Digital Culture- What Do I Really Think.

So the term has finished and my time studying Digital Culture has also come to an end. And so its only fair I share my true thoughts on the course and what I have learnt.
I can't speak for everybody in my class but I came into this class and these lectures having the smallest amount of digital culture knowledge, it was quite exciting to wait and see what I'd be learning. And after 24 lectures I think my knowledge has grown somewhat and my enthusiasm for the subject has grown alongside it.
I think I definitely learnt that there were certain topics I was far more interested in than others. For example when we had the guest speakers and focused on, cyber-bullying and cyber-stalking. This really interested me because it felt so real, and the facts and figures were astonishing to me. I engaged with these topics more so than others. Maybe because I use the internet mostly for things such as Twitter and Facebook and social media sites, so when we focused on digital culture in terms of those things I felt more interacted. Also, for me, these were the most interesting topics.
The most difficult for me was engaging with topics such as democracy and politics, I think I found those types of lectures slightly more difficult. Maybe because they were more intellectually stimulating, and I found it in some ways difficult to link Digital Culture to this topic.
The course as a whole was one which was really interesting for me. I especially enjoy the idea of writing a blog at the end of each workshop. Blogging is the newest form of journalism, and for me it was really good practice to get into the habit of writing a blog post weekly. It has also encouraged me to start up a blog of my own where I can post about different things, and put myself on the blogging map.
Maybe the one downside to the course that might be improved was the fact that it became repetitive. Every week we would sit and listen to the lecture and write notes on the power point, then have a workshop and write a blog. Every week was really similar, and it might have become boring for those not interested in the topics. It become easy to switch off with things I might not have understood, having said that maybe that says more about myself than the lecture itself.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the course Digital Culture, the topics were new to me which made them more interesting. And the fact that we were able to create a blog and write all our thoughts on the topic was one that will hopefully really benefit me. I have always been interested in blogging, and this course simply encouraged and helped me to pursue that.

The Birth Of Hacker Culture.

After researching Wikileaks and thinking about its cultural values, although I believed from a journalistic point of view that it can only bring benefits I do suppose it is fair to say that the cultural values could be questioned.
Anything that involves hacking in my eyes isn't ethically right, and in todays society unfortunately hacker culture surrounds much of the journalism and online world. So, Wikileaks is a form of Hacking and this does make it unethical, it promotes the idea that hacking is okay and this is where scandals such as phone hacking starts.
Phone Hacking has been made huge in the past few years because of journalists being so desperate for stories that the result to phone hacking. Because it is seen to be so easy to do online people are beginning to take it a step further by hacking phones, intercepting personal calls and text messages. Wikileaks is a prime example of a site to promote this, the people behind Wikileaks hack into government documents to leak stories, and if you can hack into government documents surely you can hack into anything?
I decided to look further into the ethics of Hacking and what it really is about, to do this I looked at Steven Levy who wrote a book on the birth of hacker culture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_Ethic  and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution gave me a lot of further information into the background of Hacking. These pages gave me a lot of information about what hackers believe in. To them it is a free world, all information should be free, nothing should be hidden from us. So maybe they aren't breaking any rules or doing anything wrong at all? They simply feel that nothing should be hidden from us.
"Access to computers—and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total." Maybe there are certain cases in which information should be public, and maybe Hackers aren't ethically immoral. They are simply trying to make the internet and computers a free space, everything should be there to see because computers and there information can teach us a lot.
So maybe my views on certain 'Hackers' has changed. Although I still stand by my original views on the idea of Phone Hacking. Phone Hacking is far more personal and is one on one, certainly for journalistic prosperity, phone hacking should be a huge no no!

Wikileaking...Good or Bad?

In this weeks lecture our main focus was put upon Wikileaks, what it is and the impact it has had. I looked at past articles about Wikileaks to find out more about what it has done, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10757263, this article in particular tells us the types of information that has been posted freely on the internet because of the birth of 'Wikileaks' in 2006. It's obvious when researching the topic that it has caused much controversy since it was created. And the population seems to be split in opinion. On one hand, maybe it does give us crucial information that is helpful and informative but it also is invasive and leaks private documents that could worry a nation and government. It seems governments, in the firing line of Wikileaks, is who it worries most because it is a way of exposing their biggest secrets to the public.
From a journalistic point of view this surely can only be good news right? We are receiving inside stories, stories that could have massive consequences, and stories that are definitely of public interest. And without Wikileaks we would have no way of getting control of such stories. Therefore from my personal perspective I like the idea of Wikileaks. Not only because of its positives in the journalism field, but also because some of these secrets the public should know and they shouldn't be kept a secret.
For me, Wikileaks isn't there as a negative against the government, it is simply there as a way of serving the public, and that is what I think are its cultural vales and purposes. I can see why the government would be so against an organisation who wants to expose the things they have been desperately trying to hide from the public, but then again as long as Wikileaks is sensible about what they are exposing, i.e. they don't expose anything that might cause alarm or panic then, in my eyes, there shouldn't be much of an issue.
I have only one issue, concern or negative about Wikileaks. Does it promote the idea of hacking? It's a form of computer hacking, breaking into information that is hidden from them for a reason. In my next blog I will look to explore the idea of Hacking, both computer hacking and phone hacking and whether sites such as Wikileaks promotes these ideas.

Digital Oppurtunities.

This week it was our aim to look at how digital media may have impacted on our concepts of the media text. By doing this it made me realise just how many opportunities arise from being digitally cultural.
It was clear to me that a text can lead to so much more, both digitally and not. For example, it can start with reading a book, before you know your watching an film adaptation, then you can play online games about the book/film, then you can buy merchandise, or join fan bases. This all started from a text and then digital media has impacted that text to make it huge. Digital Culture provides this range of opportunities to link things together, novels, films and gaming.
The presentation we got shown involved a lot of mention on 'Para text.' I wasn't too familiar with what this really meant, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paratext. I looked to my friend Wikipedia in order to learn more about what it is or does. And so the main author can create his or her novel, which is then edited by editors, publishers and printers. It seems the Para text can affect the concept of the piece of literature. For example the artwork on the cover of the novel can affect your idea and concept of what the book might be about. This is surely digital media impacted upon our concepts of the media text?
I think the point of the lecture was to really concentrate on just how much the digital media impacts on us. The idea that digital culture provides a lot of opportunities for media texts, it gives us filming, gaming, fan sites, merchandise and much much more.

Do we trust the media?

My last blog post was all about politics and the media. I seemed to find myself on the topic of the media and how it has evolved through the age of print, and now we are here. In a place where journalism has become so drastic that journalist are hacking in order to get stories. I felt this topic deserved it's own blog, as who knows how long I could go on for.
Hacking, in my eyes, has always been related to computers. Hacking into someone's Facebook or Twitter account, or hacking a computer in general. But I think nowadays it is important to remember that although hacking may have derived through computers, for example see my Wikileaks post, Hacking has actually become much more than that.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14045952 All you have to do is look at this BBC news page to see just how far hacking has been taken. It seems journalists have been hacking into phones in order to get a story. So how can we really blame the public for questioning the media?
Have we abused the media power? I think it is easy to underestimate the media and just how much the media affects us every day. Whether It be reading a magazine, newspaper or watching the news it seems we are consumed by the media. So how can we be so into it without trusting it?
I think the last lecture on politics and the dream if democracy really got me onto the topic of hacking and media trust. I think its obvious changes need to be made drastically to the media, in order to win back any kind of trust from the public.

Politics and the Digital World.

Digital Politics and Power- The Dream Of Democracy. Seeing this as I walked into the lecture confused me somewhat, to me it was hard to link the idea of computing and digital culture to politics and power. And so, the lecture itself was enlightening and taught me a lot.
The lecture was all about looking at how digital media has affected democracy, and when I thought about it, it was clear to see just how much the media affects politics in todays society.
Gradually as the years have past media and digital culture have started to become a bigger part of democracy and politics. Nowadays it seem politicians rely on the media, newspapers, magazines in order to get them the publicity they need.
We looked at a presentation that showed us just how much democracy and the digital world can be linked together with positive outcomes. It was clear that when the Printing Press was created this would cause a shift in communications, people now referred to newspapers and books and this was able to spread the word quicker which would, in turn, affect democracy and the political world. "Over time print media evolved that were specifically addressed to dealing with the news and current affairs of the day." Quote taken from presentation. It seemed that the printing press meant people relied on newspapers to give them all their crucial information.
And so the link between democracy and politics and the digital world isn't as far separated as I first might have thought. The age of print as it was described in our lecture was a 'knowledge bomb.' And therefore digital media was originally greeted with great enthusiasm because of its ability to tell an spread news. Elizabeth Eisenstein wrote 'The Printing Press as an agent of change' in 1979. I looked into this further as it shows you just how crucial the printing press was in creating change and creating this 'bomb of knowledge. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/286525.The_Printing_Press_as_an_Agent_of_Change

Clearly there is a link now between the digital world and politics. But is the idea of democracy simply a dream? Journalism has evolved throughout the years, and here we are today in a world where journalism is being highly scrutinised because of its lack of morals, with people questioning whether the media can be trusted. But maybe that's a topic for another blog?

Facing Facebook

In this weeks workshop Dr Emma Short, a Psychology lecturer, came in to discuss with us our opinions on Facebook and other social media sites. She is working on gathering information from students on their opinions and usage on these websites. For me it was a really interesting workshop, not only was it one we could all become really interacted in, it was also useful to see just how much we use Facebook and whether or not we use it in the right way. It was also useful in pointing out some serious problems to these sites that we go blissfully unaware of.
Looking into some background of Dr Emma Short she has recently done alot of research in Cyber stalking and published, 'Cyber stalking in the UK: Analysis and Recommendations International Journal of Distributed Systems and Technologies (IJDST) Volume 3, Issue 4.' Clearly there is a link between the idea of Cyber stalking and Facebook, as alot of those who are victims of Cyber stalking it can stem from sites like Facebook and Twitter.
But in her most recent research she is looking into our behaviour, as students, on Facebook. The discussion came onto the topic of Bullying and inappropriate comments that get posted. Do we actually do anything to stop them? Do we encourage them? Or, do we read them, ignore, and carry on? At this point it was apparent the room was very quiet. I cant speak for everybody, but certainly for myself I was ashamed to realise that I probably do read horrible, nasty and hurtful comments and on almost all occasions I read them and ignore it. Probably because it isn't aimed at me...but it has been aimed at somebody, somebody will have been hurt by the comments and at this point I probably should intervene. I know I can say that never have I ever wrote anything offensive to anybody else, but is it just as bad to sit there and do nothing?
We went on to discuss Facebooks rules and regulations, do we ignore those to? Unfortunately, yes. This is familiar territory for me as I have previously wrote a blog post on this topic, http://torirutherford.blogspot.co.uk/- "Stop Ignoring The Important Stuff." Look at this for more information and my opinion on the matter. But it was obvious that 100% of my class all use Twitter or Facebook, or both and ALL of us accepted the terms without reading. Does this not raise issues and tell us alot about our generation? This lead us on to think about rules and policies on a bigger scale. For example, when at the University of Bedfordshire we can use their wireless access on our phone, I do this regularly. But every time I do so, I have to type in my password and accept their rules and regulations, http://ps-mx-200-01.beds.ac.uk/aaa/student-index.html?wbaredirect=http://www.beds.ac.uk/wireless This website shows the full regulations that I agree with every time I log in to use wifi.
The whole workshop was really quite eye opening to alot of things, and it was interesting to find out just how other people my age use the web and social media websites. It's always important to remember what we agree to, and important to remember, in a society where the media is changing and evolving everyday, just how to use the internet and social media properly.

Globalisation and the Digital Divide

Globalisation as a definition is, "Globalization' is commonly used as a shorthand way of describing the spread and connectedness of production, communication and technologies across the world.” http://www.infed.org/biblio/globalization.htm
This weeks lecture was all about making us think about globalisation, and how it happens on so many levels and with that to begin thinking about the digital divide.
It is important to remember that although with globalisation we get many benefits and we are able to connect all over the world, but it also brings many inequalities.
When I think about globalisation I automatically think about Mcdonalds, a company that no matter which country you go to you can almost guarantee you will find a Mcdonalds. Therefore this is a prime example of a company who have globalised successfully all over the world.http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/country/map.html This link tells you just how Mcdonalds have taken it, it enables you to see which countries have at least one Mcdonalds branch, quite startling if you ask me.
 This diagram we were shown during the lecture really put things into perspective for me.

This diagram really made me think about Globalisation and the negatives of it. It encouraged me to remember the inequalities that come from it. Here we can see just how much people get in the chain of production, proving just how unequal things can be. The worker gets minimal, because we can get people in countries such as India and Asia to do the job at a quarter of the price it should be done at. So although it is obvious that globalisation does create connectivity all over the globe, it all creates a massive divide amongst countries.

This leads me on to the Digital Divide, and to be quite honest I'd never really considered it in any depth until today. I have always been quite content, in my household I have one main computer and as many as 3 laptops! This probably isn't unusual for most large families in England. Our access to the internet is unbelievably easy, if I want to do a bit of research i can quickly get up google and with the touch of my fingers could probably get any information I wanted. So what about the people who don't have internet or computer access, what do they do? This diagram shows the amount of computers per 100 people all over the world, I don't think I need to go into too much depth about what this shows. So when looking at Globalistation and how great it can be connecting us all together, I think it is even more important to think about how it is dividing us as well.

You've got to let it Flow.

This weeks lecture was all about the concept of flow and the relationshop between boredom and stress. Flow has been the focus of Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi , a researcher in the fields of happiness and creativity. And he says, "People are most happy when they are in a state of flow–a state of concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation. It is a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter."
In particular this week it was important for us to see how we could improve flow within Education. For me education and my school life always seemed to be one or the other, I was either really bored or really stressed. So how is it possible to have a state a flow, where boredom and stress is in a state of balance.
I think it is extremley important to get the balance right, and this i think can be assumed when "your challenges meet your skills." http://www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife/blogs/flow For me this website was very helpful in explaining what you might need to do in order to meet this state of flow, something which after learning about I clearly found quite difficult.
As I mentioned earlier your school life is a good example of a point where you are either bored or stressed. For example, I took English literature as A level and it felt like we were reading books, learning quotes, and causually discussing themes and motives forever. Then suddenly your coursework is due in two weeks time, with an exam a week later. It all comes at once and soon your thrown from that relaxed boredom into a crazy state of stress. We were specifically told in our workshops this week to think about a lack of flow in education, is there a lack of it? I think quite clearly there is a lack of flow and it is difficult to help people meet that point between boredom and stress. Therefore after looking into this state of 'Flow' and in particular when thinking about it in terms of education, I think it is imperative that changes be made. Mix up how the cirricullum is taught, dont let the students relax for 7 months, learning bits here and there and then throwing them into revsion and exams right at the end. Encourage a mixture of both throughout the year, this should help increase challenges making a state of flow easier to achieve.
So just remember, when your at school or sitting behind your desk with nothing to do feeling extremley bored that you'll never be able to meet your full potential...increase those challenges and let it flow!

Gaming Culture

Ever since I was young it seems games have been quite a big part of mine and most young childrens lives, and you might not have even realised. I'm sure those reading this will recognise these two guys...I certainly do as I grew up playing their games! But I think these type of game represent the modern gaming culture, when in reality games fit in with out long term historical cultures.
In our lecture we looked way back in time and realised that games are in fact as long as history.
Sport for example has been around as long as time, and sports in reality are a game. These types of games are structured by excercise, but have outcomes, rules and winners. When I think about it alot of what we do is structured around games, whether it be playing a drinking game, playing a game on your phone, playing a sport, playing chess they all involve 'playing' and have been around as long as we have. In terms of games, digital culture and the media, we can look at how the media has played its part in progressing gaming cultures.

This diagram shows how modern gaming culture has progressed, since 'The Magnavox Odyssey' was first released in 1972 to today with the X-Box. In 1983 gaming had a 'big crash,' as the diagram shows there was too many consoles out along with over production they simply wern't selling. It seemed consumers were bored of "last generation" consoles. Then in the late 80's it was our man mario who brought the gaming industry back to life. Until finally we reach the 2000's where gaming sat in the centre of digital culture.
It's wierd to think that I play games at least once a day and that they impact my life more than I could imagine. Video games in my opinion have helped to shape and change our society as games affect all parts of peoples lives. For example, I'm aspiring to be a Journalist and my lecturer and the lecture itself made me realise that some people see Journalism as a game, 

“A new generation of news junkies has stopped reading the news and started playing it.”  Fred Turner quoted on the Amazon.com website. This quote implies that journalists have stopped taking the news as it is and can twist it into whatever they want you to read. Looking into this just makes me take the gaming culture a little more serious, maybe it isn't all about making Mario jump over obsticles, in fact it can be much deeper than that. Gaming Culture shapes us and our community and it is crucial to recognise just how important IT IS to us.

Tagging and Folksonomies...Useful?

If I've gone on a big day or night out with my friends and taken lots of photos, the first thing I will do when I return is upload them to Facebook and tag all my friends in them. By doing this my photos will now appear on their pages, and all my other Facebook 'friends' can see who I was out this. Until now it's safe to say I've never actually thought about what I was doing, I've always just done it. This photo is an example of how easy it is to tag someone in a photo or even a comment on Facebook.

But I think the idea of the lecture was to look at how we find information, tagging enables us to do this. For example on search engines such as Google all we really need to do is type in one key word, and a whole range of search results will show up. This links me to the word 'Meta-Data,' which is basically a key word which is typed into a search engine such as Google or Yahoo and will give you all results linked with your word.
So, tagging like Meta-Data,

allows a user to add categories to different things.


http://www.spicynodes.org/blog/2010/09/13/thomas-vander-wal-when-folksonomies-transplant-taxonomies/?gclid=CJrNl63Z9LYCFabLtAodyh8A9A This blog is about Thomas Vander Wal and the term Folksonomies. Which, I'll be honest, have never heard of until todays lecture. Foksonomy is the activity of sorting information into categories derived from the consensus of the information users. My question is...Is it useful? I think there are pros and cons, and the blog I posted earlier will help define these for you. For me it probably isn't as difficult as all this, I simply tag my friends in photos or comments and that's as far as I take it.
But a point was made during the lecture that made me think, with our ability to tag everything, have all these words lost their meaning on the internet? Have all of these words simply been categorised and that's it, it's certainly something to think about. Maybe we are taking Folksonomies too far, and categorising too much.
In terms of tagging and folksonomies, I would say they are more useful than not, and make our life on the internet far easier.

Our friend 'Alice'

With the progression of technology comes the question of technology in education. Education has always been about reading books and learning to write, but with the increase of digital cultures should we look to be changing this somewhat 'old fashioned' way of learning. In my opinion, reading and writing will always be the foundations of an education and technology shouldn't be brought in until later in a childs education. But thats not to say we should ignore it completley, as it could be extremley effective.
In this weeks lecture we looked specifically into Digital literature and the idea that the National Cirriculum could begin to involve online ways of learning. In particular we were advised to look at a website called 'Inanimate Alice.' http://www.inanimatealice.com/ This link to the website will tell you all you need to know about the project. Inanimate Alice has been "created as a reading-from-the-screen experience." It tells the story of a young girl, and as a reader you follow the girl as she grows up and go through the story with her, watching the video, reading the words, listening to the sounds and looking at the pictures.
The argument is, should this be included in the National Cirriculum? For me, there is alot of benefits to this project. It uses a range of multimedia which could be beneficial to some learners who get bored with simply reading words on a page. It also allows the reader to go at a pace which suits them best, stopping and starting as they wish. Therefore to some extent it could be quite a useful and a new way of teaching and keeping children interacted. At the same time it is fairly simple, and so i think that aiming for teenagers might be slightly too old as it isnt very taxing, and some brighter students could grow out of it very quickly.
Therefore it does clearly have benefits and drawbacks, and I think whether you think it is a good idea or a bad idea will all depend on the person and the type of learner you are. People who are very against multimedia and computing will not agree that it should be included in the National Cirriculum, yet those whoe enjoy aesthetics, collaborations and multimedia might think the opposite.
Whether you think Inanimate Alice is good or bad there is no denying that projects like this are being produced because of how rapidly technologies are developing. And clearly there is a gap in education for things like this website to develop, as alot of children these days do focus on computing and social websites. I think maybe it is time to accept that a new wave of teaching and education could be on its way as a consequence of new technologies.

Digitally Cultural

My blog has been purely based around Digital Culture and commentary on the ideas and technologies presented during the course of this unit. Whilst doing this it has made me realise just how important it is to think about the internet, just how much we do use it and what it is used for. Not only that but it seems important to remember where it came from, how it was made and how it has been so widely accepted in our society.
The importance of this has only hit me now, previously I was that person who used the internet an uncountable amount of times a day without actually even realising. Constantly quickly glancing at my facebook or twitter, sending a quick message or making a phonecall. Because in effect our mobile phones are actually computers in todays society.
By doing this blog it has made me appreciate the internet and computers in a new light, and has encouraged me to think about them and where they come from.
And in my opinion the way technology is growing, were not nearly finished yet.

Why's Wiki so wrong?

Don't use Wikipedia. A phrase used commonly throughout my education, but why? Wikipedia has become something of a bogey word in terms of education, it was always drilled into us how unreliable a source it is and how we shouldn't use it as a reference. To me nothing is ever going to be a hundred percent accurate or reliable, take newspapers. Half of what we read everyday is not actually true, yet the majority of us will still go out daily and buy a newspaper. So what's different with us using wikipedia?
In my opinion Wikipedia isn't actually a site I would use for information, purely because of how easy it is for anybody to add information to a page. When I realise this, I ask myself why I don't add any information myself if it's that easy? Then I decided to ask some others if they had ever added or edited any wikipedia pages... the answer was no. Obviously there is no technical issue here, as we all have the technical ability to do it if we wanted. My thought, for myself anyway, is that I have been brought up to think of Wikipedia as a site not to be trusted. Therfore why would I want to add any valuable information to it, only for it not to be taken seriously.
During my research into wikipedia I actually looked at the website in depth, something i've never actually done. Doing this, I realised i've never actually read a whole wikipedia page. Usually I look specifially for a piece of information, name or date and thats as far as it goes.
But Wikipedia actually offers you a great deal more than that. It is so easy to look back to when it was created, every change that has been made to the page with a date and name, so maybe we should give it slightly more credit than we do.