How though does this mapping transfer onto the space that is Tumblog?  The properties and layout of the Tumblog promote interconnection of the blocks mentioned earlier.

I like the use of the spiderweb as a metaphor for my Tumblog. In the centre sits EDC and it is from this core that all of my posts have  seeded and sprawled. Each post sits as individual on its own silken thread but is integral in the make-up of the web as a whole.

This was not evident until a certain amount of the course content had been covered. Tagging allows for “the collection of information, the sense-making, the organisation of information through categorisation and the trading of detail and knowledge describe some of the essential processes of human intelligence.” (Merchant, 2007, p. 251) The tag is a powerful tool with which one may construct the stepping-stones of access through the blog space.

The category structure is an important gateway for user access through the blog. When deciding how to fragment my categories I felt that it would be beneficial to fork the division: blocks and weeks. Perhaps weeks or blocks would have been sufficient on their own but when the time came to decide on that section the spiderweb image still lingered in my mind and resulted in the inclusion of both.

The capacity for customization within the Tumblog is substantial. Although most of the group’s blogs looked alike for the majority of the semester it is only in the past fortnight that we have gone down the road of personalization through layout and image. The diversity of our imaginations and creativity is supported by the Tumblog structure.

• Merchant, G. (2007) Mind the gap(s): discourses and discontinuity in digital literacies. E-Learning, Volume 4, number 3, 2007

To just imagine getting through an average day without it would send shivers up most of our spines!

So where is it going to take us next?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Martin Cooper highlights the future capabilities of the machine suggesting  that in time phones will be used to flag and monitor medical conditions held within the body of the holder. Cooper believes that the minimalist look is set to continue suggesting in a 2010 interview with the BBC that:

“[T]he cellphone in the long range is going to be embedded under your skin behind your ear along with a very powerful computer who is in effect your slave”  promoting what Haraway (2000) refers to as the ambiguity created by machines “in the difference between natural and artifical, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines. Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert.” (Haraway, 2000, p.36]

Haraway, D. (2000). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century. in D Bell and A Kennedy, The Cybercultures Reader. Routledge.

So many of the cyborg associations that I have identified over the past two weeks have taken the human/machine form. What of the animal/human merger? What of the mermaid?

The other evening I found myself mesmerized by a Discovery Channel documentary Mermaids The Body Found. Armed with a cynical raised eyebrow I initially thought that this was an elaborate April Fool’s day joke but a little digging online revealed a different set of ‘facts’.

Originally aired on Animal Planet in May 2012 it harvested high viewer ratings and re-aired on the Discovery channel the following month. The documentary is described as “science  fiction based on some real events and scientific theory” and puts forward a hefty argument toward the possibility of the real existence of these mythical sea creatures.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It is this blending of science fiction and fact where we might view the mermaid as “a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction” ( Haraway, 2000, p.34)

Haraway, D. (2000). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century. in D Bell and A Kennedy, The Cybercultures Reader. Routledge.

This week my Tumblog hasn’t seen a lot of action principally due to home dynamics [sick children]

Between the bouts of illness I did manage to tend to an area of concern that was niggling at the corners of my mind. I wanted to ‘show’ [myself / anybody] what I meant when talking about the rhizomatic nature of the Tumblog in Gatherings. The image in the original post didn’t sit comfortably with me…it sort of felt inadequate.

What better way to do this then to use the Tumblogs themselves. Collecting all of our Tumblog walls in one artifact meant that although each contributor could recognise their own work it resulted in the gathering of several to form one. My wall rhizome image did end up looking somewhat similar to a scorpion though this was accidental. Perhaps if held upside down or diagonal it will take a different form, varying from one interpretation to the next.

The concept of cyborg remained at the surface of my thoughts this week , asking questions over how technology, such as Google Glass, could add to us becoming cyborg-like. This raised questions of privacy, ownership and social immersion. The cyborg is embedded within the fibres of sci-fi…how exciting to uncover another contemporary real life example.

While there is a temptation to state that week Twelve of the Tumblog will be spent tying loose ends together I actually feel that this is the wrong way for me to view the remaining time. I hope to spend this time giving final nurture to the roots and shoots bursting from the experience of all that is EDC.

Last week I posted of new feelings towards my Tumblog, seeing it as a rhizomatic landscape. Taking steps from the single to the multiple, the essence of the Tumblog changes. Through interaction, experimentation and communication we create a networked  kaleidoscopic mesh.  For me, the image above illustrates how the meshing of all of our Tumblogs showcase the roots and tubers of our learning.

Beginning with  21st Century Cyborg? I tried to clarify what ’cyborg’ means outside of the fiction arena, provoking questions on body, soul and conscience – all nudging me forward. A celebration of World Poetry Day encouraged me to step [way] outside my comfort zone and experiment with A Sonnet to a Cyborg. I saw this as an opportunity to push my own personal boundaries and dip my toe in unknown waters.

The pinnacle of this week for me was the lightbulb moment  that generated from reading the Edwards [2010] paper.  Gatherings outlines how the meaning of the Tumblog has morphed to become part of the ‘knowing’ itself.  

”In the post-human, rather than the subject representing the object through sense data of, for instance, observation, we enter into the spatio-temporal practices of gathering and experimentation. Knowing is not seperate from doing but emerges from the very matter-ings in which we engage” (Edwards, 2010) 

The rhizomatic nature of the Tumblog is composed through our connectedness, interactions and distances.  Readings this week allowed me to see earlier readings / activities in a new light. Originally inspired by IDEL the cyberspace topography image, Rhizomatic becomings  shows how connected all of these course components are.The concepts of the past ten weeks are not single isolated dots, but connected together by overlapping lines of the familiar.

 I love the quotation above from Edwards (2010). For me, it expresses how I feel about my Tumblog. I have been mulling over the Tumblog [matter and meaning] for weeks now.  All that time feeling frustrated by not ‘knowing’ for sure what the Tumblog ‘is’ / ‘isn’t’.

What comfort found  in reading of fallibility, conditionality and emancipatory ignorance!

Through the  connected blog terrain we do more than simply represent or observe…we experiment, and so become part of the learning process as the learning process becomes part of us…human-machine intertwining.

 Today is World Poetry Day 2013! I thought that it would be fun to have a go at putting together a cyborg inspired sonnet…Poetry not  my thing but figured I’d give it a whirl anyhow!