Lecture 8 - Political Possibilities (by Stephen Stockwell)

There was a strike this week so there wasn't actually a lecture, however lecture notes were put online which I will be summarising from.

This weeks lecture basically would have looked at cyber-politics and the work of hackers. The lecture would have looked at the Internets role in modern politics (Epolitics) and how it has helped shape and change democracy. It also would have looked at the medias role in democracy and what influence that has over such forms. This of course leads into a censorship debate which I discussed in my last blog, before discussing the role of hackers in democracy. It is suggested that hackers play a vital role in democracy through the assertion of information that regular citizens do not have access to. This is an interesting point. Often hackers are perceived with negative connotations, however when it is looked at from a different angle, you can see that sometimes hackers are quite important to maintaining transparency in governments. I think was perhaps the most important idea in this potential lecture.

Lecture 7 - Free Culture, Free Society (by adam muir)

I didn't attend this lecture and unfortunately my computer doesn't have the software to show me the slides uploading on learning-at-Griffith which is a bit of a shame. I think this lecture probably would have been interesting. The idea of Internet censorship is an interesting one, dividing many factions of society who are passionate about the issue. The arguments are pretty standard. Those who approve of censorship will generally raise the issue of child pornography and paedophilia, whilst those who oppose it will generally raise issues regarding freedom of speech and make reference to china. Generally I oppose censorship of the Internet. I think it's pretty bad when I government starts intervening on things like this. I have no problem with governments trying to restrict access to child pornography or the like but I do have a problem with governments filtering blogs and media outlets which may have an opinion contrary to theres.

Mobile Phone Video.

Okay, So I didn't make my own mobile phone video and upload it onto that website. Instead I decided to upload a clip of Flight of the Conchords making fun of mobile phone videos.

Lecture 6 - Video Production and Consumption (by Josh Nicholas)

Despite being aware of most of the material in this lecture, it was still pretty interesting. A division between the consumption and production is pretty self explanatory. We are for the most bit consumers. Even those who produce are still consumers in some way. Most of the lecture was basically just explaining forms of media consumption and production and the forms in which that is done. I was a bit new to the idea of fan films to be honest. That side of production has never really appealed to me so much. I must admit the mash ups where very clever, I had never really looked into that either but it is certainly something that I will be looking into in the future. I thought it was interesting that the discussion of music mash-ups and remixes didn't eventuate, I guess it wasn't as relevant..