Binnsy's Hovel

Simulcast from my WebCT forum for Convergence and New Media:

Purchasing practice, ants and networked individualism

Chapter 17 of Nightingale and Dwyer makes some interesting links between the World Wide Web and biological processes. The main source of this work is Steven Johnson, whose book Emergence I found to be incredibly engaging, indeed the most engaging outside source of the course so far. Don’t panic folks, I haven’t read the whole thing, but I’ve skimmed most of it. Johnson basically says that the World Wide Web, and the software that’s being developed nowadays and being tailored to the WWW, is creating an atmosphere of open-source creativity and mass production on an enormous scale, but increasing reliance on one set of brands and products. Think ’social networking’ and you immediately think of MySpace and Facebook. Think word processing you think Microsoft Word. Think spreadsheets it’s Excel. It goes on and on. We are increasingly plugged in to a mindset that lets our purchases and creative/online endeavours extend only so far as the biggest companies’ products. In this way, Johnson says, we’re like ants to honey, swarming to find the sweetest bit.

The other part of Ch.17 I found interesting was the concept of ‘networked individualism’, in which people express themselves as a direct byproduct of a network they are inadvertently involved in. The best example of this is blogs – although a blog is an entirely personal space where someone chronicles their thoughts, opinions, interesting tidbits of information found while trawling the web; a blog is part of a network where each person’s page is linked by a top bar with a Next Blog button such as with Blogger, or simply by a URL, e.g. www.happyblogger.com/janedoe and www.happyblogger.com/sanjeev189 may be on different sides of the world, different races, different interests, different sexualities or favourite foods, be completely different people, yet they are linked by the simple expedient of a web address.

NB: The ‘Ch.17′ I’m referring to is Chapter 17 of our textbook for the subject, the as-yet-unreleased New Media Worlds: Challenges For Convergence, by Virginia Nightingale and Tim Dwyer.

Until next time…

I have just had one of the scariest yet most awe-inspiring moments of my life. Being intelligent people and deductive reasoners you will have figured out even by now that I’m not ill or incapacitated in any way, given my ability to think coherently, form sentences and use my fingers to type. Knowing as you do my passion for film you’ll have no doubt considered a cinematic experience as the reason for my state of being. And you’d be correct.

Over three years ago Danny Boyle began working with screenwriter Alex Garland on an entirely new dimension of project for him, being the director of 28 Days Later, Trainspotting and Millions. Sunshine, set 50 years into our future, tells the story of the crew of the Icarus II, a spaceship assigned the dangerous task of sending an enormous amount of explosive material into the heart of the Sun, in an attempt to reignite it.

I was watching the film and I was sweating with anticipation, fear and anxiety. Boyle creates a simplistic yet richly layered atmosphere of claustrophia and paranoia that seeps into every pore. It’s so incredibly different to watching something like Armageddon, where typical American gung-ho bravery and hope suck all the fear out of the situation. Here the situation seems real because of its hopelessness.

I commented to several friends that the reason the film is so disturbing is because there are no ghosts, no ghouls, no aliens, no zombies, no supernatural phenomena of any kind. The fear is of humankind itself, and of the psychology attached to flying into the middle of the Sun to save humanity. In that respect it’s absolutely terrifying; but throw into the mix the psychotic captain of the previous mission, Icarus I, who is hideously burned and disfigured, yet relentless in trying to stop the crew of Icarus II, because mankind shouldn’t interfere with the intentions of the Lord. ‘For seven years I spoke only to God,’ says the character Pinbacker. ‘He called me to take us all to hell.’

All in all, a thrillfest worthy of a spot alongside Psycho and The Exorcist in my books. Check it out.

Until next time…

In not-all-that-surprising news for university students, scholars and academics, Wikipedia can now officially no longer be trusted as an authentic news source, with revelations that members of the Prime Minister’s office have been altering government-related pages. Kevin Rudd chimed in to say that making factual corrections is perfectly fine – that being the only kind of Wiki-editing done by the Opposition – but to change history is beyond reproach.

Even more shocking was information that the Australian Department of Defence was guilty of over 5000 erroneous edits, having made changes to entries on the Vietnam War and the 9/11 Truth Report. On reflection it’s not that shocking. When you consider than anyone can add a page or make changes to any entry on Wikipedia, it seems only a natural progression of human nature to try and alter history in the eyes and minds of Wiki addicts.

Personally I think this would make a fascinating doco or mocko on how altering information can change the way young people think. Youth are hooked on Wikipedia as a source of information. When contributions made by the general public are taken as fact, over more reputable, peer-reviewed sources, what could possibly go wrong?

Until next time…

Still Jungle, disappointingly (I’ve only tried it once though), and 14 stars.

Well, my little baby Jon’s Story is off to the highly prestigious and coveted Hawkesbury Film Festival. w00t. We all have to start somewhere, I guess. Who knows, they might like it.

Other than that I’m off to a 21st tonight and things at uni are cool. So it’s all swimming, basically.

Until next time…

Right off the bat, just so you know, Jungle on Agent, and 11 Stars.

So I’ve got a lot of things running through my head at the moment with regards to citizenship in the ancient world. I had to lead a tutorial today in a discussion of Cicero’s concept of res publica, and, though helpful and insightful, I don’t think it really got to the crux of the matter. I’m hoping to redress this imbalance in my essay, which will be taking a similar vein.

Res publica is one of those terms from the ancient world that can have about fifty different meanings. But my general understanding (and I claim not to be a scholar in the field, but more of a slightly-more-educated-than-the-common-folk enthusiast) is that res publica is a certain state of mind when it comes to public affairs in the ancient Roman empire – a status quo, perhaps. It could also be construed as a set of attitudes and beliefs towards those who hold power.

Cicero himself defines his concept as what is essentially, as my lecturer put it this morning, ‘public stuff’, i.e. all that makes up the social and political moment in history. In the tute we basically went over what Cicero saw as the three main systems of government – democracy, aristocracy and monarchy – and drew connections between then and now in terms of what would happen if someone who’d been hanging in the wings suddenly seized ultimate power. The analogious figure we chose was Peter Costello. What if, tomorrow, he proclaimed himself leader of all Australian states and territories? How would we react?

I’ll be working on this in a lot greater detail and depth in my essay, which I can’t wait to get stuck into. How I’ve missed history.

Until next time…

Well, I’m in my seventh heaven.

In a bizarrely fast and speedy chain of events, I found myself in the possession of a newly acquired Nintendo 64 console, two games and two controllers. How I’ve missed the old thing.

I don’t know what possessed me when I sold my own console and games on eBay at the start of last year. The money, I daresay. But I got this one for a bargain price, and with Goldeneye and Wave Race 64 thrown in for good measure and good times.

I’ll see you in a month, when I’ve finished Goldeneye on 00 Agent.

(Just kidding.)

Until next time…

So the Muppet went to a strip club. Good on him! It’s nice to know that the little man has a sense of spirit and adventure that may have dried up in some other politicians.

Ironic, I think, that the person assigned to the story in the Smellygraph was none other than drunken maniac Glenn Milne, unknown to most of the Australian social sphere until he had a few too many and launched into a demented tirade against Stephen Mayne, founder of online leftist political rag Crikey at the Walkley Awards, an action which prompted several million Australian bloggers to action and within minutes had been added to Mr Milne’s Wikipedia entry (a true sign of controversy in this truly online world).

Downloadable Smellygraph masthead coming soon. Gotta love this open-source world.

Until next time…

UPDATE (12:20pm): Well that only took half an hour! Here ya go, all ye mass media haters…

Right-click and save to copy the full-sized image to your computer.

Your results:

You are Malcolm Reynolds (Captain)

Honest and a defender of the innocent. You sometimes make mistakes in judgment but you are generally good and would protect your crew from harm.

Click here to take the Serenity Firefly Personality Test

Who da captain? That’s right. I da captain.

Until next time…

Having finally watched a decently subtitled version of The Lives Of Others, I can reassert my position that it is possibly one of the best foreign films ever made. It brings a truth, an honesty and a modesty to a time in German history that many would much rather forget.

For those not familiar with the premise and the background, it is set in State-controlled Germany in 1984, when the Stasi, or German Secret Police, kept tabs on every subversive citizen in their gigantic headquarters.

The story centers around the Stasi’s monitoring of loyal playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), whose lover, actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck) is involved in an affair with Minister Bruno Hempf. Assigned to watch the couple is Stasi agent Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe), crack interrogator and agent. Once he learns that the Minister’s reasons for monitoring the couple are personal and not political, Wiesler becomes less inclined to hand over the truth about their activities. He becomes connected to the couple and compassionate through his monitoring of their lives.

It’s the story of Wiesler’s transformation rather than anything else. The triumph of the human spirit all over again, but emerging from the darkness of an omnipotent regime such as existed in East Berlin before the wall fell. Even in pitch darkness, there is always hope.

One of the central objects in the movie is a fictional piece of piano music, ‘Sonata for a Good Man’. I was reminded of moments in the film Thirteen Days where it was said the fate of the world rested in the hands of good men.

Find the movie and watch it. You won’t be disappointed.

Until next time…

So not much has been happening really. Well, heaps has been happening. I’ve been plunged headlong into another frantic semester of uni work, including fun assessments in Editing and Sound Production, and plenty of evidence, counter-arguments, criticisms, essays and tutorial presentations in Convergence and New Media, and Citizenship Ancient and Modern. All good fun.

I’ve also just gotten back into writing, having left Jon’s Story in its present form as probably about as good as I’m going to get it without actually shooting the footage itself. After it’s shot I’ll have a better idea of how it’ll actually run on screen, but for the moment I’m happy with the way the ‘theoretical’ script reads.

My new project is just called ‘The Writers’ at present. But more on that as it develops. I still have to buy a camera. But we’ll get around to that probably early 2008.

I’ve also recently been forced to dig out my old Motorola E398 mobile, as my Nokia 6131 has been sent away for repairs. And like an old friend who you’ve kept in a strictly proverbial drawer for ten months but is constantly picking away at your conscience like a kitten at carpet, I’ve fallen in love with the thing all over again. Even its incredibly laggy responses to your pushing buttons.

And being the nerd that I am, I was inspired to once again trawl the turbulent and treacherous oceans of the interweb to excavate as much backwards information as I could muster on my old technological flame. Perhaps that was too many metaphors for one sentence. I don’t know. Anyway. I managed to find a community of people that have taken the humble E398 and turned it into some kind of monster from the deep in terms of phone modding. Now I’d heard about gaming console modifications before, but not of mobile phones. But apparently it happens. If you have any doubts, check out http://www.e398mod.com for the full lowdown on phone revamping.

Being of little faith in these matters I chose not to modify the old Moto, but just downloaded some games for it instead (including a rather nifty port of the Top Spin tennis franchise and the old NES version of Mario). But it’s still very intriguing to see what some people have done with it.

Now I’m creating a monster – the infamous link dump…

[everyone loves a funny cat picture]
www.lolcat.net

[who hasn't had a bash.org moment]
www.bash.org

[a funny film made by a friend at uni]
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q4bJ3zIaE8Q

[time lapse photography rocks]
http://youtube.com/watch?v=TemK6CF6lF0

[one of the coolest blogs ever]
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/

[an onymous lefty and lolpolly]
http://anonymouslefty.blogspot.com/2007/09/lolpolly.html

[max barry's bookshelf]
http://www.maxbarry.com/2007/06/29/news.html

[one of the best things on the net]
www.librarything.com

[cyber-osama]
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22161037-28737,00.html

[vale ingmar]
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22162766-601,00.html

Until next time…