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.