Is something missing?

Digital Culture definitely covered a lot about the digital technology, past, present and future. It is good to know about these, for we live in the present, we wonder about the past and we live for the future. We learnt about all different kinds of technologies, and I was certainly shown a new light, however could we have learned more? 

I think we could have learned more about the journalism side of things with the future of technology, and how it will affect our lives. This was covered slightly, however, as a Magazine Journalism student learning about news and journalism is more beneficial to me in particular. 

In particular the augmented reality was a favourite of mine. The new technologies and advances available are incredible. I have also recently seen there is a new technology coming out of which you can use your eyes as a scroller on smart phones. Welcome to the future I am very interested in how this would work, if we had more time in this unit, that would be a particular interest of mine. 

Altogether, I think the digital culture unit was helpful and shown our group all to do with the digital world of wearable computers, popping out photos and how our grandparents used to live without Facebook. 

Thank you, Gavin. 

http://news.sky.com/story/1064885/samsung-galaxy-s4-launched-in-new-york

Wikileaks & Geeks.

Are you a geek? 
Are you accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits? Did you feel socially awkward?
Or are you foolish and clumsy? 
Maybe, a carnival performer, which bites the heads off live chickens?
In that case, you are according to the Inner-geek website you're a geek. 

So, do you hack phones and computers? & have you heard of Wikileaks?
Questions aside, according to Wikipedia, Wikileaks is an international, online, non-profit organisation which publishes secret information and classified media from anonymous sources. They began setting up a website in 2006, in Iceland and claimed a database of 1.2 million documents within a year of its launch! Their basic idea is to allow information to be published that couldn't be published by journalists, however, is this really ethical, when it is not supposed to be available for public interest? 

They also aim to prevent journalists being jailed for emailing sensitive documents, the 'drop box' was created to "provide an anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists".

"To bring important news and information to the public...one of our most important activities is to publish original source material alongside our news stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth".  - Wikileaks website

They also aim to prevent journalists being jailed for emailing sensitive documents, the 'drop box' was created to "provide an anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists"

There are many people against Wikileaks, for they have been accused hacking into many computers to find out information. However, Wikileaks have denied this believing it was "completely false". 
BBC news reported two years ago that the site released almost 400,000 secret US military logs detailed Iraq operations. 90,000 military records gave insight into Afghanistan's strategies.
The biggest was soldier Bradley Manning who posted a video on the website of the US Air Force killing 12 people and two Reuters journalists in Iraq. He believed that the Americans had the right to know.
"True costs of war"
His point seems genuine, they do have the right to know what has happened however, he released information that may cause more trouble than it would if it was still covered.
Would you want to know everything that is going on? We do have the right to know about what is going on, however, there are reasons for keeping it hush hush. Amazon web services claimed "there have been reports that governments were prompted to not serve Wikileaks  because of DDOS, which occurred but they were defended against, therefore these rumors were inaccurate. 
After all the criticisms, it's a wonder why Wikileaks is still open. I suppose they just want the public to be aware, and known however, are they really doing it the right way? 


Back to being a geek,.. could the Julian Assange be considered a geek with his supposed hacking skills? Are all the team?

Take the inner-geek test, here Geek test. 

http://wikileaks.org/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10757263

http://www.editorsweblog.org/2012/02/16/the-impact-of-wikileaks-on-professional-media

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeakshttp://innergeek.us/

Just an extra...

For the assessment, we need 13 blog posts, if I were to submit without this post, there seems to only be 12, therefore I thought I would add in the extra bits we did in a workshop with a lady who came in to conduct research on social networking, and cyber-bullying and would we report, or say something?

We sat in our normal workshop room, and she handed three sheets of paper. Two had Facebook statuses on, and the other was one for all of the group to fill in. All was anonymous  but as for this blog post, my opinion is the only one shown...  
The status's were both immature, one of was worse than the other, which you could class as cyber-bullying. 
However, as I pointed out in the class, that Facebook is one of those things where you say what you like, and get away with it. Although there are certain elements to Facebook posts, and videos which I would definitely not agree with. People post offensive statuses on Facebook which is not nice to see, however, would commenting and voicing your opinion be the best idea when you could make it worse for yourself. 

Personally, if a friend of mine posted something about another friend which was not appropriate, or irrelevant for everyone to see on Facebook, then I would probably send a direct message to that person, but I wouldn't post a comment, causing more problems, creating a Facebook war. 

We all voiced our opinions, turns out we were being recorded too (I do not have a good recorded voice). 

It was good to be there, knowing you were part of someone's actual research. 

Paratexts, Pokemon & Phones

Within the lecture we learnt about paratexts, we also learned about augmented reality, here's a bit of both...

Paratexts is additional material that is added onto the author's published work by editors, printers and publishers. These can include, the inside and back cover blurb, cover art, titles, typography, authors profile, prefaces written by someone other than the author. They are supposed to form a frame for the main text, and have the possibility to change the interpretation of the readers. 

Not only is it books, but Musayama, 2002 has the idea of 'The Open Product'. This is the idea that something, a film, has a beginning, middle and end, the credits role on screen and that is 'The Closed Product', therefore open means that something hasn't finished yet... His example is Pokemon cards. He says that yes, the film and the game have credits therefore they are closed, however, it is not over “…in search of Pokemon. Also, a player may use a cable to trade Pokemon with other players.”
It brings the question, is there ever really a real GAME OVER?

There is also the concept of Fandom. Fan's of particular films, TV shows (Doctor Who), create something similar and of interest to them which on YouTube  can often be mistaken for the real thing if they are good. 

The next half - 

Augmented reality. I have written a blog similar to this when I wrote about Google Glasses and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.. 
As a recap, augmented reality (AR) is a view of the physical world, with elements augmented by computers. Sound, graphics, video, GPS data are all mediated reality.
So, what did we learn at school today? 
We found out about a new application for smartphones that our university lecturers and techs have created. It reacts with a scanner and bar-code on a newspaper, once scanned the images come to life on  the mobile phone. The images go from 2D, boring images to 3D colourful, and cartooned images. Some the them included sound, which made it just that little bit cooler! 

These apps are still in development, but eventually just like Google Glasses, we will be seeing people with these. Reading the newspaper has never been more fun. We have got apps on phones that scan bar-codes in magazines, so this could be our future, and it sounds rather great. 







http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paratex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-paratext.htm

Digital democracy ft. The youth of today

Previously I explained what democracy was, I explained different forms, and I explained about the Public Sphere, so what is left to explain?
How does it all affect us?

Digital technology is with us all day, everyday (Those who are lucky enough to have it), even in previous blogs, technology is basically us, so it is obvious that something digital, especially something that includes our opinions (democracy) is going to affect us in one way or another..
Young adults and teens are aware of the social networking sites such as; Face
book, Twitter, Tumblr, therefore similarly we almost have a public sphere of our own, just through modern technology and online communication. Those with strong opinions will write statuses to update friends about what they think should happen, and why. Others will comment and like, or discuss oppositions and one day even use a dislike button on it. It is just debating on social sites.

So, our debates may not be those that change laws and we definitely aren't new MP's however, we all get involved in those we believe in. Do you remember KONY? Kony 2012, the invisible children campaign began as an experiment to see if an online video of obscure criminal behavior, and he was famous, would the world work together to stop him? 
3.7 million people pledged their support to arrest Joseph Kony. The invisible children project was to help stop the raising of an army of children and killing anyone. The campaign resulted in a resolution by the United States and contributed to the decision to send troops by the African Union. This list included 20 "celebrity culture makers", such as George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Oprah Winfrey Taylor Swift and Ryan Seacrest. It has over 97 million views on YouTube, all those with Facebook had posted and shared the video online for everyone to see. Although it didn't result into his arrest, we had such a huge spread of people who got involved to help stop Kony. 

This evidence alone demonstrates that we are all involved in a digital democracy. We get annoyed with certain posts on our timelines, however we made a stand for something. It just proves that social networking helps form democracy. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kony_2012

The One With The Public Sphere..

In life, we have a particular way in which we have our say in decisions of which affect our lives, this is known as DEMOCRACY. It begins with a form of Government, however, Democracy allows eligible citizens to participate, directly and/or through elections. Democracy changes and adds proposals, developments and the creation of laws. 
There are also many forms of democracy, the main two are; Direct Democracy, and Representative Democracy. 

Direct Democracy developed in Athens many many years ago. Around about 550BC, so as you can imagine, it was a pretty old time. This type of democracy allowed people to vote for policy legislation and bills opposed to representative democracy in which they vote for representatives who then vote for policy actions. Being able to make your own decisions of what will affect your own life, no one else to do it for you is a reward. Some would argue and get together in groups, this shortly passed as big cities were not all able to get together.  In the 13th century, Switzerland began the modern-era of lawmaking. It is the easiest form of decision making, however there is always an opposition...

Representative Democracy, As I said before it is opposite to direct democracy, therefore it means the people are able to vote themselves, but they vote for a representing group of people who then vote. This seems like a good idea, having someone do your 'dirty work' of voting for you, what happens if we choose one guy and he makes the wrong decisions, we all hate that one guy, and moan continuously. Similarly like the politics voting for Liberal democrats and university fees, because that worked out so well... 

So, who was Jürgen Habermas? And what was his Public Sphere?

It arrived in the 18th Century, however it still holds modern relevance. He explains that the public sphere is a gathering of private people who join together to form a 'public'. They would sit around together and debate in coffee houses. Similar to the number one American series; F.R.I.E.N.D.S. They used to sit in Central Perk, drink coffee and I guess you describe it as critical debate with there differences, or maybe just Chandlers' Sarcasm. Going back to Habermas, he describes these people as wealthy and highly educated citizens of which made the discussion of art and literature become possible. 

 But, the circle of friends erupted due to economic and structural changes, boundaries of states and societies became blurry. So does this have anything to do with media and Journalism? 

Yes. 

Habermas argued that the world of mass media is cheap and powerful. He believes it attempts to manipulate and create a public where none exists. Example; advertising and public relations, this are non-governmental organization which replace old institutions of the public sphere. Within Journalism it could be seen as newspaper companies, deciding on what is good, what they've read, what is newsworthy? 

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/public/summary.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/j-rgen-habermas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy

World War? or Cyber War?

Will our lives get easier? better? Is technology the answer?

There are many strong assumptions that computers can make our lives better. Technology has already programmed itself into our minds that without it we would be lost. In some ways, we would. What would we do if the internet went down? Phone networks were turned off? It is possible. 

“Authorities can shut down mobile networks whenever they find it politically expedient” 

Evgene Morozov, 2011, The Net Delusion. No phone, no friends, no life? 

It is, almost sad to think that our lives are based around technology. We live for a device, but what can we do, its what we know. 

Television series, Revolution. Life without lights.

"We are entering the era of robots at war"
So, basically we have no more normal fighting on battlefields against men in armor, we have robots.
Remote-controlled drones, bomb dismissal  and unmanned fighting platforms to take out terrorists in Afghanistan. But there will be more.

“The human is becoming the weakest link in defense systems, unmanned systems offer a path around the those limitations. They can fly faster and turn harder, without worrying about the squishy part in the middle….the unmanned fighter jet will totally trump the human pilot eventually, purely because of physics” 

So, what are the concerns of war of virtuality? Cyberwarfare. 

It is known as politically motivated hacking to conduct sabotage according to Wikipedia. Richard Clarke and Robert Knake (2010) know this as " actions of a nation-state to penetrate another nations computers or networks for the purpose of causing damage or disruption". 

What does this mean exactly? 

It could mean more combats with explosives, bullets and missiles.  Countries are at war through hacking and computing, and it is happening now.

There is virtual war taking place in Korean Peninsula. Jarno Limnéll, doctor in military science told the Huffington Post UK that a "cyber war arms race" is now in operation on the peninsula, and that it represents a new and dangerous frontier for both sides.

It is worrying to think that we could be at war with countries in general, but computers and abilities to hack into our computers, with ability to change everything. Who ever thought World War Three would be virtual? 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet-security/9943388/Cyber-warfare-more-must-be-done.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/04/10/north-korea-cyber-war-threatens-real-war_n_3052026.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare