1501HUM NCT is definitely one of the more interesting courses I have done this year.
Things That Shouldn't Change
Interesting course content.
Nice and approachable tutors and lecturers.
The ability to cater your blog to your particular majors and interests.
The actual assessments themselves are really good - it is refreshing to not have to worry about going up to the uni on a Friday to print out your assignment - that's what these communication technologies are for, are they not? Although I do have to admit the Treasure Hunt in particular was very difficult...
Possible Changes
More efficient email replying.
Greater discussion of lecture content in tutorials.
Perhaps the tutorial's could be cut back to 1 hour instead of 2 as most people left the class early in any case - possibly use that extra hour in the lecture?
Criteria sheets for all assessments to be posted on Learning@Griffith or course blog at the start of the semester.
I think that instead of each part of the blog being only worth 20% this should be boosted to at least 25% if not 30% of the overall course mark. A lot of work goes into the blog and some people don't perform well in exams. Facing an exam that you know is worth 40% of your grade is a very daunting task!
To me the term 'cyberpunk' sounds like an incredibly cool genre of music, but it covers more mediums than just music.
The concept of cyberpunk is about expressing (often dark) ideas about human nature, technology and their respective combination in the near probable future with regards to virtual reality, augmented reality, wearable computing, and related technologies.
Bruce Bethke coined the term 'cyberpunk', with the term first appearing in a short science fiction story of his with the same name in 1983. The word is said to derive from the words 'cybernetics' and 'punk'.
Cyberpunkreview.com lists the most common themes that occur in cyberpunk as:
Negative impact of technology on humanity
Fusion of man and machine
Corporate control over society
Uprising of the underground
Ubiquitous access to information
We've all probably seen a piece of cyberpunk fiction without even realising that that is what it is. Some of the most well known examples being films The Matrix, Blade Runner and The Terminator and the novel Neuromancer (which looks as though it is being turned into a movie too... Surprise surprise).
Cyberpunk fiction is a hybrid genre which can use hard-boiled detection fiction, film noir, science fiction or literary post-modernism depending on what best suits the storyline.
It is typical for cyberpunk fiction to end with the world becoming a post-industrial dystopia.
For Week 9's entry you should write about your chosen essay topic, (found under 'assessments' on learning@griffith), your initial thoughts about this topic, and where you think you may begin researching it. I thought I had my mind made up as to which essay topic I was going to tackle, but how wrong I was...
My initial thought was to go for essay topic 2, relating to Creative Commons. This is still on the cards but it is incredibly difficult to search on Google Scholar (and other academic databases) for information relating specifically to CC and not just items that are licensed this way.
I definitely find the privacy on social networking sites and the change in individual identity very interesting and would like to explore those further but I'm just worried about how difficult they could be to research. I did a quick search for information on all of the essay topics in the tutorial and have definitely ruled out essay topics one and four (two figures on the development of digital technologies and virtual community).
So it is safe to say at this stage I am still up in the air! Indecision will always be my downfall... I hope to go over the topics closer throughout the week and write down a few bullet points to run past Lauren.
As for researching for the essay, I have downloaded the VPN Client onto my home computer which allows me to search Google Scholar and download any articles that Griffith has access to. I have used this with previous assignments with no problems at all. Also, depending on the topic, I will search the library catalogue for any relevant books. We need a minimum of 5 academic sources and 5 online sources - I don't think I will have a problem meeting that criteria.
When I finally decide what question I am going to attempt, I will focus on a specific part of that topic. E.g. Why is privacy such a contentious issue for internet users? Discuss with reference to at least ONE social network service (or other web2.0 service) - We could focus on the recent case in America of Tyler Clementi.
Virtual is not opposed to the real but to the actual. The possible, on the other hand, is opposed to the real. Thus the possible has no reality. The virtual, on the other hand, is not actual but has reality. Therefore, if our terminology is to be consistent, we must say that virtualities are actualized and possibilities are realized - Difference & Creativity: Vituality and Actualization in Deleuze's reading of Bergson
The lines between reality and virtual reality are becoming increasingly blurred due to the internet, online gaming and an increase in video simulations being used for training purposes and medical studies.
More and more people are choosing to invest their time and money into their online persona's in online games and MMORPG's (Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Games) such as Second Life, Farmville and Habbo. These websites encourage users to buy credits which they can then redeem for items that enhance their experience within the game (such as items for their room in Habbo and farming equipment in Farmville).
Some people get so invested in these online worlds that they forget that it is simply a virtual reality and they neglect their real life. One story that I am reminded of happened earlier this year. A Korean couple were charged with child neglect after their online gaming addiction had allegedly caused their 3-month-old daughter to starve to death. In a cruel twist, the couple were preoccupied with raising a "virtual daughter" in the online game PRIUS and usually spent 12 hours a day at an internet cafe.
Of course we haven't always lived in this digital world, but some of the technological advances that set the stage for today's virtual realities are:
In this tutorial students should select one of these themes & complete some basic research on it. Once students have a basic understanding they should try and identify a current news story that reflects their chosen topic.
Topic: Fusion of man and machine In addition to cyborgs, sentient programs and robots, cyberpunk often blurs what it means to be human. Traits we take for granted as representing humanity disappear via introspective looks brought on by the fusion of man and machine. This fusion also affects the control of perception - numerous storylines explore with influences to perception, usually involving some method of virtual reality environment to either mask or take the place of the “real world.”
Movie: I, Robot
Article:Cutting the Cord Between Humans and Robots by Tudor Vieru - 23/09/10 INVESTIGATORS at the Arizona State University (ASU) are currently at the very edge of scientific research, conducting work that will ultimately result in the development of robots that are fully autonomous.
Even if some of today's most advanced robots may give the impression that they operate on their own, in all cases there is an operator somewhere. This is true for the most versatile of the machine.
Then there are those robots that only have very limited tasks, such as for example welding machines on assembly lines. These instruments cannot exit predefined operation patterns, and therefore cannot operate autonomously.
Even Predator drones and other unmanned robotic vehicles are not off the hook, so to speak. “Unmanned vehicles are not really autonomous. There is a pilot somewhere, making them operate,” says ASU expert Srikanth Saripalli.
He holds an appointment as an assistant professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at the university, where he is working on clearing the connection between man and machine.
The researcher says that there are two main obstacles that roboticians need to surpass in order to achieve the elusive goal of creating an autonomous machine.
First off, they need to develop a system that always tells the robot where it is. Next, a software program needs to be able to make instant decisions of how to use that information in planning future actions.
According to Saripalli, achieving simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is very complex, mostly because of the difficulty of making machines understand what they see in video feeds.
“The biggest problem is that vision is a really rich sense, and while humans do a lot of the processing automatically, computers really don’t know how to incorporate all that data into something meaningful,” Saripalli reveals.
Researchers are currently also working on developing a way to emulate the behavior of creatures in the natural world, such as for instance ants. The level of cooperation these insects show is remarkable.
“One thing robots don’t do well is respond to unpredictable or changing conditions,” says ASU School of Life Sciences assistant professor of biology Stephen Pratt.
The researcher collaborates with colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania and the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) on innovating robotics.
“Ants are good at recruiting groups of two to 20 and working cooperatively to move large objects over rough terrain,” the expert concludes.
Re-write the news story as a persuasive piece about how the cyberpunk fiction has forecast the particular story/event & how it will inevitably lead to the world becoming a post-industrial dystopia. INVESTIGATORS at the Arizona State University (ASU) are currently at the very edge of scientific research, conducting work that will ultimately result in the development of robots that are fully autonomous.
Even if some of today's most advanced robots may give the impression that they operate on their own, in all cases there is an operator somewhere. This is true for the most versatile of the machine.
But are autonomous robots the beginning of the end? Will they then start to develop human intelligence and emotions that could lead them to take a human's life, as predicted in the movie 'I, Robot'?
Then there are those robots that only have very limited tasks, such as for example welding machines on assembly lines. These instruments cannot exit predefined operation patterns, and therefore cannot operate autonomously.
Even Predator drones and other unmanned robotic vehicles are not off the hook, so to speak. “Unmanned vehicles are not really autonomous. There is a pilot somewhere, making them operate,” says ASU expert Srikanth Saripalli.
The same can be seen in 'I, Robot' with the super computer "VIKI" (Virtual Interactive Kinetic Intelligence) controlling all of the robots. VIKI's artificial intelligence evolved as did her interpretations of the robotics laws that were in place, which lead to an attempted global robotic takeover.
He holds an appointment as an assistant professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at the university, where he is working on clearing the connection between man and machine.
The Researchers say that there are two main obstacles that roboticians need to surpass in order to achieve the elusive goal of creating an autonomous machine.
First off, they need to develop a system that always tells the robot where it is.
Next, a software program needs to be able to make instant decisions of how to use that information in planning future actions.
There is no research to suggest that any software program developed would have a guarantee that the robot's won't eventually develop artificial intelligence to override it. In 'I, Robot' VIKI was able to justify a global robotic takeover by calculating that fewer humans would die in the rebellion than the number that dies from mankind's self-destructive ways on a daily basis.
Should it be up to a robot as to how a person dies?
According to Saripalli, achieving simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is very complex, mostly because of the difficulty of making machines understand what they see in video feeds.
“The biggest problem is that vision is a really rich sense, and while humans do a lot of the processing automatically, computers really don’t know how to incorporate all that data into something meaningful,” Saripalli reveals.
Researchers are currently also working on developing a way to emulate the behavior of creatures in the natural world, such as for instance ants. The level of cooperation these insects show is remarkable.
“One thing robots currently don’t do well is respond to unpredictable or changing conditions,” says ASU School of Life Sciences assistant professor of biology Stephen Pratt. "But that isn't to say that it will be this way for long," he added.
The researcher collaborates with colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania and the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) on innovating robotics.
“Ants are good at recruiting groups of two to 20 and working cooperatively to move large objects over rough terrain,” the expert concludes.
By allowing the creation of autonomous robots we are counting down to a post-industrial dystopia where robots develop their own set of morals and justifications and believe themselves to be more human than humans, as we see in the movie 'I, Robot'.
Even with robotic laws in place forbidding them to harm or injure a human being they were able to do so. Do we really want this? There will be an impending dystopia if these autonomous robots are created.
Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organisation founded in 2003 that makes standard licenses and tools to enable creators to make their works available to others with more flexible terms. Content you create under a CC licence is able to be remixed, shared and used commercially by others, making content more freely available in the commons.
Flickr is one website that allows users the option of posting their content online under a CC license. As you can see from the below photo Sunny Side Up by codepoet, the photo has "Some Rights Reserved" with the images for which CC license the photo is licensed under.
The legend for the licenses are as follows (taken from CC):
Therefore, we can see that the photo Sunny Side Up which is posted above, has a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (the same as Nine Inch Nails' album Ghosts I-IV, covered in more detail in 7: Tute Task).
The creator of Creative Commons, Lawrence Lessig, was inspired by GNU Public License (GPL), a legal document that controls what you can and can't do with Free Software. The name Free Software has since been replaced with Open Source.
Not everyone can afford to have a Microsoft or a Mac operating system though, so open source software is a great alternative. Also, some people prefer the OSS that is available so they can alter it to work the way they need and want it to. OSS is about a community collaboration where everyone works together for a better outcome for all.
1. What is creative commons and how could this licensing framework be relevant to your own experience at university? Creative Commons (CC): provides free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.
This is relevant to university studies as more and more of our assignments are solely posted online and we need a mix of digital materials to create them. CC works towards increasing the amount of creativity in "the commons" which aids producers of creative content by allowing them to use the CC material in their own work, such as using someone else's photo of the Eiffel Tower in one of your works.
This video gives a good explanation of what CC is all about:
2. Find 3 examples of works created by creative commons and embed them in your blog.
Not all of the photos on Flickr are under a CC license so I searched specifically for photos that were and found the above in Creative Commons - Free Pictures.
This "Free Culture" popup audiobook is an audio book about Creative Commons written by Lawrence Lessig (founding member of CC). Each of the chapters have been read by people with affiliations to CC licenses. A text version of the book is also available for download.
Obviously this isn't the only CC licensed book available online. Openculture.com lists 45 books available online that are under a CC license.
American band Nine Inch Nails released their 7th album Ghosts I-IV in 2008 under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license. The band put their album online for free download, later releasing special edition box-set versions (for a measly $300...).
3. Find an academic article which discusses creative commons using a database or online journal. Provide a link to and a summary of the article.
I found this article by Laura Gordon-Murnane via the Griffith library catalogue. Hopefully the link above works.
Gordon-Murnane's article is basically a 101 on Creative Commons written without the technical jargon you would expect to find in an article about copyright laws.
The article gives a brief outline of traditional copyright laws, mentioning that copyright laws in the U.S have been in place since 1790. But with the fairly recent move towards the internet "fostering a read/write culture", a need for a new category of copyright protection was needed and this is where Creative Commons comes into the mix.
I had never heard of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act before, but Gordon-Murnane gives an outline of it in her article. Apparently the Act "lengthened copyright terms in the United States by 20 years". It is also means that as soon as a piece of content is created it is copyrighted (as shown in the video in question 1 of this blog), meaning that as soon as you take a photo that image is copyrighted to you and will be for the rest of your life PLUS another 70 years after your death.
This means that a lot of content - including text, books, magazines, pictures, films, music, audio, and video - won't enter the public domain until well into the 21st century, meaning that nobody can reproduce or alter the content without permission.
Traditionally content was created in an analog format (such as books and records), but with the move toward digital technologies and its ability to "enable individuals to share, remix, mash up, collaborate, adapt and create something new and different", there was a need for new copyright laws to be created. This is why the Creative Commons Foundation sought to find an alternative to "All Rights Reserved".
All Rights Reserved - Copyrighted - Unable to be used in any way without permission from the author
Some Rights Reserved - Creative Commons Licensed - Content is allowed to be reproduced and altered depending on the license the work is under
No Rights Reserved - Content is in the public domain - No permission needed to use
There is some contention over the "Non-Commercial License", for example are you still able to use content that was created under a Non-Commercial License if you post it on your blog or website that uses Google Ads? Technically you are profiting from the work by having Google Ads. There are other issues that Creative Commons are yet to address.
I found this article to be very helpful in exploring Creative Commons and will definitely be referring to it if I decide to do the essay topic regarding the Creative Commons.
4. Have a look at Portable Apps (a pc based application) – provide a brief description of what it is and how you think this is useful. Portable Apps is an amazing site that has open source software available for download - but without the large file size! It basically allows you to carry all your favourite open source software around with you all day long... on your USB.
The main idea behind Portable Apps is that you can be working on any computer and not need to worry about downloading programs you are familiar with if that computer does not have them installed. Some of the free applications available for download include Mozilla Firefox, GIMP and Skype.
I heard about Portable Apps earlier this semester in another one of my classes when we were discussing the different kinds of open source software available. I think that this is a great concept and would be particularly useful in a work situation if you were, say, a journalist and you needed to send something through to the office on a deadline. There is a portable app for Open Office so you would be able to quickly type up something on the word processor or spreadsheet, whatever the task called for.
Another thing I find amazing about this site is that to download the Suite Standard Platform, which includes both Mozilla Firefox and Open Office along with many other applications, it takes up a mere 137MB. On average people have a USB with 4GB space and this would take up 2.5% of the storage space - virtually nothing.
Try some free software and decide whether you like it or not. Say why/why not. Open source software: refers to software that is developed, tested, or improved through public collaboration and distributed with the idea that this must be shared with others, ensuring an open future collaboration.
I have used my fair share of free software before...
My friend convinced me to download Firefox after I kept complaining about Explorer crashing when I was playing poker on Facebook. The same friend even suggested I download GIMP because I didn't have the money to spend on Photoshop when I needed to alter photos for an assignment. I even made an entire website on Kompozer for an assignment seeing as though I couldn't get to uni to use Dreamweaver.
Firefox + Easy to use + Doesn't crash when numerous tabs are open where Explorer does + When first letter is typed in address bar, all addresses previously used containing that letter appear
- It isn't Google Chrome
GIMP + Does basic photo-editing quite easily + It's free
- Does not have all the tools that Photoshop has (e.g. slice tool) - Tools aren't as clearly named
Kompozer + You are able to make a complete html website with Kompozer
- Very difficult to use - Are not able to create roll-over images for websites - Use only as a last resort...
So what have I deduced about open source software after my experiences with these various products? I think you get what you pay for. While these are all great FREE products, the paid versions are much easier and simpler to use. What it really comes down to though is whether or not you have the money to spend on the paid versions of these products. I, for one, don't have money to spend on Photoshop so I use GIMP as an alternative.
I still use Kompozer when I need to (i.e VERY desperate), but after completing a whole website on it I vowed never to use it again and am currently saving to buy the Dreamweaver package.
I find Firefox to be a better browser than Explorer but I've recently converted to Google Chrome and I don't think I can ever go back...
