Tuesday, 3 April 2012
Thursday, 29 March 2012
WEB206 - Week 4: Narrating the Self
Everything we publish on the Web says something about who we are. Whether it be the photograph we choose to represent us on a social networking site, the biography we include as a part of our blog, or the nature of our conversations with others through communities, message boards and comments, as we contribute to the Web we are establishing for ourselves an online identity.
In this light it is worth considering whether you wish to have two established presences on the Internet, one that is public and another that is private. You need to consider whether you want your (professional) web publishing to be connected with your private social networks.
Turkle, S. (1999). Looking Toward Cyberspace: Beyond Grounded Sociology. Contemporary Sociology, 28(6), 643-648.
Schau, H. J., & Gilly, M. (2003). We Are What We Post? Self-Presentation in Personal Web Space. The Journal of Consumer Research, 30(3), 385-404.Walker, J. (2005). Mirrors and Shadows: The Digital Aestheticisation of Oneself. Paper presented at the Digital Arts and Culture Conference.
To what degree - if at all - do you see yourself playing different 'roles' on the Internet?
I've been using the Internet since 1993 and back then it was a lot more about being anonymous online. I had one of those scary personal homepages with flashing gifs and the entire thing referred only to "Nicky", with very few other identifying features. I found the Schau & Gilly reading really interesting because it made me realise that although the links I put on that homepage were there because I liked them, they were also there because having them there portrayed the type of cool geekgirl online persona I was striving for at the time. :>
For that reason, I found MySpace and more particularly Facebook to be quite confronting, and I deliberately held off on participating for a long time. I still struggle with the concept of privacy online and although I've opened up a lot more in recent times, I've still made a fairly conscious effort to draw a line between what can be public and what should stay private. My Facebook is fairly locked down by some people's standards and is probably the most purely "me", bad jokes and all. I also have a professional LinkedIn profile and a public Twitter account and anything that goes on those is usually with "big picture web presence" in mind, so while they do demonstrate my humour and interests, there's very little that would be offensive to anybody. I've also set up a completely separate Facebook business page and Twitter business account so I can keep those things separated. Initially I did this so that I didn't bore my friends & family with professional stuff, but it's now worked well in the opposite way too, to keep my professional contacts separated without the family photos. This is the area where I plan for my new blog to slot into.
How much do you find user avatars contribute to your perception of the people behind them?
How is your perception of people affected by avatars within different contexts (i.e. discussion forums, games, instant messaging, social networks etc.)?
I find avatars interesting from the perspective of how that person views themself. But I tend to base my perceptions of people more on what they write, or how they play, or how they react to certain situations, because I think those observations give me a clearer view of the person. I've always viewed avatars as more like a snapshot in time, of what a person WANTS to be, rather than what they really are. It's possible that I think that way because when I first got online, almost nobody had a photo or an avatar and you had to learn to form views based on on other things.
How do you think the lack of recognisable avatars within the Blackboard environment affects your relationship with others in this course?
Tuesday, 27 March 2012
WEB206 - Week 3: Copy/Paste & Copyright
"The infinitely replicable nature of digital 'texts' has raised important questions about intellectual property, ownership and the nature of creativity within our culture. Where previously the technologies required to copy a text were relatively cumbersome, personal computers have made this task essentially trivial. Coupled with the enormous power of the Internet as a medium for distributing and sharing information, we have entered an era where established ideas of copyright increasingly need to be reconsidered and re-evaluated."
This week's readings:
Snapper, J. W. (1999). On the Web, plagiarism matters more than copyright piracy. Ethics and Information Technology, 1, 127-136.
Available: http://www.springerlink.com/index/L215064QJ8KK1331.pdf
Lessig, L. (2004). Creators. In Free Culture: How Big Media uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Strangle Creativity (pp. 21-30). New York: Penguin.
Berry, D., & Moss, G. (2005). On the â€Å“Creative Commonsâ€: a critique of the commons without commonalty: Is the Creative Commons missing something? Retrieved September 4th, 2009, from http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/node/1155/pdf.
In the light of the information here and the readings you have done, what license do you anticipate using in your non-academic work? Why?
If I license content that I put online then I generally license it as Attribution Non-Commercial so that others can remix my work non-commercially, as long as they attribute it to me. However, as this is a business blog then I intend to license it as Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works, which means that others can copy and distribute my work non-commercially but are not allowed to alter or transform it. My blog is something I've been thinking about doing for a while, to supplement my website development business and help to build my brand. As many of my clients are older, small business owners who have never had a website before, I'm hoping that existing clients will not only benefit from the information I present, but also pass it on to their own networks, which will hopefully result in additional work for me.
Do you agree with the assertions made by advocates of Creative Commons that copyright is restricting culture?
I think that today's copyright laws are not entirely applicable to the digital world. I really liked Lessig's example of the Causbys and the aeroplane problem - I thought it demonstrated exactly how the law and new technology don't always meet. While it is important for creators to be able to financially support themselves if they choose to - perhaps important work would never be created if individuals did not choose to devote their life to it - and copyright goes some way in protecting those people, I think the current "lifetime plus 70 years" concept of copyright is ridiculous and has gone way too far in support of the producers, not the creators - it is not benefitting any individual in their quest to create, 70 years after they've died.
I just finished watching a Keynote address by Lessig that discussed copyright, spectrum and broadband which I found quite interesting: http://blip.tv/lessig/recognizing-the-fight-we-re-in-6047323
Lawrence, L. (2004). Creators. In Free culture: How big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity (pp. 21-30). New York: Penguin.
This week's readings:
Snapper, J. W. (1999). On the Web, plagiarism matters more than copyright piracy. Ethics and Information Technology, 1, 127-136.
Available: http://www.springerlink.com/index/L215064QJ8KK1331.pdf
Lessig, L. (2004). Creators. In Free Culture: How Big Media uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Strangle Creativity (pp. 21-30). New York: Penguin.
Berry, D., & Moss, G. (2005). On the â€Å“Creative Commonsâ€: a critique of the commons without commonalty: Is the Creative Commons missing something? Retrieved September 4th, 2009, from http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/node/1155/pdf.
In the light of the information here and the readings you have done, what license do you anticipate using in your non-academic work? Why?
If I license content that I put online then I generally license it as Attribution Non-Commercial so that others can remix my work non-commercially, as long as they attribute it to me. However, as this is a business blog then I intend to license it as Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works, which means that others can copy and distribute my work non-commercially but are not allowed to alter or transform it. My blog is something I've been thinking about doing for a while, to supplement my website development business and help to build my brand. As many of my clients are older, small business owners who have never had a website before, I'm hoping that existing clients will not only benefit from the information I present, but also pass it on to their own networks, which will hopefully result in additional work for me.
Do you agree with the assertions made by advocates of Creative Commons that copyright is restricting culture?
I think that today's copyright laws are not entirely applicable to the digital world. I really liked Lessig's example of the Causbys and the aeroplane problem - I thought it demonstrated exactly how the law and new technology don't always meet. While it is important for creators to be able to financially support themselves if they choose to - perhaps important work would never be created if individuals did not choose to devote their life to it - and copyright goes some way in protecting those people, I think the current "lifetime plus 70 years" concept of copyright is ridiculous and has gone way too far in support of the producers, not the creators - it is not benefitting any individual in their quest to create, 70 years after they've died.
I just finished watching a Keynote address by Lessig that discussed copyright, spectrum and broadband which I found quite interesting: http://blip.tv/lessig/recognizing-the-fight-we-re-in-6047323
Lawrence, L. (2004). Creators. In Free culture: How big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity (pp. 21-30). New York: Penguin.
