In todays Lab, we recapped Monday’s lecture and Hugh implored us to connect more personally with the course and apply its messages and content to our own existence in ‘the network’ and indeed in ‘the world’. So how is information disseminated? By asking myself this will it lead to a fundamental questioning of what I, personally regard as important or relevant or even credible sources of information? I hope so, I feel like shakin’ things up a bit.

So, I ask myself the following set of questions:

What is hypertext beyond it’s definition? How does information spread and evolve?

I think the very nature of ‘research’ has been changed by hypertexts/hyperlinks and I often wonder if this new way of storing and compiling information is inherently changing the way that the human mind logically orders facts and retains information. As a young person, reading an entire (yes ENTIRE) chapter of a book seems almost to be a, do I dare to say it…waste of time when I can simply ‘Google’ it and in seconds be privy to a summary, analysis and condensed account of its contents? I will probably be able to click a link which leads me to other opinions/journals relating to similar content, I can cross reference it’s claims, I can ‘Google’ its author to perhaps gauge where it sits in terms of position or bias. I don’t even need my humble library card, or protein enhanced muscles to lug the multiple books I would have otherwise needed to gain the extensive range of information I needed, all I need is my trusty mac book pro and Google Chrome. Does this make me incapable of actually compiling information on my own? Do I rely on databases that are conveniently crafted for my understanding? Is this necessarily bad? Its quicker, its more convenient and its cheaper for sure. Perhaps by romanticizing the idea of trawling through yellowed books for quotes or ancient opinions is for those who truly enjoy the act, because honestly, I couldn’t imagine how I would have the time, or the patience to do so. I think today, the way we relate to information has been changed by how easily we can access it, and how simple ‘academia’ has become to master. However, this brings up a whole new issue – with such a plethora of easily editable information out there, can we ever really claim an idea? Can we ever really trust a statement to be reliable? Could we ever do this in the first place, surely everything can be queried and always has been open to questioning? Wow, I have really digressed here which I guess is actually an exemplification of how this phenomena of ‘hypertext’ operates. You begin by searching a certain term like ‘dog’ which will inevitably lead you to a webpage about dogs – probably one which has been set up by some ridiculously obsessed person residing in a remote part of Canada. The person who set up this webpage allows Qantas to advertise on their page and you click on a scrolling bar advertising a fare ‘bonanza sale’, you search for your dream destination, but flights there aren’t even that cheap, so you click on an alternative destination – perhaps Bali, its closer and it’s always hot there…you think, but your not sure so you Google ‘Bali Weather’ and click on the first page which is hosted by Wikitravel and discover that flights are so cheap because it’s the wet season, sigh, it sounded nice for a moment. Your eyes are drawn to the top of the page, a blue link reading ‘bali nine’ attracts your attention so you click on it, you have always wanted to know a bit more about it. So you start reading up on the Bali 9, which leads to a good hour of searching the contexts of recent terrorist attacks and extremist groups. Now, to get back to my original point…which was……

I was thinking about something that Hugh said in our lab yesterday right?  It was something along the lines of – ‘before the internet it would have taken us days to find out about the attack in Norway’ (what about the telegraph?). Anyway,  it made me think about our complete accessibility to events and just how the nature of this accessibility has changed as social networking has evolved. Now, we don’t look to newspapers for our news – I mean, why would we when the internet gives us minute by minute updates on major events as they unfold – the newspaper is already behind the eight ball the moment it is printed. This mornings news is old news. I began to cast my mind back to Cyclone Yasi and, for the first time realized that Australians living outside of the affected areas actually had better coverage than those who were directly experiencing it. The fact is, that without power, many electrical appliances were unable to function – how many times did we hear that the people of far north Queensland were facing “torrential weather, alone and without light”. If they didn’t have light, they definitely didn’t have the TV going with Anna Bligh’s conferences – some may have had a phone linked up to Twitter, well, many did, which allowed us to experience the event in real time, with personal testimony. But what about the news displaying live footage, what about the minute by minute calculations of wind speed and sea levels? I doubt while people were ‘bunkering down’ they were privy to this amount of detail – nor in the follow hours were they as informed as we were to the exact happenings in a wide area. I think this event, more than almost any other in Australia really exemplifies the kind of multi-interface world we are now living in – on the night Yasi hit, you could be watching 24 feeds of the storm on YouTube, read the literal second by second tweets on #Yasi, while following either channel 7, 9, 10 or ABC’s live coverage. I doubt anyone in far North Queensland could.

“The thing to keep in mind is that HTML and CSS are all about separating the content (HTML) and the presentation (CSS). HTML is nothing more than fancy structured content and the visual formatting of that content will come later when we tackle CSS”

Beginning my education on HTML DOG, it’s quite useful and I think is beginning to answer my questions surrounding the separation of content and form in a more technical, less wanky “i do philosophy and literature” context…

So far, HTML dog has taught me that it’s okay to not know what your doing as long as you stick <!DOCTYPE… at the top of your page so the internet knows what the hell your doing and doesn’t crumble under the stress of having a newbie caress it’s perfectly structured corners. Also, apparently my browser can lapse into some kind of state reffered to as “quirky mode” where it will begin to act very strangely…it’s nice to know, that finally, after all this time, I can identify with my browser on a more personal level.

Oh geez, I can already hear Tracy Grimshaw’s overly emphatic, nasaly tones warning the public…”How one girl fell in love with her browser…”. I never, ever wanted to be that girl, but sadly, i think this relationship with my browser is only going to go further…I mean, i’m only up to attributes…

Okay, so page one of the readings, and I’m already asking questions – the quote below (Evan Davies), brings up this idea of a separation between form and content.

To me, the blog concept is about three things: Frequency, Brevity, and Per- sonality. (..) This clarification has evolved over time, but I realised early on that what was significant about blogs was the format — not the content.

Content is simply the things that are held or included in something, where as the form is it’s manifestation, the way in which the content appears. The form is where the affordances lie – the things/methods that it’s structure allows us to communicate to our audience.

“A weblogger filters a mass of information, choosing the items that interest her or that are relevant to her chosen topic, commenting upon them, demonstrating connections between them and analysing them.” Pg252

This definition makes bloggers sound so…planned, so calculated and so…studious. Half the time I think blogs are a simple way of proving that you do exist as more than a Facebook page, more than another face in the line at the coffee shop. I feel like blogs are a device where the writer has a unique kind of freedom to delve into aesthetic rambling, to allow themselves the freedom to write what comes to their mind without a pre-existing filter or mindset. Is this not the fundamental, yet undoubtedly abstract form of a blog, that really, it can be anything you want it to be? You can be whoever you want to be, credible or not? They are like the grand symbol of our post modern age – that nothing is universal, nothing is set in stone, there are no ‘right’ answers, or ways of living – we each have to choose our own form of expression which suits the content we find to be life affirming or inspiring.

Sometimes I wish we were back in these days!

Was it just me or did everyone struggle to grapple with the ideas in this morning’s lecture? It was probably me – after a monstrous weekend, a diabolical train journey and a dash down Swanston street, complemented by the impenetrable mass of human flesh blocking me from my latte- a 9:30am lecture teasing out abstract contexts and unpacking complex ideas in relations to these contexts was probably more than my brain was willing to compute. However, i digress – most likely because i don’t know where to start in attempting to compile any kind of notes or key points from the lecture. I guess I will begin with the blantantly overt as I ask myself the following question;

What is a ‘network’, what are its affordances and what does this explicitly say or imply about its audience?

Wikipedia hosts a plethora of different types of Networks, defining each mode according to it’s specific technologies or uses.

From what I can garner, any Network is about a web connectivity, the sharing of information and the sending and receiving of messages. These interconnected webs can be complex and can be abstract (not physically tangible, like a social networking page) or they can be in physical existence, such as a transport system or computer network. I think this was one of the main points presented in the lecture, that Networks exist in many different forms, and that these forms begin to inform the way that we, as a society communicate. Networks are therefore a majorly grounded in history, and evolve as we evolve – the example used this morning was warfare, particularly World War2 and the use of email which was interesting, as both of these ‘events’ still today directly influence the way we as humans relate to one another and communicate with each other.

One concept that I had never heard of before that was mentioned this morning was ‘Packet Switching Networks’ – I am a self confessed technophobe – so anything that sounds remotely complex or as if it involves multiple sets of numbered and colour coded wires sends me running for the hills. Okay, so Packet Switching – from what my brain can compute – is a way of grouping information for transmission which does not categorise by type or structure over a shared network.

The major idea that i took from the lecture was one that we explored throughout last semester – how is the idea of authorship being changed by these new and increasingly ‘editable’ online networks? Is it even possible to be an author if our ideas and writings are constantly subject to change and evolution by others without our consent or sometimes even our knowledge?

To end with a quote from the lecture -

“pay attention to the relationship between the formal and the material qualities of a medium and the reading and writing practices it makes possible”

I’m going to go and wash all this lingo off, it’s making me feel nerdy…

http://www.frankie.com.au/

This is my most viewed site – okay, so it is set as my homepage, but thats because i love, love, love it!

Note to self: MUST START TO LEARN ABOUT HTML INSTEAD OF TRAWLING ON FRANKIE.COM.AU

I need to start being able to move beyond using simple in browser formatting!

<p style=”text-align: right;”>I need to start being able to move beyond using <strong>simple </strong><em>in browser </em><em>formatting!</em></p>

For the above example, i simply clicked the bold, italic and strikethrough button on embedded in the ‘visual’ tab (where you write your posts), then copied the HTML from the HTML tab – it may as well be in hieroglyphics.

Wish me luck…