Last Post!!!!!!

THE END IS NEAR.....

Well its week 13, our learning time is over, our assignments are in and its time to reflect on the theories, concepts, definitions and facts we have learnt thoughtout the semester.

Our final exam in on wednesday and until then I will be busy revising my blog and notes I have taken in the lectures. I started studying today and WOW we have learnt so much! Alot of it is interesting but some of it I must say was quite boring hmmm WALTER BENJAMIN!!!

Although I did enjoy some of the films and documentries we watched like Blade Runner and the documentary on Second Life. The other films like Alaphville I found required more reading and interpretation to fully comprhend what the film was actually about.

I also enjoyed learning about Email phising and blogging...hence this blog and my growing junk mail folder!

Im finding it hard trying to remember all the theorist and their ideas...there is just so many...will they all be on the exam? I hope not!

Throughout the semester I learnt some interesting new terms, such as: Semiotics, Utopia & Dystopia, New Wave Cinema, Cyberculture, Intersubjectivity & Intertextuality. Lets just hope I can remember the definitions too them all for the exam!

Overall I am glad I can say I actually learnt somthing in this course, althought im sure I have learnt a few things that will leave my brain the minute I walk out of that exam room. But there are also things that I have learnt that I will more than likley use in everyday life and future studies.

Happy studying everyone!!!

Good Bye fellow NCT bloggers!

Thanks Steve, Adam and Chris!

THE END......

Blog 10

FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE AND BEYOND.....

• Free Software principles adapted to describe a community-centric mode of production...
• Initially for software but adapted to other areas of creativity
• Open model has not one author but many...
• More eyeballs = more quality control
• Wide Participation encouraged by nature of the central philosophy
• The Internet is Open Source!
• Creates awesome programs that let you control how you use your computer without being dictated to by money-hungry corporations...

Blog 9

THE ETHICS OF PEER TO PEER FILESHARING

Lecture Discussion: Is it ok to download music and movies?

Steve made the point that before the 20th Century people had their own music that they sang, played and passed from one generation to the next and that the idea of paying for music was perhaps just a passing fad. The students in the class made the moral distinction between stealing from a tangible product from a shop and downloading music and movies which are (eventually) given away for free on the radio and TV.

• Some artists are happy to have more people listening to their music, without making any profiit. They make majority of their money from concerts and merchandise.
• The loss of money from ‘pirating’ can be questioned >> was the person ever going to even by the record?
• Songs are already played in the radio and through MySpace for free >> why should the downloading of them cost something?
• Who i really making the money from downloads? The Internet service provider
• Piracy is the cause of mass communication
• Piracy: changing people’s habits
• New media adapt themselves to the new technologies constantly: the music industry should be doing the same!
• The fact is that there is no way to stop the downloading.

Blog 8

BLADE RUNNER

BLADE RUNNER is a 1982 American CyberPunk film.

The film is set in the future in a Dystopian Los Angeles in 2019.

Genetically manufactured beings called replicants – visually indistinguishable from adult humans – are used for dangerous and degrading work in Earths off world colonies.

Replicants become illegal on Earth and specialist police called "blade runners" are trained to hunt down and "retire" (kill) escaped replicants on Earth.

The plot focuses on a brutal and cunning group of replicants hiding in Los Angeles and the semi-retired blade runner, who reluctantly agrees to take on one more assignment.

Blog 7

CYBERPUNK

What is CyberPunk?

It is a science fiction genre based in the possibilities inherent in computers, genetics, body modifications and corporate developments in the near future.

The word comes from the words Cybernetics which is the study of communication, command and control in living organisms, machines and organisations and Punk, a style of fast, loud, short rock music with an anarchist political philosophy.

The movie MATRIX pushed the limits of cyberpunk so it became like the bloated soap operas that it had originally scorned. It deals with philosophical issues at some depth.

Some quotes from the movie:

• Morpheus: The desert of the real.
  
• Neo: Why do my eyes hurt? Morpheus: You've never used thembefore.
  
• Morpheus: What is real? How do you define real? If you'retalking about your senses, what you feel, taste, smell, or see, thenall you're talking about are electrical signals interpreted by yourbrain.

MATRIX pushes the boundaries of computer-generated effects as it explores apossible future world where machines dominate humans but keep them inignorant bliss of their real state. The machines in MATRIX create atotally illusory reality for people, constructing their identities to suit the purposes of the machine.

CYBERPUNK THEMES:

• Technology and Mythology
• Utopia and Dystopia
• Cities as Machines
• Technological change
• Modernism to Postmodernism

Essay

HAS TECHNOLOGY CHANGED THE TERM ‘FRIEND’?

Yesterday, I caught up with a few friends. Natasha showed off her latest pictures from her European adventures. Sophie introduced me to her newborn son. Then Zane played his bands’ latest song – twice. All this happened in one day and none of us ever left our computers. We were on MySpace and we weren’t alone. For those of you who live under a rock, MySpace is a social networking service that allows members to create unique personal profiles online in order to build networks of ‘friends’. I have 124 MySpace ‘friends’ and there is a 90/10 split between people I know and bands I love. That’s right. MySpace has let me be friends with my favourite musicians. The term ‘friend’ has taken on a whole new meaning in the world of MySpace.

Steven Pearman, the senior vice president for production strategy at MySpace was quoted by News Week online (2008, p. 1) stating that “at MySpace the term ‘friend’ goes beyond people I know in the world”. This evokes a lot of questions about the nature of ‘friendship’ when it comes to sites like MySpace. How many friends is too many? How does someone become an online friend? What other mediums have influenced this change to the nature of friendship? Furthermore how has this change impacted society? The following study will analyse and explore these issues with references to a variety of sources and evidence from the Tila Tequila case study.

So how many friends is too many? According to author Ethan Watters (2004), you can never have too many friends. That’s indisputable in some sense, but over one million friends? That’s Questionable. An article published by Time Magazine Online features Tila Tequila who has over 1.7 million MySpace ‘friends’. Who is Tila Tequila? She’s the poorly dressed want to be rapper who has been touted the Queen of MySpace. She’s turned her MySpace presence into a career, and Time Magazine Online credits Tila Tequila for what has become the world’s biggest popularity contest. Pre-Tila, your MySpace friends were mostly people you actually knew. Post-Tila, the biggest game on the site became who has the most friends, who ever they might be.

In view of that, does having an excessive amount of MySpace ‘friends’ categorise a person as popular? Not exactly, Tila Tequila is trying to launch a music career – yet despite having over 1.7 million MySpace ‘friends’, according to Time Magazine Online, only 13,000 of them –less than 1% - actually bought her first single. Also just recently, 2008 Big Brother housemate Michael was evicted from the house, yet according to the official Big Brother website he has over 10,000 MySpace ‘friends’. These extreme examples display how a MySpace ‘friend’ can in fact, not be a friend at all.

Therefore how does someone become an online friend? According to Terry Burrows (2007), an online friend can be someone you have not even met. Burrows (2001, p. 176) states how “social networking on the Internet enables people to make new and relevant contacts with those they would have been unlikely to have otherwise met”. Not only can a ‘friend’ on your MySpace list be someone you haven’t met, but someone you see all the time and don’t say a single word to. Jasmin Kelaita, a writer for the Camden Advertiser shares her experience with an Internet ‘friend’ in an article she recently published online. She explains how she once had a MySpace friend that would see at her the gym and never say hello to her face, but would leave her ‘I saw you’ comments on her MySpace page. This demonstrates how ‘friends’ can seem so close in the confines of MySpace, yet so far away when it comes to physical communication.

Social networking sites such as MySpace are not exclusively responsible for altering the nature of the term ‘friend’. Other aspects such as the media and television have also influenced this change. I think a lot has to do with the rise of reality television over the past decade and how accessible and familiar celebrities are to us now. Renowned authors and sociologists O’Shaughnessy and Staddler (2005) support this in highlighting how the media encourages a feeling of friendship with stars and celebrities by referring to them only by first name. Reality TV shows like Big Brother have everyday people living in a fishbowl like environment for up to three months for all to see. For a few months of the year, the contestants are among the most well known people in Australia and viewers feel like they get to know the housemates. According to Watters (2004) it is the feeling of ‘knowing’ a lot about someone which makes people believe they are ‘friends’.

From the information we have established that new technologies have reshaped the nature of ‘friendship’. So are these changes having a positive or negative impact on society? According to White and Wyn (2008) digital communication has generated a greater sense of belonging for the individual, especially youth. This sense of belonging has a positive impact as sites such as MySpace provide a space for people to feel apart of a particular group or subculture. Also Nancy Willard states that social networks “allow people to experiment with their own identities” (2007, p.76). She also adds that “they offer a place for people to make connections which are contributing to their social well-being and expanding their perspectives and understanding of themselves, their close friends and other people from around the world” (2007, p.74). Through these statements it is apparent that new digital communication technologies are a positive influence to the development of the individual and society.

Through the analysis of MySpace and Tila Tequila it is evident that in recent times the term ‘friend’ has evolved. Today a friend doesn’t have to be someone who has actually sat on your living room sofa; in fact it can be your favourite band, a celebrity or simply someone who is a friend of a friend. Ideally this expansion of the term friend has given people a greater sense of belonging. Although the amount of online friends a person has doesn’t necessarily reflect their popularity. Subsequently it is up to the individual if they want complete strangers listed as ‘friends’ on their MySpace page. As for me, I think I will stick with the 90/10 split of people I know and the bands I love.

Alyce Elliott
S2638654

Reference List:

Websites:

TMZ.com In The Zone: ‘Tila Tequila's 1.7 Million "Friends" Not Giving Single a Shot’, viewed May 8th, 2008, http://www.tmz.com/2007/03/16/tila-tequilas-1-7-million-friends-not-giving-single-a-shot/

Big Brother.com: ‘Housemate Profiles’, viewed May 15th, 2008,
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:m6uBoHpJoNkJ:www.bigbrother.com.au/housemate-profile-michael.htm+big+brother+myspace+friends&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=au

News Week.com: How many MySpace friends is too many? Viewed May 15th 2008, http://www.newsweek.com/id/137512?from=rss

MySpace.Com: Terms & Conditions, viewed May 8, 2008
http://www.myspace.com/Modules/Common/Pages/TermsConditions.aspx

Camden – Your Guide.com: I have 500 MySpace friends, viewed May 15th, 2008, http://camden.yourguide.com.au/blogs/jaz-says/i-have-500-myspace-friends-therefore-i-am/770377.aspx


Books:

Watters, Ethan 2004, Urban Tribes: Are friends the new family, Bloomsbury Publishing, London.

O’Shaughnessy, M and Stadler, J 2005, Media and Society: An Introduction (Third Edition), Oxford University Press, New York.

Burrows, Terry 2007, Your Life Online: Making the most of Web 2.0 – the next generation of the internet, Carlton Books Limited, London.

White, Rob & Wyn, Johanna 2008, Youth & Society: Exploring the Social Dynamics of Youth Experience, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne.

Willard, Nancy 2007, Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber Savvy Teens, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.

Blog 6

MICROSOFT WORD & EXCEL.....

This weeks tutorial task was a bit of a refresher course for me. I found the Microsoft Word excersise very basic and easy, as I learnt all the aspects of Microsoft Word in High School. I also worked in Administration for a couple of years where I used all the features daily. The Excel excersise was fairly easy for me aswell, although I found the Macros task a little confusing. I had learnt about Macros before, although I did not use this feature frequently so I had forgotten some of the details. Overall, I thought this was a worthy little task, as it refreshed my memory on some of the features of these programs that I havent used in a long time.

THE VIDEO GAME.....

What is a video game?

• Arcade Games
• Consoles
• Computer Games
• MUDsMMOGs
  

We can then divide them into different genres: Hardware or Software. Then into sub-genres from first person shooters to advernture games.

Interesting facts about video games:

• Video games have been intertwined with the development of computing technology since the development of Spacewar! in the mid-1960s.
  
• People used 'home games consoles' (pretty much early computers) long before they used them for writing documents or keeping track of their finances or even browsing the web.
  
• The military have always shown particular interest in video games as training tools, which has driven development of hardware to power their training simulations.
  

3D WORLDS VS MSN......

So I took a bit of a field trip into the virtual worlds of Habbo Hotel and Active Worlds. Until a couple of months ago I had never heard of Habbo Hotel. That was until I saw my 15 year old sister on the computer interacting with her friends through Habbo. I was amazed at how behind the times I was, Im still using good old MSN.

The differences I noticed was Habbo looked more like a game than a chat room. My sister had created her own little 3D world. Her character and was going to parties with her friends, had her own house and pets, all while interacting with her friends from school. As for MSN, its more of just a chat room for friends. So I guess the main difference is Interactive worlds such as Habbo are more 'personalised' than MSN.

As for me? I think i'll stick to MSN, Mypace and Facebook...they take enough of my precious study time as it is.

Blog 5

Tutorial Task: Wikipedia

Article 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biloela

This article on my home town ‘Biloela’, is surprisingly accurate. It highlights the geographical location of the town, the industry which the town thrives on, local facilities and other interesting aspects of the town. It covers all basic facts which a reader would need to understand the topic. The article is a little biased, as it kind of sounds like a article you would find in a travel brochure promoting the town. In my opinion, Biloela is not that great of a town. I was born and bred there and couldn’t wait for the day I moved to the Gold Coast. But that is my opinion. Maybe to improve the article I would write from a local’s perspective what it was like growing up in the town. This would give a little more of an insight to what it’s like to live there, not just as a tourist destination.


Article 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optus

This article on Optus only covers the very basic facts about the company. From what I know from working for the company the article is accurate. It highlights the important aspects of the company which would be a useful start to someone who is researching Optus. The article is very balanced and fair as it only states the very fundamental facts about the company. No biased opinion is prominent in the article. I would not make any changes to this article as I believe it does not need any more information. A researcher can go to the Official Optus webpage for further information.


Lecture Notes:


Birth of the Computer
Charles Babbage created the first Mechanical computer; he sketched out the logical structure of the modern computer.

Computers were first commercially produced by IBM in the 1950s. The first generation of computers were large, unwieldy and expensive machines for military, government and corporate work but it quickly became apparent that computers would get smaller, quicker and less expensive at an exponential rate

Xerox PARC
Xerox PARC is known for making the personal computers of today possible and approachable by the general user. In the early 70’s they developed concepts such as the mouse, the graphical ser interface (GUI) and pull down menus.

Apple
Apple was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
They produced the Apple I - a primitive machine with a single circuit board, no case and no keyboard. It sold for $USA666.60

PC/Microsoft
Bill Gates wrote a language called BASIC for the Altair, so that it could be used for simple applications like word processing, basic accounting and some games. In order to market his program he started a little company in his garage - Microsoft. By the end of 1975 more companies had joined the PC industry.

The internet
The internet is a network of networks, which is often called ‘Internetwork’. It uses servers to run everything. There are only seven serves in the world which controls all the information.

World Wide Web
It is important to understand that the internet is not the same thing as the web.
The web is an application of the Internet which began in the 1990’s. The Web includes all the internet sites that people have made available on servers around the world. The web is just one part of the broader internet which includes many other things as well as the Web

Cyberspace
A conceptual space where words, relationships, data, wealth and power are manifested by people using Computer Mediated Communication technologies.

Some early Internet Applications:

• Electronic mail (Email)
  Email is a virtual mail system which sends documents from one sender to either one or multiple receivers.
  
• File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
  File Transfer Protocol is a system which allows you to directly download (or upload) files from another computer onto your computer with minimal requirements for compatibility.
  
• Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
  IRC is a real time chat system that was particularly popular in the 1990s as it was one of the first applications that allowed people to type to each other in real time. This is what is known as a “Synchronous” medium of communication.
  
• MUDs, MOOs, MUSHes, etc.
  These are all variants on the same kind of program usually referred to as MUDs (which originally stood for Multiple User Dungeon because it was based on Dungeons and Dragons. These were the first of the internet massive multiuser online role playing games. Rather than being graphics-based, MUDs are text only.

More Recent Internet Applications:

• Instant Messaging (IM)
• Peer-to-Peer (p2p) file sharing
• Portable Audio (MP3s, AAC, FLAC, OGG, etc) and Podcasting
• VoIP and Voice chat

Blog 4

Week 5 already, time is going fast. Our lecture this week was mostly about negative and positive aspects of Wikipedia. The overall sense was that Wikipedia is not a reliable source, especially for academic research. It is more of a cultural source for diverse theories and opinions. Wikipedia can be edited by anyone at anytime. So how do we know what is truth? In the lecture notes, there were some theories that can help determine the truth:

Correspondence Theory: Just the facts - observable, measurable
Coherence Theory: Does it fit together and make sense?
Performative Theory: I do declareSocial Theory: What can we agree on?

We also looked into some of the aspects of the movie Matrix, which gave us a glimpse into the future of technology.

The reading for this week was a short story based in the 1940's and was set seven years into the future. I found it quite complex to comprehend. The lecture notes stated that the Wikipedia article for this story was 'pretty good' so I went to the Wikipedia site for an overview of the story. I guess it relates to this weeks topic of 'Wikipedia', as the story is about an encyclopedia article about a mysterious country, that is imagined by people and thereby created. It reflects our study of Wikipedia and the search for truth.

In our tutorial we shared our individual interpretation of the lecture and discussed our ideas for our essay topics. My essay topic is: Do virtual environments emulate or mimic the real world and the everyday lives of real people?

For our tutorial task, we were asked to consider the following questions:

How do the ideas from Walter Benjamin's "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" apply to contemporary digital media?
Walter Benjamin explains that Mass production enables all people to view digital movies and not just the elite sort. This type of production is much better suited to today’s society.

There was a time when "Art" was made by artists who were skilled professionals. Now that anyone with a computer can create things digitally (music, images, videos, etc), what does that mean for "art"?
In todays society art is not just a painting or drawing on a canvas. Art is used to express emotions and creativity in what ever shape or form. For example, an Apple turning brown once its been cut open could be seen as art. Just like most things in life, art has evolved overtime.

Is a photoshopped image "authentic"?
No, authentic means real, genuine, true relaible. Would you call a photoshopped image of a super modle real, genuine, true or relaible? No, I wouldnt. These images are not real people, they are digitialy inhanced to create the ideal or perfect person. When in relaity people dont look like that. So no, I do not belive a photoshopped image is authentic and I would like to meet someone who thought they were authentic.

Do digital "things" have an "aura" (in Benjamin's terms)?

Media such as music, images and video are a form of art which is expressed by mass media. The “aura” refers to people’s sense of awe they have to these such productions. These digital medias provoke feelings and opinions, and so are considered to have an aura.

Blog 3

Welcome back; hope you all had a nice break. We kicked of week 4 with a lecture on old communication technologies. Why learn about old communication technologies in a new communication technologies course you might wonder? Well there are many reasons why we should study the history of communication technologies. We look at how these technologies have evolved over time and what factors have influenced these changes. Also, studying old technologies helps us understand new communication technologies today. We touched on the history of communication equipment such as, the telegraph, morse code, phonograph, radio, telephone and television.

Also in the lecture we looked at theories over time dating back from the 1920’s. We had an extended reading on Walter Benjamin, who has been influential in the fields of cultural studies and media theory. We also briefed on 'Semiotics'. Which from my understanding is a theory about signs and how they are apart of social life. Elements of a Semiotic approach is the relationship between signs to what they stand for, the formal or structural relations between signs and the relation of signs to interpreters.

In our tuorial we discussed the lecture material and what we learnt from the content. It was good to hear other students ideas and thoughts, becuase there was somthings they spoke about that I did not pick up in the lecture. We also discussed our essays and we are expected to have an essay topic in mind by our next tute.

Our tutorial task for this week was to answer the following questions using an internet based search engine other than the favourite 'Google'.

1. Who was the creator of the infamous "lovebug" computer virus?

Answer: Onel de Guzman, 24, at computer school

Source: studenthttp://archives.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/06/29/philippines.lovebug.02/index.html

2. Who invented the paper clip?

Answer: Erlman J. Wright invented the first official paperclip.

Source: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/121017http://www.answerbag.com

3. How did the Ebola virus get its name?

Answer: It takes its name from the Ebola River in northern Congo (Zaire.

Source: http://www.answers.com/topic/ebola?cat=health

4. What country had the largest recorded earthquake?

Answer: The largest recorded earthquake was in Chile.

Source: earthquake.usgs.gov/learning/kids/facts.phphttp://www.yahoo.com.au

5. In computer memory/storage terms, how many kilobytes in a terabyte?

Answer: 1 terabyte = 1 073 741 824 kilobytes

Source: www.t1shopper.com/tools/calculate/ - 43k

6. Who is the creator of email?

I found alot of conflicting answer to this question. So I could not just state one, as I do not know which one is correst.

7. What is the storm worm, and how many computers are infected by it?

Answer: It is one of the largest and most sophisticated cyber fraud networks ever constructed and it has affected close to 10 million computers.

Source:http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/10/the_storm_worm_maelstrom_or_te.html?nav=rss_blog

8. If you wanted to contact the prime minister of australia directly, what is the most efficient way?

Answer: To contact the Prime Minister it must be done through the Australian Government website.

Source: http://www.australia.gov.au/

9. Which Brisbane-based punk band is Stephen Stockwell (Head of the School of Arts) a member of?

Answer: Stephen played in the Black Assassins.

Source: http://www.griffith.edu.au/school/art/staff/stockwell.htm

10. What does the term "Web 2.0" mean in your own words?

Answer: Web 2.0 is a term used to refer to the next generation of the internet. It is concerns a more user-based internet, that conects people.

Source: internet.http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

To achieve my answers I used a couple different sources such as dogpile.com and yahoo.com. I found that Google is more specific in its findings than other search engines. I had to filter through a few different web pages to get the answer I was looking for. I think I will stick to Google when looking for information. It saves me time!

Blog 2

So we kicked off week three with a two hour screening of Alphaville. The opening scene started and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Here I was in the year 2008, watching a black and white, 1960's film in some foreign language. Yes, we had to read captions the whole way through. I'm pretty sure the language was split between French and German? I found it hard to stay focused; occasionally I would find my self day dreaming about what to pack for my Easter trip to Sydney! Then I thought to my self, I better stay focused and try to figure out what this film has to do with New Communication Technologies? I honestly had no idea.

From what I could comprehend of the film, the main connection to our course was the idea and concept of new technologies. A major aspect of the film was revolutionary ideas of what technology will be like in the future. The 1964 film displayed ideas and concepts of what technology will be like in the future and what impact it could have on society. Could an innovative giant computer, known as Alpha 60 in the film control society in the future? Well today in 2008, computers do, to some extent control peoples lives. To the degree where people have stated “I could not live without my computer or mobile phone or the internet”.

In our week three tutorial we got together with other students and we discovered how to add ‘friends’ to our blogs. After some trial and error Courtney figured it out and showed me how to add friends to my blog. Now I have four friends – Courtney, Aleisha, Eve and Chantelle! I look forward to reading their blogs every week!

Our blogging task is to explain how we use new communication technologies to communicate with our friends and family. Well I guess it’s different for each person. My friends and I communicate a lot through myspace, facebook and text messaging. Whereas, for my family I mainly use text messaging, instant messenger and phone calls. Although it has changed over time, I used to use instant messenger for friends, but as technology changed and myspace became the 'in thing' I started using comments on myspace to connect with my friends. As for my family, mainly being my parents, I have only in the past year or so began to use instant messenger with them. The reason being is they are a bit behind with the times I guess. Who knows maybe in a few years my mum and dad will have myspace or facebook?

Now to summarise the reading for this week on French New Wave:
My understanding of French New Wave is the evolution of the French film industry, which peaked between 1958 and 1964. It was the development of new filiming techniques such as, jump cuts, shooting on location, natural lighting, improvised dialogue and plotting, direct sound recoring and long takes. Many of these techniques are still used today, but back in the late 1950's and early 1960's they were groundbreaking.

Have a nice Easter Break! See you all in week 4!

Alyce.

Blog 1

Introducing me, Alyce Jayne Elliott. I am a 21 year old Journalism student at Griffith University and I am a casual news presenter for 105.7 Radio Metro. You can listen in every Wednesday at 4 O'clock to hear my news bulletin. For this week’s blog I will endeavour to explain the world of ‘Second Life’ and examine email phishing. I will also analyse blogging and if it is journalism?

So what is this ‘Second Life’ we learnt about in our first lecture? For those of you who don’t know, Second Life is an internet based virtual world, it enables users to interact with each other. Residents can explore, meet each other, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, create and trade items and services from one another, buy, sell and develop property and many more ‘real’ life like activities. It was launched in 2003 by Linden Research Inc. Since then approximately 13 million accounts have been registered, although a lot of them are inactive and some users have multiple accounts. In the lecture we watched a video clip which portrayed the great debate surrounding Second Life. It displayed the opinions of people for and against the idea of this ‘second life’. One main point being that chronic users of Second Life, should try getting a first life. Ideally it is up to the individual how much time and effort they want to spend in front of a computer screen.

In our second lecture we touched on this subject of ‘Email Phishing’Email phishing is when bulk email is sent to get money out of the receivers, other wise known as spam. We learnt that a lot of these types of emails appear to be from well known banks such as Commonwealth and Westpac. The sender uses the banks logo and requests the details of the receivers bank accounts. From a show of hands it was evident that almost everyone in the lecture theatre had received one of these emails at least once in there emailing life. Although, there were a handful of people who have never received a phishing email. Maybe those of us who are getting these emails daily, need to find out what spam filter thoes people are using.

Other than the lectures we had tutorials and readings which extended our understanding of blogging. Before New Communication Technologies, I thought blogging was just used as an online diary. Now I have a greater understand of blogging and how much it can impact readers. We even come across the debate ‘is blogging journalism?’ or are ‘bloggers, journalist?’ This is still an ongoing debate and honestly I believe it comes down to your own individual understanding and opinion. Either way, journalists and bloggers inform their audience on what they feel are important issues. Essentially blogging offers an ideal format for some aspects of the craft of Journalism. It can be seen as journalism in the form of entertainment.

That’s it for week two. I wonder what I will learn in week three?

Alyce Elliott
S2638654