Topic 3 - Alphaville

Lecture – Alphaville
The 1965 film Alphaville is an interesting cinematic experience that provides insight into the mindset of director Jean-Luc Godard. While some people may draw parallels between Alphaville and Orwell’s 1984, I feel as though they present two slightly different perspectives. Alphaville illustrates a utopian dream gone awry contrary the Orwellian nightmare of a more progressive evolution of the political and technological systems. In relation, the over arching theme in Alphaville is the use of mind control with the intentions of creating a utopian society.

Being accustomed to films with big budgets and special effects made Alphaville difficult to watch. The sense of immersion was never really established as the narrative would have liked. In order to enjoy Alphaville you have to look beyond the lack of special effects, terrible action sequences and look at it in context for the time it was made. The ideas in the movie were radical for a time when computers were barely in their infancy. Alphaville, and the themes Godard explores, paints a vivid picture of impact of technology on society and the shift in human ideals.

Readings – La Nouvelle Vague
French ‘New Wave’ was a cinematic movement of the late 1950’s early 1960’s perpetuated by the rejection of classic cinematic forms in favor of new and individual influences. Many of the works in the ‘New Wave’ movement focused on political or social issues at the time and themes were often driven by personal artistic expression. As one of the major figures in the New Wave movement, Jean-Luc Godard made several movies during the era including À bout de soufflé (Breathless), Vivre sa vie (It’s My Life) and Alphaville.

One of the key aspects of understanding French New Wave cinema is to look at the social and economic conditions of post World War II France. Movies of the era were shot on shoestring budgets, thus film makers were forced to improvise and cut corners to minimize costs. These gave New Wave movies some of their most distinguishing features:

• Jump cuts: a non-naturalistic edit, usually a section of a continuous shot that is removed unexpectedly, illogically
• Shooting on location
• Natural lighting
• Improvised dialogue and plotting
• Direct sound recording
• Long takes
  

Tutorial – Using NCT
As a person who has had internet access since 1996, I’ve tried a wide variety of online communication systems. As internet technology plays large role in both my personal life and working career I am motivated to constantly seek out new technologies. My first major online communication method was ICQ (instant messenger) in 1997, which I utilised to talk to friends and family. Currently, through the internet I communicate with people through services such as Skype, Live Messenger (MSN), TeamSpeak, Online games, Message Boards, eMail and Social Networks.

As a result of my extensive online gaming, I have come into contact with a number of people who I have never met in person but speak to on a regular basis. The internet has broken the barriers of communication and allows greater numbers of people interact across the world. Being a social person, not having met someone face to face still doesn’t hold the same value as friend I speak to in-person. The internet acts like a buffer between people; this poses both positive and negative aspects. Behind the internet people are free to modify their personas; this characteristic allows people to be both truthful and deceitful. The same argument could be made for in-person conversations; however the internet removes a level of transparency and creates more opportunities for false information.

Privacy and security are always issues when utilising the internet. Unfortunately as part of my professional career I need to maintain knowledge on current internet technologies, this requires that I spend more time and use more services online than the average user. This means I guard my personal information very closely and never publish it on the public internet. If I sign up to a new online service I read the Terms and Conditions as well as the Privacy Policy for the company. If a service has a lax privacy policy whereby they reserve ownership of the information I put on their service I am less likely to put specific information about myself. For example, FaceBook have an extremely lax privacy policy which they utilise to allow the sale of your information to third parties.

Do you have face book ?

Topic 2 - Email / Blogging

Lecture – Email is dead?
Email is definitely not dead, it maybe a little sick at times but its life is not in danger of ending any time soon. In its current iteration, email is a critical component in both the private and corporate worlds. When you consider a medium sized company like PRD Reality with 250 staff in their Brisbane offices consumes on average 150-200gig worth of email per month, it gives a clear indication of its importance in the corporate environment. The private sector isn’t much different, the amount of email maybe much less but its importance as a communication alternative is definitely just as great.

However, email is not without its issues. Email’s biggest advantages are also its disadvantages; free and easy. As a result the barriers to entry are very low which allows people to send great amounts of unsolicited email otherwise known as spam to millions of accounts every day. Statistics now show that over 80% of all email in the United States is unsolicited SPAM email. Advances in spam filtering have only curbed the rate of SPAM by negligible amounts as spammers find ways to circumvent the systems as fast as they are put in place.

The simplest solution would be for internet service providers to charge its customers for email. This is by no stretch of the imagination is a perfect solution but spammers who send millions of emails a day would find their profit margins becoming thinner.

Readings – The Handbook Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents
In the Simpsons episode titled “The Fraudcast News”, Mr. Burns purchases all of Springfeild’s media outlets in an attempt to control the news. However, Lisa’s newly released newspaper is not for sale and becomes the last media outlet not in Burns control. The episode is a satire on the ownership of multiple media outlets by large corporations such as Fox.

If that episode has been made in the last 12 months, Lisa would be blogging. Blogging has become the prefered communications medium for voices around the world where unbiased news is a high commodity. A critical point in the reading was the fact that many countries such as China and Bahrain have their media controlled by the government. Blogging enables individuals to workout side these restrictions and allows them to stay somewhat protected in the blogosphere. Being easily accessible with many free blogging services, blogs have become today’s equivalent of printing your own newspaper.

Tutorial – Blogging @ Blogger.com
Not being an avid writer, I have never had or considered authoring a blog, as a result Blogger is the first blogging website I’ve utilised. Being newly acquired by Google I was able to use my existing Google account and information to log in. This simplified the registration process and allowed me start configuring my blog. An issue which did cross my mind was the number of Google services I utilise and the push by blogger.com to entice you to use more of the services offered by Google.

Not having used other blogging sites I can’t draw any direct comparisons, however I can analyse the more basic site functions. The main problems I encountered revolved around the menu system which for me didn’t allow quick alterations. The settings menu system needs to be more streamlined opposed to the double layered tabs. A layout similar to hotmail/Gmail would be much more user friendly. A function which is completely missing is the ability to browse for blogs on Blogger. Other less critical functions which are also missing include word count and spell-check.

Topic 1 - Second Life

As described by the official website by Lindon labs, “Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely created by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by millions of Residents from around the globe” (2008).

One of the issues raised during tutorial discussion was the idea that the virtual world of Second Life was a more suitable platform for people unaccustomed to traditional online environments or gaming . A convergence of the online medium with traditional communication methods is becoming more apparent with greater numbers turning to the internet. Facebook announced that the average age of its 15 million+ person user base was 30, further reinforcing the notion that the online medium is reaching a wider audience.

Second Life is one of the first virtual worlds to give its users Intellectual Property (IP) rights over their in-world creations. Unlike other virtual worlds, Linden Labs open supports the conversion of real world currency into virtual money. The critical point here is that it is that by doing this Linden Lab is trying to create a balanced virtual economy similar to real life. Other Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) environments, World of Warcraft (WoW) being a prime example, actively prevent and ban users who try to sell their in-game goods for real world currency. As a result of strict IP rights, WoW and similar MMOs now face the threat of uncontrollable black markets which aim to satisfy users. The open economy and IP management provided by Linden Labs now prevents the need for black markets and thus creates more revenue for the company.

• Financial Figures (November 2007)

As reported by the secondlifeinsider.com,

Yesterday in Second Life we:

• Spent US$1,372,000 at an exchange rate of L$268.7 to US$1
• Exchanged US$274,000 at an average of US$11,400.0 per hour.
• Market buys were US$197,000
• Market sales were US$75,000
• Limit-limit buys were US$1,400
• The busiest time was at 11am when about US$16,000 was exchanged.
• The quietest time was 3am when about US$6,000 was exchanged.

New Com Tech - Welcome

In an age where technological change is measured in minutes, we are forced to constantly reevaluate the way in which we utilise new technology. As defined by (Dwyer, 2002), in its simplest form communication is any behavior verbal or non-verbal that is perceived by another individual. This definition broadens the scope of communication methodologies which technology and other environmental forces may coincide. In previous iterations, trends in technology have commonly followed the path of communication methodologies (Ess & Sudweeks, 2001). Put simply, technological trends in society arise from changes made to our fundamental communication methods. The preeminent example of which is the internet (originally ARPANET), developed by the U.S. military as a communication tool to allow for data transmission between several nodes.

As described by Riva & Davide (2000) a trend in the convergence of various media types into a single computerized standard. As a result several major communications technologies have filtered into the mainstream over the past several years, examples being Short-Message Service (SMS), eMail, Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) and Social Networks. Independent to the aforementioned technologies, virtual reality is rapidly emerging as a new communication medium. Initially this medium would have been restricted to large scale online games such as World of Warcraft or Lineage which both service a subscriber base of 5 million+ users. These online gaming environments act as incubators for virtual communities effectively providing a new communication stream for its users. Social interaction outside of an online gaming environment has become the next logical step with largest example being ‘Second Life’ by Lindon Labs.

References:

Dwyer, J. (2002). Communictation in Business.

Ess, C., & Sudweeks, F. (2001). Culture, Technology, Communication: Toward an Intercultural Global Village.

Riva, G., & Davide, F. (2000). Communications through virtual technologies. Identity, Community and Technology in the Communication Age.