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.

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~!!~!

The literal error

This week's lecture I found really interesting. Probably because it was full of not technological jargon and complicated coding but instead more philosophical and conceptual ideas.

When you think about it, technology is almost infinite; it is something that is constantly expanding. At the moment, when I hear 'technology', I think of an iPhone. But in a few month's time, will it be iPad? (It's also interesting how Apple are almost a figurehead for notions of anything 'technology' nowadays. You think technology and see that little 'i'.)

Technology is like another world. Especially with the internet. This place with so much information... and its own set of rules - "affordances and limitations". However, like Michael said, the limitations of the internet are constantly changing. Who knows, maybe a few years from now it'll become a way of transporting physical things, like teleportation. That probably won't ever happen because we'll want to eat food digitally instead rather than buy it from Woolworths Online and have it appear through our laptops. But anyway. Because affordances and limitations are constantly changing we need to be able to adapt, and in turn that means that design conventions for example with change. In an example more relevant to us, how we make media: this could change. How we show it, too, will change. How it affects the audience. And so on.

The design conventions of a website seemed so relevant, too, especially seeing as that's what we're handing in this week. And when I thought about the websites I frequent most, it was easy to see why those conventions worked.

Speaking of our websites... mine's alright. I mean, it's still a massive work in progress. It took a little while, but I found/decoded the URL for the Twitter API I'm hoping to incorporate into my project. The problem is trying to format it into my page so that there's a little box with a nice little live feed making many happies. I bet it's really simple but I'm doing this in typical style by over complicating it and missing the point.

Basically my exhibition is writing - The Six Word Story. Ernest Hemingway once claimed that he could write a story in six words; and, sure enough, he did: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn". I think it's a little, for want of a better word, wankerish, to assume it's amazing and everything, but I've found it interesting enough to exhibit it.

You see, the six word story has become a trend. Literally, on Twitter (#sixwordstory or #6wordstory). Twitter has become the perfect form for people to post their own six word stories, probably because the character limit allows not much else aside from incoherent babble, and they can show it to the world. Mind you, there are some pretty poor stories on the trend, with some people using any trend available on Twitter possible to advertise, themselves or otherwise.

But this is all part of my project. In the very first lecture the death of the print media was brought up; now with the internet, people can essentially do whatever the hell they want. Exploit the six word story, use it, appreciate it. Most do the first, in my very humble opinion, but I'm no critic. So I guess my exhibition... well, exhibits that very thing.

Along with general background and such to give a background to the Twitter thing(s), I'm hoping to link in some journals and communities I found on LiveJournal.com, all dedicated to producing six word stories. Have they exploited the art form? What defines a good six word story? To me most of the ones I've been coming across are pretty poor. But maybe I just don't understand it.

I've also found a group on Flickr that is dedicated to photos depicting their very own six word stories, as decided by the photographer. I've worked out how to use Flickr APIs, so hopefully I can add this in too. But really it'll just be something extra I'll add in because my exhibition's more on the writing part. The Flickr group will be good to show how the story form has spread, I guess. Maybe I'll find some weird Youtube videos called "My Six Word Story" and people read them out. That would be epic.

At this stage my project's called The Literal Error, which is apparently a synonym for typo. Rather fitting.

Also, I looked up the trailer for The Runaways because I like romanticised retellings of musicians.

Frigging Kristen Stewart.

You just got week fived

I don't like the word reflection. Just saying. It's almost as bad as "journey".

I think by this stage I've gotten the basics of HTML and CSS downpat. That said, I'm still not very confident with it, and building pages from scratch is a bitch. So. While although I think I've got it, I also think I'm a massive beginner which depresses me. I think it's necessary to put a little more effort into learning it than I have, I guess. I know that semantic markup is the name given to the code that describes the information you're putting on your page in elements - so rather than having to put bold tags throughout your page to make headings bold, you can make it so all headings of a certain type are bold. It also makes readability more possible - think of the word "semantics"... different words have different meaning for you. You want tags that make more sense. For example is less logical than , with the em standing for emphasis. And and so on.

I've never been good at explaining things so this is hard. But I understand what it means. I guess I'll steal this website's example, which was very helpful when a few moments ago I tried to explain ~semantic ~markup.

Say you want all of your headings bold. You could go through and put all the necessary headings in b tags. However, as you update the site, you start adding more headings. More b tags. You screw one up here and there and the page looks ridiculous. You constantly have to comb through your code and find the offending tag.

The heading code is very useful for this. It requires CSS. There are a variety of header codes, ranging from h1 to h4 and so on... I think they're automatically bold. With CSS you can also edit the header tag so that the font size is how you like it.

For example
h1 { font-size: 50px; } will make all of your h1 headings 50 pixels in size. And then you can edit the colour and stuff.

Even though it's in the CSS code, you'll still have to put HTML tags in around your headers so the computer knows which text are headers. So if you've put the aforementioned CSS code in using the h1, put and (without the ! marks) around your headings.

What is epic about it is that you can make different headings. h1 could be red and big and h4 on the otherhand could be more like a subheading and blue and small. But either way you're transforming entire elements. Which is nice.

As a result, non semantic markup would do the thing will all the bold codes and have to specify the font size and colour for every heading. Which would be a pain in the ass.

I guess I kind of made that website's example my own, but oh well. I need to credit them anyway. The website also goes into presentational markup, which I now understand, but I won't bother going into it.

I can't really explain what the 'cascading' in Cascading Style Sheet really means. So I'll get the internets to help me.

This website is legendary.

Style Sheets allow style information to be specified from many locations. Multiple (partial) external style sheets can be referenced to reduce redundancy, and both authors as well as readers can specify style preferences. In addition, three main methods can be employed by an author to add style information to HTML documents, and multiple approaches for style control are available in each of these methods. In the end, style can be specified for a single element using any, or all, of these methods. What style is to be used when there is a direct conflict between style specifications for an element?

Cascading comes to the rescue. A document can have styles specified using all of these methods, but all the information will be reduced to a single, cohesive "virtual" Style Sheet. Conflict resolution is based on each style rule having an assigned weight according to its importance in the scheme of things. A rule with a higher overall importance will carry a higher weight. This will be used in place of a competing style rule with a lower weight/importance. A hierarchy of competing styles is thus formed creating a "cascade" of styles according to their assigned weights.

So basically, cascading means the ordering of code based on importance so that stronger code overrides less strong code in order to style something. This is important because there is often conflicting codes when styling elements.

I think. Chances are I got that completely wrong.

Censorship. This is something I feel strongly about. The government's plans to filter the internet are stupid. I first became aware of the topic on a website message board I frequently visit.

I think it's a poor move by the Labour Government for several reasons. The first - it is a typical, vote-grabbing stunt designed to attract parents with the 'somebody think of the children' mantra. The government thinks there is a need for something where there isn't. Yes, there is a lot of inappropriate content on the internet, and yes, children can access it. But it is the parents' responsibility to filter this for their kids. This is where the problem is. It is not the government's responsibility to do so, and it is also nearly impossible for them to do this on a national scale. It is too difficult technically, financially, and morally, when you think about other people's civil liberties, particularly for members of the population that are over 18.

The cost. According to the Australians Against Internet Censorship group on Facebook, initial setup costs are estimated to be around $44 million, with an additional $33 million for every year it runs. The Labour Government has already cost us enough, what with a several billion dollar deficit currently reported, and this is just another useless program designed to attract votes and cost way too much money.

It will slow down the internet. When various filters were tested, internet speeds dropped from 21 to 86%. My internet's slow enough already, thank you very much.

Civil liberties. We pride ourselves on being a free country, where we have freedom of speech and all that stuff that some citizens of the world don't get. In an earlier lecture I remember Michael putting up a list of other countries whose internet is already censored in the same way that our government proposes to. From memory, most were Communist or run by dictators. We are a democratic country and yet our government is impeding on our rights.

How can you define what is appropriate or inappropriate? There are so many boundaries. What age level is the country internet's content appropriate for? How are the lists of illegal content compiled? Who compiles them? Who will maintain the list?

It's a shit idea. Basically Kevin Rudd is a n00b. And Stephen Conroy. And whatever dimwit thought it was a good idea.

CSS (creativity sucking swine)

I'm not that bitter about CSS, I just thought my HTML abbreviation thing was so cool and assumed it would be possible to make another one. But it didn't work.

Coding is frustrating, but I guess oddly rewarding. The thing I find interesting, though, is that we're being creative by using a code, a logic, a set language... it's creating something out of logic. I guess that's not normal for me, and I'm sure Jackson Pollock would be ashamed. I've tried to throw code on a blank TextWrangler thingy with miscellaneous passion and try to reveal my artistic subconscious, just like Pollock, only to come out with a webpage so excessively hideous and wonky that the only thing logical at that point would be to throw the stupid oversized Mac computer screen at the stupid frigging wall.

I guess what I'm trying to say that it's challenging. But isn't it like any other work of art?

This is what I'm thinking. A painting, right? You're mixing colours and trying different paintbrushes but it just won't come out right. So you paint over the top. You mix more colours. You snap your paintbrush in half and shove it down some poor soul's throat but just apologise by saying "I'm an artist, I'm allowed to be violent". In the end you come up with a visual creation, an amalgamation of colours and lines and thought processes that gets put in a wanky art gallery and people get their own meaning.

A webpage might not be conceptual, and instead a little more factual and logical, but if you're trying to make it pretty with CSS you're imporing the aesthetics and making it something that a visitor could appreciate more. At least I am. So in the same way you're mixing paint, trying different colours, and snapping that godawful $30 horsehair paintbrush into tiny little pieces like it deserves, with CSS you are going back and forth, deleting code, looking up a new one and trying it out, and in the end trying to create something distinct, charismatic or easy to understand - it all depends on your website's purpose. The same as an artist is trying to create something specific too.

I don't know, maybe it's some pointless thought from the recesses of an overactive and confusing but not at all original mind, but I find CSS interesting as a result. It's a stylesheet, it is trying to add style to your bland webpage... make it more visually pleasing. (Or maybe visually annoying, depending on how postmodern you are.) So it's sort of a kind of visual art. The weird thing about it, though, is we're using a completely logical (or supposed to be logical, depending on how CSS-savvy you are) code to create it. A lot of art isn't logical. It just comes from somewhere, like the deep crevices of the subconscious for abstract expressionists.

Or maybe CSS isn't an art and art is logical anyway so I should shut up. Either way, CSS is endlessly frustrating but I'm determined to beat it down with my big oversized wooden spoon. Suck it up. My web proposal at this stage looks somewhat average, but just you wait.

The age of the understatement

Blog in process, looks pretty homemade at the moment. CSS editing skills a bit rusty.

I don't like this blog voice I'm adopting. It seems a bit smarmy, and I'm sure if it was embodied in a person I'd punch it in the face. Or just mutter under my breath about how I'd like to. I don't know how to avoid it, though.

Do all bloggers adopt a voice? Is the fact that the internet has allowed every single one of them to voice an opinion the fact that they sound so smug? Are they naturally smug and as a result "proper" publishing mediums can filter them out?

I'm gonna continue with my theses on how other people should shut up but I have the right to my opinion. Smarmy or not.