Delightfully Beautiful

Today was a day that everyone in Sydney stopped to admire the most powerful friend of ours...the weather. The sun was strong, and a subtle autumn breeze was evident. After a glorious breakfast for lunch in Elizabeth Bay we wandered home and it dawned on me to take a photo of one of the most beautiful blooms I have seen for a long time. Previously the thought of stopping to take a photo of a tree in bloom would have bewildered me, however today it was the most natural thing to do...EVER! The glory lies below...

I felt it necessary to share these beauties while I sit here sipping on Lady Grey tea and listening to a Craig Armstrong classic. Lovely. 

Clear Signs of a Fever

A repetitive notion that I have been left with both after this week's lecture as well as reading into the notion of archives is the idea that even though one would think archiving is the way to contain the past, it is in fact the method of unveiling the future. As abstract as this sounds, I thoroughly enjoy this idea and have immediately started shredding apart all of the platforms I currently use to "archive" and realise the way in which this "calls into question the coming of the future".
The method by which archives are formed is through this concept of memory which is discussed widely by 90's philosopher Jacques Derrida who makes the vital observation on the impact of technology to its relationship with the human memory and in essence the conceptions of the archive: 

The technical structure of the archiving archive also determines the structure of the archivable content...archivisation produces as much as it records the event.

Considering Derrida was writing well before the immense rise in social media he should be credited for initially identifying the impact technology was having and indeed forecasted to have on the development of archives into the future. The most obvious archival platform that springs to mind upon archive discusssion is one that I interact with on an hourly basis belongs to the real-time web (Matthew Ogle) is Facebook. Facebook as well as its predecessor, Myspace is a perfect example of a technological archive constantly recording your presence, photos and comments that you make in the cyber world. With its latest development of timeline, it makes looking back through the years to find what you were 'thinking' in 2007 simply with a click of your mouse. Derrida makes note of the concept of archive fever focusing on the idea that:

"It is to have a compulsive, repetitive and nostalgic desire for the archive, an irrepressible desire to return to the origin, a homesickness, a nostalgia for the return to the most archaic place of absolute commencement”

I can relate to this idea personally as it is through Facebook that I am able to quickly see a snapshot of my life in England in 2010. 10 years ago, the ease at which one would be able to jump back to that time in your life would be completely different to what we have today. The 'desire' will come to me at random times and it is so simple to go back through various archived photo albums or messages sent to you from that time in your life.


Another platform of which I have only recently discovered is rather new and deals with purely image archiving. It is called Pinterest and is a perfect way to accumulate various images you find on the 'real-time web' and culminate them in the one place. The purpose of the site is to allow for an archive of photos of which you can look back through at ease. The interesting thing about Pinterest which I particularly love is that there is this complete network of people from around the world that will "Pin" photos from the internet to their respective "walls" and anyone can view them and get the option to "re-pin" or "like" them. This concept of merging private and public comes back to the idea of convergence and publishing in the public arena. As an example of the brilliant ways in which Pinterest allows you to archive work I have embedded some images of my "wall" as well as my "wall feed"...

Author(s): Jacques Derrida and Eric Prenowitz, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression
(Summer, 1995), pp. 9-63, The Johns Hopkins University Press


http://julierenszer.blogspot.com.au/2008/11/archive-fever-freudian-impression-by.html


http://mattogle.com/archivefever/

Actor Network Theory...really?

Well at least that is what I am left thinking after madly trying to wrap my head around the rather verbose texts we read this week.
The best method I utilised to decipher this week's topic was through humanising it in my own way through firstly discussing the issue with my friends and then watching the Big Bang Theory excerpt which not only sheds some light on the complexities of the human brain, but managed this in an amusing way.  
The development of technology over the past century has led society to adopt a need of "always being up-to-date" and having constant access to news around the world. Social media in particular today means that we are constantly interacting with multiple networks that the roles that we play vary from adopting a semiotic presence to a material presence. Whether we contribute the thoughts, the physical presence, or the fingers typing into Facebook each user is simultaneously a contributor. This development of social media has meant that people now interact with media differently and in turn this affects the way we interact in society. For example, when was the last time you caught a train and less than half of the passengers in your carriage were not occupied on their smart phone? 
These shifts in media and publishing can be discussed further through the concepts of assemblage and actor network theory.
The concept of the Actor Network Theory (ANT), developed as an approach to social theory by Michel Callon, John Law and Bruno Latour, attempts to explain and evaluate the relationship between materials (things) and semiotics (concepts) to ultimately make up a heterogenous network (Wikipedia). 
This broadly relates to the concept of "assemblage" which in fact refers to “a relational network of elements or actants in a flat ontology.” Latour states that an assemblage is comprised of both human and non-human "actants". These in turn form relations in which they are all relatively equal, which leads to the concept of a "flat ontology".
In order to humanise this rather strange theory I quite enjoyed looking at the example of a school. While the material objects are there which make the physical attributes of a school for example the desks, the buildings, the pencils.... there are also the semiotic components which consists of the teachers, the thoughts of the teachers, the students, their collective academic ideas all of which collaboratively interact to form this heterogenous network, where each component plays an equal role in forming the network.


Bibliography:

‘Actor Network Theory’, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor-network_theory, Date Accessed March 19 2012. Last Page Update: Unknown.

‘Actor Network Rochambeau’, any-space-whatever blog, http://www.anyspacewhatever.com/actor-network-rochambeau/ 
, November 14, 2010. Date Accessed March 19th 2012

Did I mention....

...that I am ridiculously in love with hippos? 

Techy Complexities

Publishing ain't hard...however with all of the different ways to link, post and subscribe being promoted on every website it can be a world that becomes increasingly overwhelming. I have just spent half an hour of precious time (I should otherwise be dedicating to reading) on researching the different ways in which I can attach a Twitter widget to a blog...and may I tell you it was NOT a successful mission. I currently publish my thoughts and innermost feelings (not really) on three different platforms on the internet all of which are widely accessible to me. I have multiple advanced publishing networks through 3G network on my iPhone, my home wireless connection on my Macbook Air and through the temperamental Uniwide access at Uni. I can constantly be updating and publishing and for me this is becoming so second nature I forget at the end of the day where the distinction lies between the dissemination of my information publicly and privately.
Given the advancement of technology, publishing has embarked on an interesting journey over the years from the early days, printing press to the bulk production of daily newspapers. Yet today, the news industry is faced with another challenge. How do they compete with the growing online world of alternative and often international news sources?
A major response from newspapers around the world is to offer an alternative method of accessing their newspapers, in a digital format. Yet in order to encourage growth as a business, consumers can only access the e-news through a pay-wall. 

A pay wall essentially works through restricting some or all sections of a website until the customer contributes a payment to the paper.

There are multiple opinions on pay walls and many papers who originally were against them are continuously turning to implementing them in light of plummeting numbers of their readership. Felix Salmon (2011)  shed light on one of the most notable papers in the world, “The New York Times is taking a more open-door approach, on the theory that the pleasure of reading its content will be enough to persuade a large number of people to pay.”  Dan Gilmore further explains, “The Times’s paywall…doesn’t put up a firm blockade the way, say, the Times of London has done. Non-subscribers can read up to a certain number of articles before being asked to pay, and there are numerous ways to get around what is already not an onerous system.” Dan Gilmore (2011).

Given the multiple news scouring sites and blogs at our disposal over the internet, I find it difficult to understand specifically how paywalls are resulting in a gain in profit for businesses. Personally, I would be deterred from a website asking for me to pay, not because I am unethical, only because I know that through a platform such as Twitter I can receive links to alternate news sources. As Steve Busfield (2010) states “If you erect a universal pay wall around your content then it follows you, (you) are turning away from a world of openly shared content". 

One major advancement Australia is making in the next few years in regards to technology is the development of the National Broadband Network which the government is rolling out billions of dollars for. In the long run, the government claim that the benefits will make the extortionate initial spend worthwhile, however at the rate that technology is developing, my guess is that the need for a NBN will end up being redundant as there will probably be some sort of satellite internet connection available worldwide which will inevitably solve all of our problems ("tech-y" language is clearly not my strongest suit). Regardless, given that the government is going ahead with this project, the NBN will provide people who could not originally access the internet so easily with chances and opportunities to keep up to date with the online world and have access to the latest technologies to help them in daily life. The online world of publishing will yet again continue its changing course as new users inundate the forums and begin to access their online 'voices'. The NBN is aiming to be a non-exclusive device to give everyone no matter where they are situated access to the online world.

Dan Gillmor (2011) ‘The New York Times paywall: the faint smell of success’, The Guardian, August 3, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/aug/03/new-york-times-paywall>

Salmon, Felix (2011) ‘How The New York Times Paywall is Working’, Wired, August 14, <http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/08/new-york-times-paywall/>

Busfield, Steve (2010) ‘Guardian editor hits back at paywalls’, The Guardian, January 25, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/25/guardian-editor-paywalls> (The Editor of The Guardian, against paywalls).

Old-school is Cool.

For most people, publishing seems like a very straight forward term, yet when one delves into an explanation, it proves seemingly not as simple as anticipated. The concept of 'publishing' can perhaps best be described as, "the process of production and dissemination of literature or information — the activity of making information available to the general public.” (Wikipedia)
The advancement of technology has allowed for some huge changes to the ways in which information is published and accessible. One of these changes can be particularly seen through the development of the e-reader. Judging from the movement from one year having a hard-copy 200 page plus paper reader to the next year where we are asked to read 20 readings online and abolish any form of tangible textbook or reader, one can already see both the effects of technology on the life of a student and as a result the prominence of technology in particular the e-reader. 
Currently there are approximately 100 varieties of e-readers available on the market and considering their novelty only a year ago it seems that in the short space of 12 months they have quickly become an acceptable household item. 
The reception of the idea of an e-reader has not been so widely embraced as I feel most people like to keep the notion of a book something tangible and able to be flicked through at leisure and not left to the pressing of buttons to simulate a new page of words on a screen. 
The rate at which the world is changing and adapting to new technologies never ceases to amaze me, however one thing I know I am pretty adamant about keeping in tact is the beauty and tradition of owning and reading a book with one part ink and the other part paper sourced from trees beautifully bound at the spine. 
Some of the problems associated with transformation of books into a digital format can be seen through the issues faced by Kindle users who raised the question of ownership given that, at the end of the day they may have purchased the e-book however Kindle still have the power to erase the book in the face of copyright breaches. John Naughton (2009) highlights some of the issues facing the e-transformation of information. "Technology enables content owners to assert a level of control over the reader that would be deemed unconscionable - and unacceptable - in the world of print." Although e-readers can allow the user to travel with the possession of over 100 books, they cannot allow the user to have tangible rights to the literature and in turn the user is unable to lend, read and hold the text as they would if it were in its traditional form. This lack of possession thus potentially leads towards an "arteriosclerotic narrowing of freedoms" (Naughton 2009).
I feel that although it is inevitable with the decline in book sales and closure of book stores such as Borders that the e-reader will saturate the market, it will always be important for people to have something that will remind them of past experiences they shared with a tangible book. In saying this I am directly referring to book sensations that have occurred over the past few decades the biggest being Harry Potter. The experience in itself of awaiting eagerly the release date and then rushing to the book store to collect your pre-paid hard copy of Rowling's most recent release was phenomenal and one I don't think exists through the relationship of a reader and their e-reader device. 
Rowling herself mentioned that the e-reader is perhaps a generational thing, however I would have to disagree with her there, being in a younger generation and after speaking to a wide group of friends, one of which has just finished a 600 page paper-back thriller, they all said the same thing. That no matter what, they will always buy and borrow paper books ahead of any technological device. And what can I say? I wholeheartedly agree. 



‘Publishing’, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publishing>


Naughton, John (2009) ‘The original Big Brother is watching you on Amazon Kindle’ The Guardian, July 26, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/26/amazon-kindle-book-deletions>


Lacy, Sarah (2012) ‘Confessions of a Publisher: “We’re in Amazon’s Sights and They’re Going to Kill Us”’, pandodaily, January 26, <http://pandodaily.com/2012/01/17/confessions-of-a-publisher-were-in-amazons-sights-and-theyre-going-to-kill-us/>