End of Semester

Coming to an end of another semester i feel that my studies have brought me that just bit closer to graduation. Just one more semester to go! New Communication Technology subject has taught me a lot not just about technology but a lot about the way we view technology and how we as human beings communicate with each other. It's mind blowing to think that we have come so far in history to this very moment with communication that is not just local or state wide, but nationally. We are now able to communicate in every language possible with the help of new technological advances that help us translate a medium to a language we understand.

At the start of this course I didn't really know much about how all this technology or even how communication came to be, but after attending lectures and tutes I learnt that what I had predisposed of what was communication was not all true. I thought communication was simple as did Aristotle but, alarmingly it is quite complex and intricate.

Watching that first film with Lemmy Caution made me think about what people in the past had envisaged of the future and futuristic advances in technology. A dystopiatic world where computers rule and humans submiss. It's unthinkable to most of us, but certain themes in many movies discuss this. The other movie Exitenz permissed me great confusion. I didn't really know in the end whether they were actually out or in the game still. I gues you need to watch it more than once to really understand it. But if that what games are gonna be like in the future than I'm sure I'll be playing it. Virtuality like that in the movie are so very interactive unlike games we have now to some extent. Games have a big future I think.

Why is it that the simplest forms of things can be so interesting? Just like that 'word movie' Cocaine, only a black background and white words display on the screen enticing the viewer to read the story and imagine for themself. Even though there are no pictures, the words get more faster and faster as the story escalates. Brilliant piece of work I thought. Simple but effective.

I wrote my essay on Wikipedia and how it is not as bad as critics say it is. What a lot of academics and critics forget to see is that it is still a young encyclopedia and in some retrospect still in birth. Even though it is written by muchly anomynous contributors a lot of academic work does not come from just universities or research areas but can also come from people like you and me. Think about those research papers you wrote in primary school. You weren't an academic then but who said you couldn't write what you want. The use of a web site is entirely up to the disgression of the user and how they percieve the information whether it be true or false. However, even though Wikipedia may be dismissed by academics now, maybe in the future it will first information source we turn to. Don't judge a book by it's cover.

Overall this course has taught me some really knowledgable things that are certainly going to help me in the future. I now see two sides of the story and have started to think outside the box.

Essay

Wikipedia is a valuable source of information and could be used for a primary source of information in the future.

Wikipedia has brought with it much controversy since its birth. Contentious as the subject may be there is much concern about the chaotic mess and digital dystopian nature that it survives in. Many academics have focused merely on the negative characteristics of Wikipedia and believe that it is an unreliable source of information because anyone can edit entries. This essay discusses the positive aspects of this open source system and the potential that Wikipedia holds for future knowledge; and why it is not as substandard as it is perceived as.

Many academics do not consider Wikipedia an appropriate source for information. Wikipedia (2008) explains that ‘as with any community-built reference, there is a possibility for error.’ On the other hand, this can be arguably true for paper-type ‘academic references’ that are compiled by numerous qualified researchers. Gibbons et al. (1994 as cited in Black 2008) suggests that knowledge is not generated only in university settings but also that it has a variety of settings, including government venues and other types of industries. In a study by Forte and Bruckman (2005) they found that Wikipedia contributors generally begin as seekers of information, but gradually adopt the practices of proofreading, fact checking, and eventually of authoring new content just as qualified researchers would, suggesting minute difference between the article quality of academics and ‘Wikipedians’. Wales, the president of Wikipedia Foundation, argues the fact that they do not ‘vet people on their credentials before they can contribute’ (Nature 2006; Giles 2005). Even the example of ‘judging a book by its cover’ would obviously be crude to an author.

Numerous articles in Wikipedia closely resemble those in traditional print encyclopaedias and are found to be factually accurate (Giles 2005; Emigh & Herring 2005). For example, articles on topics such as, algorithms, origins of the American Civil War and severe acute respiratory syndrome have emerged as reference-quality articles (Lih 2004). News publications also have cited Wikipedia on subjects such as crony capitalism, folk metal, British ‘honours’ system, Abdul Qadeer Khan and extinct animals. Most strikingly, in the US litigation a Wikipedia article on profanity was cited in a motion to dismiss a case in a Colorado court (The Smoking Gun 2003).

Any good researcher or academic would not just cite a source in Wikipedia, or any other encyclopaedia, without justifying it with further research. Valsino (2006 as cited in Assael et al. 2007) explains that 90% of today’s society search for information from multiple sources before they are able to trust certain information. He also finds that people turn to people like themselves rather than the traditional forms as a trusted source of information. This may be a reason why Wikipedia is able to work so well since it is written and ‘peer reviewed’ by people just like themselves (everyday people), not merely just academics. Harnad (1999 as cited in Black 2008) describes peer review as a ‘quality control’ which guarantees the accuracy of the large scale of knowledge being developed. One key component of Wikipedia’s review process is the ‘NPOV’ (neutral point of view), where other writers must have a mutual agreement to where an article stands (Wikipedia 2008). Though Wikipedia is open for abuse – that is, the notion that anyone can write anything – it is harder to vandalise an article than it is to contribute to it. Wikipedia tracks and stores every edited version of an article – thus, no edited article is permanently destructive (Lih 2004). This open source system also has the ability to mediate a conversation between differing points of view held by users to transform opaque information into a useful, reliable form in a very short period of time (Black 2008). Moreover, it is this irregular situation that urges users to be productive and cooperative members of the wiki community, allowing quality content to emerge (Lamb 2006).

Traditional encyclopaedias such as Encyclopaedia Britannica have typically been the norm when it comes to quality, reliable information. However, with long period publishing cycles and high cost lead to an opportunity for Wikipedia to arise. Wikipedia has changed the way people perceive knowledge, as it creates a ‘timely distillation of information and generation of commentary’ and a semantic related exploration of text (Emigh & Herring 2005). In contrast to publishing in the fundamental way, publishing in an open participatory environment encourages involvement from those who do not possess academic reputations. Along with this, scholars can increase their potential readership exponentially (Alexa 2007 as cited in Black 2008). An argument of Lih (2004) suggests the notion of rigor – more editing cycles on an article provides for a deeper treatment of the subject or more scrutiny of the content. He also proposes diversity – that is, with more editors, there are more voices and different points of view for a given subject, thus, enhancing quality.

A recent study found that Wikipedia, in terms of accuracy, is actually rival to that of Britannica Encyclopaedia (Giles 2005, Stvilia et al. 2005). Giles (2005) found that in scientific topics, an average Wikipedia article had about four ‘inaccuracies’ (factual errors, critical omissions, or misleading statements), compared with about three ‘inaccuracies’ per article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. This supports other studies (Wilkinson & Huberman 2007; Anthony et al. 2005) that similarity in quality provides evidence that articles in Wikipedia are reliable and valid (Black 2008).

A rebuttable from Britannica claimed that Nature’s article was misleading and inaccurate. Conversely, they explain that Britannica is not error-free (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2006). Assuming that no research is ever error-free, one could suggest that Wikipedia is a case of simply ‘larger error’ in comparison to other academic sources of information. Wikipedia is still a ‘young’ encyclopaedia when compared older versions, such as Britannica and many researchers seem to overlook this. Wikipedia is just like a child in life, it is deemed to make mistakes, but in time, corrected, shaped and fine tuned and hence always ‘under construction.’

To a normal person this perplexing phenomenon this open source system of information would just not make sense in the real world. Despite the digital dystopian nature that Wikipedia exists in, it has emerged as the largest online encyclopaedia. As Wikipedia grows more popular and widely recognized, Lih (2004) suggests that it will be vital to apply ‘quantitative metrics’ to what people currently informally perceive as the overall ‘quality’ of Wikipedia’s articles.

Nowadays, in a progressively more demanding work environment Wikipedia provides the opportunity to restructure research and semantically relate it to source documents. This essay discussed many positive aspects of Wikipedia and various studies showed remarkable accuracy and reliability of the open source database. With more fine-tuning and authority Wikipedia could be used widespread as a reliable source of information in the future. It is undeniably a developing organism and the only way to improve Wikipedia is to not criticize it, but embrace its potential of becoming a great online free resource of information.

References

Alexa 2007, ‘Traffic rankings’, www.alexa.com/data/details/main?q=andurl=http://www.wikipedia.org.


Anthony, D, Smith, S & Williamson, T 2005, ‘Explaining quality in internet collective goods: zealots and good samaritans in the case of Wikipedia’, Fall 2005 Innovation and
Entrepreneurship Seminar, viewed May 7 2008, http://web.mit.edu/iandeseminar/Papers/Fall2005/anthony-pdf.


Assael, H, Pope, N, Brennan, L & Voges K 2007, Consumer Behaviour, 1st edn, John Wiley & Sons Australia, Milton.

Black, EW 2008, ‘Wikipedia and academic peer review: Wikipedia as a recognised medium for scholarly publication?’, Online Information Review, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 73 – 88, viewed May 6 2008, Emerald, http://www.emeraldinsight.com/.


Emigh, W & Herring, S 2005, ‘Collaborative authoring on the web: a genre analysis of online encyclopedias’, Proceedings of the Hawai'ian International Conference on System Sciences, viewed May 9 2008, http://csdl2.computer.org/.


Encyclopaedia Britannica 2006, ‘Fatally flawed: refuting the recent study on encyclopaedic accuracy by the journal Nature’, Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc, viewed May 5 2008, http://corporate.britannica.com/.

Forte, A & Bruckman, A 2006, From Wikipedia to the classroom: exploring online publication and learning’, Georgia Institute of Technology, viewed May 9 2008, http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/~asb/papers/forte-bruckman-icls06.pdf.

Gibbons, M, Limoges, C, Nowotny, H, Schwartzman, S, Scott, P & Trow, M 1994, ‘Production of knowledge: the dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies’, Sage, London.

Giles, J 2005, ‘Internet encyclopaedias go head to head’, Nature, vol. 438, no. 7070, pp. 900–901, viewed May 7 2008, http://www.nature.com/.

Harnad, S 1999, ‘Free at last: the future of peer-reviewed journals’, D-Lib Magazine, vol. 5, no. 12.

Lamb, GM 2006, ‘Online Wikipedia is not Britannica - but it's close’, Christian Science Monitor, viewed May 10 2008, http://www.csmonitor.com/.

Lih, A 2004, ‘Wikipedia as participatory journalism: reliable sources? Metrics for evaluating collaborative media as a news resource’, Proceedings of the International Symposium on Online Journalism, viewed May 10 2008, http://staff.washington.edu/clifford/teaching/readingfiles/utaustin-2004-wikipedia-rc2.pdf.

Internet Field Trip

Today, socialising on the internet has become bigger than ever. With such networks as MySpace, Facebook, IM and msn, people are becoming somewhat less interacted in the real world. What is the real world though? A slow change is drawing clear and maybe what we know as the real world is in fact the virtual real world.

The differences with the virtual worlds and IM’s etc are the amount of interaction that you can have with the other recipients. Virtual worlds let you do pretty much anything except for being, most importantly, real – that is humanly real. You are interjected into the virtual world where you can walk around fly and do many more things. A character designed by yourself is shown, whether it reflects you yourself or someone fiction, and means that you are now ‘internally connected’ or ‘wired.’ IM’s such as msn messenger let you do voice, word, and video chat but this is only the tip of the ice berg when it comes to new age communication. Because the virtual worlds are 3D it makes you feel like you are there yourself. It’s like playing a video game in a sense – you are now the real player, you have a face, a body and a personality in a sense, not just another face on a page. You are an interactive character that can involve yourself more than ever. You can create businesses, houses, anything you want, even make money off it. The sky is the limit literally – you can fly.

However, much controversy is seen in that it is more open to attack than IM because it’s more personal. Some people actually design their characters on themselves and this suggests that maybe an attack could be made on that person in real life, if not in the virtual world, because everyone knows what they look like. Virtual worlds are a developing technology and is just the beginning in new age communication.

Excel and Word

I found that both exercises in today's tutorial were found to be a bit too easy, especially the word exercise. Though I did find it helpful I don't think that I would ever use it, or at least not particularly at the moment. I think it would be very useful in the workforce, specifically an office job. Already using word for years now I always like to know extra helpful ways to make things easier. Though the version I used today was not a very recent one, I have used word 2007 and find that the functions of it are very easy to use and helpful.

The exercise for excel was somewhat too simple and found that it doesn't really affects me in anyway. I think excel is widely underused, mostly to the complexity of all the functions in excel. A person unfamiliar with the use of these mathematical equations would probably feel a bit lost in a sense. I think there is a need for a clearer and easier explanation for the use of the functions. creating the table today was easy but really was to simple to understand it in that I didn't really need to create a graph for the 3 sets of data. For a beginner of these programs it would probably be helpful though.

Wikipedia

Arachnocampa

The word ‘Arachnocampa’ literally means ‘spider-grub’ and most of us wouldn’t usually understand this scientific term. However some of us with out even knowing have been already exposed to this type of insect. More formally known as the ‘glow worm’ Arachnocampa is found only in certain areas in New Zealand and Australia.

Wikipedia displays a page on Arachnocampa of somewhat precise truth. Formally being an eco-tour guide myself I studied the Arachnocampa at the Natural Bridge in a rainforest on the border of Queensland and New South Wales. With much knowledge in this area as I look at this article in Wikipedia I feel rather relieved that the information that is presented is quite substantial, and covers all the basic facts for a person to understand this topic.

The article seems to follow the Wikipedia guidelines for useful articles as most sources are referenced and exist as reliable sources in Australia and New Zealand. It is also a balanced and piece of work, as in only states the facts and suggests no argument. Nonetheless, it has been altered and problem resolved for accuracy and precision.

As for improvement and wider Wikipedia usefulness much more research needs to be done in order to enhance the expediency of this article. Much is still not known about this insect and is recommended to provide more information which may arise in additional community awareness.

Griffith University

Griffith University is an Australian public university, based in Queensland, with five campuses located between Brisbane and the Gold Coast. As a student of the university one would assume that you would know about the university, but some people just haven’t got a clue. If anyone ever wanted information on a university you would think that that you would go straight to the university website, yet as Wikipedia being the resourceful site as it is you can just look there and the article on Griffith University will tell you pretty much anything you would want to know for at least a ‘starting point’ information knowledge.

Conversely, as the article suggests it needs a ‘cleanup’ or referencing from a third party for complete accuracy and precision. One would assume that Griffith University would have actually done this themselves already. As a result, guidelines have been followed to an extent, excluding the note for referencing and so forth.

The article is more or less biased and less balanced than one would presume. Not all important aspects of the university are mentioned, and significant data is left out to consciously or unconsciously make the university sound better than its counterparts. If changes were to be made on this article a recommendation to the university itself would be suggested. The actual university should gather accurate information itself and third party referencing should be used as reflected on in the article.

Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Walter Benjamin suggests that “mechanical reproduction,” that is the reproduction of art, changes the reaction of the masses toward art. With such contemporary technologies nowadays, society as whole has unmistakeably have changed in the way that we react and view art. Technology such as, computers with CD/DVD burners; phones with sound recorders etc. have contributed to this age of mechanical reproduction. We can now buy Cd's, DVD's with recorded, that is reproduced, art work to either be seen or heard. There is now no necessity to visit a movie theatre or go to a live concert; we view everything on a digital basis.

At the time when art work was produced by a viewable and real medium, an artist or skilled professional, there was an evolving change in technology. With music, images, videos and or types of art work being created and reproduced digitally art has changed in a matter of meaning. “Art” is now not just a painting or a live concert or opera, it’s a form of everything around us. One could suggest that the environment is a work of art nurtured by a horticulturist, or the inside of a restaurant designed by a interior design. Art can be seen anywhere and everywhere we step our feet. However those artworks produced by real mediums are somewhat different to our digital forms. One cannot really connect oneself to the artist as we see these digital forms on TV, computers, and hear others on headphones or speakers. “Art” has changed dramatically and is for in some sense changed for the better in a way that art can be viewed or heard anywhere in the world via the Internet. Conversely digital mediums lose a sense or realism when loaded up onto one’s screen.

Other questions still remain as to whether a “photoshopped” image is in actual fact authentic. Some suggest that this new form of digitalised art can be called authentic in a sense that the final product is different from the original. It is a question of belief and or viewpoint to whether one to call a “photoshopped” image “authentic.” Most certainly many people would claim that a “photoshopped” Picasso painting is not authentic, yet a photoshopped image of a model for an advertisement would be suggested as most probably authentic depending on the audience.

Even though Walter proposes that digital forms do not consist of an "aura" one can suggest that it still consists of an “aura,” though is significantly diluted through the process of the art being transformed into digital media. For example the essence of watching a live opera is much more impacting than what it is to listen to the opera on one’s iPod. One’s reaction is substantially changed if one was to listen to recorded media rather than watch and listen to a real and live media. Digital mediums still form an “aura,” however; it is just an issue of how close one is connected to that “aura.” The digital form is just less aura-listic than the real original form.

Search Engines

How do search engines rank the stuff they find on the internet?
Google is an example of this. The heart of Google's software is PageRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by our founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages' relative importance.

Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.

Some of my favourite search engines include Google, Yahoo, altavista, and hotbot. For myself Google and Yahoo are the ones I use the most. Mostly for the reason where they have given me better and more relevant results for searches. I think that such search engines as hotbot and what ever are quite underrated though and with more user awareness would strengthen their database and provide better results for searches.