Steph's E-learning and Digital Cultures Blog

Hands writing on the ‘Circulation, Networking [and] Flattening’ came to mind this week and can be related to a virtual community. My chosen community is brought together by the belief that the members are equipped with political, moral and spiritual ideologies that can better the world and make it sustainable. As Hand says, cyberspace reduces the limitations of being a lone, lost voice by enabling people that are geographically distant to join together to form a larger, empowered body of people. The possibilities of the cyberculture restructuring boundaries created by a democratic world tied up in bureaucracy are intriguing. I also hold some cynicism that people can hide behind a persona that is not representative of them in the ‘real world’. This is something I wish to investigate further.
Much of this week has been spent observing the multi-faceted dimensions of my community and taking snap shots of what I feel represents the community. Ethically, I feel I have addressed the essential thinking related to being the ethnographer (as outlined on the AoIR website and course content). However, as I become more acquainted with the community I cannot help but make personal assumptions and question whether I agree with/support their practices. For my participation within the community my participation is not guided directly by the literature but something that I am personally, morally comfortable with. I’d go as far as to suggest that whilst my ethnography is conducted with a benevolent attitude I find myself repeatedly questioning whether in fact I may interfere and inadvertently alter the natural dynamics of the community. Undoubtedly, I have found this aspect the most challenging part of ethnography and have therefore decided not to contribute but attempt to make unbiased observations.

This week I have been contemplating the most appropriate virtual community in which to base my study. In the interview with Howard Rheingold he makes reference to the ‘Global Community’. Whilst he in clear in stating the global community is not some fluffy, ideological community where everyone is best friends he does raise some interesting points. Namely, a large portion of the world now live in cities and now experience less of the close knit community born in villages where people are concerned about life on a very local scale. This has occurred concurrently with geographical boundaries posing less restriction as travel is readily accessible and geographical boundaries have been dissolved by the risk of global flu pandemics and nuclear war, for example. Reduced community identity on a small geographical scale, development of infrastructure/the WWW and geographical distance becoming inconsequential and the sharing of common concern/interest/belief have paved a way for virtual communities to develop. This shift in community dynamics poses numerous questions as to how people converse and a basis for my ethnography.
I received feedback on my lifestream. As anticipated, it was apparent that my use lifestream is not being used to its full. In an attempt to update my lifestream I found that I had notes scattered across my desk and throughout my hard drive that would suggest I had done some work yet to look at my lifestream one could not tell as much. My course participation is an array of scribbles and links that require structuring to form weekly summaries. Due to (the overused excuse of) work commitments I have found it difficult to participate in the discussions held in Holyrood hub. However, time spent commuting enables me to complete the readings and I have managed to feed a couple of twitter comments into my lifestream. I wonder at times whether it will take the ten weeks of this course to master making regular and varied contributions to my lifestream…slowly I am getting there.

The week of the artefact. The theme I wished to present was clear from the outset…or so I thought. The film festival has made apparent that different people can love or hate the same film, find it entertaining or disturbing to watch and consider something meaningful or just regard it as existing without meaning. I initially intended to demonstrate the use of digital culture during an average day in my life and how there can be conflict within a digital culture; creating utopia or dystopia. Whilst I initially (and naively) considered these two states to be polar opposite I began to realise that in fact the distinction between utopia and dystopia was guided by application/purpose/acceptance of the digital technology and social context. A slideshow of how the worlds merge seemed an obvious medium for demonstrating this continuum. YouTube was an obvious place to present my artefact as it allowed audio/visual without distorting my artefact and provided an opportunity to practice uploading, at no cost, a product I have created for the mass market.
The artefacts created by the class were brilliant. The variety demonstrates my earlier reference to the way that people have exposure to the same event (in this case course content) but from it draw different conclusion and relate more with one aspect than another…I continued to do this in my commentary on some of the other artefacts though must investigate whether these comments can be fed to my otherwise hungry lifestream.

Here is the link to my artifact:

I initially named the piece “Worlds Divided by Conscience” but feel the “Worlds Divided” is perhaps more appropriate. “…by conscience” was perhaps a more personal motivation.
Let me explain. Throughout this course, I find myself thinking back to a talk given by Robert Winston during the Edinburgh Science Festival earlier this year. He presented from his latest book titled ‘Bad Ideas’. What stayed with me from this presentation was that for every positive advancement in science people are able to use it for a negative. Arguably, utopia and dystopia are not worlds apart. However, the benefit of embracing science (or more specifically cyberculture!) should not be avoided because of fear of creating a negative action. Instead, judgement must be appplied. The rapid expansion and development of the cyberworld leaves little time for assessing the risk…so do the benefits justify the risk?
Here is a link to Robert Winston speaking on the same subject to the Guardian

I’d welcome any comments or suggestions for a title of what my artifact means to you.

Some small achievements have been made this week. The unfamiliar cyberculture jargon is starting to become familiar and thus the time spent deciphering the text, word by word, can now be spent reading and looking for greater understanding. This week has also finally seen me master the ‘simple’ task of text wrapping my blog around a picture and more importantly use WordPress for blogging! I still at this point need to start on my weekly summaries. For other courses I collate information and present it in one final essay. The ongoing assessment and requirement to contribute near daily and summarise weekly is new and requires more structure to my life that is fundamentally unstructured due to shift work.
Baynes (2010) reference to the ‘destabilized classroom’ rings loud for me this week. I was able to participate in the Skype chat this week. The conversations were intertwined within each other and fast moving. Sitting back and following the discussion was on my screen was challenging enough but I made attempts to comment on the readings the best I could in a virtual room of exceptionally knowledgeable and fast typing students. There was a definite feeling of the practices being ‘disorientating’, ‘strange’ and at times ‘anxiety-inducing’ but with perseverance newly learnt skills become practiced and the unfamiliar can become familiar.

My entire working day is spent (in the physical form) with people; observing, listening and speaking.  In any given situation, being receptive/collating information, synthesising and regurgitating information with meaning and ambition to improve understanding of the initial situation is no new concept.  However, sharing a regurgitation in written form, online is new and challenging.  I am caught somewhere in the conflict between…..

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt” (Abraham Lincoln taken from Solomon’s Proverbs)

and…. “Everyone talks of changing the world, but no one talks of changing himself” (Leo Tolstoy). 

So that said, I am prepared to risk proving Mr Lincoln right.  Motivated by a vision of improving myself (and perhaps with some good fortune) I hope embark upon producing contributions that may produce a change, however small, in the world.  This greater vision begins with collating my notes/thoughts and publishing some summaries from weeks 1-3.

Already the beginning of week 3! Whilst reassuring myself that we are still at the beginning of the course I realise that I must remind myself that it is only a 10 week course and the time will fly in. Compared to registering accounts, organising feeds and then ‘playing’ to work out how to navigate my way around them I do not feel I have given a sufficiently proportionate time to the course content this week. However, for now I am reassuring myself that this is essential work as not having the feeds set up properly will restrict me in representing what I’ve been reading/doing. I’ve always been resistant to Twitter until now, with perhaps a dated view, that that if someone really wants to know my opinion (and I want to share it) it is better done on a one to one basis. Having set up Twitter I now realise how dated my thinking was….because you can private message on twitter too! I have followed the advice and organised a Tweetdeck account. This has made managing the course a little easier as I am in a position to follow some of the comments by separating them from personal messages. That said I’m finding conversations disjointed when reading them a day or so later and this makes it less effective to contribute through this medium.

This has been an entirely overwhelming week resulting in failing my personal objective of producing daily contributions, as the week was over before I realised it had begun. Unfortunately, a disproportinate amount of time was spent on the basics that I had taken for granted that I would grasp without difficulty as opposed to course content and demonstrating an insight into the readings. I have set up accounts with Twitter, Delirious and explored WordPress. Hours can be lost sifting abundant internet resources for relevant content but more often being distracted by interesting (though not directly relevant for that moment in time) information. WordPress appears to be the biggest of my distractions as I can easily spend a precious evening rearranging my widgets and creating my avatar with no direct benefit to the course content….lesson learnt here!
I provided a delirious contribution but wish to develop my usage of delirious further as I see this is a very useful tool in online sharing. My tweets allowed me to participate in some way with the film festival (I was unfortunately unable to attend the synchtube session this week) and successfully linked to my Lifestream.
The readings are challenging! There is a cyberdictionary’s worth of new terminology for me and whilst I hope to have drawn some worth from them I look forward to re-reading them in a few weeks (as my experience of digital cultures develops) and having better appreciation of the emerging themes.