Week 8, Task 1: Digital Immigration

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=digital+immigrant

According to the urban dictionary, digital immigration can be defined two ways. The first, which I think isnt the appropriate definition for this work, says that a digital immigrant is "Somebody who has popped up on an Internet site because of clicking on a link (sometimes accidentally). They don't have the slightest idea where they are at, but read the site information out of curiosity, and occasionally buy items if they are listed for sale."

The other definition, the one correct to this work, says a digital immigrant is "Someone who grew up before the digital age and is fairly new to the internet. Basically anyone over the age of 28."

Marc Prensky studied the digital immigrant phenomena back in 2001, and he had this to say. "The importance of the distinction is this: As Digital Immigrants learn – like all immigrants, some better than others – to adapt to their environment, they always retain, to some degree, their "accent," that is, their foot in the past. The “digital immigrant accent” can be seen in such things as turning to the Internet for information second rather than first, or in reading the manual for a program rather than assuming that the program itself will teach us to use it. Today’s older folk were "socialized" differently from their kids, and are now in the process of learning a new language. And a language learned later in life, scientists tell us, goes into a different part of the brain."

So there is a clear distinction between digital natives, the generation we find ourselves in, and digital immigrants, who may be our parents, grandparents, friends, cousins, long lost sister's dog's mum. What Prensky is trying to say is that digital immigrants will always remember life without technology and how different the electronic counterpart of a book or a daily task is so different and will take some time to adapt to.


Quotes taken from "Digital Natives Digital Immigrants" ©2001 Marc Prensky found at http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf

Week 6, Task 2: Joint Ventures

JUST REALISED IVE DONE THESE TWO TASKS THE WRONG WAY ROUND SO THIS SHOULD BE TASK 2 NOT 3!!!

For this task I looked at the forums on www.tombraiderchronicles.com.

This forum is set out the same as any other forum, but I consider it as a community of practice as all the members within are constantly trying to better their skills at the tomb raider game series. There are several rooms, one for each game and through these rooms there are sub topics which any member can contribute to. The possibility of responses and private messages to members can all help each other out too, as if someone has a problem related to a game, finds something new in a game or has news about an upcoming game they can post it with sources for the other members to discuss.

I believe this is a joint venture because it is easy to get a response from another member and also see how the members are working towards a shared goal. In several of the rooms there are topics asking for help with certain games or external projects that are related to the games. The existence of a programme allowing users to create their own tomb raider levels is a big draw for fans of the games and users of this forum who frequently seek help with the programme.

Week 6, Task 3: Organisational Units

I think Wenger differentiates between a community of practice and an organisational unit by their practicality. I would take a community of practice to be formal in appearance but with many informal characteristics, particularly visible when we look at the members of a CofP. Members within a CofP are human individuals who exhibit their own personalities and deal with the situations they are placed in differently. They are united by one thing: which is the activity they are coming together to do. I think that a CofP is highly human in its nature, as it relies on groups of people working together.

On the other hand, I take an organisational unit to mean a company or a megacorporation. It appears faceless and less humane, yet still has a human work force. For example, brands such as Pepsi use celebrities to advertise their product to make it appear more human. The Pepsi-Cola company have a workforce that deals with the creation and advertising of the product as well as its public relations, and whilst several communities of practice probably do exist within the company, when they are united they create this organisational unit that is the faceless company. A drink cant sell itself after all!

Week 6 Task 1: Communities of Practice

My community of practice that I have chosen to examine is my job. I work at Walkabout in Lincoln, which is an Australian themed bar. Using Sue's example and Wenger's model I have created my own below:

Community of Practice

Bar Staff at Walkabout Lincoln

Context

Shared Member Goals - Profit Making, serving drinks, top sales person

Interest in Common Theme - Customer Service

Employment - Paid to be there, its for a reason

Social gathering (members likely to know each other)

¨ Membership of group - Any age/ethnicity/gender/nationality

¨ Presents united front to outsiders - all working towards the goal of keeping the pub running.

Power (as always in any communities some are more equal than others)

¨ Experts - Staff who have worked there longer

¨ High position in external society - Customers depend on us to get their drinks

¨ Hierarchy of Management

¨ Full Time/ Part Time Staff

Newcomers (difficult one this – they could be new because they are inexperienced or new because they have not been in the external society before)

¨ Beginners - New members of staff

¨ Returners - this seems to be very popular with Walkabout, staff return very frequently, myself included!

Experts

¨ Longtime members - more experienced staff who know the tills and bar etc

¨ Leadership figure - supervisor who allocates tasks

¨ Best salesperson - League table

Exclusions (until becoming expert)

¨ Full integration denied - no real authority in tasks

¨ Possible lack of hours compared to more experienced staff

¨ Not asked to “mentor” beginners

¨ Problems with customers - down to being "new"

Week 5, Task 2: External Blogs

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/arts/author/danny_leigh/index.html

Danny Leigh is a film columnist for The Guardian and regularly posts his thoughts on the state of the movie business today. I am very interested in this topic myself and like to consider myself well versed in film and the way the industry works. So for me it was very interesting to read someones blog who has links within the industry and whose opinion can actually matter.

The comments for the blog are sometimes more interesting than the article itself. Take for example, one blog examining Zack Snyder's film 300. Leigh takes an objective look at the film and the critical and public response to it, as well as the supposed racism, misogynistic and homophobic tendencies the film portrays, and examines why the film could create such a reaction. The blog itself looks at the film from an academic perspective, examining the themes present on screen and the things going on in the world at that time. Whilst I do not agree personally with what has been said about the film, since it is a film adaptation of a graphic novel that is depicting a historical event, it is easy to see how something seemingly harmless can be blown out of proportion.

Comments range from responses to Leigh's article and his own responses to the comments to the old "its only a film!" response. Users are free to give their own opinions on Leigh's work whilst debating the points he raises within the article. I have read several of his blogs and they all offer a similar debate on various subjects within the movie business. Another blog examined the resurgence of 80s action heroes in our time and what it means in the wider world outside of the films' scope. Die Hard for example has always had a valid place in society as it has dealt with the constant threat of terrorism and the various ways it can appear.

The first film released in 1988 dealt with an elaborately planned hostage situation, the second, released in 1990 and the time of the IRA, an airport under attack from a terrorist group, and the third, released in 1995, revenge for the villain of the first film through his brother and a bomb placed in a school in New York. Possibly related to occurrences in the world at the time of each release, the films placed an everyday man who became an iconic action hero at the center of all the trouble. Returning in Die Hard 4.0 in 2007, John McClane returned to foil a group of terrorists planning to shut down the United States electronically, again reflecting the times fear of cyber terrorism and the halt of life as we know it.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/film/2006/11/ill_be_back.html
"For Die Hard, appearing in 1988 as Reagan exited the White House, the appeal was just as evident - with the piratical optimism of the preceding years having become mired in the grubby squelch of Iran-Contra and the drabber, hungover age of Bush I underway, John McClane's buccaneering was already an exercise in nostalgia."

One comment responded that: "The Die Hard sequel is more obvious, though didn’t a lot of Ameircans go and rent Die Hard following 9/11 as a fantasy to make themselves feel better in light of the events of that day? I always found it interesting that the Japanese boss can’t deal with the terrorists and has to die, leaving the American to save the day – kind of prefigured Michael Crichton’s Japanese-hegemony paranoia drivel in Rising Sun!"

So people do believe that a film can be related to real life, whether overtly or covertly. On this blog, such an issue can be discussed more openly, whilst giving the author the chance to respond in a professional but opinionated matter. I found this blog extremely interesting to read, as whilst it does stick to the conventions of the blogging genre, it explores its content much more deeply as it is on a subject many are deeply interested in and willing to defend their opinions on.

Week 5, Task 1: Blogs as a new media Genre

http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/askbruce/articles/browse/blogging_1.shtml , http://robotwisdom.com/weblogs/ - Information found on the development of blogging.

The first person to use the term "weblog" on a blog was Robot Wisdom Weblog in December 1997. In the ten years since then we have seen a tremendous eruption of people keeping blogs. Now anyone can have one about anything and edit it at any time. Robot Wisdom Weblog says that "William Gibson foresaw professional weblogging in 1996:

'Pretty soon I think there'll be people who make a living pre-surfing it for you. There's a real need for that."

This is a very valid statement, as blogs are often questioned as to whether or not they are just a form of online plagiarism. Users find information that interests them, log it into their blog, post their thoughts on it and allow talk backs from other users on the same subject. It is interesting to look at a blog objectively and wonder if this is true. We can see that it does take information from several sources to form a blog, but surely while a user acknowledges that this is not their own words, and proceeds to post individual thoughts on a subject, it cannot really be classified as plagiarism. Or can it?

Week 4, Task 2: Music Sharing Online

The way music is consumed has expanded incredibly since the introduction of downloadable content on the internet. With programmes such as Itunes, Napster and Limewire freely available it is easy to access the music we want when we want it. For a fee, we can download the music on these programmes, as licensing and distribution laws do not condone piracy and want us to contribute to the artist as we would when buying a cd. However, there are many illegitimate ways of downloading music without paying through various other programmes. Limewire is not entirely legitimate as it allows users to browse other users music libraries and take what they want on a peer to peer network.

With music that is published on the internet so widely and freely available, it is easier for a band to be discovered and given a recording deal if anyone who wishes to can access and download their music. Artists such as Lily Allen, Corinne Bailey Rae, The Enemy and Kate Nash have all been in existence on the internet before appearing on the music scene. This has changed popular music as artists do not need to go through the painstaking process of playing nationwide gigs and venues just to be discovered. They can be paid to do this once they have a recording contract. However, this is not always a good thing. If an artist wants their music to be just that, discovery and widespread distribution of their product may alter the way their music sounds. The Stereophonics for example, did not like the fame their music brought them, but still went on to produce several albums, the newest of which has just come out.

I think we will still need media production companies as people still need a server to host their website. After this their discovery and distribution adds ultimately to the company's pocket, so there will be no worry about media companies disappearing. What do you think?

Week 4, Task 1: Social Networking Sites

Social Networking sites Ive found include:
www.facebook.com
www.myspace.com
www.tagged.com
www.wayn.com
www.bebo.com
www.faceparty.com
www.flickr.com
www.ilike.com
www.friendsreunited.com
www.reunion.com
www.student.com
www.travbuddy.com
Windows Live Spaces

and many more....

Week 3, Task 2: Newsdirectory - Gamespot

Gamespot is an online magazine devoted to the world of gaming. With sections of the website dealing with a different platform and endless pages within these sections each presented as an article whether it be a review, preview, feature or simply a news article, there is plenty of chance for the users of the site to comment on any item they see fit, whether they agree or disagree with the subject at hand.

In the forums section of the website it is similarly split into sections and subsections within each "room." For the purposes of this assignment I looked into the Xbox 360 forum, and several categories within it. Firstly I looked at a thread titled "Achievement Hackers brought down today". On an Xbox 360 console playing games unlocks achievements which generates a gamerscore for your profile. Recently there have been many users utilising hacking technology in order to alter their gamerscores, making them higher without actually playing any games. This was an interesting thread to observe, as it has grown to 6 pages of responses. As each page holds approximately 18 posts, length depending, it is clear to me that this issue is very important to Xbox 360 gamers in this online community. Users often "flame" the people who have cheated to enlarge their gamerscore, calling them cheaters and various other insults. One user, named DZBricktop, said "I think achievements on games that i really, really enjoy, are great. But overall points mean nothing. But for games like Just Cause, Hitman Bloodmoney, CoD2, Crackdown, etc., i love the achievements. Because on games like those that i had fun playing, i enjoy going through the game more than once and unlocking some cool achievements." Another user, named volcomstoner180 said "man those cheaters got what they deserved. that sucks for them they cant ever get the same achievements again even if they do it legit."

The users are constantly debating over whether or not is fair of microsoft to enforce such a harsh punishment, with some saying that cheaters deserve it and others arguing that its pointless because a gamerscore doesnt actually mean a thing. As these forums are moderated like many other places, users cannot be aggressive in the way they exert their opinions. So a whole lot of slang is used, such as noob to describe someone new to the xbox, or w@k to say something isnt very good, its whack.

I dont think they would discuss such issues in the same way offline, because there is a lot more consideration of others in a spoken conversation, and a speaker couldnt get away with being so confrontational without some sort of backlash in a spoken conversation. Online someone can post a retaliation to your post, but you can choose to ignore it completely.