Wednesday 5 December 2007

reflection on the course

My learning curve and curiosity goes downwards and then more depressed during the course. I like the beginning 3 weeks of this course much better. From week 4 and 5, big lengthy group discussion started to occupy the whole lecture. It seems like coming to a class became a social event. Nigel's teaching time becomes less and less during the class. And with little preparation, we have to initiate something to discuss during the class.

Week 4 was discussion about online community, if we can do less on sit and talk about the danger and hypothesis of online community and actually see some examples of online communities and how they work, interact; Read what newspaper and theorist have been written about online community; And have slides or PowerPoint presentation on some high profile internet community incidents etc, etc, the class will be more engaging and informative.

During the week 5, we discuss new journalistic style on line. If we can spend some time read through some good blogs and online journalism together and give feedback during the class, it will be much more interesting. It is pretty bad that I don't have internet at home, and it is probably due to my own fault that I didn't organise my time well for learning, so I didn't manage to listen to the online board cast and the radio show and absorb some useful information.

I found it difficult to focus during the class too. Sometime going to the class seems pointless and frustrating for me, but I attend anyway because there was group project that I need to work on. When Week past after week, I can't remember what we learnt in the class.

However, I am glad to learn how to make wiki pages, and doing the group project is interesting and enjoyable. I think it makes more sense for me now why people want to write blogs. And how some blogs are popular and with many replies. I think there are some basic factors that blogs will run well. They have to be in a place where technology and intellectual zones are proliferate and overlap. The writer of the blogs have the access to computer and Internet (which is not that easy), and their writing are interesting, passionate and critical (this is not easy either). Some people are talented in their writing skills, they are fluent and expressive, they have a point to make and they are confident with their voice. That is what i want to learn in the future.

When I start this course I was hoping that I would learn better how to manage my time online and know more interesting websites, blogs. But instead I learnt the idea behind Internet, and some concepts and ideas about how things work, and how people cooperate online through open source movement and wiki. It is good. I feel more positive about Internet and it becomes a place in which things make much more sense. I think I have to work out on my own how to manage my time online and practice my writing, discover good blogs on my own though.

That is the end of my course reflection.

Good and bad web design






I like highly interactive websites with a lot of graphic, animation and video experimentation. So a good website for me is to have an interesting narrative and fun to play.

the pictures above are screen shot of http://www.requiemforadream.com/, follows the narrative of the film Requiem For A Dream, this website is divided into 3 stories of how people fallen into drug addiction. Stylistically, every element in the website is broken but carefully composed together. The first page is a mocking of those pop-up windows of a gamble website, it direct you to the hallucination of winning money and success. There are also secret passages and links. Sound repetitions. Movement and distortion of graphics creates a strange kind of aesthetic. the design firm of this website receive attention for creating this website. It was a break through of internet art at that point of 2001. see other web design firm www.sofake.com create amazing websites that test the limit of what programing, interactivity and graphic design and do in the confinement of borrower window.

although i think these website fulfill the criteria of good web design and web-based art, i do aware that they are just entertainment and commercial products. If other more informative, educational website, like the example below can be more simple, in their web design, it could be more accessible.

Thus, I think bad website design is there are too much focus points and information on one page. if a page is divided into 3 columns plus there are menus for 10 options for you to chose from on both top and bottom. that kind of website is very confusing for me. thus, i tend to neglect information altogether.



from http://www.radicalmath.org

Wednesday 21 November 2007

work that needs to be done

pressure, alot of things need to catch up. I haven't done the examples of bad-good web design blog entry yet, (I had written about it in my notebook, but no time to put it on blogger because i have no internet access at home, and i need not to tell you that i just moved into a flat so there are issues that concern basic living necessities that need to be sort out) but we already have another assignment of an blog entry about reflection of this course that we need to write. :(

I can't do either of them now, because i haven't done my reading for community

reading list at the moment- a community manifesto by chris wright
-virtual community by Howard Rheingold
-the queeruption website
-stonewall 25: the making of the lesbian and gay community in Britain (stonewall is a lobbying group concerning gay and lesbian right, equality etc...) (and before this book I was reading The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities , but I am not sure if either of these book is useful in describing the kind of diy, self-education activism experienced in the queeruption event)

I have come up some terms and structure that i think is important to explain in my writing in the group project
- my promises is that virtual community is rooted in reality.
- what is non-hierarchy collectives and its decision making process...?
- how does sexuality become as identity and activism in forming communities ?
- technology is seductive, and this link to Internet and virtual community


dani had produced good written work about social networking sites, we had putted them on our group wiki this monday. we also designed the layout for our page. it is basically grey blue very minimal design. dani chose the colours, and i chose those pictures :) one picture is queeruption camp site. they use that on their website to introduce visitors how to get around in the place. the other picture is a virtual city on the Second life.

in response to dani's writing on our group wiki (haha, i have to hyperlink it a thousand times because we are so proud of our work) I agree with her linking social networking website to a post-modernist symbol-game. so i found more materials in relation to her topic, and sent an email to our group members....

when we say that the meaning of "friend" changes online. when it become a little bit more like objects people gathered to show their own popularity.

I think in certain extend it is true. online community maybe make the meaning of "friend" become symbols rather than 'moral' beings. but don't need to be pessimistic about that. i mean, albeit simplistic, mechanism of friends might work in similar way to that of a petition. maybe a friend is equivalent to a vote, of some quality reassurance, on the virtual world.

fly on the wall, the "creative common" is celebrating its 5th birthday by gathering 50,000 friends on face book, myspace, and flickr
the News http://lessig.org/blog/2007/11/50000_friends.html
you might already know that, Lessig is a the American law professor in Stanford University. he initiated the alternative copy right idea online - the creative common. there is more emphasis on freedom of artists, writers to share cooperate work together online. Look at their propaganda

however, the criticism towards creative commons important too. creative common is ambiguous on its political position. it is a extension of American copy right law, -----""the Creative Commons plays as an unconcerned corporate filter. As mentioned in Martin Hardie and "Creative License Fetishism", "When one examines closely just exactly what sort of 'freedom' is ultimately to be had within these licenses, one is quick to discover that they are primarily set up as tools meant to feed directly into corporate co-option." "
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons

especially when you think about all these free tools - flickr, blogs, youtube, that allows people to publish online. all these tool are actually owned by big cooperation such as Microsoft and Rupert Murdoch's media companies. so if the cooperation has the project to utilise these archive of photographs people constructed and make profit out from them. those cooperation are free to do so. in the end of the day, who has the control?

-----------that is almost the end of the email that i send yesterday.

and i have been trying to construct my writing since yesterday. but I'm still in the stage of reading. anyways, carry on working. our goal is that every body can finsih their part of writing this week so we can piece them together next week.
and then that is the deadline.

Monday 12 November 2007

Group work

Our group project had the time of being trapped in defining “what are the elements of which a community is constituted?” but we decided during last week to move on to work separately to find our own examples of virtual communities and to see how they work out in their own different ways for their own different users.

For me, I am going to be looking at http://www.queeruption.org/
And to see how activism has been playing a vital role in binding people with different approaches, but, similar interests together as communities to work on projects that is potentially mutually beneficial for all participants.

For Daniela, she is going to look at Myspace, and argue that they are not actually a community as how myspace advertise themselves. Instead, it is used as a way of exhibiting, advertising etc.

And Karl is going to look at http://www.freecycle.org/
Freecycle is a good example of how an idea is enabled through Internet. The practice of providing things you don’t need for free to people who might need them has been spreading across more than 70 countries.
How trust between people is build through this website is interesting to look at. Subsequently we might say people’s location in the world in relation to how a community is composed of might be more flexible because of Internet.
This example is particularly useful because we are going to look at how certain terminologies, words changes meaning over the time. Such as our perception to the community, to the world, to the location, to the distances and to our relationships changes through the ways we communicate.

Class feedback for last week

The lectures in last two weeks were about definitions of community and blog/academic writing. I have to say that I didn’t get much out from the classes because I didn’t engage with the class discussion. I had all these arguments in my head already. So “What the point of arguing and add up confusions in the class?” I thought.

I was hoping the class can clarify some ambiguities around these terms. But instead I could only find some clarification to Internet writing and community through a festival called Ars Electronica. Within the festival, there was a competition category called Digital Community. They asked some vital questions: how to technology can be used to bridge digital divide, what is the social responsibility of initiatives of digital community in democratisation, equality, education, professionalisation etc.

In terms of the writings on Internet, the competition asked if it was possible for blogging to become new forms of journalism or “citizens journalism”...

Tuesday 6 November 2007

Virtual Community Landscape- Second Life


Community Landscape- Queeruption Vancouver

Sunday 4 November 2007

community - friendships?

A mouse and a frog meet every morning on the riverbank.
They sit in a nook of the ground and talk.

Each morning, the second they see each other,
they open easily, telling stories and dreams and secrets,
empty of any fear or suspicious holding back.

To watch, and listen to those two
is to understand how, as it’s written,
sometimes when two beings come together,
The All becomes visible.

The mouse starts laughing out a story he hasn’t thought of
in five years, and the telling might take five years!
There’s no blocking the speechflow-river-running-
all-carrying momentum that true intimacy is.....

Rumi
Many years ago

--
rather than using commonality to describe the formation of a community, how about using the idea of friendship as the basis of a community? then, what should our group project do? the meaning of friendships; the process of building up a friendship; the problems of a failing friendship?? haha

Haven't build up a good habit of research for this project yet. I believe there are much interesting things we can do with it. but right at the moment, I am puzzled where to start. I had been reading other group member's blog, dani's blog is quit inspiring. -Considering this it would be interesting to see how many heterosexuals as opposed to homosexuals identify themselves as being part of a community in relation to their sexuality.-

want to go to sleep now. such a strange entry with no beginning or end isn't it.

Tuesday 23 October 2007

community -

during yesterday's class, Nigel showed us the loc.alize.us website and try to convey us that there could be all different sort of ways of defining a virtual community: they are alot of photographs mapped out on a satellite map to show their actual location in the world, cross a spectrum of time, uploaded by different people. could this be a community? of people who are committed to using the application and contributing their photographs to this growing archive? this example make me realised a virtual community could be without any definition of sexuality (like queeruption does) or similar musical tastes (like myspace does) or don't have to be actual friends that related in the reality (like facebook does) technology, in this case, seems to cross the bridge of social confinement and erase the importance of identity.








However, if community is simply a social grouping, it can be anybody in a same room without any communication or exchange of emotion. is that a community?





"we know the healing effect of community in terms of individual lives. " M. Scott Peck
The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace





I would say it is not easy, even in the society we live in, to have a community of people who willing to share their time, knowledge etc. it requires efforts. But I think loc.alize.us lack of a function of community, or loc.alize.us might be just an extension/accessory of a online community.


Howard Rheingold define 'The Virtual Community' as 'People who use computers to communicate, form friendships that sometimes form the basis of communities, but you have to be careful to not mistake the tool for the task and think that just writing words on a screen is the same thing as real community.'" Howard Rheingold's book is interesting, i will dig into that.



ahhh.... and something else, about the poet Rumi, a 13th Century Persian. a research was conducted to asked a group of about fifty participants to define why Rumi meant so much to them. their responses in 12 distinct categories which are listed below with explanation.

1- Non-Intellectual: They found Rumi to cater to their hearts, emotions and instincts rather than intellects.
2- Levels: They found many levels in Rumi’s poetry. The more they learned about Rumi, the more they appreciated his depth and were encouraged to dig deeper.
3- Unity: They found the sense of unity and universal siblinghood in Rumi’s poetry to be very attractive.
4- Friend: They found him to be a friend.
5- Personal Process: Reading Rumi for them is a personal process. They associate themselves with him.
6- Grace Descending: Every time a Rumi poem was recited they felt Grace descending.
7- Longing: They associated with the sense of longing in Rumi’s poems.
8- Love Affair: Rumi was like a lover to some of the participants.
9- Cultural Bridge: They found Rumi to form a cultural bridge for the Persians, Turks, Afghanis and the Arabs in this country. Through Rumi some Middle & Near Eastern people found a new acceptance in the U.S.
10- They Don’t Even Like Poetry: Some expressed that they don’t even like poetry but they love reading Rumi poems.
11- Participate in the Process: They found Rumi extremely expressive and found themselves participating in Rumi’s own process.
12- Spiritual Guide: They found Rumi to be a spiritual guide for them.

Rumi is said to be very popular in America, I think even a piece of writing can be significant, and be the base of a community. because people feel connected through that. but how about bibles, and other religious writings?... i think maybe i am going to far. nenglish.

Monday 22 October 2007

In last week, we learnt how to use Textbook to create a HTML document. so we created a web page from scratch. I wasn't familiar with writing the code at all, I had always choose the lazy way of using Dreamweaver. I am amazed how simple the syntax of HTML is. and I learnt how to put video files on a webpage.

We also created a group Wiki page. our group is called DEKN, you can find us here http://dekn.pbwiki.com

our main topic is online community. we will draw both Myspace.com and queeruption.org as our examples. we thought it is a interesting comparison of different kind of communities online, and of different aims these communities try to achive via new media technology.

firstly, our group would like search for ideas of what is "community". and we will see how it is different from online community.

then we will use the example of Myspace and queeruption as example. we thought that it is the contrast between commercial/non-commercial narcisism/comformity

the mission statement on queeruption website makes it very clear what they want to do and how they like to use the interenet to communicate:

Mission Statement:

What we're doing and why
We want to make an internationally relevant Website where alternative/radical/disenfranchised queers can exchange information, network, organise, inspire and be inspired, self represent, challenge ourselves and each other, and learn about DIY ideas and ethics. We hope this site will convey the diversity of queer life, identity, and politics; provide visibility for a definition of queer that confounds and contradicts the limited representation of the "normal"/consumerist model; and be an active tool for building community that recognises the differences in queerness globally.

The goals of the site are:
*To be a home base for information about past, present, and future Queeruption gatherings.
*To be a major networking tool for radical queer people and groups.
*To be a central site for information and resource sharing among queer activists.
*To provide organising tools and inspiration for people who want to organise locally as well as internationally.

In order to meet these goals the site should be:
*Up to date.
*Inclusive, not exclusive.
*Multi-lingual.
*Technologically accessible -- i.e., quick to load and easy to navigate.
*More about participation and creation by and for queer community and less about editorial oversight.

From queeruption.org

Tuesday 9 October 2007

two assignments for this applied study
1. group wiki: should write about group research project: people in the group; the research topic; decision making process;
2. personal blog: a reflective dairy of what I have learnt compares to what i already know before...

where am I coming from?
I use to play with animation, graphic, film editing programs alot. and had too much coffee, and bad health. I use to design graphic based websites, but hate to mentain them. I use to be very geeky and excitied by computer learning, but my learning got stucked when i try to learn programing and database stuff, because i don't have the basic training of computer coding. I was facinated by computer art like this http://www.levitated.net/p5/chamber/ - a program written in simple code but can draw amazing images, grow organic structure. but I got bored with these kind of art after a while. because I can't find deeper meaning to it. (its time to become a traveler to experience the real world! ;D )

what I want to learn from the class?
see how it goes...

what I have learnt from the first class?
the potencial of internet social network. ... the population of Myspace is bigger then any country in the world. I waste so much time online doing facebook/myspace/livejournal, feel guilty to even think about it. how i can use internet communication more effciently? i mean... i want to do useful things like check gardien online or bbc online radio or doing interesting things such as constructing a online book full of jokes... but never get my head around to do it.
computer teching is more then about using tools.... it more about how the tools can be more useful for us....

Monday 8 October 2007

the first blog entry

Blogging is a myth. some can get rich from managing a good blog and sale things on it.

I set up this blog for my course assignment.

I had 2 blogs before. One is livejournal, and I don't update it regularly. i'm amazed by those people who can write amazing stuff and up-load their blogs regulraly.

My mom has a blog too. she doesn't update it at all.




----------
wiki, who are on the group, what we doing

blog, what i am doing. what i want to learn from the course and so on....