"Look Up" from social networks and mobile devices.

A viral video that has been floating around Facebook and Twitter over the last week, has been calling for a digital revolution. Putting to one side the irony of creating a video promoting the dissolution of social networks, which is being promoted on Twitter and Facebook; does the video have an actual moral message about how we should remove social networks and our online self from our lives or is it just taking a narrow minded single view approach to how people use the online environment?

Related theories
Nathan Jurgenson - Facebook is real life.
Danah Boyd - Social networks blur boundaries of friendship.
Steven Handel - Digital Divide
Christine Rosen - Social Networks is about self-fulfilment.
David Gauntlett - Making is Connecting
Jean Burgess - Memes

Shut Your Facebook

Shut Your Facebook is a New Channel 4 program that explores the online world of Facebook and questions the ideals of 20 somethings. Posing questions about whether your Facebook, Does affect your ability to get employed? and Do we shared too much online about our private lives?

Watch the first episode HERE.

Caution is advised as nudity and strong language are present in the episode.

The Web is REAL!

A2: Assignment No 2

The Matrix is real but it is not a product of mainstream media. It is self-made, constructed by the public, and proliferated by social networks. We are (knowingly) constructing personalised prisons for our minds; our realities essentially giant filter bubbles, made up of ideologies we accept. We are turning ourselves into thoughtless, marketing machines, exploited by the highest bidder.

To what extent do you agree with the sentiments above?

Make explicit reference to:

• The Matrix
• Baudrillard's theory of hyperreality
• Strinati's theories about media saturation and superficiality
• The ideas you encountered in the Boyd, Turkle, Handel, Rosen, Boder, Sunstein, and Keegan articles, including digital identity and the public sphere
• The ideas put across in Eli Pariser's TED talk
• Twitter discussion about friendship, digital self and instant gratification
• Video's about digital identity and digital self
• Notes from lessons and other discussions
• Any other research/reading that you have completed

A2 Twitter Discussion - Storify

Here are all the tweets from today's Twitter discussion...

A2: The Matrix, Social Networks & Self-made Prisons

The Matrix is real but it's not a product of mainstream media. It's self-made, constructed by the public, proliferated by social networks. We are (knowingly) constructing personalised prisons for our minds; our realities essentially giant filter bubbles, made up of ideologies we accept. We are turning ourselves into thoughtless, marketing machines, exploited by the highest bidder.

Sounds scary doesn't it!? However, the more you think about it, the more 'real' it becomes...

During the first week back I want to make a more congruous link between the work we did on 'digital self' and Baudrillard's theories of "hyperreality" explored in 'The Matrix'. 

We'll be looking at, analysing, evlauating and debating the following material. If you've got your essay out of the way, then you may want to get a head start...

Sherry Turkle: Aspect of The Self

Danah Boyd: Incantations for Muggles: The Role of Ubiquitous Web 2.0 Technologies in Everyday Life

Steven Handel: The Dark Sides of Our Digital Self

Christine Rosen: Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism

Pieter Boder: Habermas' heritage: The future of the public sphere in the network society

Cass Sunstein: The Daily We - Is the Internet really a blessing for democracy?

Helen Keegan: The Paradox of Openness: The High Costs of Giving Online

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Thanks go to Catherine Cronin for sharing the material for her 'Social Media Classroom' online.

Postmodern Media: Digital Identity vs Digital Self

Two useful videos as we come towards the end of the unit:

Network from Michael Rigley on Vimeo.

"Information technology has become a ubiquitous presence. By visualizing the processes that underlie our interactions with this technology we can trace what happens to the information we feed into the network."

WoW from aram bartholl on Vimeo.

"The WoW project takes this mode of publicizing players’ names that’s typical of online 3D worlds and transfers it into the physical domain of everyday life. Participants of the WoW-workshop will be able to construct their own name out of cardboard and then parade around in public with it hovering above their head. What happens when a person’s customary anonymity in the public sphere is obliterated by the principles operative in virtual worlds online?"

I came across the two videos via Dean Groom. He makes some thoughtful comments in his original post as well.

The Machine is Us/ing Us

"Web 2.0" in just under 5 minutes.