Week three summary

My first post was a commentary on Tears in the Rain. It raised questions about being human and the parallel one can draw from fiction to reality.  My second post was a visual on the evolution of communication. This cartoon illustration brings out the issue of superiority of text, and neglects the creativity and ingenuity of human beings to adapt to technological tools. It has linkages with the focus this week on multimodality and image over text discussion.

My third post was a status on Facebook which exemplified how younger generations may perceive Facebook as ancient technology compared to Twitter.  Following this was a quote from Kress and a sound experiment. Kress’s positioning about image over text has been an interesting one: the explanation on the differences and how the web has challenged traditional reading pattern, and the place of the author is noteworthy.

And finally a review on transliteracy. The use of the term unifying ecology of all literacies was useful to think about its application in publications on or off line.   Here I also discussed the work of Sanford Biggers, which provided a new way of thinking about space, histories and representation.

At the back of these, I reread Bell’s and Stern’s article from Week 1 and 2.  There is now greater clarity over the terminologies of cyberculture, cyberspace, material, political economy story and material story. Stern’s Historiography of Cyberculture illustrates the difficulty of framing the studies of digital culture, and has brought awareness of where to start drawing the boundaries, and when it is crossed and what is to be included.   These place the discussion of the Film Festival in a whole new light!

I have made an attempt at responding to different posts of peers.  My introduction the EDMOOC on the Hangout on Friday was satisfying.

Reference:

Bell, D (2001) Storying cyberspace 1: material and symbolic stories, chapter 2 of An introduction to cybercultures. Abingdon: Routledge. pp6-29. [e-book] [PDF]

Kress, G (2005) Gains and losses: new forms of texts, knowledge and learning. Computers and Composition. 22(1), 5-22.

Sterne, J (2006) The historiography of cyberculture, chapter 1 of Critical cyberculture studies. New York University Press. pp.17-28.