Let It Be (Meta Post)

The Let It Be album of blog posts. I started this blog in naming it after The Beatles, and I'll finish it by naming it after The Beatles.

Firstly, my top three entries:
Datavizual (Week 11)
The Literal Error (Week 6)
Multiplicity and Beyond (Week 10)

So, The Grey Album. As part of the NMP unit, it was supposed to be an example of networked media itself, along with the other criteria such as a place where we would have to individually reflect on readings and lectures and develop our various projects.

In terms of content, I see my blog as sticking to the criteria. I noticed myself adopting my "internet voice" when writing out my responses to each week in a blog post. When I was writing these responses I feel I was (subconsciously) keeping an eye on the fact that my fellow students would be those reading it the most. And, it being the internet, a place where I've travelled many times before, I felt more informal. This reflects themes we've encountered during our lectures, such as the death of print media and the openness of the internet, where anyone can post. If anyone can post, it's more informal and less prestigious.

Secondly, typing it directly into the little box affected me too, I think. If we were hand writing responses and handing them directly to our tutor - I can only assume I'd be more formal. In posting it on the internet I am submitting myself to the world at large, so a kind of lax attitude to the content was more obvious. I did, however, make sure I reflected on each week's lecture content effectively. In putting it into my own words I feel as though I've learnt a lot more.

The audience, I feel, was pretty limited. The blog itself is obviously much more relevant to students completing the course this year, and this semester. I did, however, end up having unusual visitors to my blog, such as a friend who was curious as to what I was doing at uni this year, and even my high school English teacher, who would frequently email me in response to my blog posts. This connectivity was a result of my own networking - via Facebook and real life social groups - and not so much a result of visibility on the internet.

I have attempted to research what my most popular content was and wasn't, or where I have gotten traffic from. But, after vigorous Google searches trying to investigate the manner, I discovered that with this blogging platform, Blogger, it is not so simple. To investigate page hits on single entries I would have to install a page counter on each one; something I did not consider when creating my blog in the first place, but something that probably would not have worked well at all. I could have put a page counter on my whole blog, but in doing so I would not be able to see which posts were popular and which weren't. I could have put a counter in every post as I posted it, using HTML coding, but this wouldn't have worked very well either. It would only have worked if people clicked the direct link to each individual post. So if you read the post via my blog's main page, this would not have affected the counter.

If I judge the popularity of my blog via the comments I received on entries, it would be like the nerdy kid at school. I have only been able to judge whether or not people have been reading it via references in their respective blog posts, or if they have told me face-to-face. The latter would be less likely and only happened with close friends.

As an example of networked media, I think my blog does have the potential. I am listed on other people's blog rolls, and in creating The Grey Album I checked the box which the blogging platform provides, asking if you wish to be a public blog viewable by other people on the same platform. Obviously I am not a blogger of much interest to recreational users, as my content is very specific and relevant to few. But I do have connections, at least.

To observe my blog's connectivity to the wider web, I did a google search. First, I googled 'networked media blog', only to find a bunch of links not even related to this unit at all. Narrowing it down a little, I added the phrase 'canberra university' to the end of the search, to have a link to Michael Honey's Icelab website at the top of the list, followed by a few more irrelevant links, and then some actual students blogs (namely, those who mentioned 'University of Canberra' in any posts). I tried adding my first name, to no avail, and then various tags I've used for posts. Nothing. It wasn't until I typed in the exact title of my blog that a link came up.

Obviously my blog is only a tiny, tiny part of the massive thing known as the internet; it is also only a tiny part of the millions of blogs that are part of Blogger.com. This is obviously where the tags assist in narrowing it down. Since blogging I've come to see how networked media-savvy they really are.

In the end, however, my blog is significant as a product of this unit and its fundamentals. From the learning outcomes:

I have come to understand the cultural and creative implications of digital communications networks for media production: my informal voice and ability to post whatever I like whenever I like on a public medium like my blog are an example of this.

I understand and demonstrate fundamental processes of networked media production: the internet is a huge place, and is made by its connections. It was through Project A, as well, that this was fully established in my mind; live feeds made the web much more accessible and allowed you to interact with multiple sources of content in the one place.

I am able to navigate and analyse networked cultural and creative practice: in creating my blog I was directly part of the public medium that is the internet we constantly referred to in lectures, and was able to interact with other sources on this public medium, too.

And I am able to position my own work appropriately within the context of networked media practice. Both Projects A & B allowed me to reflect on networked media practices, both physically in actually creating a functioning exhibition, and conceptually, such as observing the implications of social networks in my geo-narrative.

But on the whole, I think the NMP unit has been one that was the most reflective and significant out of my other units for the Media Arts and Production degree. The way we share media is rapidly changing; without realising it I had contributed to this change just by watching Youtube videos. It was these kinds of experiences I knew best about, and could happily blog about all week.

From the team over here at The Grey Album (I have always wanted to say that), I'd like to thank the epic lecturer Michael, and the ever-cat-in-funny-costume obsessed Stephen for making the internet and world of networked media cooler than it already was.

Project B Rationale

On the first glance, Facemap seems complex. Full of coloured lines left, right and centre – seemingly all originating from somewhere near Canberra – it looks confusing and messy. But really, it forms a coherent story, just like what the geo-narrative assessment brief asks for. I have created a geo-narrative which , in itself tells a story of networking.

Explanation of the story will come next, but the first step in the process of its creation was trying to come up with a geo-narrative that was somewhat conceptual, in reflecting important issues we had covered throughout the semester, but also reflective on and inclusive of networked media principles. I was also determined to create something a little different. When we were given an example of a previous student’s submission I was inspired by the level of photography and storyboarding she had included – but also a little intimidated, because I didn’t feel I’d be able to excel for the same elements. I also considered what other students were going to be handing in; from my tutorials, I could tell that most, like me, were choosing the geo-narrative. The reason for this seemed to primarily be that datavisualisation was too difficult with our level of skills and the amount of time we had to successfully create something in.

I felt the same way. I knew exactly what datavisualisations were supposed to be. I knew I wanted to create something that was shiny and modern and on the computer, not physically hand-crafted. I just had no idea to do it. With time running out, I considered the geo-narrative option and got cracking.

However, in doing so, and noticing the trend of other students going the same way, I had to consider how I could make mine different. I noticed that the geo-narrative would require more consideration as to how to actually involve networked media; after all, that is what this subject is all about. Looking at Rohani Moore’s submission, and reading through her rationale blog, I saw that in linking Flickr images and Del.i.cious links she was networking. I kept this in mind, but also tried to think of how I could make mine even more networked than that.

Looking for inspiration, I turned to the topic of social networking. We had discussed it to no end in lectures and tutorials, and it was very topical. And it is something I know a lot about. This was a good start.

The next source of inspiration was a little-known event to over 30s, but very well known to under-20s. It made the news in technology sections of e-newspapers worldwide and made many aforementioned under-20s ‘lol’. It is of course Kate’s Party, the Facebook event created that ended up with a guest list of over 60,000 people with tens of thousands more invited. It turned out to have been created by an online prankster, but it made the news for being an apt example of how privacy and the internet aren’t mixing.

I thought about privacy issues, the endless stories of online predators and uncomfortable experiences in chat rooms; I then thought of how 400 million users worldwide have Facebook accounts, connecting them to the 399,999,999 other people who use the same service. We are all connected now in ways we weren’t before; not just by Facebook, but by many other internet-related services, too. And then there was me: I was part of this statistic. I have mentioned in other blog posts an online writing community I am part of, Mibba.com. On this website I have been not only able to post my own writing work, but interact with other users and become friends, despite having never met any of these new people in real life. As is now inevitable nowadays in befriending someone, I have them added on Facebook. I have access to their information, whether it be our favourite movies and bands or what schools or universities we go to. And they have access to mine, on tap. While I am quite sure I know who these people are (having actually met some in real life since befriending them online, much to my parents’ dissatisfaction) there is always a possibility.

What also struck me is the new era of globalization, which is so strongly evident in my online friends. Globalisation began to happen initially because of the sheer availability and accessibility of international travel. Now, with the internet, we’re seeing a whole new type of globalization. People like me can connect with people on the other side of the world in mere milliseconds; this is making the world a very small place.

With these things in mind, I thought of making a story which is an example of networked media – friends connected via social networking platforms Facebook and Twitter – using real-life characters, my international Facebook friends, for a fictional story, that would demonstrate issues with privacy, misconstruing of things posted on the internet, globalization, and viral spreading. The viral spreading is seen in the story where a friend of mine sees my status update and is intrigued as to where it comes from, so googles the phrase and gets into the band where the phrase came from. This is more one of the benefits of the networkiness of the internet, and contrasts against some of the more serious issues I put in the story.
Facemap, my submission for Project B, is almost like a datavisualisation in a way. The global view shows a spread of placemarks which, as you click down the sidebar, are people’s Facebook accounts, and in turn represents the spread of a particular group of friends worldwide.

I have chosen to link these peoples accounts and the people they have listed as “family” (usually not actual family members) on their profiles, demonstrating networked media in itself. In terms of privacy and licensing issues, it is quite within my right, as a Facebook user, to do this. In creating a Facebook account, you are submitting personal details and information which, upon submission, becomes owned by the Facebook company. I stumbled across this piece of information while reading through the website’s privacy policy. I found it quite scary, as the vast (very vast) majority of people who sign up do not care to read such declarations, me included. In submitting your information, you are also making it available for the world to see – including me, who has linked it elsewhere. Not only are you at risk, but the people you list on your profile or friends list are as well. Privacy settings can be adjusted so that certain information cannot be accessed by non-friends, but with the sheer inter-connectedness of the millions of users chances are somebody will be a friend with one of your friends and be able to access that information. Such as one character in my story, whose conversation with my friend I manage to see despite not being that character’s friend.

For these purposes, I have, out of courtesy, made this map unlisted so that only those who are given the link for the map will be able to access this information. The images I myself have uploaded to Flickr are also set to private, only accessible by me or a direct link to the image. I don’t necessarily feel entirely comfortable with the networkiness of this project, either. It does however represent the crucial risk with internet privacy.

In terms of the story itself, I have made it rather clichéd and simple; the misconstruing of a status update was something I have seen in my own Facebook experiences, and served as another inspiration point. The simplicity of the story is coupled with a rather naïve narrative voice for the actual words of the story; this is in an attempt to be ironic. Naivety has no place on the internet.

The photos of the individuals themselves have been used under a suitable Facebook licence, but also remixed by way of resizing and recontextualising to avoid copyright issues. It should be noted that every photograph uploaded to Facebook also becomes theirs. As my story is entirely fictional, I have actually hand-crafted (by way of Photoshop) the screencaps that accompany the narrative. I took many screenshots of posts I have come across online, then copy and pasted my own text in to make conversations or the necessary people involved, involved. This was no easy task, but exceptionally tedious and my eyes were very sore by the end.

As I come to the end of this rationale, I should probably further note that this story attempts to make a linear narrative out of something very un-linear; this is, essentially, the nature of the internet. Things happening all over the place and in no particular order owing to how we might see them. It is best, to get involved with my story, to navigate via the links down the left hand sidebar. Upon viewing my completed project I noticed that it is best if you maximise your screen resolution so that the map can appear at a larger size on your entire screen.

Hopefully I have successfully created something networked, topical, reflective and creative. It was these four things I aimed to do, and hoped to stretch the geo-narrative to accommodate rather than be a simple story. And maybe I’ll reconsider my Facebook use… I’m rather scared that this company owns so many of my photos now.

Just as I was creating this post a conveniently related article came up on the Sydney Morning Herald technology section of their newspaper HERE. It seems Mark Zuckerberg knows we're all suckers...

To see the project, click HERE.

Stylo

This week was concentrating on the technical process of how I'm going to do my final project. Last week I was talking about how I know how the dataviz is supposed to be, I just don't know how to. Well, I guess I've conceded defeat, because for the ideas I was hoping I found the dataviz option too difficult. I don't just want to make a boring graph. I'm interested in trying to discover a way to create my ideas, but in the space of two weeks that'll be unlikely.

So, I have been researching the geo-narrative. It seems more my thing, anyway, less mathematical. I've been coming up with ideas for a suitable story, and am determined to make something that has meaning deep down but seems a bunch of fun.

I'm thinking something topical about the internet, getting to the roots of this subject and consequences of networking and such, whether this be social or otherwise. I don't want it to be too corny, or saying 'Facebook is bad lol'. That's been overdone but I want my story to have a cultural landscape. Internetscape. Whatever the hell it is.

Today's tutorial was pretty much dedicated to me trying to work out how I attach images and such to a location. In typical form I over complicated it, got frustrated, and couldn't find out how. Until me and another student managed to find out via a previous student's blog post - the key in attaching images and such to Google maps was by creating an account and making a path. You can then put the images in via HTML, so the images require a link. This is convenient because I can upload images to Flickr and this shows a networking element. Connecting to other websites and such. Niftynifty.

Anyway, so now that I've conquered that battle, I just need to create a storyboard and such and get excited.

overload'd

I've been finding heaps of examples of dataviz. I've felt inspired by some, encouraged to create a visualisation on something I'm interested in... and I get an idea, but the other half of my brain asks the unfairly negative question 'How?'. And that's when I get stumped. I have had a few ideas, but I feel as though I'm not talented enough to do them. The most exciting dataviz examples seem complicated when I consider how they're actually made. I've never used Flash, so that rules out those examples, and I'm determined to do it via computer instead of handmade.

Ever since we were shown an example of a previous student's geo narrative, I've felt much more inspired to do that one - any chance to be arty. (I feel like dataviz might be too mathematical for my tiny illogical brain.) So I've been trying to think of a geo narrative that would make mine original, not a blatant copy of this student's, and a way that also reflects something about the internetscape nowadays.

Still racking my brains. I'm hoping for a perfect idea that will be fictional but highlight something important. Contextual, y'know.

I know what dataviz is supposed to be, but I have no idea how I could actually do it in a cool nifty way. Still working that part out.

Datavizual

I guess I'll take any opportunity to say 'dataviz'. Seriously, it'd have to be the coolest shortening of a big word ever. Dataviz. Dataviz. I can't help it.

The key defining points of datavisualisation, as I established from the lecture, would have to be:

- a visual representation of abstract information
- an exploitation of the ability of human beings to see things
- having the purpose to translate abstract, numerical and so on facts or statistics into something visual
- quantity translated into scale, colour, shape, position, movement, and so on.

These four things, I think, basically sum up datavisualisation. At first I thought "Oh, okay, you mean like putting stuff into a graph so we can see it and the trends and shiz". But as Michael showed a few more examples, I realised I've come across examples of datavisualisation many times before. The Oakland police department was a classic example, using a map to visually represent the location of various crimes throughout the city, but on top of this representing the crimes committed by use of colour-coded dots and abbreviations.

The map showed a simple way to display multiple pieces of data simultaneously. If this data was in its raw form, it would be a massive list. But at a glance all of the information needed is there, and is easy to digest.

This, I think, is something that is really important to dataviz. It makes it all the more nifty, because you can get much more with half the work. Lovely.

The dataviz delicious links were really interesting. It gave me some inspiration as to not only the different ways I could create a datavisualisation in a way that isn't a graph, but different subjects.

Take the Charting the Beatles concept, for example. I was interested because it is something I love (Les Beatles). I was initially worried that I would have to make something more informative and formal for Production Project B, because I couldn't think of any way I could think of something cool to dataviz about. The Beatles examples Michael Deal puts forward are intriguing, not only because the way it incorporates one of my favourite bands, but because one of the graphs attempt to mathematically represent something quite un-mathematical.

The specific example I am talking about is the Authorship and Collaboration graph that was published in William J Dowdling's book Beatlesongs. In this graph, which you can see for yourself HERE, Dowdling charts the degree of collaboration on all Beatles songs, with the time they were released ordered horizontally. What is unusual is that on songs Lennon and McCartney co-wrote, they are not simply distinguished as 50/50 input; the graph represents more uneven collaboration levels such as 70-30, 80-20 and so on.

I guess this graph highlights the possibility for data representation - it is perfect to notice and reveal trends and correlations, such as how towards the end of their career the collaboration between the four members, particularly Lennon and McCartney, is much less, and George Harrison's songwriting took a definite increase. I am just interested to know how Dowdling got his data exactly, as to me, it is hard to put a percentage on artistic collaboration. Do they do this numerically by the number of words or chords one of the members put in? Or did he ask the members or producer(s) of the respective songs for their estimates as to how the credit should be distributed?

At this stage, I'm still trying to come up with an idea for my Project B datavisualisation that will carry me through and be specific enough not to have necessarily been done before. The Beatles example has shown what kind of spin I can take on traditional statistic representations.

I would be interested in something a little bit beyond a simple chart or graph. While although I've never used Flash before, perhaps I could come up with an animation or video such as this example. Seeing a Hashtag Spread represented its findings quite niftily, especially seen in the second video, where they used people's Twitter icons lighting up to represent how the tag spread. It would be cool to do something like this.

... and I guess I'll have to make sure I keep these five things in mind:

- exploration
- layering
- interactivity
- availability of data
- comparison of datasets

Especially the interactivity one. Nobody wants something they're just forced to stare at.

Also, I'm pretty devo'd that we don't get any more lectures for this subject. It's such a relevant subject and was pretty damn epic. So thanks Michael for all your hard work making the internet more than just Facebook, I found a picture for you as a present should you ever read this.

Multiplicity & Beyond

Crowdsourcing: relying on a group of people for information. For all you hear from fer srs n00bs like my mum about the internet being a "terrible resource, get off Google and go read your goddamned textbook" (I don't know if she's actually ever said that word for word, but it was probably similar), the concept of crowdsourcing is still really important, and damn useful. It just depends on the information you are trying to gain for yourself.

In my last post, I mentioned Wikipedia being, in a way, the most reliable source out there. And it is - but in a way. Obviously you are going to come across faults in your information, like that time I read the Wiki article on Vegetarianism, and was scanning through the Background paragraph when all of a sudden "Hi my name is Cheri please become a vegetarian you will love yourself forever!!!" hit me like a giant steak-sized portion of tofu. But along with this, you are going to get a lot of specific, lesser-known facts about a topic because of the large group of people's diversity. So it's a bit of a balancing act.

But crowdsourcing and multiplicity are not only relatable to factual information, which is what my mum would always diss in relation to English literature assignments. In her eyes, a published book is much more reliable. And it probably is, it just depends on what type of reliability you are looking for. 'Information' does not simply mean the stuff you need for assignments. It can be data and all other things wise.

I find 99Designs a thoroughly interesting example. It is a cool concept! And it practises crowdsourcing, relying on a group of people for information - in this instance, a product. You put your request out there, and a group of people are to respond. You are relying on a group of people's intelligence or knowledge. ( But Twitter backgrounds for US$149 seems a bit extreme, in my humble opinion.)

Being part of 'the flock' in the internet community that provides that service is not something to be ignored. While although much is said of the service you can get in requesting, it is important that things are held on the internet world by people continuing to respond to other people's needs. This will be when certain websites relying on crowdsourcing will collapse, and the requests will outnumber the received products.

Crowdsourcing is clearly not something that has only come to fruition with the internet; it's just that it is so close to the internet's heart, especially with Web 2.0 and the endless prevalence of connectivity. I found an epic yet simple example of crowdsourcing in real life by reading fellow tutorial/classmate Susan's blogpost. Driving in a pack of cars is a classic example. (Go read that post now. Here is my example of page ranking and connectivity, fyi)

On another note, in class today we were asked to come up with and idea for our own website that puts collective intelligence into practice. The exercise mentioned gathering and distributing, and making access to information - the foundation of crowdsourcing - so we came up with the online submissions of the Australian census, and a place where the results of such a thing were publicly accessible. If it were online, it would be easier to gather, compile and distribute the information. I don't think our initial idea works exactly true to the collective intelligence ideal, but the information it makes available is very valuable. It is a form of information put together by a group of people; it just so happens that our information is more in the way of statistics.

Also, Wikipedia races were pretty much the highlight of my senior years at high school. I guess that's when collective intelligence, multiplicity and crowdsourcing were well and truly an established part of the internets.

PS love you mum :D

web 2.0 ftw

Yay for my laptop getting a virus. I wonder if that's Web 2.0's fault.

Web 2.0, I think, is so interesting. It is also extremely relevant when I think about most of the websites I use/are familiar with today in particular. This week's topic made a lot of sense, and probably because of its epic relevance.

An interesting point made was when Michael mentioned how Wikipedia, in a sense, is the most accurate encyclopaedia out there. And this is very true. When you think about it, the people who collaborate your ordinary encyclopaedia are a very narrow group of people. You do not have that sheer range or diverse group of people, who all hold specific knowledge about very specific things; instead you have a group of academics with money to make physical copies of their works. You may have a substantially large group of academics, but you don't have the entire world like Wikipedia does.

This reminds me of things we had to consider in relation to scientific collaboration when I did chemistry at high school. We had to explore the benefits of collaboration - I had the points memorised in my head for my NSW HSC, it would be a serious 'fml' moment if I could still remember them. And I think it is very significant in this context.

Web 2.0 - a collaboration. It is, essentially, a popularity contest, when you think about it. Such as the page ranking system. Or the Touching the Void versus Into Thin Air debacle. People of all kinds with all different tastes and values and cultures and morals are deciding the future of the internet. They are also deciding the survival of websites, because without its users Facebook wouldn't exist. Same going for eBay, craigslist, and so on. These websites exist because of the connectivity they provide between users.

"The more people that use a service, the more useful and valuable that service becomes." This is, obviously, very true for the websites I just mentioned; but it is also true of communities and the like I am a part of on the internet. Take my membership on a creative writing community website, for example. It is a place where you as a user benefit from being able to post your pieces of work and get feedback. And, as a user, you can also browse the different genres available if you feel like a good read. Even hot slash. (Isn't that nice?) The more users there are, the more stories there are to choose from, with the most ridiculous and obscure fanfiction now available. The website simply serves as a place for people to congregate and upload stories.

So what can I say? Web 2.0 ftw!!!!!!!!1111~!!~!