Monthly Archives: November 2009

Weekly summary – end of week 9

November 27, 2009

Sorry that my end of week summary is a bit late for week 9. Life has been pretty hectic and full of illnesses around me. I was concentrating on the reading – it was pretty hard for me understand the week’s reading.

So…
Again, I’ve been using more Facebook than Twitter to reflect on my reading. Have not done any serious blogging on the reading as I found it difficult to concentrate and finished the reading on time. Hence the Facebook as I go along. Also been using Youtube to find for more information/notes that could help me understand it better.

I’ve also read the Hayles’ paper for the second time and just realised that there are questions I need to address when reflecting on the reading via blog.

What’s the difference between cyborg and posthuman? I thought I’ve understood the two papers but start asking myself again what’s the difference… So I definitely have to read the papers again to really understand them and hopefully I will produced a blog that could explain the difference if there is any…

Posted in: Uncategorized – No Comments

Cyborgism

November 18, 2009

So what really is a cyborg?  Is it just enough by combining human and machine and that makes one a cyborg as define by Haraway? 

A cyborg is a cybernatic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction (Haraway, 2007, p34)

Will an individual who had a prosthetic arm a cyborg?  So Detective Spooner in I, Robot a cyborg – being part human and part machine to help him function…better?  What about a human who operate like a machine – ie, you wake up in the morning, have shower, dressed, breakfast, drive to work, do the tasks required one after another only having break during lunch time?  I sometimes feel that I am a machine as working not stop from morning till nite – especially at work – able to have lunch is like a bonus to me some days.  I even had a colleague who reminded me to take a break – will this make me a cyborg?  As far as I am aware – I haven’t got any mechanical part in my organic form.

What feminism got to do with cyborg?  I struggle with this when reading Haraway’s.  I will get back to this…

Posted in: Uncategorized – 2 Comments

Weekly summary – end of week 8

November 14, 2009

This week the reading has been quite tough for me as I have never quite understand feminism and capitalism let alone socialism and politics. The closest I’ve come across cyborg is from watching Star Trek, Terminator, Star Wars, I Robot and etc, but not actually analysed them as Haraway did.

I’ve used Facebook this week more compared to other applications to reflect on my reading as I go along.

Also used of Youtube to find any related videos to help my understanding of the topic this week – Cyborg.

I’ve been using my delicious account a lot more this week too compared to previous weeks as I found a number of articles which I have found relevant and interesting for the course not just the Cyborg week.

Not so much on Twitter as I found it frustrating with its word limit. Perhaps I should include this as part of my ethnography which was also brought up by one of the “commentor”.

What frustrate me so far studying this course is when human still wanted to practice power (dystopia?). Power to control others, especially on how others use the technology for a good cause. For example, I went to a LRC forum: The impact of technology to the Library and its profession. There are a few wifi services available but none that I could have access to. Surely there is a way to overcome the security issue if that is the reason why it’s not being public. So there I was sitting with my technology (IPod touch) try to Tweet my reflections of the forum to give some spice to my followers but I could only do the notes offline. It is not the same as it has to be spur of the moment – even with blog! With technology most of the time (in my experience) when things went wrong usually are caused by human error.

Is this one of the reason what Haraway trying to point out in her reading – to make the human better by creating cyborg?

Posted in: Uncategorized – No Comments

End of week 7 summary

November 7, 2009

Due to my cold I have been off the grid for awhile. I’ve been concentrating on my ethnography for the last couple of days. I have blogged my findings and posted to the Course website and waiting for comments.

Posted in: Uncategorized – No Comments

My digital ethnography – #mscdystopia on Tweeter

November 7, 2009

This is my very first attempt of “ethnographing”. After some thoughts and bouncing of ideas, I have chosen to do our (EDEDC) Tweeter tutorial #mscdystopia.

Introduction

Before participating on the online community which is Tweeter #mscdystopia, we are required to watch four films under the theme – “dystopia” which were selected by our tutors.  We were required to comment, give our opinion/views and also suggest a film which falls under the theme.  We also need to set-up an account with Tweeter and pick a name for our online identity on Tweeter and mine is m45n1 just because someone already used “mas”!

There are all together 199 entries for #mscdystopia and it starts on the 21 September 2009 and ends on the 30th October 2009 (but this was me asking for help searching/retrieving the #mscdystopia for my study).  Really it ends on the 6th October 2009 with an entry from lesley1004 “wud you feel any emotion if videos had no accompanying music …next step , watch the eyes”

mscdystopia7

This is how it begins on Tweeter:

This is how it all begins

This is how it all begins

The first tweet post was from “hyperscoped” giving his views on what is dystopia.  There are various threads available on this:

  1. Opinions/views on the four suggested films: mscdystopia4
  2. The use of the social websites for example: Tweeter, Facebook, etc and how they influence our life
  3. Individuals response to other individuals
  4. Suggested clips related to the theme
  5. Comment on the readings and its relation to the theme and suggested films – mscdystopia2
  6. Real life example – government – mscdystopia3

And this is how it ends…

mscdystopia6

Conclusion

Not everyone involves in the community is  an “active contributor” me included.  Individual bounce ideas about their thoughts on the theme.  There are also some comments on the key reading for the theme.  Answering questions with questions to provoke thinking and some share the same ideas/views.

I hope this inform my readers about the ethnography of Tweeter #mscdystopia for MSc E-learning – E-learning and Digital Culture.

I am open to any suggestions on how to improve my “story telling”.  Sorry that it is not presented in a sophisticated online way.

Posted in: Uncategorized – 10 Comments

End of week 6

November 4, 2009

Not much happening for me in week 6. Using Twitter and Facebook mainly to “thought showering” for my ethnography choice and understanding Hine’s reading on Virtual Ethnography. Emailed Sian about my choice and towrds the end of the week have decided to study the course Twitter’s community on #mscdystopia.

Posted in: Uncategorized – No Comments