To me the tumblog experience was also about the creation of an online blogging identity through the weeks, and understanding the digital and eLearning community, by being immersed in the culture.  There has been constant reassessment and negotiation of the boundaries, and defining the relationship of digital culture and elearning culture (Edwards, 2010).

I have experimented with multimodal, transliteracy elements, and considered how my tumblog content may exclude or include readers, and how visual digital literacy is enacted in different publications, and considered how or what people present or project as themselves online.  There were also the constant considerations for what might an academic discourse and essay look like if text was not the dominant medium.  My creation of several digital artefacts such as the virtual ethnography are examples of images taking precedence over text.

I have felt like I am both a virtual ethnographer and a futuristic archaeologist, trying to come to terms and make sense of the rich cultural life of the elearning and digital world, which although I am part of, I have only been on the periphery of this world.  The study of posthumanism and narratives of dystopia and utopia have really forced me to think about what digital culture really means in a variety of context and locations.

The tumblog also reflected the rhizomatic development of links and ideas where I have digressed to non-digital cultures a few times, to enable me to look at the topic afresh.  Some examples of this were in the automobile Prezi in Week 5, and also the posts related to fashion or hair design.  One of the more pertinent fragments drawn from the internet was the paper from Heidegger on Ontological Education which gives the background for where posthuman ideas evolved from.

I rather prefer Heidegger’s idea of deconstruction which is “not to destroy our traditional Western educational institutions but to ‘loosen up’ this ‘hardened tradition and dissolve the concealments it has engendered’ (Thompson, 2001). In contrast, the posthuman idea of man and nonhuman existing in the same continuum is continually presented as a novel condition for humanity, for which no previous educational approaches suitable. However, I found that the authors never explained why previous technology did not divorce humanity from itself. I argue these technologies have made us more human than less, which I will develop in my final essay.

Finally, reflecting on the selected imagery that captured my thoughts and emotions by Kasey Mccahon, called Connected in Week1,  I can compare this with the Portrait of a Posthuman by Eva Rorandelli, which sums up some of the Posthuman elements in human identity, posted in Week 12.  My vision of digital culture, derived from the mash-up of different sources from the web, through reflection, discussion, will now be consolidated in my final assignment.

Reference:

Edwards, R. (2010). The end of lifelong learning: A post-human condition? Studies in the Education of Adults, vol 42, no 1, 5-17.

Thompson, I (2001) Heidegger on Ontological Education, or: How We Become What We Are in Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy Volume 44, Issue 3, 2001 Accessed 03/04/2013

Hence you can see words like dystopia and  utopia explained in the first two posts. My third post is a Wordle presentation of the notes from Hand’s Hardware to Everyware: narratives of promise and threat which provides the background to the main themes of dystopia and utopia.

The subsequent posts were a search for the meaning of culture. I made a detour and look at Fashion Digital Studio and see how the Digital Culture is impacting other industries other than education.   I also wrote a piece on personal reflection of what culture has meant to me in the past.

The film festival so far presented a gentle introduction to the themes, and Benito’s machine has provided a lot to think about: whether technology is a positive or a negative development for societies and individuals.  It also presented interesting questions about the portrayal of academic discourse in short films such as Benito’s machine.

These thoughts, emotions and questions hung in my head all week:
1.    Excitement and apprehension in building an empowering online community through blogging and twittering
2.    Having to present my thoughts in images, stories, music and different representations
3.    How to ensure this tumblog is inclusive and accessible to others who may not know much about digital cultures

I wonder if this is a common experience of an introverted individual having to create a public persona?

Reference:

Hand, M (2008) Hardware to everywhere: narratives of promise and threat, chapter 1 of Making digital cultures: access, interactivity and authenticity. Aldershot: Ashgate. pp 15-42.