What is Cyberspace

While researching the mean Cyberspace i found the following statment from William Gibson which was firtsly mentioned in "Neuromancer", 1984 and i would like to share it with you.

"Cyberspace, a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding."

The Profiler: Examine crime scenes on your iPhone

In last weeks lecture, Steven Conway mentioned a game (I am so sorry I don’t remember the name of the game :P ) to Zuzana Husarova and the class (guest lecturer of previous weeks lecture) in order to relate gaming and digital fiction.



So, today I am going to post a small review about a game I just found in Apples Appstore which is available for iPod touch and iPhone users. The name of the game is The profiler and the aim is to examine crime scenes and find the clues on your iPhone or iPod touch.



The user mast examine, find clues and find the identity of the serial killer on a number of crime scenes, I have to mention that those crime scenes are plain images with some small text tips which will help you find where the killer is. The user must zoom in, zoom out in order to examine the image of the crime scene and he must be very careful on the objects of the scene.

The game is available for 1,79£ on Apple Appstore

Digital Fiction - guest lecture Zuzana Husarova

This week he had a guest lecture by Zuzana Husarova.
"Zuzana Husarova is a visiting PhD student with the Research Institute for Media, Art and Design, University of Bedfordshire. Her home institution is The Institute of World Literature at Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava, Slovakia. She has MA degree in English Language & Literature (English & American Studies) at the University of St. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava. She is writing her thesis on hyperfictions, cyberfictions and digital literature." NRMG

Zuzana gave a lecture based on her PHD research about Digital Fiction. I have to admit that it was the first time i heard this term. After a her lecture and a small research Ive done i came up that now days most of us use means of Digital Fictions every day. Here is an example of some of the Digital Fictions types:




Technology and the nature of Internet as today provides higher levels of interactivity to the user and the audience. The user can simply navigate and select a text, to change the layout of a website, change a flash animation online and why not to image process online.

10 years before the role of the user was to view and listen, now things have been changed the user can view, listen, click, choose and also with the help of social media get a feedback of what he wrote or asked.

My question is can Digital Fiction kill the books? We had some examples of poems embedded in flash animations - movies. Let me just inform you that i hate poems and poetry. BUT when Zuzana show us some examples of poems embedded in flash animation - movies i found my self atracted to them, not only because of their funcy animations but for the message the poem was trying to send me with the usage of those funcy flash animations.

Digital Fiction

View more presentations from Angela Thomas.

The Webby's Top 10 Influential Web Moments

The born of Wikipedia, the death of Napster, the entrance of Google in stock and the evolution of online video via YouTube are four out of the 10 most influential moments of the Internet from 2000 till today as they where discussed and nominated by the Webby.


The top 10 nominees where discussed by the group which runs the Webby award and took place in New York. Each year this society awards the best of the best that has to do with Internet such as the best online news, the best web designed web site, the best Internet advertising campaign etc.

Here is the list with the top 10 facts and Phases of Internet from 2000 since today.


• Craigslist classifieds expands beyond San Francisco (2000)
• Google Adwords (Text advs) lunches (2001)
• The Shutdown of Napster (2001)
• The lunch of Wikipedia (2001)
• Google in Stock (2004)
• Online Video Explode with the help of YouTube (2006)
• Facebook allows access to anyone not only students, Twitter take off (2006)
• The Iphone - easy mobile Internet Access (2007)
• Internet Advertising on the U.S elections (2008)
• Iran Election Protests by Twitter (2009)

And the winner is…………

You will have to wait until April 2010

If i was asked to vote for one of those i would vote for The lunch of Wikipedia (2001) as it changed the way students and professionals find the resources they need.

Sources:
CNN

Internet censorship and free speech

In the museum of Science and Technology in Shanghai Obama said: "i think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes"

"they should be available to all people including ethnic and religious minorities whether they are in United States, China or any other nation."

Obama can help for the freedom of Internet in China as authorities in communist states have blocked access on different kind of websites, such as face book, twitter and YouTube.

Obama as we all know is an Internet fun and his political campaign was mainly based on Internet, so i believe he can help a lot in order a percentage of people to have freedom on the Internet.

More info about this topic:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120474685

Web 2.0 architectures of participation

What exactly is the change from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 ?
Let’s see some of the major changes:

Web 1.0 --> Web 2.0

Double Click --> Google Adwords
Double click is one the biggest Internet advertising companies which now is owned by Google, Google Adwords changed they way of Internet Advertising by creating the text ads in search engines.)
Ofoto --> Flickr
(Users now upload their own photos)
Akamai - Limewire --> Bit Torrent
Mp3.com --> Napster
Britannica Online --> Wikipedia
Domain Name Speculation --> Search Engine Optimization
Publishing --> Participation
Contect Management systems --> Wiki

Web 2.0 applications interact with the Internet user and basically this is the reason why web 2.0 term gain the attention of the society and business. In Web 1.0 webmaster was the publisher and in Web 2.0 user is the one who creates the content of a web site, user is the publisher.
Bellow is a video which explains What is Web 2.0 and it applications.


What Is Web 2.0? All You Need To Know. - The funniest movie is here. Find it

What after Web 2.0 ?

Prop ably after Web 2.0 we will be introduced to the Web 3.0 which will be more user-centric than web 2.0. Basically Web 3.0 will make web to work for people even when they will not be online, an example is the Smart Agents.
Smart agents will be program ms that will perform a job behalf of the user, the smart agent will learn and what his user wants, once the smart agent understand what the user wants it could be work in the background and it will deliver the results.

News and Technology

Before i comment on this weeks lecture, i would start by referring to this week topic "News and Technology" and i will mention an example which identifies that the way news are been made is changing. Up to date we have journalists where their job is to record daily news and present them to their audience either by newspapers, TV, radio or Internet. Most Journalists are paid to do this kind of job.
My opinion is that this kind of job (Journalist who present daily news) is "dying", with the use of technology (basically Internet, camera and microphone) ordinary people can present news by using the Internet, here is an example so that you can understand what i mean.
On January 15 2009 a plane crashed on Hudson river, probably all of you know about this story, no one died and the captain became a legend. But do you know the answers on the following questions?
- Who was the first who presented this disaster?
- In what kind of media this story was first presented?
- What is the name of this media?

The first person who presented this story was Janis Krums who posted a photo of the airplane crashed, in a social network web site, called twitter. He just wrote “There is a plane in the Hudson” and he posted the following image.



This week's topic basically was about news and technology how is emerged with media and news.
Internet allows 24 hours of news abour our society and business, not other medium is able to provide audience with 24 hours of static and updated news.

Is Internet addiction a real addiction Addiction, compulsion, disorder or hysteria?

Surfing in the web in order to find some more resources about human and technology i found a very interesting article about Internet addiction, in other words which some parts where people are loosing control, and yes Technology can help them loose control.
The reason i am posting this article is basically because on my previous post i said that we have to use Technology for good reasons and not to harmful our lifes or others.
Let's have a look some Technological Adictions (on the Internet) that can destroy a happy family.

Internet gambling addiction
Gambling is a growing buisness on the internet and people who have gambling addction are know not just at risk in casinos. Know the casino is on every computer the compulsive gambler has access to

Internet gaming addiction
Gaming addiction is probably the most talked about internet addiction. Probably because we are seeing so many children and adolescence losing control on this type of internet addiction. The games that are most addictive are those that are played real time with real people (MMORPG= Massive multiplayer online role playing games and MMOFPS = Massive multiplayer online first person shooters)

Internet chatting addiction
Everyone is chatting and now some cannot stop chatting. First people who lost control chatting was mostly lonely housewives, but now just people who are social isolated, lonely, social phobic are at risk

Cybersex addiction
People often say sex is most search topic on the internet and cybersex is probably the web 2.0 version of sex on the internet. We are seeing lots of cases of cybersex addiction and online adultery is a growing problem

Pornographic addiction
More sex (but not web 2.0). Access to pornography has never been easier on never be so easy to hide your interest in it. So lots of people are getting hooked on pornographyon the internet

Auction addiction
Auction like eBay can also be addictive and it is probably similar to shopping addiction but with a gambling twist to it

You can found the whole article here: http://www.squidoo.com/Internet-addiction

Information and the Organism: Cybernetics, Cyborgs, ALife, AI

This weeks topic was “Information and the Organism: Cybernetics, Cyborgs, ALife, AI”

We talked about Cybernetics (the comparison between biological and artificial systems), Cyborgs (human who is supported by an electronic device ), Alife (Artificial Life) and Artificial Intelligence ( a computer which process operations based on thinking and learning)

What was important for me and I will give some more details was the statement “What makes us Humans”. We saw examples of experiments such as the mouse with the ear, the human with 3 ears and an artificial heart; those were examples of human parts which by using the latest technology are implemented inside organisms (human & animal). NO human parts, does not make something a human. “Self-awareness and free moral agency, speech and symbolic cognition, our nimble thumbs, conscience and the capacity to imagine: these are just a few of the traits that distinguish us from other species.” (WhatMakesUsHuman, 2008)

Here is a video of what people say in the question What makes us humans?



Latest technological products proves that Artificial Intelligence is ready for a big challenge, to prove that it can create a computer system which will be more clever than the human. The society should not be afraid of this achievement as long as it is used in order to not harm human life and environment.

You want it or not, now days everyone is depended by technology, for example me, I cannot leave my house if I don’t have with me my mobile phone or my laptop.
It is not bad to be depended by technology , as long as I said before is not harmful.

WhatMakesUsHumans, 2008. Conference in Los Angeles, [Available Online] http://whatmakesushuman.info/home.html [31/10/2009]

Beyond New: Thinking about Media Change

Have to admit that this week’s lecture was very interested for me as after my studies I want to follow the pathway of Interactive and Digital Media.

I will start this week’s blog post by referring to an award winning Interactive Advertisement for “LACTA” a Greek chocolate bar.
OgilvyOne Worldwide, one of the most respected advertising companies in the World created an Interactive advertisement, combining a TV Spot (“Old Media) and the continue of this TV spot (1 year later ) as an Interactive advertisement on the Web.
Have a Look:



It is a great example of combining an “Old Media or Traditional Media” with a “New Media”.

The reason why I am using quotations in the terms “Old Media” and “New Media” is because I don’t agree with those terms and their relations to media kinds, there is not old media and new media, we are still using every kind of media in order to promote and communicate. What will happen in 10 or 15 years? We will call Internet an “Old media” and the new innovations in the media market “New media”? I will agree that “New Media” is a term mean but I would prefer to call them as Digital Media.

The Birth & Death of Cyberspace

This week’s topic was “The Birth & Death of Cyberspace”.

The fact is that in order to discuss in detail this topic we need more than a month of daily lectures.

So what is Cyberspace? By hearing this word some images come up in our mind some of those images were discused in this weeks lecture.The image that comes in to my mind is different than those that where sawn in the lecture, by hearing the word Cyberspace the first image that comes into my mind is a spider and a web.

Dictionary.com identifies the word cyberspace as “the realm of electronic communication” and I agree, as cyberspace is mean of communication.

Referring to the word “death” of cyberspace as the topic of this weeks lecture mentions, is not meant the end of cyberspace, is meant the end or the decrease of real world human communication & Interaction.

Finalizing my blog post I would like to answer three arising questions of the Gibsonian Cyberspace.

• Where do we go when we go into 'cyberspace'?

The realistic answer would probably would be in different servers, but sometimes our mind travels into images, texts and videos related to the content we see in the cyberspace.

• What exactly are 'we' when we are in 'cyberspace'?

The realistic answer would be users or clients, but most of the times we like to be characters of our imagination

• Who is in control when we are in Cyberspace?

It is a difficult question with a very complicated answer but the realistic answer would be the admins and the administrations of our broadband line.

A Video in CBS, interviews a woman and a group of disabled people, where cyberspace and Second Life have “changed” their lifes.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=3547970n

By watching this video and by reading the article refered to the above video

Week 1, Welcome to my Blog

This blog has been created as an Assignment for the unit Media and CyberCulture at the University of Bedfordshire, in which i attend for an MA degree in New Media and Internet Technologies.