Alphaville

Some say this is a superb film, somewhat similar to 'Blade Runner', some say it is not. Whatever your opinion Alphaville has its place and tells a somewhat near future story. The film entails a mysterious "Outland" agent, Lemmy Caution who arrives in Alphaville, a metropolis controlled by Professor Von Braun and a massive computer system called Alpha-60. Dominated by Alpha-60's perfect logic, the citizens of Alphaville have lost their ability to think, to communicate, and to love. Lemmy Caution struggles to destroy the machine and rescue Von Braun's daughter Natascha.


Alphaville brings across themes of a controlling technology. It makes you wonder if this could happen in the future. Many of us would say, "As if this could happen," but think about it, everything these days are going online and are put into computer databases. Our bank details, birth certificates, passports, centrelink, university grades etc are all backed up by computers. Could this personal information ever be tampered with? Of course. What's stopping anyone!

Even now, programmers and IT experts are designing computers to monitor and learn from human behaviour. Playing games against the computer is just one example of this. You could say that sooner or later computers will be able to determine our next move even before we play it out. They will know our behaviours to minute detail, subsequently leading to a sense of hopelessness in most of us. Just like Alphaville we too can be "taken over" if we are not careful.

Why do you think we have hard copies or paper copies? Is it for our safety? Or is it just that we do not trust technology? What would happen if everything was digital? I could not fathom the thought of everything on digital technology even though this could happen in the future. Some people say the future is scary, but I think that not having control over your own future is scarier.

Second life?? How about GET A LIFE?

Been a while since that lecture but it has just started to bug me. 'Second Life' that virtual online game that seems to have taken some people by storm.

I have three words 'Get A Life.' Not to criticise too much but, the concept of people making characters that mislead who they really are and pretend to be sometimes someone they are not just annoys me. And some of them treat it like a job, designing clothes etc. Really, how much money could you really make?!? Maybe a few people make success of that and I say 'Good for them!' but not just open a real store? You would probably get more customers! Not just all those people obsessed with 'Second Life.' I see it as a game chat where you be what you want to be. It seems so fake to me. But that's just my opinion. I think I'll just stick to communicating with people in 'REAL LIFE.'

No friends!?!?

Of course not!!

No matter who you are you can always have friends. Some friends are real people in the real world, some friends are imaginary, some are virtual and some are online friends. No matter what type of friend they are you can still call them a friend.

Communicating with your friends and family is now more easy the ever. Mobile phones, video phones, online video chat, msn messenger chat are just some of the ways that we may choose to communicate with people we know. Depending on the type of person you are you might prefer one over the other for example. I tend to use msn messenger online chat much more when communicating with family. When you don’t want to talk you can ignore them! (Sorry mum). It’s quite convenient I think. On the other hand, when talking or chatting with friends I prefer to use my phone a lot more. Having a real conversion using voice means much more to me than just typing all the time and sometimes I can’t be bothered typing either.

My thoughts about a few questions.

1. Do you have friends whom you only know from the internet and have never met in person?

Of course I have but it is a rare case. They are usually friends of friends that were introduced to me through an online social network. For me, these types of friends are people that I’d love to meet but just never have the chance to. We have the same sort of conversations that my real friends and I do. The only difference is that there is no deep connection or strong bond that I have with real friends. You could say it’s more of a light friendship or even acquaintanceship.

2. How long have you been using these communication technologies?
I’ve been using communication technologies since as early as I can remember. The analogue phone for instance, and those old chunky mobile phones that are heavier than a brick.

3. What influenced you to start using these particular technologies?
More than what influenced me; it was a change in society that got me to use these technologies. It just becomes second nature to use them just because everyone else does.

4. Is privacy an issue for you when using new technologies? (How do you deal with issues around privacy?)
I think privacy is a big issue with msn messenger and other chat where you can save conversations and exploit people with them. No so much with mobiles phones but you really need to watch what you say when you chat. How do i deal with them? I try to be cautious of what I do online. You never know who is on the other end too!! The internet can be even scarier than real life.

What is technology? What is communication?

Communication and technology are intertwined with every part of our modern day lives. Some people say we can’t live without technology and communication. In contrast, some people say that we can live without communication BUT we can live without technology! An example of these technology so called ‘haters’ despise the way we use our mobile phones. They say we are controlled by them, having to ‘be on call’ 24-7. Despite the fact that sometimes these ‘haters’ maybe be true about the mobile phone controlling us, can we really live without one?

The answer for some of would be yes. I myself feel that my phone controls me in a way that I can’t enjoy the day. I feel naked without my mobile phone, and sometimes empty feeling of loneliness builds up inside of me because I left my phone at home and now can not contact my friends and so on. On the other hand, in the midst of forgetting my phone, I find that at the end of the day that I felt quite good, ‘one of the best days of my life’ I think, and am somewhat glad that I forgot my phone and didn’t worry about anything all day.

Worrying about communicating? You can never communicate too much, that is how we strive as a people. But communicating with another human being believe it or not can sometimes be daunting! Intersubjectivity, a theory that the listener interprets a message and changes it as they send it along. Every heard a story from your parents that were passed down generations? It would be interesting to compare the old version against the new version.Intertextuality is also another theory that any message gains its own meaning (for a particular person) from all the other messages that a person has previously received and sent.

My particular experience with this is messages sent on mobile phones. The use of emocons (the little characters that people add to messages to display emotions and feelings) had widely affected me in the way that made me feel about a person. For example, I often received messages from Japanese girls with little love hearts and similar characters. This threw me off and made me think that this girl liked me. However, this was not the case as I embarrassingly found out. She had only put them on just to make the message more pretty and cute!! Gee I felt sheepish!!

There is no doubt that most of us use these new technologies everyday and ultimately embrace them for our future lives. Without technology and communication where would we be? Maybe back in the olden days with the cavemen!! Who knows!? Technology has many mysteries.

Introduction

Hi, welcome to my blog on New Communications Technology. My name is Jonathan Senior and I'm writing this blog not only for the purpose of this subject at university but for my own understanding and learning and to help write my thoughts and feelings about new communication technologies.

I recently arrived back from Japan on an exchange program at Komazawa University a university in Tokyo. From that experience I learnt so many things and living abroad gave me a lot of insight about how to view the world and the things around us. Whilst in Japan I worked as a part-time actor/model performing, acting and modeling for various magazines, commercials, films and advertisements. And Japan, being a well know country for its high tech gadgets and electronics I learnt a lot about their culture with technology as well. This first hand experience has given me an edge to compare things that are used in Japan and Australia.

Whilst in Japan, my boss from my talent agency introduced me to blogging and showed me how blogging can increase the knowledge of the public about me. However, that blog (take a look) never really got running off to a flying start as I got very busy and it was hard to sit down at a computer and type . I think I just didn't understand the real impact that blogging can have. After returning to Australia and starting back at university I think I became more aware about the differences and experiences that I learnt and had in Japan. Numerous of 'Geinojin' (celebrities) in Japan use blogs to to tell fans about what is happening in their life and even just to share thoughts and things that they do everyday. There are some people that update their blog every ten minutes via 'keitai' (mobile phone) and just write a few sentences about what they are doing at that very moment. Another phenomenon in Japan is a social network, called mixi, the Japanese version of MySpace.

Now in my last year of university I am eager to discover new things that may help me now or even in the future as I move out into the working world. I think technology is a big part of our lives and we need to embrace good and bad technology in order to move to the next level and learn from our mistakes. The future is all about change and o is technology. Technology is always changing and we need to adapt and adjust to these new changes that happen nearly everyday in our ordinary way of life.