Topic 2.4 - The Shaping of Time and Space

READ
Harris, Laurel. 2003. Time, space. In Theories of Media (University of Chicago). Archived by WebCite.

This glossary entry is useful in terms of its discussion of the socially-constructed aspects of time and space, and the role of media technologies in changing our experience and conception of time and space. How are time, space, and the Internet interconnected, how has the Internet affected the way we experience time and space?

Soraj Hongladarom. 2002. “The Web of Time and the Dilemma of Globalization,” The Information Society 18(4), pp. 241 - 249. In E-Reserve.

This article is useful in terms of considering the political aspects of time, particularly in relation to the power balance between global and local cultures, as applied to Thai culture. Are there any parallels with your local culture/s?

DISCUSS:

1. How has engagement with the Internet affected your experience of time and space?

2. The mindmap: how well does it represent your learning and understanding of the Internet and everyday life since? Given what you know now, what would you do differently?

I've moved from an office-based (apparently 9-5 but not really!) job working for an employer, to being self-employed and working from home at all different times of day and night.  This has also enabled me to study online in a similar way.  I read a lot of stuff about work/life balance and people complaining that you can never switch off like you used to, but the Internet has enabled me to work, study AND spend quality time with my kids and achieve the kind of balance that I would never have managed pre-Internet.  Mind you, I do seem to LOSE a lot of time too, reading links from Twitter mostly, which has helped me to expand my knowledge in a lot of areas that I had no previous experience in - but has also helped me on the journey to needing reading glasses!

Cheers,
Nicky

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Topic 2.3 - The Relationship between Society and Technology

READ
Williams, R. & Edge, R. (1997). What is the Social Shaping of Technology?. The Research Centre for Social Science.

These authors criticise the exaggeration of the inherent qualities of technology. What is SST? What is technological determinism? What does SST offer in contrast?

AND:
 
Micah M. White, “Facebook Suicide ,” Adbusters, June 4, 2008. Archived by WebCite.

This piece for an activist magazine issues a call for to leave Facebook; read the comments as well. What relationships between the control of our social networking information (power), community, identity, profit (economy) and privacy does this highlight?

DISCUSS

1. With reference to Facebook, an online game, or any other Internet application or technology, look into how the developers and users negotiate its development:
   1. Are there examples of the developers and the users disagreeing with some change or other? What was the outcome of these?
   2. Have the people using the application found uses that the developers may not have anticipated?

The Facebook privacy issues were a classic case of Facebook going just that bit too far, and users revolting.  Earlier this year changes to the Facebook platform resulted in everything I had previously clicked "Like" next to suddenly being visible to the whole world next to my name, even though my privacy settings were all set to only allow myself or people on my friend list to see my profile.  And there was no way to stop that from showing.  So I went in and removed all of my Likes (although I've since put some back, but now they're all carefully "neutral" or "professional", in case they decide to do it again one day).  There were people all over the world threatening to leave Facebook, which resulted in this email from Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, to a friend (intriguingly, the friend questions his own right to publish the email, and only does so when Mark gives him permission, which I found quite hilarious at the time - I was wondering what excuse Mark could possibly come up with to make his friend protect his privacy!)


http://scobleizer.com/2010/05/23/when-do-you-throw-a-ceos-privacy-under-the-bus/

The privacy issue was covered in the media and finally Facebook announced that they would be "Making Control Simple", which I thought was really a very subtle way of saying "we stuffed up".


http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=391922327130

This was reported in what I considered to be a more HONEST way by many media outlets:


http://www.itwire.com/your-it-news/home-it/39398-facebook-backs-down

Google has also encountered privacy problems with applications such as StreetView and Buzz, resulting in lawsuits by various governments including Australia, Canada and the European Union.
To answer the second part of this question, the best example I could think of was Twitter, with users creating the @username and #hashtag, but now that I've logged into Blackboard I see that William beat me to it!

Cheers,
Nicky

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Topic 2.2 - Community and Identity

READ
Shafi, Can a Virtual Community be any different from the experience of a Real Community?” Incoherent Thoughts, December 13, 2005. Archived by WebCite.

This blog post expresses the author's initial reservations about virtual community, and then moves on to a more positive stance on their possibilities. This highlights the normative use of the word community, that is, beyond being a way of describing a set of social relations, 'community' often implies certain values and expectations. What do you associate with the term, 'community,' and are these things available in both online and face to face types of community?

Don Slater. (2002). Social Relationships and Identity Online and Offline. In Leah A. Lievrouw, Sonia M. Livingstone & Sonia M. Livingstone (Eds.), Handbook of New Media (pp. 533-546). In E-Reserve.

This chapter in a student textbook on new media interrogates the distinctions between offline and online and provides examples of the changes in the way social relationships are formed and maintained, and identity is constructed.

DISCUSS

1. Discuss, in relation to an online community of your choice:
   1. How is this a 'community' (and what is a community)?
   2. Connections and gaps between the world of this community and face to face life.
   3. Who are the 'powerful' in this community, and how was this power acquired?
   4. Is there a difference between 'virtual' and 'real' life? What do these terms mean, nowadays?
2. Pick 1 topic (e.g. dating) and list examples of the way the Internet has, in terms of your topic, become part of our everyday in terms of community, power, economy and identity.

Shafi defines a community as “a group of people having common interests” (Shafi, 2005) and Zhang defines a virtual community as "communities formed through computer-mediated communications" (Zhang & Tanniru, 2005).  I've chosen to examine Facebook, which is the second-largest website in the world (Facebook, 2010) with currently over 500 million users across the globe (Alexa.com, 2010).  Facebook allows "communications between people who are spatially dispersed", or "disembedded" (Slater, 2002); that is, it enables friends and family in different geographic locations to communicate with each other online.
There are some similarities between "real life" and an online community such as Facebook.  Facebook demands that you use your real name when joining, which removes some of the anonymity, or "disembodiment" (Slater, 2002), of earlier Internet-based communications such as IRC and ICQ and arguably makes it less detached and more "real" than those earlier communication platforms.  It allows you to control who can and can't view your personal profile, which is similar to you controlling who you do and don't tell things to in the real world. and you can also control what you actually say.  Some may argue that you only see what people want you to see on Facebook, but I think that's true in real life too - if I'm having a bad day then I'm just as unlikely to wander around the streets telling people as I am to post it on my Facebook page.

There are also some obvious differences.  After many years of travelling I have many friends scattered across the globe, who previously I would only hear from a few times a year via a lengthy email.  Now that they are Facebook friends I can keep up with them on a far more immediate basis.  In some cases too, I've learned more about individuals via their Facebook pages than I ever knew about them from real life.  The biggest problem I have nowadays is if a friend ISN'T on Facebook - it has become so easy to post an update about something in my life on my Facebook profile and letting 100+ know something simultaneously, that I sometimes forget to then contact those individuals who aren't on Facebook.

I think the power behind Facebook lies equally between Facebook themselves, and also users.  Facebook has access to the personal information of over 500 million people and, as was discussed in last week's iLecture (Kent, 2010), the fact that Facebook is free to use only means that they aren't selling Facebook to individuals but are instead collecting our data as a way of selling Facebook advertising to us.  However, Facebook itself is of no value if nobody uses it, and the public outcry (Swan, 2010) last year over the way they handled user privacy resulted in changes to privacy controls (Zuckerberg, 2010).

I think that the terms "virtual and "real life" nowadays really refer to what Slater calls “face-to-face embodied interaction” and "disembodiement" (Slater, 2002).  Traditional ideas of community have changed - community is now less about geographic location and much more about common interest (Shafi, 2005).

Alexa.com. (2010). Top Sites - The top 500 sites on the web.  Retrieved November 1, 2010, from http://www.alexa.com/topsites
Facebook. (2010). Facebook Statistics, from http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
Kent, M. (2010). The Internet and Everyday Life: Power and Economy.  Retrieved from http://dbs.ilectures.curtin.edu.au/lectopia/lectopia.lasso?ut=3152
Shafi. (2005, December 13). Can a Virtual Community be any different from the experience of a Real Community?  Retrieved from http://shafisaid.wordpress.com/2005/12/13/can-a-virtual-community-be-any-different-from-the-experience-of-a-real-community/
Slater, D. (2002). Social Relationships and Identity Online and Offline. In L. Lievrouw & S. Livingstone (Eds.),In Handbook of New Media (pp. 533-546): Sage Publications Ltd.
Swan, D. (2010). Facebook backs down  Retrieved May 27, 2010, from http://www.itwire.com/your-it-news/home-it/39398-facebook-backs-down
Zhang, Y., & Tanniru, M. (2005). An agent-based approach to study virtual learning communities, pp. 11c.
Zuckerberg, M. (2010, May 27). Making Control Simple.  Retrieved from http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=391922327130

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Topic 2.1 - Power and Economy

READ
Brendan Gilbert et al., Web Content/Social Networking, Blog, Corporate Power in New Media, May 14, 2008. Archived by WebCite.

This student blog states, "People's barriers are down and they fail to realize the extent to which corporations affect their online behavior". How true is this statement?

Mansell, R. (2004). Political Economy, Power and New Media. New Media & Society, 6(1), 96-105. In E-Reserve.

This scholarly article makes the case for analysis and research into the political and economical aspects of the Internet. Note down the reasons Mansell gives and think of examples to illustrate.

DISCUSS

1. Power operates in many ways on the Internet, let's take one example, that of Internet access, to discuss power (no more than half a page):
   1. Are there limits to when, what (sites), how much, and where you access the Internet?
   2. How can you transgress those limits and what are the possible consequences?
   3. Is it possible to lose your access and what are the ways this might happen?
      
2. How do economic relationships conflict with or support existing power structures through the Internet? Choose an example from your first module and discuss on the discussion boards.

Author: Nicole Veitch
Posted date: Wednesday, October 27, 2010 2:27:29 PM WST
Last modified date: Wednesday, October 27, 2010 2:27:29 PM WST
Total views: 3  Your views: 3

The corporation that bothers me the most is Google.  The best example I've seen that demonstrates just how far they've wormed their way into our lives via the Internet, is this video:

http://hungrybeast.abc.net.au/stories/beast-file-google

At the time I came across this (it may have been part of an earlier subject, I can't remember now!), it was labelled "Google is Skynet" (for anyone who has watched the Terminator movies or TV series).

While everything Google offer is "free", there are so many strings attached that a lot of people never think about.  I use Gmail, I have an Android phone with a bunch of Google apps on it, and I've used Adwords and Adsense for business, Maps, Earth... the list goes on and on.  All of them are "free" and once you've got a Google login then you can use it for everything so it's easy, no need to remember a bunch of different passwords.  But the other side of that is, everything you do is under a single login, which means that they can read your emails, see your Contacts, see copies of any online shopping you've done, see all the documents or photos that you store, see what you search for in Maps and Earth, they can even see a StreetView picture of your house (and hopefully you're not IN that photo!).  It's really quite creepy once you start thinking about just how much information they are storing about YOU on their servers.  And they are using your information to target advertising at you.  So from the perspective of this week's topic - I would say that Google hold a massive amount of power online, because they own so much information about so many people.

Cheers,
Nicky
======
Author: Nicole Veitch
Posted date: Thursday, October 28, 2010 6:03:26 PM WST
Last modified date: Thursday, October 28, 2010 6:03:26 PM WST
Total views: 4  Your views: 4

I too found the Mansell reading to be horribly longwinded and confusing and frankly, that was an hour of my life I'll never get back.  However, the key points that I finally wrung out of it were:

- While there is now far more new media available than ever before, the actual supply of much of this media is controlled by a small number of large media companies.

- Scarcity is being created by these companies, via things like copyright and paywalls, to control the media and therefore control consumers use of it.

- Additionally, information is gathered about consumers by these companies, which is then sold on for advertising purposes.

- This results in changes to the social and cultural behaviour and values of consumers - ie. they only consume media produced by a small cross-section of the media, and therefore can have their views and opinions "shaped" by that media.

- There has thus far been little attempt to research the consequences of these changes.

It basically all comes down to power and money which, if I've got it right, is what Political Economy is all about - these processes give these huge companies great power, from which they can make great profits from.

You only have to look at the current state of Australian media ownership (http://www.aph.gov.au/library/intguide/sp/media_regulations.htm).  Virtually all of the media in Australia is owned by either News Ltd, PBL, Fairfax, Telstra, Seven, Ten and a couple of others.  I don't see any stories that any of them are going broke!

Cheers,
Nicky
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1. I personally don't encounter many limits with regard to my own Internet access because I pay for a good plan and have the technical know-how to get around most issues, but I can think of quite a few limits that are currently imposed on a good percentage of the population, including:

• Media corporations imposing limits via the use of paywalls - Rupert Murdoch recently made the website versions of UK-based "The Times" and "The Sunday Times" newspapers subscription based, and sites like Crikey.com.au which have a portion of their site behind a paywall.  While the jury is still out on the effectiveness of this for news (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/has-rupert-murdochs-paywall-gamble-paid-off-2067907.html), I see Jenny gave a good example of this affecting access in an academic sense.
• Media corporations blocking access to certain media on a country-basis - ever tried to watch an episode of your favourite TV series directly off the US-based website?  Chances are good that you'll get a "sorry you need to live in the US or Canada to view this" message.
• Many corporations impose limits for their employees via corporate firewalls, blocking sites such as Hotmail, Facebook, etc.
• The Government, via departments such as the ACMA - although there currently isn't a mandatory content filtering system despite Senator Conroy's best efforts, the ACMA can and do issue takedown notices against ISPs who host certain material (as detailed here http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=INT_IND_CONTENT_ABOUT).  If the mandatory Internet filter is ever allowed into existence, the government will have the right to block information that is not illegal to own, our very own government-endorsed censorship regime.
• Schools - many government primary schools take the approach of blocking everything and only allowing a specific list of sites to be accessed.
• ISPs, particularly in Australia, enforce download limits and shape access speeds for certain accounts at certain times of day.

 While it's not easy to get around a paywall without actually paying, it IS fairly simple to bypass most technical blocks via the use of anonymous proxy sites and as far as I'm aware, there aren't a lot of consequences for doing this.  However, in some instances it would be possible to lose Internet access altogether - for instance, if your ISP chooses to block your access due to excessive downloading, or hosting inappropriate adult content or for breaching copyright.

2.  I've been using the Internet since the early 90's, before it was such a money-oriented beast, and I have to say that while the constant money-driven aspect of it nowadays annoys me, with sites covered in advertising and having to pay for things that once you could download for free, the fact is that back then there just wasn't a lot of good content available, and not as much choice.  So it's sort of a catch-22 - finding ways to make money from the Internet has ultimately given consumers greater choice and variety and greater quality to choose from (if you know where to look!), but it also means putting up with all the advertising and paywalls and other economic "barriers" along the way.  I've used the example of Google in another post - free email accounts come with more and more "added extras" every day.  At the end of the day I think you generally get what you pay for.

Cheers,
Nicky

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Topic 1.6 - Politics Julia Gillard is my Facebook Friend

READ:
Nagourney, Adam. The 08 Campaign: Sea Change for Politics as We Know It. New York Times. 2009-01-19.

This week we were asked to look at two political websites from a choice of four, and think about the degree to which people's political engagement and participation is affected by Internet communication, and also the role played by the Internet in assisting the democratic process to identify and resolve the main social issues.
I chose to look at www.pm.gov.au, the Prime Minister of Australia's website, and also www.GetUp.org.au, a citizen/interest group which I've become interested in over the past year.  While the Prime Minister's website pretends to display a "participatory" look via prominently displayed "PM Connect" links to Facebook, Twitter and Flickr on the front page, the reality is that the site is presented in a traditionally mainstream media format which is effectively a one-way broadcast platform containing advertising and press statements, that allows the Prime Minister's office to carefully control the information that is released.  The social networking pages don't appear to be actually used for social networking, but more as an extension of the main website, to broadcast news, and there is no interaction with followers.  It is questionable whether the Prime Minister has ever personally touched any of these websites!  The overarching message is one of "follow me but don't speak".

On the other hand, www.GetUp.org.au is an independent political movement which aims "to build a progressive Australia".  Their organisation including their website is participatory with many contributors and they actively utilise Web 2.0 and social media to keep the lines of communication open.  They encourage individuals to join up, either as free email members or paid contributors, and contact members directly to ask which issues they would like to address and to get feedback on campaigns.

I found both websites interesting because I think they both ultimately achieve their current goals, albeit in vastly different ways.  The Prime Minister's office are using the Internet and social media as a way of showing that they are modern and up-to-date, without actually interacting with followers in any significant way.  GetUp are using the Internet to inspire and drive a grassroots movement of political change, by interacting and participating with their followers as much as possible.  Both sites are targetting different groups in different ways and for now, they are probably both achieving their respective goals.  But in terms of assisting the democratic process and dealing with social issues, the Prime Minister's one-way communication website is hardly promoting democracy and it could be argued that they are missing the value of internet-based communication which is free, broadly available and has a wide reach.  By contrast, GetUp offers it's 350,000+ members the opportunity to identify and participate in a broad range of political and social issues including changes to the electoral registration process, opposition to the Government's proposed mandatory internet filter and currently, a class action regarding bank fees.  It's a shame that the peak political website of our country is one-dimensional in it's approach to the democratic and social issues of the day.

Cheers,
Nicky

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Topic 1.4 - Health What My Doctor Didn't Tell Me

READ:
Gunther Eysenbach. (2008, August 25). Medicine 2.0: Social Networking, Collaboration, Participation, Apomediation, and Openness. Journal of Medical Internet Research. 10(3).

This week we were asked to select a particular health topic that interested us and find out more about that topic using the Internet.  I chose to investigate a form of skin cancer called Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), which my father was recently diagnosed with.  I started by typing the name into Google and the first result that came up was on Wikipedia, which provided a high-level outline of the condition, followed by a variety of sites based in the United States and Australia.  Even though a medical condition is often going to be a global one, I tend to prefer to use the "Pages from Australia" option and then select government-provided or professional association sites such as:

Cancer Council Australia
Department of Health and Ageing
Sunsmart
Australasian College of Dermatologists

The main reason I prefer these sites (gov.au, org.au or asn.au) is that I trust that the Australian government and professional bodies will provide accurate information.  Eysenback describes three ways that users can identify trustworthy and credible information and services - using intermediaries, which are basically trusted web portals containing only information vetted by experts, disintermediation, which is where a user bypasses "middlemen" and directly accesses information themselves, and apomediaries, which is more like guidance and filters that help direct a user to high quality information and services.  I suppose in this instance Google is my apomediary and the government and professional association sites are my intermediaries.
During my research I discovered that SCC is the second most common form of skin cancer, less common than Basal cell carcinoma but more dangerous, although less dangerous than melanoma.  I also discovered that the "official" sites I'd chosen were overall more informative and less graphic than Wikipedia, which had a couple of horrendous looking photos.  The other thing the research did was to send me off looking for skin spots on myself, which I probably wouldn't have otherwise done today!

I think the Medicine 2.0 that Eysenbach describes is an interesting idea and I'm sure there would be a cross-section of society that would embrace it and be happy to "take responsibility for their own health".  But then I think of people like my parents and grandparents who don't like the idea of any of their personal information being online in the first place, and who probably wouldn't have the time or inclination to try to get to it anyway, and my currently "invincible" 20 year old cousin who is at that age where health is something you just don't think about, and many of those in society who would probably benefit the most from it but have the least amount of opportunity to access it.  So I think it's probably quite a while off yet.

Cheers,
Nicky

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Topic 1.3 - Dating, Intimacy and Sexuality

READ
Pascoe, C.J. (2009). Intimacy in Mizuko, I et. al. Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media. Available from http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/book-intimacy

This week we were asked "How far would a partner/spouse have to go online before it is considered cheating? Up to what point is flirting online acceptable? How 'real' is cybersex?"  We were also asked to discuss dating, romance and intimacy in the context of the Internet, drawing on this week's reading by Pascoe.

I've been using the Internet since the early to mid 1990's and I know many people who have met somebody in some type of "online" way, although none who were teenagers so Pascoe's article provided a different perspective for me.  He uses the example of teenagers to break down courtship practices into four different areas - meeting, flirting, going out and breaking up - and argues that new media tools have changed the ways that these things occur.  People can now look up others online, utilise shared contacts to facilitate a meeting and flirt using online social networks which allow for "controlled casualness".  These networks are both private realms away from adults, and also public arenas that allow other members of the social network to view what is happening.  Once a courtship reaches the "couple" stage, social media can be utilised to display affection and to reinforce a relationship in the eyes of others, and if it gets to the "breakup" stage then there is often a public element of "sweeping up the digital remainders" of the relationship.  At the same time, however, individuals can also use these same networks to monitor others, which increases the vulnerability of those being monitored.

I found Pascoe's article interesting but not necessarily compelling.  While it may indeed be true that teenagers prefer to meet in person first and then go online to conduct the "flirting" stage, in my own experience, admittedly not with teenagers, many people nowadays also meet online first and then develop a relationship later.  While new media tools have certainly allowed all of these activities to be conducted in new ways, ultimately I don't believe that meeting somebody online is greatly different from meeting anywhere else, and I don't think relationships should be viewed any differently either, so the first two questions of this week's question is interesting to me from the perspective that the word "online" could be taken out and the question would be the same.  At the end of the day, if one person's behaviour hurts the other then it's not appropriate, whether it's conducted online or offline.  Flirting is flirting and cheating is cheating, no matter where it happens.

The question of cybersex is also interesting.  While the physical side of things doesn't seem to be a factor, I imagine that actually getting into that situation with another person would involve finding/meeting somebody who was willing and probably also some online flirting, ultimately leading to the grand event.  In other words, there would have to at least be some mental energy devoted,and possibly also an emotional connection.  So I would consider that getting to that point with somebody other than your partner/spouse would be just as hurtful to them as any other form of cheating.

Overall, it is evident that the Internet and people's everyday lives are becoming more intertwined, to the point where "online" and "offline" relationships are not necessarily distinguishable anymore.

Cheers,
Nicky

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Topic 1.1 - Music I Want My MP3

Read: Laughey, D. (2007). Music Media in Young People's Everyday Lives. In Music, Sound and Multimedia: From the Live to the Virtual (pp. 172-187). In E-Reserve.

This week we were asked to examine what the Internet has added to the musical landscape and what it did for music, consumers and producers.  We were given a reading and set a task of opening an account with a music discovery and streaming service such as Last.fm or Grooveshark, and reviewing the service.

I initially set up Last.fm but didn't find it very intuitive and didn't like the idea of having to install software on my PC to make it play so it was abandoned fairly quickly.  On the other hand, Grooveshark was much simpler to use and I found the concept interesting.  I was a teenager in the 1980's so back then it usually went like this:

- Hear a song on the radio.
- Setup cassette deck and sit next to radio every night waiting for it to come on so I could tape it off the radio, hoping the DJ didn't talk through the beginning or end.
- If I REALLY liked it, buy the record (you could buy cassette tapes but tapes stretched with constant playing so buying the record was like having a "master").
- Tape the record anyway, because the only record player was my parents and it was in the lounge room, and I had a tape deck in my room.

The Internet has resulted in many changes to the music landscape, including the way music is produced and distributed.  Digitisation has enabled music to be produced easily and inexpensively and, more importantly, allowed it to be perfectly copied and therefore downloaded and shared.  The creation of the MP3 file format in 1993 allowed songs to be reduced in size to a few megabytes, and the introduction of services such as Napster in 1998 enabled consumers to download perfect copies of songs for free.  These practices have consistently upset the music industry ever since and they have spent great time and effort pursuing individuals and sites for copyright breaches and the like; however, new technologies such as BitTorrent continue to emerge and now we are also seeing online music streaming services such as Grooveshark.  These sites are interesting from the perspective that consumers are sharing their own music but not distributing it - there is no downloading involved like there was with Napster - so it will be interesting to see how the music industry handles this.   Regardless, all of these new technologies have allowed consumers to have choice, to listen and share whatever music they want, whenever they want it, no longer at the whim of a radio station.

The different ways of sharing of music and musical preferences has also flourished with the Internet.  Sites such as Grooveshark allow users to create friend lists and playlists and share the music you're playing.  What was once private consumption is now public.  Additionally, social networking sites such as MySpace have also enabled distribution of music by artists, allowing them to distribute their own work without having to rely on traditional platforms.  In some cases this has even allowed new artists to be "discovered" online.  Fans can also "follow" their favourite artists in similar ways to the traditional "fan clubs", but the information is much more immediate.

Cheers,
Nicky

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NET102 - Introduction

READ:
Study Guide for Module 1. These study notes establishes some of the basic ideas and approaches we'll be using in this unit: What are the reasons for studying the Internet in terms of the everyday and what our chief areas of focus?

'Everyday Life' and 'Conclusion' sections (pp. 163 to 165) of Berger, A. A. (1995). Sociological Theory and Cultural Criticism. In Cultural Criticism: A Primer of Key Concepts. Sage Publications. In e-Reserve.

This week we were introduced to the unit and given a reading which explained "Everyday Life" as the "focus by social scientists on the experiences of ordinary people and on their routines, attitudes, beliefs, and ways of functioning", which are influenced by popular culture, the media and particularly advertising.  The reasons for studying everyday life are 1. To understand ourselves and our society better, 2. To identify and understand effective progressive/conservational tactics and 3. To recognise and understand change.  I must confess that I found the 3 pages fairly dull so I hope the rest of the unit isn't all going to be like this!

We were also asked to discuss our experience of the Internet and how it compares with others and I submitted this to Blackboard:

I was really interested to read all of your Internet experiences and actually I was a bit rapt that there are so many long-time Internet users here because in my world I've always been considered the nerdy one, so this is like joining a very cool club! :>  I started out with a Commodore 64 in the late 1980's and in 1993 started working in IT and discovered bulletin boards, and from there got onto the Internet via dialup, armed with an Ozemail 3.5" disk of apps that allowed you to use Usenet, Archie, Gopher, IRC (which I subsequently spent hours of my life on) and the World Wide Web (using Quarterdeck Mosaic).  In 1995 I taught myself HTML and wrote my first web page in Windows Notepad and in 1996 I went backpacking and kept in touch with the very few people I knew who had email (mostly IRCers), and put some photos up on my website as I went.  This involved getting film developed, finding a friend with a scanner, a PC and an internet connection, another friend who provided me with a free Unix shell account, and knowing how to FTP and write HTML via a command line - fun!

Nowadays it seems like just about everyone I know has email and a home PC and a mobile phone they can surf the net with, and you get to see people's photos at the time they're actually doing things instead of weeks later. I can't imagine life without the Internet now - I do everything online - banking, read news, social networking including Facebook and Twitter, organise holidays, research things like restaurants, movie times, builders, tradesmen and schools, study, and work - still doing websites.  My daughter is in grade 1 and she uses the Internet at school.  I joke with friends and family that if they're not on Facebook then I don't remember to keep up with them but it's almost not a joke any more.  My husband made me leave my laptop at home for a week in July when we went on a family holiday and I felt like I'd had an arm cut off!  So the Internet is very much a part of MY everyday life.  I found this article which I thought was interesting - it's about whether broadband should be considered a necessity and a basic utility like gas, electricity and water.  I personally haven't spent more than a week or 2 away from the Internet since 1994 so it sounds perfectly reasonable to me but I don't really think my usage is the norm!  My parents and many of their generation of friends/family have broadband but just as many don't and I have many friends who have access but don't use it anywhere near the way I do, and they're all quite happy, so maybe we're not at "necessity" yet. :>

As far as controversies - one of the things I've always been very focussed on is online privacy and until recently I made a concerted effort to stay very anonymous online.  Joining Facebook was a huge step outside the "anonymous" comfort zone and I have to say that, despite the fact that it's convenient and fun, the way Facebook handles (and changes) privacy settings drives me mad and I've had days where I've thought about just ditching the whole thing.  But I also find it a bit addictive so maybe that's why I'm still there. :>  Another issue I've been fairly involved in over the last couple of years was the Australian government's proposed internet filter, which hopefully is now dead in the water.  If you'd like to get me started on the issue of governments and censorship then just say the word, but I'll restrain myself for now!  But to me, although both of these issues are Internet-related, they're also relevant offline issues - privacy and civil rights.  It's just about how the world should handle them in a global, online situation.

Cheers,
Nicky

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