day 7 Tutorial Task

Task 1- sign an e-petition

E-PETITIONS CONFIRMATION
Thank you Ms Kellerman
Your name has been added to the Supporting the decriminalisation of altruistic surrogacy in Queensland E-Petition as specified below
TO: The Honourable the Speaker and Members of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland
Queensland residents draws to the attention of the House that under current legislation Queenslanders are at risk of fines and imprisonment for undertaking altruistic surrogacy arrangements. This is despite the fact that altruistic surrogacy is a long held tradition of some Queensland cultural groups and is not a criminal act in the majority of Australian States and Territories. The current laws do not allow Queenslanders with medical and fertility issues to make their own decisions about accessing current medical methods to have a family. It discriminates against those women who, for medical reasons, are unable to carry a child to term and therefore cannot use other legal methods of assisted reproduction (eg. IVF and AI). The current Queensland laws send surrogacy practices underground, force families to move interstate to access the treatments legally, and place children born of these arrangements in precarious legal and guardianship situations. The laws also restrict the rights of women who wish to be a surrogate, for no monetary gain or personal benefit. Your petitioners, therefore, request the House to implement the unanimous recommendations of the investigation into altruistic surrogacy committee tabled on 23 April 2009.

http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/view/EPetitions_QLD/CurrentEPetition.aspx?PetNum=1290

Task 2.

Task 3. What is Barack Obama up to today?
http://blogs.america.gov/obama/

Changes to Afghanistan strategy in store
— By Michelle Austein Brooks, 30 November 2009
President Obama plans to speak to Americans via a prime-time address December 1 about new plans for the war in Afghanistan, which has now lasted about eight years.
His top political advisors and military commanders are aware of the upcoming changes, as President Obama met with them Sunday evening in the oval office. This comes after months of reviews of current Afghanistan policies and meetings with top officials.
The new strategy will likely include an increase in troops and plans to further strengthen the Afghan and Pakistani governments’ involvement. Before announcing it to the American people, the president plans to talk to leaders of some of its greatest allies, including Great Britain and France.
For more on the upcoming speech, see “Obama Addresses Afghanistan Strategy December 1.” What role should the United States continue to play in Afghanistan?

Task 4.
Find out who your local, state and federal representatives are.

Federal:
May, Mrs Margaret
MP



+ adam asks: What do you think of the Australian Government's plans to censor the internet (the so-called "Clean Feed")???

I think that that the QLD government's plans to censor the internet is outragous. It seems that this is just another blatent attempt to monitor people's use of the internet and remove any negative remarks about the government. It is taking away people's right to free speech!

Tutorial 6 task- Essay Research

Write out the question that you would like to answer for your essay, find at least 5 references and write 50 words on each.

The question that I chose to research was "In what ways is the virtual world and the real world merging?".

Mixed Reality: Future Dreams Seen at the Border between Real and Virtual Worlds
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, November/December 2001 (vol. 21 no. 6)
pp. 64-70
Hideyuki Tamura, Hiroyuki Yamamoto, Akihiro Katayama


Mixed reality (MR) is a kind of virtual reality (VR), but a broader concept than augmented reality (AR), which augments the real world with synthetic electronic data. On the opposite side, augmented virtuality (AV) enhances or augments virtual environment with data from real world. MR covers a continuum from AR to AV.

Virualized Reality: Constructing Virtual Worlds from Real Scenes.
1997
T Kanade, P Rander, PJ Narayanan
IEEE Multimedia

A new visual medium, Virtualized Reality, immerses viewers in a virtual reconstruction of real-world events.The Virtualized Reality world model consists of real images and depth information computed from these images. Stereoscopic reconstructions provide a sense of complete immersion, and users can selecttheir own viewpoints at view time, independent of the actual camera positions used to capture the event.

Augmented reality: linking real and virtual worlds: a new paradigm for interacting with computers
AVI archive
Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces
Wendy E. Mackay
Publisher: ACM New York, NY, USA
Pages: 13 - 21
Year of Publication: 1998

A revolution in computer interface design is changing the way we think about computers. Rather than typing on a keyboard and watching a television monitor, Augmented Reality lets people use familiar, everyday objects in ordinary ways. The difference is that these objects also provide a link into a computer network. Doctors can examine patients while viewing superimposed medical images; children can program their own LEGO constructions; construction engineers can use ordinary paper engineering drawings to communicate with distant colleagues. Rather than immersing people in an artificially-created virtual world, the goal is to augment objects in the physical world by enhancing them with a wealth of digital information and communication capabilities.

P Milgram, H Colquhoun - Mixed reality-merging real and virtual worlds, 1999
Chapter 1- A taxonomy of Real and Virtual World Display Integration.

The primary objective in this paper od this paper is to present a number of fundamental display integration and orientation issues related to the nascent eld of Mixed Reality. The approach is motivated rst by the need for a more encompassing term to supplement the existing denition of Augmented Reality (AR), which leads us to propose definitions of the associated concepts of Augmented Virtuality (AV) and then Mixed Reality (MR). Following our discussion of the breadth of Mixed Reality displays in Section 1.1, we discuss the associated issues of viewpoint centricity and control- display mapping in Section 1.2. Finally, in Section 1.3, we present a taxonomy which we hope will be useful for dierentiating between several of the issues raised with regard to the dierent classes of Mixed Reality display systems.

Roomware: Toward the Next Generation of Human-Computer Interaction Based on an Integrated Design of Real and Virtual Worlds, chapter 25, 2001
Norbert A. Streitz, Peter Tandler, Christian Müller-Tomfelde, Shin’ichi Konomi
pp. 511-602

The next generation of human-computer interaction (HCI) is determined by a number
of new contexts and challenges that have evolved during the last five to ten years and will be evolving more rapidly in the next five to ten years. They are rooted in new, emerging technologies as well as in new application areas asking for new approaches and visions of the future beyond the year 2000.

Webblog Part 2- Week 2 lecture 6 summary

This lecture focused on 'the academic study of video games'.

• video games were around before the internet, and began approxamatly 50 years ago.
• Steven Pool wrote the book "trigger happy", exploring the field of video games and their appeal. This was released on creative commons, and made into a documentary as well.
• Video games are evolving at a rapid rate.
• video games are extraordinary because you are interacting, changing and emersing yourself within the game.
• Video games are different from any other cultural untertaking because unlike books and films ect, you as the player can experiment and 'see what happens when I do this'.
• computer/ console game use is widespread and is the equivalent of back in the times when it was common to own a television.
• the BAFTA awards show how video games are becoming mass.
• it is a struggle for games to compete with other films/books narratively.
• games such as the 'sims' allow for some emotion to be brought into the gaming characters.
• people use real money to buy 'imagenary' objects for thier online game's character.
• are the real world and the cyber world merging?
• video games include the following;
• arcade games, consoles, mobile handheld consoles, computer games, MMD's (text based games), MMOG's (Eg- Everquest, world of warcraft).
• in the 1960's, spacewar was an early video game..
• However, it has been recorded that video games were around as early as 1954. These games however, were hidden so as to not be in the spotlight.
• Video games have been intertwined with the development of computing technology since this game (Spacewar).
• military interest in video games have been in the form of simulations ect.
• Theoretical Considerations:
• media effects and games- the impact of the game on the audience)
• the persistence of effect- games can have lingering effects on how people experience reality
• Games and utopia- in video games we can create a perfect society.
• new form of cultural practice? - what does this allow us to express that we cannot anywhere else?

• Narratology: is the study of video games from the perspective of them being stories of literary works eg- Janet Murray, Lev Manovich
• Ludology: in contrast, is concerned with the game play element.
• Platform studies: tracing a history of video games according to their hardware platform.

lecure 5 Summary

This lecture focused on 'Virtual Philosophy'

• virtual philosophy poses the quesion 'what is reality'
• virtual has come to mean 'almost the same' so that virtual reality is 'almost the same' as reality
• Plato from 2000 years ago came up with the idea that there are things in life that can be considered essential to somethings nature (or an ideal form- which is something in nature that has this)
• this idea came along before people new what the atom was
• it is a 'perfect' form of this subject
• which is subject to everyone's personal subjectivity

• Plato's essences were played out through 'the cave'
• the main idea of this (as a metaphoror concept) was that if everyone was sitting and looking at a cave, behind everyone are the 'essences' which people cannot see. The essences are replicated as the 'fire of life'. The fires shadow is our reality. We dont always experience the full essence of our reality

• Guy Debord thought of the 'society as spectacles' and the mediation of society.
• he thought that this was (as reality tv) to entertain us.
• we as people dont like reality because we ahve become so bored with it.
• we have been trained by everyday media just like classical conditioning.

• Umberto Eco created 'hyper reality'
• this means that reality is not just real, it is hyper-real
• our reality is media oriented
• thanks to extensions of our body, we can suddenly experience reality like never before

• J Baudrillard wrote of the similar or 'simulacrum'
• meanging that everything that we experience is a copy of that thing (philosophical)
• we approach computers as the 'mediators of reality'

• two french philosophers came up with the theory in thier book 'what is philosophy' (below)
  

ACTUAL (1 direction) VIRTUAL (many directions)
------------->
---------> ------------->
------------->
PRESENT MOMENT
(Plato's essences)

Savenger Hunt part 3

Search engines rank the stuff they find on the Internet by word match and relatedness. The closer the word or phrase is the more useful the site will be to you, so that closely matched phrases appear first. My favourite search engine is google, just because i am used to using it and it simple.

Tutorial 5 task

What are the differences between the regular IM program and a 3D environment?



There are many differences between the regular IM program such as MSN/Facebook as compared to a 3D chat-room environment such as Second Life. Firstly, the regular IM programs are alot less complex compared to that such as second life. There are basic rules to follow in the regular IM programs, whereas the 3D environment such as second life has limited rules that are loosely governed if at all. The 3D environment has significantly more visual stimuli, as each person that is involved in the virtual world has a visual physicality, such as a body, hair, a face etc. of their choosing. The 3D world involves the 'player' holding a unique identity, also of their choosing. This differs to IM programs such as MSN in that the player portrays limited information about themselves and their online identity other than what is in the written text and perhaps a photo or picture. Another difference is that in programs such as Facebook you can choose who you communicate with, via 'friend adding' and exchanged messages. In Secondlife however, the player interacts with many others that they don't know. These people can communicate with eachother as they wish, without having to officially "add" them as friends.

Short video

Lecture 4 Summary

Today's lecture focused on Free Software/Creating commons.

• open culture movement
• ideas of community- collaboration- choice
• copywrite, how law and technology come together
• Lawrence Lessig (2004) wrote about free culture and was the founder of "creative commons"

Our current culture is one in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past...

• copywrite and legal rights... you as the creator have complete rights to what you create, and it is your property.
• you have the right to say who can use your material and can give those rights to another person.
• in the past, if you wanted to create something new from building on another's work, you might be sued.
• L. Lessig says that 'culture is not a crime', and asks 'why is it illegal to share information with eachother?'
• Creative Commons started in December 2002.
• non for profit organisation, dedicated to promoting reasonable copyright. Copyright that makes more sense to us than standard copyright.
• It is more flexible in its terms, and employs 'some rights, rather than all rights, reserved'.
• stems from copyright, variations on copyright, and public domain (PD).
• PD material is available for anyone to use, and takes place after a person's lifetime + 75 years.
• Core licencing Suite: where the creators/lincensor chooses their license options.
• they can choose commercial use/non commercial use, no derivatives, or share alike options.
• BY: remains constant however, as credit is always given to the creator or licensor when others copy or distribute their work.
• You as the creator have the choice to mix and match these options.
• the philosophy of creative commons came from the free software movement.
• Free/Libre/ Open Source Software (FLOSS).
• How software Works: Source Code: instructions written in the programming language that tell a computer to do certain things. Instructions get transformed into a working program . This is what makes the software work.
• Source Code = Recipe
• Historically, software was free.
• Anyone could contribute, Share and re-use Source Codes. Like an "Open Air Market" (Raymond, 2001).
• R. Stallman started the free software foundation in 1981. His goal was to create completely free Unix-like operating system made totally from free software (before proprietary software).
• Free OS called GNU
• 'Free' was meant as 'Freedom'
• There were free software principals such as 0- run the purpose for any purpose, and 1- study how the program works and adapt it as you wish.

Tutorial 3' Scavenger Hunt Questions

1. What did Alan Turing wear while riding his bicycle around Bletchley Park?
He would strap a gas mask to his face.
Altavista.

2. On what date did two computers first communicate with each other? Where were they?
October 29, 1969 called the ARPANET. They were interconnected between UCLA's School of Engineering and Applied Science and SRI International (SRI) in Menlo Park, California. I used Altavista.

3. What is Bill Gates’ birthday and what age was he when he sold his first software?
28 October 1955, and first sold his software in 1975.
Answers.com

4. Where was the World Wide Web invented?
At CERN, Geneva.
Yahoo.com

5. How does the power of the computer you are working on now compare with the power of a personal computer from 30 years ago?
in 1979 computers were on a 8-bit microprocessor technology, and in 2009 2.60GHz, 800FSB, 2MB processor
Yahoo.com and Dell Website

6. What is the weight of the largest parsnip ever grown?
2.3kg
AltaVista

7. When did Queensland become a state and why is the Tweed River in New South Wales?
1859, and the tweed river is is NSW for various reasons found at:
www.dnr.nsw.gov.au/estuaries/inventory/tweed.shtml
Altavista

8. What was the weather like in south-east Queensland on 17 November 1954?
presumably raining as to the usual weather at that time
Altavista

9. Why is is Lord Byron still remembered in Venice?
He wrote famous poems including Don Juan there.
Altavista

10. What band did Sirhan Chapman play in and what is his real name?
The black assassins, real name Stephen Stockwell
Altavista

Lecture 3 Summary

this lecture focused on New Media: virtual community and individual identity, and Internet Studies: Web 2.0 and Social Media.

Social Media includes what people do on the Internet and in particular for business.

• Howard Rheingold wrote a book about this called 'Virtual Community' in 1993 which he also coined the term of.
• the definition of Virtual Community is when people carry on public discussions on the Internet long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships.
• in the 1990's the Internet was not so widely known about.
• Rheingold wrote this revolutionary book which wrote about connecting people on the Internet with similar interests.
• Its a book about what happens when people chat on the Internet and form friendships, from a human perspective.
• Focuses on what people are doing as a group.

Individual Identity

• elaborates on people's behaviour in groups, and focuses on people's individual use of the Internet.
• Turkle (1995) wrote the book 'life on the screen', writing how;

The Internet has become a significant social laboratory for experimenting with the constructions and reconstructions of self that characterize postmodern life. In its virtual reality, we self fashion and self create.

• This book was about the way that people present themselves online. People choose to display certain things about themselves to create a particular identity.
• People can be anonymous on the Internet.

• Shared interest was one of the biggest factors of the Internet when it was first established.
• Nowadays however, the focus is more on the individual rather than people with similar interests.
• this idea is called 'Ego-Centric Social Network', where 'you' are now the centre of the group.
• Barry Welman said in his book that we are no longer individuals but are 'networked individuals'.

• Web 2.0 was introduced in 1993 in the USA and 1995 in Australia.
• this was introduced in part because of the 'dotcom crash' or 'dotbomb' of the year 2000.
• Tim O'Reilly was the founder and wanted to restore people's faith in the Internet.
• He proposed using the net in new ways such as easy blogging.
• he invented World Wide Web version 2.0 and marketed this as a new era in Web history.
• the focus in Web 2.0 was for business conducted online where the emphasis was on the user experience.
• its feature included; folksonomy, and organising knowledge such as 'tags' or posts on items.
• it involved user-generated content: where people make things such as photos or videos and put them on the net. Henry Jenkins (2006) refers to this as 'participatory culture'.
• open API: means sharing data openly between services on the Internet. Different websites can 'talk' to eachother and share information.

• Social Media includes webblogs/blogs and all variations of this such as Twitter.
• Social Network Services include Myspace and Facebook
• Content Sharing Communications include anywhere where people are uploading pictures or videos etc such as Flicker or Youtube.
• Economy of Accumulation asks who has information about you and what can they do with it?
• Attention Economy asks 'who wants your eyeball' or who wants your attention at their site, and what do they want you to see or do?

• there exist significant privacy issues on the Internet including what is mentioned above in regard to Facebook and Myspace etc.
• Specifically. the gathering and use of your information that you have put online.

part 2- second tute

I use new communication technologies to communicate with my friends and family via Facebook and Hotmail account using email. I have been using these communication technologies for a few years now, with email being used before facebook. I found out about these particular technologies through friends, and was more influenced to use facebook with the more friends that joined. Also the more emails I recieved the more I was inclined to send. I haven't always thought of privacy with my online technology, however have since become more careful. Once my email account was hacked into, I made my password less obvious. I also deleted information from my Facebook account such as age etc. I think its pretty sneaky of companies like Facebook to collect and use your personal information as most people are unaware of this fact and they do it quite sneakily. I dont have friends that I have never actually met in person as I believe that what they portray online may be totally different to how they really are.

Jonathan Zittrain - The Future of the Internet

I chose this video because it focuses on communication via the Internet and the future of this area. I also chose this video as Jonathon Zittrain is a leader in the field of the internet. In this video talks about;

• how the Internet is constantly evolving
• the future of the Internet and how to stop it
• moving from 'sterile' technology to 'generative' technology
• Jonathon talks about the history of the Internet and the 'nerdy' founders
• the initially free sharing of software, or 'shareware'
• the three founders of the Internet came from humble beginnings
• Jonathon discusses 'packet-routing'
• the ways in which this technology has grown out of control such as the use of FBI surveillance which transcends the usual CCTV that was used.
• issues with people's privacy by the government
• 'contingently generative technologies'
  

Lecture 2 Summary

Today's lecture focused on a selective history of computers and the Internet;

• the definition 0f a computer comes from the 1700's in part from the field of astronomy, where people were trying to complete large algebra. These people paid others a small amount to 'compute' small parts of their algebra problem, which they would then piece together to make a whole.


• computer = calculate


• computer means someone or something that performs mathematical functions or calculations.


• the early form of the calculator was an abacus which was used to sum numbers and make calculations.


• Charles Babbage was a key person for inventing 'counting machines'.


• He produced automated machines which would do the calculations for u humans.


• this helped to 'automate our ability to do large mathematical problems'.


• Babbage' wife Ada Lovelace was also an influential player in the progress of these machines, as she would fix them up when needed so as to work.


• She invented the logic behind his creations, or the so called earliest form of 'program language'.


• this 'language' was about telling the computer what to do.


• Ada Lovelace was considered the first computer programmer from the 1700's.

• In the 1900's during world war II, people were all about trying to encript their secret military messages.


• the English used computer calculators to try and crack the code of the enemy.


• Allen Turing was influentional in this process. An accentric mathemitician, he spent alot of time working on math problems, and specifically, trying to crack the german military codes.


• Although Allen Turing helped the military win the war, he was ostresized for his sexual preference and ended up comitting suicide. Later, a letter was sent to his family acknowledging his contribution and apologising for his treatment.


• He came up with the idea that whilst having a conversation with a computer it should be so intellegent so that you cant even tell that it is a computer.


• Another important concept was the 'enigma machine', which worked like a typewriter and had wheels which were positioned to allign in specific ways.


• the idea was that the weakest link in security (such as a war) was the people.


• this continued on to the idea of 'social engineering', which used the power of deduction based on people.


• in this way it was figured out that the code was Hitler's birthday.


• through WWII computer's rapidly developed.

• the first home use computer or 'personal computer' was developed in 1975, however so called 'personal computers' were around as early as the 1940's.


• IBM built massive computers for military use, and one of their biggest clients was teh Natzis.


• 'Xerox Parl' was invloved in people having computer's for business purposes.


• computer 'Hackers' stems from the time when people put the ideas about computers together and 'hacked' or put the pieces of their computer together.


• 'hacker' originally meant computer expert.


• However it was given a bad name in the 1980's and associated with criminals.


• 'hackers' had meetings to discuss software and etc.


• Bill Gates sold his software to a company called IBM after he was approached by them.


• One of the first software programs was a calculator program similar to excel

Task 2- lecture 1 summary

The major points that were covered in the lecture today included;

• the fact that media becomes old very quickly, and that a modern obstacle comes in the form of this quick change.
• the definition of communication stems from a man in Greece named Aristotle, who said that the speaker - transmits the message - which in turn is relayed to the listener. This basic process in important to understand as the foundation of communication.
• Shannon and Weaver elaborated Aristotle's speaker/message/listener model, to include the speaker producing a message through a transmitter- which goes to the receiver and the listener. Noise can possibly interfere with or potentially change this message.
• Intersubjectivity and Intertextuality explore how we create meaning from a message. The meaning we interpret is influenced and moulded by our life experiences.
• Almost every discipline studies the internet.
• Technology invloves the study of it as well as the techniques of how technology is used. Technology requires knowledge to operate it, and knowledge of techniques.
• Marshal McLewin said that media and technology were the same, and that technology was an "extension of our human body".
• Such extensions inlcude objects such as reading glasses, which serve to extend our abilility to see. Ancient tools used as technology extended our ability to be effective hunters (stones, spears etc). The wheel can be said to be an extension of the human foot, because it let people travel further. A book or a photograph can be said to be an extension of the human eye, as we are able to look at places that we have never actually been to or seen before.
• Such examples can be said to be an extension of our basic abilities as humans.
• "the media is the message"
• Media and technology are not one in the same
• media is an extension of "medium", which is more than one media.
• medium is a "force which acts instead of".
• media includes that such as television and newspaper, which act on behalf of others and convey a message.
• the medium is the thing in between that moves the message along.
• technology itself is not a medium, it becomes a medium when you use it in a social or cultural context.
• Convergence refers to new media forms using the content of the previous medium.
• Examples of this include newspaper content which became radio content, which became television content.
• the interenet has been a vital step forward for doing things in everyday life that couldnt be done before.

tutorial task 1- introductory post

Hello! this is the first time I have ever blogged. I am not an expert in advanced computer applications, and can mostly use Microsoft word, email, the internet and facebook. I chose this course because I am interested in learning how to use the internet better as well as learning about things that are not my expertise. Currently studying Psychology, I feel that I am a little unknowledgable about computers and have alot to learn. I look forward to increasing my knowledge base on this new area and being able to discuss these sorts of things with others.