Week 3: Alphaville, une étrange film

Tutorial

Now that I have a blog it’s time to join the blogosphere! This week’s tutorial revolved around creating a link list to be featured on my blog, in addition to getting my blog linked to by other users from the class. My “blogroll”, a link list element constructed in the overall page layout, can be found on the menu system to the right of my blog entries.

Now that I am connected to other users there will likely be interaction between myself and other bloggers. Blog etiquette suggests that when someone posts a comment for you, it's usually polite to comment on their blog as well. I hope to leave some comments on these blogs too, and hopefully people will return the favour as a form of blog etiquette. This is one of many ways to create a web-presence and expand my audience on the blogosphere.


BLOGGING TASK: WEEK 3

We were asked to consider our own interaction with new communication technologies to communicate with friends and family.

Do you have friends whom you only know from the internet and have never met in person?
Is this different to people that you know in person?
Describe the difference.
Personally, I am not a fan of using technology to communicate with people I have not yet met face-to-face. On occasion I will be introduced to friends of friends via the internet or telephone but I eventually met all of these people in person.

I feel it is too easy (and definitely tempting) for people to create an entirely new persona for themselves when physical appearance and certain personality traits can be eliminated. How do you know if you are talking to a genuine person or a fictional character they’ve constructed?

I can understand why this happens though… I used to love talking to people I had never met because it’s much easier to open yourself to them in comparison to the people I know in person (they have no direct impact on your daily life). But how risky is that?! Some choose to prey on people’s willingness to open up… a person who says they are a 18yr-old female online could easily be a 56yr-old man.

And if I happened to meet this person, genuine or not, the conversation won’t necessarily be the same as it was through the technological media. It may be fun to talk to them nonetheless, but I often find I don’t have much time to devote to the internet anyway so my #1 priority is my real life friends.

Generally I only use technologies such as the internet or phone to contact people I already know to arrange a face-to-face gathering; it’s much more personal =)
[My only exception to this is friends or family that live quite far away]


How long have you been using these communication technologies?
A looooooong time! Since I was about… 12 or 13 years old? So about 5-6yrs. That’s not as long as some of my friends though.


What influenced you to start using these particular technologies?
In a nutshell: peer pressure. I remember being forced by my friends to create a hotmail account in grade 8, but before then I honestly thought internet chatting was a waste of time. When I saw how many of my friends were talking online (without me!) however, it made it realise that I’ve been missing out on quality talk / gossip / bonding time so I continued using MSN Messenger and email to belong.


Is privacy an issue for you when using new technologies? (How do you deal with issues around privacy?)
Generally with online chat I only talk to people I already know… and most of those people probably know me better than I know myself! But I am quite cautious with websites like Myspace. I haven’t set my profile to private yet (what’s the point of having the darn thing if no one can see it?) but I am very careful with my telephone numbers, home address and email address to ensure they are never posted on the site.


Lecture:
Alphaville (1965), Jean-Luc Godard’s homage to both science-fiction and classic American detective stories, is relevant to our studies of New Communication Technologies because of the theory of a dictatorial computer (Alpha 60) being in complete control of a major metropolitan city. This central computer outlaws individualist concepts such as free thought, emotion, love and poetry in the city. Those who act illogically by expressing emotion are interrogated and executed. All words which are believed to provoke emotion are banned from the “bible”; dictionaries placed in each room which are constantly updated to exclude forbidden words. As a result of all this, Alphaville is an inhuman, alienated society of bar-coded drones.

Perhaps with the ever-increasing presence of technology in our everyday lives Alphaville has become a more pertinent glimpse into the future than ever before. Computers already have such a great stronghold over us because we have developed a need for them. Nowadays we find it difficult to even meet in person without an email, text message or telephone call arranging a time first. What if in the future our dependence on technology extended beyond communication? Internet banking has proven that bank branches may become useless, and with the ideals put forward in the Four Corners report on the virtual world Second Life we may even solely rely on technology (such as computers connected to the internet) to do our jobs and make money to sustain our lifestyles. If this is all possible, and we begin to live our lives through technology, then what use would emotion have? Face-to-face contact would be minimised so why express ourselves?




Readings:
Film and Screen Glossary
University of Waikato: Screen & Media Studies
http://www.waikato.ac.nz/film/handbook/glossary.html

General Information
Internet and Movie Database (IMDb)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058898/

Film Review
Channel 4: Cinema Department
http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/film.jsp?id=100360

Critical Review
Andrew Sarris
http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=25&eid=44&section=essay

French New Wave Cinema
Craig Phillips
http://www.greencine.com/static/primers/fnwave1.jsp

Jean-Luc Godard
Strictly Film School
http://www.filmref.com/directors/dirpages/godard.html



Wow, so many readings this week and each of them helpful in an entirely different way!

I found Andrew Sarris’ critical essay to be the most useful in explaining and analysing Alphaville. A good supporting text for this essay is the film and screen glossary created by the University of Waikato. The definitions provided helped set the scene for discussions revolving around Alphaville and helped to decode some of the genre-specific language, as did Craig Phillip’s exploration of French new wave cinema. The film review prepared by Channel 4’s cinema department and Strictly Film School’s page dedicated to Jean-Luc Godard both provided a clear synopsis of the Alphaville plot.

The general information provided by the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) reminded me of a key quote from the film: “Time is like a circle which is endlessly described. The declining arc is the past. The inclining arc is the future” – Alpha 60. This resonated a new idea of how time philosophically functions, implying that time is simply a repeating force where our future becomes our past and the past repeats in the future.

Week2: Here at last!

I HAVE A BLOG YAY!

(to all those reading: Yes, I know that’s an obvious fact)


Tutorial:
Our tutorial covered various types of networks in our world today. We found that not all networks are necessarily based on technology, such as social networks. Through much brainstorming a list of common networks was constructed:
- Internet
- Instant Messaging/Chat/Skype
- Myspace/Facebook
- Mobile and Landline Telephones
- Online Games with interaction between two users (e.g. World of Warcraft)
- Advanced Console Games
- Limewire
- Blogs (e.g. Livejournal)
- Photosharing
- Virtual Worlds (Second Life)

After creating my blog (hooray!) I participated in the survey regarding our technology usage, so a collection of results from students taking this course could be gathered and analysed during the lecture.


Lecture:
Phishing; Sending out bulk emails in the hopes of receiving credit-card details in return.
This definition sparked a discussion on the countless amounts of scam emails we’ve all received. I used to receive roughly 20 spam emails a day, most trying to sell Viagra and male genitalia –enlargement products (what use an 18yr-old female has for them is beyond me!).

Related Story:
I saw a show on TV about spam emails just weeks before the lecture (if I remember the name I will surely post it). They conducted an experiment to see how much spam they could generate in 1 week. After creating a new email account on a brand new computer (to stop the risk of viruses) and turning off all the spam filters, they did the following to attract maximum spam:
- Clicked on pop-up links
- Entered online competitions with the new email address
- Replied to all or majority of spam received with “Thank-You. I am very interested, please send more.”

By the end of the test period these guys had roughly 6,000 spam emails sitting in their inbox!!

Survey
The collective results of last week’s survey from all New Communication Technologies students were analysed and compared to results of students in America who completed the same questionnaire.

Unfortunately I was unable to find the exact data set of American students from the Pew Internet and American Life Project (http://www.pewinternet.org/) from the broad homepage link provided on Learning@GU, so I don’t have much to comment on other than the fact the American results were similar in some aspects to our own responses. I believe the most crucial result of Griffith’s New Comm. Tech. students was that 0% said they never used email; clearly disproving the hypothesis of the lecture and showing that email is clearly not dead.


Reading: Walter Benjamin
“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
Ok, I’ll be honest… I have a short attention span so although a read a few bits and pieces of the chapters I could only fully digest the preface and epilogue. From these two sections I still feel I have understood the philosophical ideas put forward by Walter Benjamin to be a logical examination of technological development.

Benjamin suggests that war is, in a sense, beneficial for technological advancement in terms of both development and functionality (mobility) because all resources are striving towards a shared goal. War also fulfils one of our mutual fantasies; “the metalisation of the human body”. With the use of technology our strength and endurance can excel way beyond the limitations of our own bodies. War gives us a reason to improve our offensive and defensive weaponry which some, such as Walter Benjamin, consider to be an advanced futuristic art form. Unnatural utilization of productive forces is the result of war and proves that although technological advancement may occur, our society is not mature enough to homogenize with this technology.

Week1: Blogless...?

As I sit at my desk, staring at this blank Microsoft Word document in which I will create the first of many blog entries, I’m wondering “How the heck am I going to create a website?” and most importantly: “I hope I can somehow transfer this blog entry from word to the web!”

Week 1 has proven to be very informative in terms of new knowledge I have gained. Although I am currently blogless and a little overwhelmed, everything I learn as time progresses will surely fall into place. Now onto my first challenge… figuring out how to report on the mass of information I’ve gained this week while keeping it short and sweet.


Tutorial:
Why, oh why did I schedule my tutorial to begin so *gosh-darn* early on a Monday morning?!

Today we met our tutor Adam and we spent a good solid 2hours exploring Learning@GU. I’m glad there’s so much information available to us online… my computer will surely get a workout when I start playing in the Free Software section!

The Week 1 blogging task took us through the Discussion Board feature of Learning@GU. This will prove to be really helpful, especially when encountering problems (which I will likely do on a regular basis!).


Lecture 1:
What is Technology? What is Communication?
We began our lecture by exploring some additional readings to set the scene of New Communication Technology.

• Map of Online Communities
  http://acatalin.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/online_communities.png
  This comedic interpretation of the internet and how its many predominant websites, groups and ideals interact allowed me to consider how everything has a space on the web; some spaces bigger than others. It also illustrates the rivalry for popularity. For example Classmates.com vs Reunion.com, and Myspace vs the invaders Facebook.
  
  
  

• Diagram
  www.cmc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/7817/Building_a_Creative_Innovation_Economy.pdfThis diagram shows the bandwidth requirements of a variety of online activities. Our technological advancement can also be observed on the diagram; each progression to the right shows a greater amount of bandwidth available to the average internet user and therefore more complex features accessible from home. Currently our position on this chart is somewhere around the top end of “video on demand”. YouTube supplies us with all our video needs at the push of a button; however we cannot yet receive multi-channel TV through our computers.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


• Article
  [“Artists, not boffins, to drive digital age”]
  http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/artists-not-boffins-to-drive-digital-age/2008/02/29/1204226991305.html
  This article explores how the cultural and creative arts will be a driving force of digital technology growth.
  
  Funding for the Arts has been increased as a result of this belief, which could potentially prove beneficial to the technological environment.
  
  THE internet may have been invented by American military engineers seeking an advantage in war, but future developments in digital technology will come from designers, sculptors and musicians, a meeting of cultural ministers has concluded.
  The Cultural Ministers Council, which brings arts ministers from Australian and New Zealand together to talk about the cultural state of play, met for the first time yesterday under the stewardship of the Arts Minister, Peter Garrett.
  The result was a wide-ranging list of policy statements, including the somewhat surprising conclusion that artists and not computer engineers or IT specialists will drive digital innovation.
  "Creativity, the cultural sector and the creative industries have a crucial role as drivers of growth in the economy," Mr Garrett said.
  "They will be the drivers of the online, mobile and broadcast digital environment."
  

• Video: Second Life
  http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/special_eds/20070319/
  For the second half of the lecture we viewed an episode of ABC’s Four Corners discussing Second Life; an online virtual world created by Linden Labs. The average age of players is 32 and is mainly played by women. While inside the virtual world each player is assigned an “avatar” (virtual person) as an identity used to interact with the avatars of other users. The world has even adapted a currency (Lindens) and people are able to convert $USA to lindens to purchase virtual products, and then back from Lindens to $USA… resulting in the possibility of virtual businesses that are profitable in the real world.
  
  

Reading: Bloggers Handbook
The Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents inspired me to create a web presence through my own blog by finding an audience amongst the “blogosphere” (blogging community). Additionally, originality and establishing credibility as a reliable source help develop a good blog into a successful one; two key objectives I wish to uphold in my own blog.