Hopefully my lifestream this week has been reflecting some of the work I have been doing. The dialogue between Jen and Sian on different aspects of the lifestream has helped me by showing that in fact there are various approaches to the lifestream. As mentioned in the blo posting I had steered away from the “chaos theory” in the first week by selecting the entries carefully. I had wanted the lifestream to be more like a curation. This second week I’ve been more generous and included some of the Youtube clips from the film festival that I liked and more short blog posts.

The lifestream still doesn’t really represent the “digital life” I lead, as it does not include the bookmarks for video clips and news sites I make at work. As I had remarked in  blog post this week I’m beginning to realise how my teaching preperation has changed due to the internet and instant access to all sorts of instant materials. Teaching has also changed, even in the community classes where we have no learning plattforms. The provision of a computer alone in the classroom gives instant access to videos and audios in the classroom. Questions that go beyond my knowledge can be answered with a quick click on to wikipedia. In a way the world has entered the classroom.

The film clips from the mscworlds cluster all focus on this notion of a virtual world.  Elephant’s Dreams, Matrix and World Builder all showing the fascination with a virtual world, though ultimately they lead to destruction or alienation. I preferred the Berlin Block Tetris which was nominated for this cluster as a more playful variant. It reminded me of the vision that Soviet futurists had of building a new world, with pictures such as The Black Square symbolising a totally new approach.

The second cluster mschuman focussed on the human – machine opposition with the question whether machines can have feelings or might even be “better” than humans.

While the core reading by Hand on narratives of promise and threat is still relevant to these topics I found the secondary reading by Johnston on “Salvation or destruction: Metaphors of the Internet” very appropriate as I have described in the blog posting on this.

Hand, M (2008) Hardware to everywhere: narratives of promise and threat, chapter 1 of Making digital cultures: access, interactivity and authenticity. Aldershot: Ashgate. pp 15-42.

Johnston, R (2009) Salvation or destruction: metaphors of the internet. First Monday, 14(4). [web site]