This should be my last weekly review of the Digital Culture course, before I submit my final review of the Lifestream. As I type, I am conscious that much of my activity involves review and preparation for relevant to my digital essay. My essay will be a presentation of the merits of producing a digital assignment instead of a traditional essay. Already I appear to be making distinctions because I have just felt the ne
ed to go back over the last two sentences I typed and bold two words I typed before appreciating their significance. In researching my assignment I am gathering data instead of information. As I am planning an essay that compares and contrasts two formats, I would previously have described such an activity as writing a discussion. But now I appear to be making a presentation. The production of a digital assignment may be a different format but I am now sitting here curious to analyse to what this extent this alters my thinking and understanding. Am I communicating differently – or do I now think differently?
Like the last 4 weeks, there are not as many lifestream entries as there were in the earlier part of the course. This is a reflexion merely of the number of web sources I tag, and not the amount of studying I am doing. The bulk of academic work over the last few weeks has been reading. However this analysis causes pause for thought over the lifestream as a whole. Over the first 6 weeks, I felt compelled to show activity almost daily. Having read the study guide for the unit, and noticed the lifestream was an integral component of assessment, I wanted to demonstrate I was regularly engaging with the course. Now I am maturing within digital culture, and developing familiarity with lifestreaming, I believe I consider quality of entries over quantity.
If I did want to illustrate learning activity on my lifestream I would need to tag my lifestream itself. I am evaluating lifestreaming and reviewing prior activity for the essay. Therefore the website I am visiting the most at present is the lifestream itself. Metaphorically, the lifestream symbolises a living flow of my learning. If I was to turn my thoughts inwards and evaluate my own activities and thoughts, would I be creating a whilpool? I don’y think so. Without evaluating my learning path, I cannot measure my understanding. Maybe over the final week of the lifestream, I will tag lifestream entries to demonstrate my point.
In the meantime, here is a blog from the 2nd week of the course, I find relevant to my preparations for the essay. I find it interesting to read and contrast my knoledge now – having subsequently carried out the ethnographic study and researched cyborg culture – to how I felt in the early stages of the course.
Am I a Cyberpunk as well as an Immigrant now?
Bell refers to cyberpunk as providing ‘a cognitive map of human-computer interaction’. For me, this reference adds weight to the stereotypical image of digital culture being populated by personalities more confident in cyber society than mainstream f2f interaction: the geeks, teckies, sci-fi buffs, etc. Watching Week 2’s Film Festival took me out my comfort zone. I admire all the special effects and do feel genuinely challenged by the symbolic messages – but I don’t feel any sense of identity and belonging. I’m a social animal who prefers eye contact.
However because of the significance of both the different behaviours and cultural identity, I do respect the value and relevance to including clips like The Matrix. I confess to being enthused and extra motivated to participate in this course – more so than any other course. Thanks to the wonders of the Dongle, I’m typing on the train right now, capturing my immediate thoughts – and posting them.
But am I any different to the real me? Are other passengers looking at me – Twittering, surfing and blogging – as a real computer nerd? I don’t feel different. I know why I’m here. I know what I’m doing.
The key point of this blog is I may not know what territory digital culture is going to take me, what I am going to learn, or exactly how I’m going to behave. But provided I retain site of who I am – ie. an e-learning student and developer – I believe I can apply my cyber interaction to the real world. I am not a cyberpunk – I am a learner.
