This concept of a network work of fiction, a transliterate production, is truly inspiring. I am inclined to try to create one if it is not too large an undertaking.

I love the simplicity, the subtle use of different modalities and dynamic dialogue and the effectiveness of the message conveyed this way through collective authorship across multiple platforms.

Having been partly responsible for the creation of a massive resource package in 2003, with films, flashcards, website, and teachers’ guide called Refuge, I can see clearly how much more effective and refreshing a transliteracy model is. Much leaner and much more appealing.

More to be said later about transliteracy to be posted here.

This is a great visual from an article written on the Neuroanthropology site entitled the Fear of Twitter.

This is my response to Amy Woodgate’s post who happened to have this image on her site on 10th February 2013

Hi Amy, I have this image up on my blog too but I did not comment very much on it then.  I thought it was an interesting perception of how people view communication, and you are right -  from the yardstick of snobbery of the written word!

I can’t help but think of my 17 month old toddler who is learning to gesture, sign, name objects at the moment, and the lovely sounds she is making.  She is also creating some lovely marks and scribbles on different surfaces and loves the tapping of the keyboard!  She will be going through the cycle but at a much faster rate and will be ever so proficient in the coded language of twittering and perhaps the appreciation of sound, image or a combination of these at an earlier age.  I am constantly amazed at the way she listens to a piece of music, and she tries to figure out the rhythm, and then try to shake and move accordingly!   I do like the way you have looked communication as cyclical.

This news report “Google, Facebook and Twitter may ‘face EU defamation and privacy cases’“surfaces the issues of the digital world, pertaining to how fast rumours and news could spread, and also the anonymity of online users.

On the other hand, there is the debate about enacting sweeping privacy protection for digital data.

Hand (2008) writes that for Robins and Webster ‘the network society is a more transparent society, and a more transparent society is, potentially, a more disciplined society’ (1999: 118).  In the light of the issues raised here of ethics in the virtual domains and the anonymity of online users, the question is whether  transparency should be continued, and if it actually promotes more discipline.

And if we were to use the metaphor of the virtual panopticon in my previous post, are we encouraging neighbours to tell on each other or do we impose a layer of policing from the non-virtual domain?  Where does morals stand for the individual? And which or whose ethics?

Poster argues for a different way to measure or think about ethics in the virtual or Information era, as several factors are fundamentally different from the non-virtual:
1.    the person whom the online user is communicating with is made up of pixels in the screen. It is not permanent as once shut down, it is no longer there but there is a requirement to honour the relationship it holds with others;
2.    the debates that ensue following broadcast of a sex change operation was not about the operation but whether it is ethical to webcast it online, it was the blurring of the line between private and public;
3.    in the new deterritorialiased space there is all sorts of information available from diverse sources which perhaps require a different moral restraint;
4.    and the individual has to process the bits and pieces of disassociated culture and reorganise them or a transvaluation of values emerging from the chaos experienced as part of a process of building the online identity.
5.    Poster believes that there is an act of determinism of the good in the innovation of the Internet.

Reference:

Poster, M (2006) The good, the bad and the virtual, chapter 7 of Information please: culture and politics in the age of digital machines. Duke University Press. pp.139-160.

I was curious how digital technologies have impacted the fashion industry.  Here is a  site which to me gives a preview of the fascinating transformation in the field as a result of digital technology.  A utopia perhaps?

Read her review on http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/digital-dystopia

Watch Sherry Turkle on TedxUIUC

Click here to view the embedded video.

What do you think of the “Reclaiming Conversations” idea at the end of Turkle’s talk?