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.