Week 3: Library Books & Databases.

Which of Stephen Stockwell's books are in the Griffith library? 

• Stockwell, Stephen 2005, Political campaign strategy: doing democracy in the 21st century, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne. Located: Nathan and Gold Coast Campuses

• Scott, Paul & Stockwell, Stephen 2000, All-media guide to fair and cross-cultural reporting: for journalists, program makers and media students, Australian Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy, Nathan. Located: College of Art (Southbank), Gold Coast, Mt Gravatt and Nathan Campuses

• Isakhan, Benjamin & Stockwell, Stephen 2011, The secret history of democracy, Palgrave Macmillan, New York. Located: Gold Coast Campus 

Cite three academic books that might provide useful material for an essay about Jean Luc Godard's Alphaville. On which campuses do they reside?

• Temple, Michael, Williams, James &Witt, Michael (eds) 2004, For ever Godard, Black Dog, London. Located: College of Art (Southbank)

• Brown, Royal (ed.) 1972, Focus on Godard, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs.Located: Nathan Campus

• Lesage, Julia 1979, Jean-Luc Godard:a guide to references and resources, G.K. Hall, Boston. Located: Nathan Campus

What is a book that will assist you to find out about possible research methods to explore social media?

• Weerakkody, Niranjala 2009, Research Methods for Media and Communication, Oxford University Press Australia and New Zealand, Melbourne. Located: Gold Coast and Nathan Campuses

Stephen Stockwell writes about politics and the media, particularly in Australia. What database would you use to find his first academic article about Brisbane in a national journal? What year? Provide a full citation.


What is the latest medical thinking about internet addiction? What data base did you use? Full citation.

What are IT engineers thinking about surveillance cameras? Identify a theme you could write an essay about and cite three papers that would be useful.

Week 3: A bit about The WELL

The WELL (The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link) was founded in 1985 by Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant as a way for the writers and readers of The Whole Earth Review to connect and converse. The WELL is not a particularly well known site, I personally had never heard of it before writing this blog post, but it has been known to a select few since before the internet became available to the public. My first impression of the website is that the appearance of the site is quite basic, certainly no bells and whistles, which I guess is appropriate as the users are no doubt more concerned with the quality of content rather than how that content is packaged. Anyone can become a member of The WELL but there are a couple of guidelines to adhere to. First of all you must use your real name to register, so you won't find any of those irritating fake middle names that Facebook users are so fond of using. Secondly you have to pay for membership, a concept that is most likely strange to anyone who has grown up relying on such social networking websites as Myspace or Facebook. The WELL has never been a overly large community and as of late the relatively small number of members they did have has been dwindling, in June 2012 The WELL had a mere 2,693 people paying for it's services (Wingfield, 2012). The website seems to rely on a 'quality, not quantity' view of things with intellectuals being the main users and the topics up for discussion are varied and in depth.   

References:

1. Wingfield, Nick 2012, 'The Well, a Pioneering Online Community, Is for Sale Again', The New York Times, 29 June, 2012 
2. Salon Media Group Inc. 1985, Homepage, San Francisco, viewed 25 August 2012, <http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/the-well-a-pioneering-online-community-is-for-sale-again/>

Week 2: Key moments in communication history.

Spoken word seems to be a good place to start as far as key moments in communication history, however since nobody has figured out exactly when that first started there's not much I can say about it. The next would have to be Cuneiform writing and Egyptian Hieroglyphics, these first primitive forms of written communication provide the building blocks for the development of the Phoenician alphabet, the first wide spread phonetic script. Written communication is perhaps the most important development humankind ever made because it allowed people to keep a more reliable record of information for future generations so we could learn from the past and society could evolve and flourish.

Giovanni Battista della Porta first describing the camera obscura in a book seems another seminal moment because "a picture tells a thousand words" isn't a saying for nothing. Photos allow up to see into the past and that is surely as important as written word because photos provide stories and information that can be understood across the worlds language barriers.

Another major development would have to be the first Newspaper ever created in Germany, 1609 A.D. Newspapers are a way to dispense important information to large amounts of people and they are still used for that very purpose today, which demonstrates the importance of this development in communication history.

The invention of the first telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 was a miraculous thing indeed because it allowed people to truly communicate over large distances, something that couldn't really be achieved through written letters or telegraphs because when we speak it's not just facts and figures that we exchange it's also emotions that we convey in the way we speak.

Lastly I'm going to list the World Wide Web because it's become such an essential part of how most of the world lives. Growing up in a developed country I cannot even comprehend not having the Internet available to me, I use it for the gathering of information, communication, entertainment and the general management of my life.

Week 2: New Communication Technology & I.

I like to think I'm a fairly moderate user of New Communication Technology, I don't use it excessively but there are aspects of it I would miss dearly if some sort of technology apocalypse occurred. I have a Facebook account which I check maybe once every couple of weeks and I can't remember the last time I posted anything on it. I do have a smart phone BUT I am pretty sure I don't take full advantage of it. I'll sometimes check my phone at four in the afternoon and see that a notification I got at midnight is still up because I haven't bothered opening my phone yet that day. I do use the internet quite a lot, it's where I get the news stories from the day and check my emails and peruse the blogs that I follow. And if you consider television a New Communication Technology than that brings my interactions with them up considerably. I've never been the first to jump on board with new communication technologies but after a while everyone you know is using them and you think if everyone else is using them it must be for a reason so you give it a try. I think the main reason I don't use social media such as Facebook or Twitter on a regular basis is I feel if I have something interesting to share I'd rather do it in person with someone I actually know, rather than online with people that I didn't really talk to when I went to school with them five years ago.

Week 1: Under what circumstances will new communication technologies become old communication technologies?

To me it would seem that once a communication technology has been replaced by an improved model the original technology is no longer considered a new communication technology because there is something better (in theory) available. Some examples of this are; DVDs replaced videotapes, Email replaced the Postal Service and Phones replaced Telegrams. Obviously a lot of what we consider old communication technologies are still viable and in fact used everyday by many people but they are no longer seen as new media. It seems to me that whilst the technologies we use currently are always being updated and improved upon there really isn't any new ground being broken in regards to a completely new form of communication technology. They can can improve the megapixels on your smart phones camera and do a little nip/tuck on the Facebook layout, but as far as creating a completely new form of communication technology I'd like to see how they can drastically change the entire experience. Of course that's probably something that a lot of incredibly clever people are working on at this very moment. I found a video on YouTube which looks into the possible direction communication technology will take and I shall attempt to link it to this blog...  

 

 

Week 1: Welcome one and all.

Hi there. My name is Kate and this is my first blog post for New Communication Technologies. I chose to do this subject this semester because whilst I am perfectly capable of using such technologies as my smart phone or laptop, I really only use them for the very basics like texting and online shopping, so I'd like to learn a little bit more about where they came from and how they came to be so very necessary. A little about myself now; I am a first year Bachelor of Arts student at Griffith University and at present I have no idea what I want to do after I've attained my degree (assuming I successfully do so). The two subjects I am most looking forward to this semester are Spanish, because it was easily my most enjoyable subject last semester, and Screen History and Research, because watching movies and television is the closest thing I have to a hobby.  So far the subjects I've chosen for this semester and the ones I did last semester have been a fairly random selection and though I'll have to choose a major at the end of the year I'm still rather unsure what that's going to be. That is all for now, so until next time I bid you farewell.