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