Lecture 8

This lecture was called Political possibilities. Stephen Stockwell first started by defining what Cyberpolitics is. He said it was the politics of the internet that existed predominantly on the internet. He also defined eDemocracy which was how the internet assists and controls real world politics that exist on the internet. He also talked about the issue of concentration, centralization, and commercialization of the mass media and how some avenues for democratic participation have been foreclosed. He suggested that the arena of deliberation may be extended via the application of new communication technologies and also shared the theory of the recreation of the public sphere.

Stephen also discussed free speech and the many strange turns that the battle between free speech and censorship had taken on the internet. There was also some talk about Hackers and how they tend to have bad reputations but they also free information by producing alternative routes and spaces for information.

Cyberpunk was also discussed. It is a science fiction genre based on the possibilities in computers, genetics and corporate development in the future. Cyberpunk also has the themes of technology and mythology, utopia and dystopia, cities as machines, technological change and modernism to postmodernism.

Lecture 7

This week Jason took the lecture again and we looked at open source software which is also called freeware. Freeware refers to applications made by users that are able to be downloaded and ued for free. They are made in to go up against oppositions like Microsoft and large companies who charge massive prices.

Freeware allows other users to improve the software through having open source coding so they are able to edit and develop the code and app. Freeware is also very specified and there are programs made to do very small, simple things. Alot of time freeware will take a more expensive program that you have to pay for and adjust it slightly to make another similar program that you can get for free. For instance there is VLC media player and GIMP which is very similar to photoshop.

There are many sites that include freeware applications. Some of these are
- http://portableapps.com/
- http://download.cnet.com/windows/

News Video

The greatest news report ever!!! Be jealous...

This report tells the story of a zombie taking over this innocent dogs body and making it EVIL!!! Obviously it is a highly realistic news item and I will be very disappointed if people actually think this is fake. I mean it even has pretty special effects.

Ireport Upload
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-338635

Lecture 6

This lecture focused on consumption and production. It started by talking about the big screens of life such as cinema, television and PC's and how consumers are passive receivers of this content because the content had been broadcast to them.

Next the small screens of life were discussed. These include personal media players, mobile phones and smart phones. Consumers are increasingly involved in this in terms of producing the product and also producing their own identities through sites like facebook and youtube.

The lecture also discussed the production of fanfilms that consumers are producing within niche markets. For example star wars fans produced 'Troops", a star wars fanfilm. Lastly mobile production was also discussed in terms of how news and content can be produced on mobiles.

Sketch Cast and my attempt at that name thing.

Lecture 5

Well this was certainly one of the most interesting lectures I've been to so far and that was largely due to the lecturer we had this week, Jason. First he showed us some data visualizations, one of the more interesting being disaster map.

He then went on to talk about the rise and fall of websites today. The 'dot com boom' saw the rise of many websites only to subsequently crash a few years later. Jason gave us the example of AOL, which was a website that supposedly would never die out however it has repaidly decreased in profits in the recent years.

He also talked about Social Networking sites and the fall of myspace to sites like facebook and twitter, which he then predicted would also die out in the near future. There was also another social networking site he went to called Elftown. Yes, Elftown was as bad as it sounds. I sort of strangely want to sign up for it - mostly so I can receive some Elftown badges like one guy had that Jason showed too us.

He concluded that in years to some social networking will become smaller and more refined to suit individual people more.

Maps

These are the links to the places on my map



View My House in a larger map



View Monfantaine Tce in a larger map


View Wainuiomata in a larger map