Week Two Summary
This week I have tried to feed my lifestream quite regularly, however contrary to belief it has not yet adopted a mind of its own. Several conversations via twitter and blog posts have materialised (which have been most enjoyable) and the comments from these have slipped into my lifestream, though on the whole it has required some dedicated maintenance to ensure its stream hasn’t run dry.
I have attempted to comment on a couple of my course peers’ blog posts this week but not all these comments have appeared in my lifestream as expected. I have found twitter to be quite a chatty tool and though you have to be very succinct due to its limited word count, it has proven to be a useful communication tool. Several additional blog posts have appeared this week whenever I have felt the need to communicate or consider a topic in a little more depth. I have also added a few new feeds to the stream this week and now have a FlickR account which includes my first uploaded picture! This picture shows off my limited white water rafting skills on the Dranse in France but it is also representative of me trying to navigate and keep control of my lifestream!
Serendipity has played a very interesting part this week on two occasions. Firstly, I encountered two error messages within minutes of each other when I tried to access WallWisher and one of our Core readings. Initially I was digitally frustrated but then inspiration struck when I realised that the error message is a recent digital phenomenon which had in fact stealthily established itself deep within our digital culture. I am now considering harnessing the ‘error message’ for my visual digital artifact assignment.
Secondly, when blogging and chatting via comments about Glocalisation and what would make a good virtual ’Glocal’ in which to meet course colleagues for general socialising and further discussions, I came across a blog post containing photos of the type of cafe bar I thought would make a suitable option. The blog owner also happens to be interested in digital culture, having written various books on topic. Rahaf Farhoush has also started to co-write a new book entitled “Misfits: How we’ve outgrown the way we live and what to do about it,”. This is something I would like to know more about and so I have contacted her seeking more information. I hope Rahaf might reply by commenting on this blog post and sharing some of her and Leonard Brody’s (her co-author) thoughts and insights on this with us all. The cafe bar in question also happens to be inspired by HR Geiger (of Aliens fame), a Swiss Surrealist who, it seems, is often referred to in pop culture, especially in science fiction and cyberpunk and bears some fascination for the William Gibson who coined the term cyberspace and who features in some of our core reading this week.
Here is one of my own photos of the ‘alien’ cafe bar in Gruyere. I have visited this at least three times and it is well worth the trip (I didnt like Geiger’s museum and gallery over the road however)
p.s I’ve left the embedded links above which lead only to an error message – as its both topical and illustrative of some of my points above
Alison,
Really enjoyed the post, especially the bits about the error message as signs in an otherwise direct landscape/path. You said it better:
“Serendipity has played a very interesting part this week on two occasions. Firstly, I encountered two error messages within minutes of each other when I tried to access WallWisher and one of our Core readings. Initially I was digitally frustrated but then inspiration struck when I realised that the error message is a recent digital phenomenon which had in fact stealthily established itself deep within our digital culture. I am now considering harnessing the ‘error message’ for my visual digital artifact assignment.”
Stealthily established itself deep within our digital culture. Well, well put. What part of our digital culture does it inhabit? What does it signal to us? I liken it to graffitti, a symbol of something someone spent time with, something that seems askew, so contextual as to not be transferable. Like never noticing an advertisement and then once you see it, you see it everywhere. Error messages, warning, print, delete buttons, downloads, clumsy interfaces, gray window panes, all ripples in an otherwise seamless journey. A glitch perhaps? I am avoiding referencing the Matrix here, but kind of like that.
Geiger is a good example here as everything has a scales effect, overlapping, and only really poignant as a whole (just my opinion). It makes sense more as a larger construct. An individual scale is out of place. Kind of like pointilism. Perhaps like our Lifestreams as well.
Hi Michael – yes you are right about the glitch, don’t apologize about mentioning the matrix. Did you see my earlier post about error messages as I highlight WallWisher’s error message which takes its steer direct from the matrix!
….. and an interesting last point about the lifestream…. perhaps its all too early in its development to reflect on its trajectory. Perhaps our weekly summary should just highlight some of the lifestream’s contents that have stood out for us over the week and weave threads where we see patterns emerging. I find I am to a certain extent contriving my lifestream (as i dont have a large digital footprint), controlling content additions so that it has a chance to make some meaning. Those with a bigger digital footprint will have a lot of ‘other’ activity to filter through, delete, review, weave etc.?