Digital Writing - Blog 1

For the first blog our tutor has asked us to write something intelligent about three different works found at the following website, http://directory.eliterature.org/works

DIGITAL LITERATURE ANALYSIS 1      -      10:01

The first piece of digital literature I have chosen to analyze is called 10:01. When I first opened the website it started off by showing me a few random quotes made by unknown people, or at least people unknown to me. Then it changed to a picture of a group of people sitting in a cinema. I could not see any of their faces however if I clicked on a person a text box would appear with a story inside it about that person.

Basically from what I can gather this websites main purpose is to tell us a fictional story about each fictional individual sitting inside the fictional cinema watching the fictional movie. I cannot see what the point of this website really is besides being extremely boring and having annoying sound effects. Whoever made this website obviously had too much time on their hands and no life.

Heres the link http://www.lanceolsen.com/1001.html check it out if you want but I personally would not bother.

DIGITAL LITERATURE ANALYSIS 2   -   Oh

The second so called digital literature piece I analysed is called Oh. It first appears as a series of dots on a white screen which if you hover the cursor over make rather amusing Oh! sounds. The dots have a ripple effect that reveals part of a poem or what the author calls a concrete cyber poem - what ever that is supposed to be. After a short period of listening to a bunch of pointless Ohs! the ripple effect clears to reveal the poem in the background. The poem goes something like this, "Oh rain Oh writes in the puddles Oh Oh Oh".

Once again this website also seems to be completely pointless, however it is slightly more amusing than the first one I analysed. The poem does not make the slightest bit of sense either. I guess whoever made this website would probably justify its pointlessness by arguing that they were being creative but the whole website is just very random if you ask me.

Checkout the link if you like, http://nonfinito.de/oh/#top but there are better things you could waste time doing.

DIGITAL LITERATURE ANALYSIS 3  -  Jabber

The Jabberwocky engine by Neil Hennessey is designed to produce nonsense words that sound like English words. It does this by bouncing around a bunch of letters inside a box. When the letters run into each other they calculate the probability of them appearing contiguously in the English lexicon. If they do appear contiguously they then join together to form nonsense words. The Blue words are fragments, the green words are compound words created from two blue ones, and the red words are garbage words. 


The point of this website honestly eludes me. All I can put it down to is people with too much time, no life, and lots of creative madness sit down and design these websites, which begs the question what am I doing analyzing them? Do I have no life as well? .... I am a university student of course I have no bloody life, haha.


Check out the link to the Jabber website:
 http://www.poemsthatgo.com/gallery/winter2004/jabber/index.htm# it really is just a bunch of Jabberwocky.

On-line 1000 Word Essay - Why privacy is such a contentious issue for internet users!

INTERNET PRIVACY A CONTENTIOUS ISSUE

The right to privacy is a fundamentally accepted moral and legal right, and the right to privacy on the Internet is in most cases considered to be part of these rights. However while the Internet provides a wealth of information, products, and services to its consumers it is also a rich source of information about consumers. Thus it is the intention of this analytical essay to argue that privacy is becoming more and more a contentious issue for Internet users. Subsequently this essay will explore specifically how our privacy is being breached on the Internet in part by analysing a social networking site called Facebook. It will also analyse and discuss what can and is being done to protect our privacy online.

Accordingly to better enable this essay to answer the overriding question of why Internet privacy is such a contentious issue it will be broken into three main parts. Part one will analyse specifically what is causing us so much concern when it comes to protecting our privacy on the Internet. Part two will analyse a recent specific example relating to what can potentially happen when a person’s online privacy is not respected, and part three will sum up by exploring what can and is being done to stop it. Furthermore, these points will be backed by scholarly evidence, quotes, and statistics which will help to give evidentiary support to this essay’s argument.

First let’s look at a few reasons why online privacy is becoming such a contentious issue. When we browse the Internet we leave behind a trail of information that anyone who is technologically savvy enough can follow. This data often includes technical information that programmers use to evaluate their website activity and customize their webpage layouts accordingly. However some software takes a more active role in sending information about the user back to the hacker, company, or program developer. It is called ‘Spyware’ and often comes imbedded in various programs provided to us online for free in order to entice us into downloading them. (Hintz 2001, p. 16). Spyware will even operate when we are not online. It will discretely gather information about us such as our tastes in music, movies, and even our personal details. Once re-connected with the net Spyware will then send all the information it has gathered back to the source.

Another more recent way for scammers, hackers, and even Governments to gather our personal information is through social networking sites such as Facebook. It has been recently disclosed that Government agencies such as the CIA are increasingly documenting or mapping social networks to obtain our information (Lynch 2010, p.1). It has even been suggested that the CIA has an indirect connection with Facebook through its brother company In-Q-Tel, however this has not been proven. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook

Recently the DEA released a PDF presentation condoning the use of security exploits to collect information but ironically further into the report cryptically mentions the ability to potentially recover private content only shared amongst those chosen by the page owner. Furthermore a document released by the FBI also states using covert accounts to obtain protected information. While none of these documents directly address the legality or ethics of using security exploits to violate social networks terms of use, they certainly raise questions about their lack of set limits in obtaining private information and absence of appropriate oversight in their techniques (Lynch 2010, p.2). 

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/08/government-finds-uses-social-networking-sites

Secondly, now that we have considered how, who, and possibly why our online privacy is being invaded, let’s look at a specific example of what can potentially happen when a person’s online privacy is not respected. The following is a true story taken from an excerpt of the BBC Online News report. Tyler Clementi was a first year student studying at Rutgers University in New Jersey who leapt to his death after two students secretly filmed him having sex with a man and broadcast it over the internet (Mackenzie, BBC News 2010). Two of Tyler’s dorm room mates Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei secretly used their personal webcam to film Tyler while instantaneously streaming it live online using a social network program called iChat video. Tyler’s body was found in the Hudson River a day later after he jumped off the George Washington Bridge.

This story is an excellent example of why online privacy is such a contentious issue. There is no doubt that Internet technology played a part in driving Tyler to commit suicide. However living in a society where young homosexuals are persecuted and marginalised was most likely also a large factor. Whatever the case it was clearly an avoidable situation, and Tyler may have still been alive today had his private life not been irresponsibly put on display online. Today Tyler has been used as the face behind gay rights and online privacy advocates alike. Hence the above example shows why online privacy is so important. However in conclusion let’s look at some of the ideas individuals, companies, and Governments have come up with to possibly stop this kind of thing from happening in the future.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11446034

As public confidence in matters of online privacy lessens there is mounting evidence that a successful remedy may be harder than first thought to find. One way to perhaps reduce the risks is through a protective framework of the legislative kind (Clarke, 1999, p.60). Another way has been suggested by communications scholar Brin. He argues that privacy protections are futile and that privacy can only be sustained by Business and governments in most advanced countries by focusing on providing freedom of information for everyone. He says “to achieve privacy, rely on freedom, not secrecy.” Brin’s argument can be succinctly expressed as: Who will keep a watch on the watchers? Answer: The watched (Clarke, 1999, p.63)

In the United States online privacy is seemingly protected through a combination of constitutional guarantees, federal and state statutes, regulations, and voluntary codes of conduct. However all the laws in the world cannot stop people from illegally attacking others online privacy. In the 21^st century as the Internet expands at a rapid rate, online privacy is only becoming more and more of a contentious issue as time progresses, and is one that will probably not be going away anytime in the foreseeable future. It will be an issue that Governments the world over will have trouble dealing with for a very long time.

Reuben Franklin

S2754967

REFERENCES:

Thomas R Hintz, 2001, ‘Internet Privacy: Web users unknowingly give personal information to strangers’, Academic Research Library, vol. 8, pp.16-17

Debra A Valentine, 2000, ‘Privacy on the Internet: The Evolving Legal Landscape’, Computer High Technology Law Journal, Vol. 16, pp. 401-417

Dwyer, Hiltz, Passerini, 2007, ‘Trust and Privacy Concern within Social Networking Sites: A comparison of Facebook and Myspace’ New Jersey Institute of Technology, Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS) pp. 1-13 <http://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2007/339>

Roger Clarke, 1999, ‘Internet Privacy Concerns Confirm the Case for Intervention’ Communications of the ACM, Vol. 42 no.2, pp. 60-67

Govani, Pashley, 2005, ‘Student Awareness of the Privacy Implications When Using Facebook’, Vol. 2 no. 5, pp. 1-17

Gross, Ralph and Alessandro Acquisti. “Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks.” WPES ’05 7 November 2005.

Jennifer Lynch, Aug 2010, ‘Government finds uses for social networking sites beyond investigation’, <http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/08/government-finds-uses-social-networking-sites>

Mackenzie, 2010, BBC News, Washington, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11446034

Adonis Niko Antonio Ho, Aug 2007, ‘Big Brother is Watching You’ 

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4278814806

Tom Hodgkinson 2008, ‘Facebook’s Relationship with the CIA’, The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook

Week 10 - Evaluation of New Communication Technologies Course

Overall my opinion of the New Comm Tech Course is a non-plussed one. I enjoyed doing the culture Jam. Making fun of Tony Abott and posting it on You-tube was a blast. I also enjoyed making the short slide show from a topic given to us in class. However I found writing a blog every week for each lecture to be a very tedious and boring task, although it did help me to better remember what the lecture was about. I also found most of the Tute-spark tasks to be dull and tedious, with the exception of one or two of the tasks which taught me a lot about certain things I had not heard of before.
Also some of the lectures seemed to be rather unorganized and lacking in much relevant content, especially in week 11 when we showed up only to be sent home ten minutes later because we were told that the lecturer did not have anything to teach us. I also found one of the lecturers in particular to be very opinionated about certain things he was teaching us. He had a very alternative opinion on certain software and companies which I had the feeling he was trying to get us to believe.
 Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the lectures given by Josh and Jules. But some of the guest lecturers were extremely boring to listen to and tended to spend their time talking about conspiracy theories and speculation rather than actual facts that I could take with me and actually use the work force. In my opinion I think the course could be improved by giving us a more hands on approach in the tutorials.

Week 10 - Response to Lecture

This weeks lecture talked about the proposed internet filter that the Australian Government intends to introduce some time in 2011. We discussed the possibility that the filter will not protect us from anything and will only serve to slow down Australia's already slow internet.

According to the Electronic Frontiers Australia website, which can be viewed at http://openinternet.com.au/learn_more/, the filter will not protect children from inappropriate content, and will not block X-rated pornography. It will also do nothing to protect children from what parents are really concerned about such as cyber-bulling, online predators, viruses, spam or identity theft. 

In relation to slowing down other websites there is also concern that the filter might seriously reduce the speed of online banking, shopping, and business websites. Furthermore if parts of  popular social websites were blocked such as You-tube or Myspace, access to other parts of these sites could become much slower.

In all cases an Internet Filter for Australia would be a breach of the Freedom of Information Act and a monumental waste of taxpayers dollars.

We also talked about the privacy train wreck that is Facebook, as there is already evidence that Governments are using it to track criminals and find potential evidence to catch out people that like to post pictures and information about themselves involving illegal activities such as taking drugs and stealing. Also mentioned was that the government has the ability to potentially recover private content only shared among those chosen by the page owner.

The reason why privacy matters was also mentioned with an example given about a student who killed himself after he was secretly filmed in the privacy of his own bedroom by his dorm room mates. This story can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11446034

Finally we also talked about the possible relationship that Facebook has with the CIA and In-q-tel.

Week 9 - Response to Lecture

This weeks topic is Cyberpunk.


What is Cyberpunk?


It is a gritty aesthetic: shadows, decay, lust (for technology), capital (cash).
OR
Some high technology: human fused to machine (You are what you consume).
OR
A questionable morality: opportunism, theft, murder (You cannot trust anyone)


It is a hybrid genre:
- hard-boiled detective fiction (anti-hero, crime, portrayal)
- Film noir (lust, money, power, seduction, murder, existential malaise)
- Science Fiction/SF (world saturated by technology, post apocalyptic or apocalypse never came, giant anonymous multinational corporations)
- Literary post modernism (fragments, quick descriptions)


We also discussed books written by William Gibson about cyberpunk such as Neuromancer which was written in 1984 entirely on a typewriter. It is a coloured geometrical representations of data. Another Book written by William Gibson is 'Burning Chrome' Its genre is hybrid, draws from film noir and science fiction. The style of the prose is written in fragments that skip around narrative time.Key Issues: theft, seduction, voodoo/luck, contingent alliances, addiction, fusion of human and machine, tragic desire, the eerie sense of everyday living.


Cyberpuck as a lingua franca of digital culture.
- Huge Impact on imagining human and machine interconnections and fusions
- Ubiquitious access to information and its lack of security, endless crisis, and ad hoc solutions.
- Largely pessimistic views of human and machines but not large apocalyptic scenarios of other SF.
- CP gave a language to the way the markets of capitalism have material impacts.

Week 8 - Tute Task

Select a theme and complete some basic research on it (ideally finding a short fiction online video that deals with the topic Fusion of man and machine: 


In addition to cyborgs, sentient programs and robots, cyberpunk often blurs of what it means to be human. Traits we take for granted as representing humanity disappear via introspective looks brought on by the fusion of man and machine. This fusion also affects the control of perception - numerous storylines explore with influences to perception, usually involving some method of virtual reality environment to either mask or take the place of the “real world.”


The first thing that came to my mind when I thought about this specific cyberpunk topic was the recent release in 2009 of Terminator Salvation which deals largely with the fusion of man and machine. One of the main characters is played by Australian actor Sam Worthington who plays a person brought back from the dead by being turned into a human machine. I found a trailer on you-tube for this movie: Find this video at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p6GHSWDScM


Try and identify a current news story that reflects the chosen topic:
I found a News Story on the CNN international website  


'2020 exciting advances in bio-interfacing will make it possible for a wider range of diseases to be treated electronically'.
Here is the link: http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/05/12/visionary.warwick/


Attempt to re-write the news story as a persuasive piece about how their piece of cyberpunk fiction has forecast the particular story/event & how it will inevitably lead to the world becoming a post-industrial dystopia (like every cyberpunk story does/is):


NOTE: Italics are my own re-write of the story.
Initially Parkinson's disease and epilepsy will be successfully dealt with. But the effects of multiple sclerosis, paralysis and motor neurone disease will also be much reduced as the individual is enabled to control their environment and even drive their car, by their thoughts alone, using implanted technology.



Initially Parkinson's disease and epilepsy will be successfully dealt with but the individual may loose control over their environment as their brain is over-ridden by computer hackers controlling the implanted computer chips in their brain.


Other problem areas such as senile dementia and schizophrenia could perhaps be tackled in a similar fashion.The whole area, termed E-Medicine, will spawn a plethora of new companies.



The spawning of these new companies will create a new niche in the market for computer hackers to infiltrate not only our private information but our minds as well.


As well as being used for therapy, the use of implant technology for enhancement will also become more acceptable.Initially there will be a backlash among those who consider the prospect of being able to "upgrade themselves" ethically inappropriate.



This backlash will soon become an uproar as dozens of terrified citizens realize that their bodies and minds are no longer safe from computer hackers.


But once the technology has been proven and is commercially available at relatively low cost, it is expected that the range of people making use of it will increase dramatically.



But once the technology has been proven to be a massive failure it will already be too late as thousands of people loose control of their minds as hackers start to take over the world.


Memory enhancement, an increased range of senses, dieting control and thought communication will all be on the market, while technology to allow for multi-dimensional thought will be at the planning stage.


Memory enhancement, an increased range of senses, dieting control and thought communications will all be controlled by computer hackers hell-bent on destroying the world.


All of these upgrades will be based on a direct link between a human and a machine brain.
In this way the ever increasing power of machine intelligence can be used to provide an improvement in human capabilities, rather than allowing intelligent machines to make important decisions.


In this way the ever increasing power of machine intelligence can be used against us to dominate us in a way never thought possible ten years ago.


Nevertheless the use of networked intelligent computers to control all the financial markets will present a worrying trend -- it will no longer be clear who exactly is making the key decisions; a machine based on human criteria, or a machine based on purely machine criteria been learnt through market experience.The military sector will witness some of the most dramatic changes. Fighter planes will be completely computer controlled, without any human intervention. Clearly it will be computers that think and learn fastest that will win the day.


These computers will become so intelligent they will overcome the human race, the hacker will become the hacked, as machines gain control over humans as the world slowly implodes.


The big question, though, is whether there will still be room for human soldiers at the front line. By extending their senses through networked implants military personnel could be kept safely out of harm's way while being virtually connected to the battlefront via a brain-network connection.


Human soldiers will become obsolete with robot soldiers taking over. The few remaining human soldiers will be no match for the artificial intelligence of the robot soldiers and will consequently be wiped out of existence. The last remaining hope for mankind being distinguished.


Finally, it will be interesting to witness the phasing out of the old style printed passport. Once everyone is fitted with a Radio Frequency ID implant containing individual data it will be difficult to imagine how we managed without them.
It's incredible to think it was only as long ago as 1998 that the first human tested out such an implant. Since then progress has indeed been swift.


Its incredible to think that in only a short period of time us human have managed to destroy ourselves. 

Week 8 - Response to Lecture

Week 8: VIRTUAL PHILOSOPHY

This week we talked about how the Matrix pushes the boundaries of computer-generated effects as it explores a possible future world where machines dominate humans but keep them inignorant bliss of their real state. The machines in the Matrix create a totally illusory reality for people, constructing their identities to suit the purposes of the machine. We discussed wether it has already happened and to what extent are our identities constructed by our consumption of corporate media product and where do our identities come from?


We talked about the movie eXistenZ which is a movie that explores the nature of reality vs the video game. It gets us to ask the questions, what is real and what is virtual?  


The lecturer talked about how the 19th and 20th centuries saw the exponential development of communication technologies that have radically altered the economy of the planet. How these changes have also started a shift from the certainties of the literary age and the rationality of logical positivism to the still emerging screen age and an attendant virtual rationality was also discussed.



We learned about a number of thinkers who have sought to come to terms with these new, 'possible' ways of viewing the world where the line between reality and appearance is so blurred that there is no discernible difference between the two, they are:


Guy Debord = 'Society of Spectacle'
Umberto Eco = 'Hyper-reality'
Jean Baudrillard = 'Simulacrum'
William Gibson = 'Cyberspace as Consensual Hallucination'
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari = 'Becoming Media'



Also discussed was one of the central myths of Western society is that of Cartesian dualism - the split between the mind and the body. In this space the cyberbody (not the mind) is immortal, while the human body (the animating soul outside the cyber body) is mortal. This is a direct reversal of current understandings wherein the body is mortal while the soul is immortal.

We also learned about Virtual Reality which is a system that enables one or more users to move and react in a computer-simulated environment. Various types of devices allow users to sense and manipulate virtual objects much as they would real objects. This natural style of interaction gives participants the feeling of being immersed in the simulated world.Virtual worlds are created by mathematical models and computer programs.

We discussed the Precursors to Virtual Reality:

The Screen Age really began with the advent of cinema a century ago buteven before that there were technological advances that were setting the stage for virtual reality.

Such technologies as: Telegraph, Telephone, Phonograph, Radio, Cinema, and Television are all precursors of virtual reality. 

We discussed how VR works:

• engaging the senses through various hardware including goggles,headphones, gloves and body suits to the exclusion of the real world
• convergence of techniques used in simulation, animation andcomputer games - entertainment as the catalyst for other purposes.

We Learned that the Elements of VR include:

1. Touch

2. Taste

3. Smell 

4. Sound

We learned some of the key issues of VR:

- Convergence

- Depth of field

- Parallax

- Resolution/Acuity

We also learned about the production problems with VR

Production issues

• Cartoon-like graphics limit the involvement of the user.
• The lag time means that the virtual environment is often slow toreact to human input.
• The user's perspective is limited in current manifestations anddoes not reach the normal human range of about 160 degree vision.
• The number of senses involved is limited to vision and sound (notouch, taste or smell).
• Kinaesthetic dissonance is the mismatch or absence of feedback.

Physiological Issues	Psychological Issues
simulation sickness motion sickness eyestrain headaches / dizziness	addiction brainwashing effects of intense interactive pornography / violence desensitisation / devaluing of 'real-world' experience