#nataliehatch

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Past, Present...lets just get bizarre!

According to Wikipedia Hauntology is an "idea within the philosophy of history introduced by Jacques Derrida in his 1993 work Spectres of Marx...The idea suggests that the present exists only with respect to the past, and that society after the end of history will begin to orient itself towards ideas and aesthetics that are thought of as rustic bizarre or "old-timey"; that is, towards the "ghost" of the past" (Wikipedia 2012). 

Media and communications are rapidly changing due to all of the technological advancements. The advent of the Internet has significantly triggered a radical transformation of the old media principles. 

Two examples i could think of for Hauntology are the iphone6 and the Nike running shoes. When the iphone5 came out most of us iphone lovers were incredibly excited about the new thinner, better, faster and more amazing phone that was coming our way. The same can be said about the iPhone6 which is apparently being realised in the near future. We are now living in a society where every time a new product is released we believe it is better than anything before. I looked at my old iphone4 today with complete amazement that i ever thought it was thin, because i now have an iphone5 to compare it with.

The other example i believe suits the topic of hauntology is the Nike running shoes which interact with your iphone. When i was in high school we were given a Nike Sport Kit or Sensor to put into our Nike running shoes. The Nike sensors tracked our running, calculating the amount of steps you had taken. The information is loaded onto your iphone with a portable connecter device. This information can be loaded to Facebook and twitter so that you can share your running experience. This technology has been linked to the #makeitcount campaign by Nike who are actively getting involved in social networking. 

The only concerns with the rapidly advancing of technology is our privacy. Could we end up living in a world where we have no privacy because of the advancement in online sharing technologies. 

References:

Easterling K 2011, ‘‘An Internet of Things’, e-flux journal, accessed 20 May, < http://www.e-flux.com/journal/an-internet-of-things/ >

MacManus, R 2010, ‘Top to Internet of Things Developments of 2010,’ReadWrite, accessed 20 May, <http://readwrite.com/2010/12/15/top_10_internet_of_things_developments_of_2010>

Anon, ‘Hauntology’ 2012, Wikipedia, accessed 15 May 2013 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauntology>

Marley, Justin, ‘What is Science 4.0 and why is it necessary?’ 2012, diigo, accessed 15 May 2013

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Do you even know what a library is??

So I was sitting at home the other day smashing out an assignment on my computer using online journals and such as resources. My grandmother was visiting so I was trying to multitask, juggling my assignment and answering my grandmothers thousand and one questions, when the inevitable hit. "Back in my day..." she began, "we didn't have computers and books online. We went to libraries to research. Do you young kids even know what a library is?" God it was every grandchild worst nightmare...the back in the day story. Normally i just zone out and nod, "yes Gran I do know what a library is and yes I know things have changed...." But for some reason this time I kind of clicked.

New media is transforming industries left, right and centre, forming new ways of doing things and creating new cultures. We have seen a dramatic change in the music industry. I remember when I was a kid having mountains and mountains of CDs that I saved my money to buy and I would play them out of my big bombox CD player. Now when i'm feeling generous I buy songs off itunes, when i'm not feeling so generous I illegally download them and I put them onto a device that now plays my music and acts as my phone all in one!!! 

So if the music industry can shift and change so dramatically in such a short amount of time due to new media, can science as well? There are many, like John Willbanks (2013), that will argue that it can't or wont change because "the scientific publishing industry as we know it today represents a structure of the past. It is profoundly tied to the medium of print, which is itself an artifact of a technical revolution hundreds of years old". Gavin Schmidt (2011) writes that publishing academic articles through print more creditable then publishing information online and that "certainly i think that blogs can be of tremendous balue in bringing up more context and dispelling the variou mis-apprehensions that exist, but as a venue for actually doing science, they cannot replace the peer-reviewed paper - however painful that publishing process might be". I guess in some ways I agree with him. Online platforms like wikispaces and wikipedia allow anyone to edit content. In a system like that how can we really trust the information? 

But at the same time I disagree. I don't think that certain industries can stay prehistoric forever. I believe that technology is moving too quickly and society is embracing it too much for anything to stay the same. I believe science will find its way online eventually, not out of desire but out of necessity to stay alive. The Internet is the best way to quickly and effectively share information on a mass scale. Inherently that is what science papers are for, to educate us. In this era, the best way to educate a mass amount of people is online. 

References:

Schmidt, Gavin (2011) ‘From Blog to Science’, RealClimate < http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/02/from-blog-to-science/ >

[online] Kelly, Kevin (2010) ‘Evolving the Scientific Method: Technology is changing the way we conduct science’, The Scientist < http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/57831/ >

Wilbanks, John (2011) ‘On Science Publishing’, Seed, < http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/on_science_publishing >

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Can we do like the hippies did?

In my previous blog we talked about Web 2.0 and the opportunity it is creating of us to have a transparent and open government that gives ordinary citizens like you and me the chance to be involved in what is happening in the government we elect. This week we follow on from this thought but we expand that thought to the ability we now have to create an open society and to organise locally to form new communities. With the help of new technologies, in particular social media, we are now able to freely assemble within the online world and create our own kind of "micropolitics". 

A great link that we had access to this week was an animation called The Coalition of the Willing made in an attempt to change social/political life from the "bottom up". The animation calls for a movement like we had in the 60's. A movement of individualism and indnividual expression, fighting back against the morals and society that had been pushed upon them from the decade before. But, "blinded by by individualistic short sightedness, we have failed to see what the 60's were really about" (Coalition of the Willing, 2010). The 60's was really a decade of superficial individualism, where individuals knowingly or unknowingly acted on mass as a 'sawm'. The counter culture revolution of the 60's was a "risamtic mesh work of loosely coordinated and loosely affiliated struggles" (Coalition of the Willing, 2010). There goals were not aways complimentary but their struggles were aligned. So what is the real lesson of the 60s? The lesson is that a swam offensive can transform cultures and history in huge ways and now, thanks to the internet, we can now interact and communicate like never before. We now have the opportunity to use the internet to kickstart our own revolution. The Coalition of the Willing did this. They are a group of individuals who used the Internet to broadcast themselves and their ideas in order to create a forum for climate change solutions and responses. 

The Coalition of the Willing and their video are a perfect example of how the Internet and other technologies can now be used to create formed communities, locally or otherwise. These communities now have a platform to present their issues and have the ability to create a new form of revolution to change their world. 

But is our ability to start these revolutions or movements working against us and playing into consumerisms hand? Can we really start these movements as a collectively formed community and not be taken advantage off? According to Bran Massumi, no we cant. In an interview with Massumi he commented, "Individual consumers are being inducted into these collective processes rather than being separated out and addressed as free agents...its relational marketing...more and more, what it does is hitch a ride on movements afoot in the social field, on social stirrings, which it channels into profit-making directions" (Massumi, 2002).

So we now have the ability to form these communities and to have an open society on an online platform. We also now have the ability to create movements where individuals have a platform to converge their ideas and make a difference...But will it work? Can we really change the world by coming together online? Or will we be taken advantage of? Will it just end up like the Coalition of the Willing's movement that shut down in 2011? Or do we have the collective power to stand up to 'the man' and change our world? 

I guess thats up to you...

1. Massumi, Brian with Zournazi, (2002) 'Navigating Moments: A Conversation with Brian Massumi', accessed 8 May 2013 via: http://www.brianmassumi.com/interviews/NAVIGATING%20MOVEMENTS.pdf

2. The Coalition of the Willing (2010) "Who are we", Coalition of the Willing, accessed 8 May 2013 via: http://www.coalitionblog.org/ 

3. Knife Party and Rayner, Tim and Robson, Simon (2010), "Coalition of the Willing", accessed 8 May 2013 via: http://coalitionofthewilling.org.uk/

4. Manning, Erin (2009) 'From Biopolitics to the Biogram, or How Leni Riefenstahl Moves through Fascism' in Relationscapes.

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"Your global village needs YOU!!"

The Internet is an amazing place, we get the opportunity and ability to comment with people from all over the world. With the invention of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter and the invention of blog sites like Tumblr and WordPress we have created the web 2.0, a world wide online community. Most of my social networking day consists of me reading about other peoples lives and looking through their pictures, "liking" what appeals to me and commenting on posts I think are worth commenting on. But we haven't only created a web 2.0 we have now created a government 2.0. So what does that really mean?

We have been able to create an almost "open" or "transparent" government, where the public are more involved in decision making then they ever have been before. If we just back into the past even 30 years, governments were elected by the people yes, but they didn't have a hand in the decision making. If we disagreed with a decision made by the public we tried to get some people together to rally and show that we were disgruntled, but our protests weren't heard by all. Now days all we need to do is post a Facebook status, that takes 3 or 4 seconds, against a government decision and suddenly the 500 friends you have automatically see it. They might "like" it or "share" it, now that person has shared that comment with their friends, all 1000 of them. Word can spread like wild fire now, we, as an online community, can make something popular and famous, or we can make them crash and burn.

The idea of the 2.0 government is built on the idea of transparency. Its aim...to make data easily available to the public, giving them the ability to know what is going on with their government. Its the publishing of information, including government data, for anyone to see. The government is beginning to jump onto the web 2.0 bandwagon. We now have a "transparent" government. 

So how transparent is our government becoming? In 2009 the Government 2.0 Taskforce was created by the Rudd government. The Taskforce's work falls into " two streams. The first relates to increasing the openness of government through making public sector information more widely available to promote transparency, innovation and value adding to government information. The second stream is concerned with encouraging online engagement with the aim of drawing in the information, knowledge, perspectives, resources and even, where possible, the active collaboration of anyone wishing to contribute to public life" (Lindsay Tanner MP Federal Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Rudd Government. Government 2.0 taskforce website, 2009). 

So remember people - "Your global village needs YOU!!"

http://gov2.net.au/ (Image reference) 

References:

http://gov2.net.au/

http://gov2.net.au/about/

Styles, Catherine (2009) "A government 2.0 idea - first, make all the functions visible', <http://catherinestyles.com/2009/06/28/a-government-2-0-idea/> 

Lessig, Lawrence (2010) 'Against Transparency: The perils of openness in government', <http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/against-transparency?page=0,0>

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My mind or my Phone?

It was one of the video's we were told to watch this week that really caught my interest this week. When the notion of the extended ind was put to me i didn't really get it ad thought it sounded pretty silly. The notion that external objects in our environment could be part of our memory or mind didn't really sit with me. However the readings and videos we were told to look at this week have changed my mind, specifically a video called 'Alan Kay on learning'. 

In the video Alan Kay introduces us to Tim Galway who said that any person could learn to play a decent game of tennis in a single afternoon if they didn't try too hard. A video was made for the ABC of Tim teaching a 55 year old woman, who had never played tennis before or even done any form of exercise in 20 years, how to play tennis. His theory was that all you needed to do was focus your mind somewhere where it will not interfere with the bodies ability to naturally make contact with the ball. He did this by having the woman say 'bounce' when the ball made contact with the court and say 'hit' when the ball made contact with the racket. 

Now I first looked at this theory in disbelief, how could you possibly learn to play tennis when your mind wasn't focused on the task of playing tennis? But you need to watch the video as well: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50L44hEtVos 

So this is where the idea of the extended mind comes into play. It is an idea within the field of philosophy of mind. It holds that the reach of the mind need not end at the boundaries of skin and skull, but rather tools, instruments and other environmental props can, under certain conditions also count as proper parts of our mind.

It was Andy Clark and David Chalmers (1998) that presented the idea of active externalism, and argue that objects within the environment function as part of the mind. They used the example of Inga and Otto wanting to go to the museum. Inga recalls the address of the museum in her memory, however Otto, an Alzheimer's patient, records the address of the museum in his notepad. The notepad is the example of the object from within our environment that is functioning as part of our mind. Chalmers had a lecture on the extended mind in Hong Kong in 2009 and in his lecture he talks about things that we used to in our minds in now being off loaded into the world, such as technology like phones which now have contact books so that we no longer need to remember phone numbers. I have also included the lecture bellow just incase you need some convincing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S149IVHhmc

So is my mind solely within my skull? Or has it extended to objects within my environment? I'm not sure if I am completely sold on the idea, but some of the examples that Chalmers and Kay used have definitely convinced me. What I know for sure is it is a super interesting topic, and I would love to read what you guys think! 

References:

Alan Kay on learning, Youtube Video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50L44hEtVos 

David Chalmers, The Extended Mind, Hong Kong, Youtube Video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S149IVHhmc

Bernard Stiegler, Arsindustrialis, Online, http://arsindustrialis.org/anamnesis-and-hypomnesis 

Wikipedia, The Extended Mind

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What a day, what an event!

Blog on Theoretical Frameworks 

Future Music Festival is a music event held in multiple cities around Australia and Asia each year. It features a line up of bands from a number of genres. It is a day festival where people, for the price of a $175 ticket, can watch their favourite bands play live meters from themselves, have a drink with their friends and meet people with common musical interests to them. It is a day of excitement, thrill, music and atmosphere.

  In the world we live in today, very little goes undocumented by social media. With such easy access to devices like iphones and smart phones and ipads there are few moments that cannot be captured and immediately uploaded to the Internet or sent to friends. A festival as big and well known as Future is always going to be well documented by the thousands of people that attend it.

  The ability to video demonstrates just how quickly technology and social media have evolved over the past couple of years and just how quickly it is changing and advancing. It is also important to look at how these technological changes are changing and impacting our lifestyles. Social media is allowing people to connect, socialize and share what is happening around them, like the ability to film and share concerts which are ticketed, viewing these concerts for free online, thanks to your friends!

  I would consider this to be an example of a media event. The definition of the word event is “something that has a beginning and an end. Every human experience, activity, idea and cultural form can be analysed as an event or series of events.” In other words events found in history come and go, they are not eternal but change constantly. This is exactly what the technological evolution is doing, it is changing and evolving constantly, keeping us all on our toes.

  If we are talking about technology changing and impacting our social lifestyles we should make reference to Murphie and Potts (2003) who write that technological determinism is the “belief that technology is the agent of social change”. This is a statement I agree with and believe my example from above about the music festival backs up. The term technological determinism is believed to have been coined from an American man called Thorstein Veblen who wrote “technology marches in seven-league boots from one ruthless, revolutionary conquest to another, tearing down old factories and industries, flinging up new processes with terrifying rapidity.” Simply put it is the idea that technology has an effect on our lives.

McLuhan talks about how the globalised flow of information has created a global village, where society is being saturated with images and sounds from around the world which is providing our world with a continuous and instantaneous stream of information from an enormous variety of sources.   

References:

Murphie, A & Potts, J 2003, ‘Theoretical Frameworks’ in Culture and Technology, London: Palgrave, pp. 11-38