Digital Literacies

Amazing stuff down the pub on Ebay …

I love the way they have a discussion board called The Nag’s head. People in there can just chill n chat.
Lots of the people in there have no selling or buying history on eBay and so are just hanging out in the discussion rooms just because they can. It’s like a free place where you can go in and loll about – only attracting attention if you break the rules.
It reminds me of the young people who hang out on street corners or in shopping malls. Those cool places where adults don’t want them but they reclaim as their own. They change the nature of a place by doing different stuff in them – and sometimes they get noticed, sometimes they don’t.
The other day I came across a thread where people were talking about brandings, piercings and body carving. Really. And there was a link to the most horrendous images. (I am not putting in a link as I don’t want it connected to my blog.) Of body carving. But they basically can talk about anything at all…so here’s one person moaning about her mother …

Basiclly I just need to rant
when Im on the phone to her or Talking to her in person I could say something she looks at me blankly and then just starts ranting about something thats on her mind

Shes had a few problems with her sisters lately and resulting in her only talking to 1 out of 5
she constantly goes on and on and on And ON about them and TBH Im getting really sick of it

Its like nothing I have to say is important because she has this problem even my kids had to listen to it when she was here last week. Carl listened to it one night and then disappered for the rest of the week

or there is this one about people with no manners:

Really wind me up
13 people said their child was coming to Connors party today, i put on the invitation that i needed to know exact numbers by the 7th as i had to pay in advance, most of them i had to chase up because they were too lazy to tick the box saying i would love to come/ i cant come.
On friday i had 13 “definitley coming” i paid £161 for the bloody party £11.50 a child and 4 of them didnt turn up after their parents said they were coming

I am so temted to tell the parents tomorrow they owe me £11.50 each

and breathe

I think that people plan to meet on these discussion boards and then have a chat. I think they know each other face to face and use this as a spce to catch up. Which is a good idea I spose as it is free and there is loadsa room to put up jpgs and the like.

So my point is that people re-fashion online spaces to suit their needs. Interesting.

Such is the fascination of eBay, that one of the most viewed images on my Flick stream, is the teacups I once bought from eBay:

People seem to feel guilty if they don’t regularly update their blog/vlog or whatever online space they keep.
What is it about this stuff that causes people to feel guilty?? (It reminds me of when I was addicted to running and felt SO bad if I had a day off).

But this is something even more strange than that. There is something interesting here about feeling that there is a vigilant punitive audience out there (out where exactly??) judging you the blogger (non-blogger) for not being a proper daily activist. Is it that in not blogging you are lettin the side down? That you are not a proper geek? That you (horror) have nothing to say?

Now come on guys… let’s have therapy on this. It is UP TO YOU how often you blog. I always seem to apologise if I have not blogged in a while (sorry chaps) and it seems to be a common thing look here at the wonderful Melissa.

She is SO SWEET.

When I was in NYC and talking to the magnificent Gamma he told me that if someone does not blog for a couple of weeks, he deletes them from his blogroll.

I was mortified. What annihilation … much as I adore Gamma of course, this is a standard I cannot live up to and get all my other stuff done at the same time.

So different blogs do different things and people start them for all kinds of reasons. Do you feel guilty if you don’t blog??

Hi there, Pop Pickers!!

How about a Rubiks cube table to go with your Rubik’s cube cake?

You can buy it here.

If I have got you interested here and you wanna buy more shite for your home … well how about a hanging Harry light pull?

Or maybe you could turn your gorgeous ipod into a piece of trash by teaming it with a cardboard classic:

yes, that’s right. It is a cardboard boombox. And you put your ipod in it. Innit?

These items and more can be yours after one short trip to Suck.com here.

Happy shopping kiddoes. Fabulous, Pop Pickers

This is what life online is all about.

At last another bit of competition for Micrsoft with Dell launching the use of Ubuntu an opensource operating system to be included on some of its machines. Perhaps this will see the end of such narrow competition … yes I know that Apple’s Tiger (grrrr) is lovely everyone …. but you know what I mean.

Ubuntu is designed by the people for the people (ha ha) or as Dell says, it:

lets multiple people change, improve and redistribute the source code, meaning the software is generally community developed and available for free

So of course that makes it cheaper. And competitive. I wonder how many other manufacturers will follow suit… and what will Microsoft do to bribe them to stay loyal?

In the meantime Brendadada has this piece on Flickr, where Yahoo’s takeover of that initially wonderful online space has progressivley annoyed her so much that she has emigrated (with some friends) to
Ipernity. It looks like a very nice place indeed.

Interesting watching the debates about control of online spaces and so on and all this does have resonances for literacy practices and research about online text production and consumption. (So keep those articles coming Brendadada).

In the meantime, here is me zooming down the A57 by Stines in Derbyshire … relieved to be on the downhill run at last … and hoping we will have some kind of summer in the UK afterall

(Thanks to TT for the shot of me smiling at last and for telling me bout stuff for my blog).

Just an example of how the internet has changed people’s lives … you cannot tell me they would have done this without planning to put it on YouTube first.

People lead more interesting lives through what they do online as well as what they do in order to report it / show it online.

Anyway, regarding this video, I love the way the drama challenges the space and the rituals of the London tube.

So this is a series filmed by three Iraqi twenty somethings in Baghdad. The films have been edited and produced by a US based company – targetting their films at a young US based audience. Distributed on the Internet it is a part of the new generation of citizenship type journalism that is now really proliferating as more and more people are gaining access to technology. Here is one of the men opening his new camera.

The Iraquis all speak English with an American accent. I assume they were selected out of the many who applied to be involved in the films, partly because of their excellent English and partly for their accents – which no doubt would give them a ‘just like us’ appeal for the target US audience. But at times the American accent seems ironic in the face of the sometimes anti-American comments the participants make.

Suffice to say, that not many Iraquis are really gonna be able to watch this stuff since few have computers, fewer have the Internet, and less still have Broadband, – and even then it takes hours to watch a two minute snippet (apparently.)

Distributed across more than one site, the primary home for these short episodes seems to be the blog, but each film is hosted by YouTube and it is really interesting to see the comments ther, under each episode. Some of them are unbelievably cynical . Many are very anti Muslim or anti Iraq comments. Many are empathetic to the Iraqui situation.

I was interested in how a comment on one of the films a comment refers to how YouTube keeps re-setting the number of comments:

timsmedia (2 hours ago)
the view count and comments on this vid have been reset AGAIN!!!!! obviously youtube are under orders not to let this video get too popular as its a nuisance to the American military-industrial complex.

At the time of copying this comment and writing this post there were only 23 comments and just over a thousand views. The last time I looked (last week) there had indeed been over two hundred comments and over 4,000 views.

The 36th out of the 38 films shows the dentist Saif’s fiancee leaving Baghdad. Despite being a qualified dentist, he has not been given his cerrtificate in order to prevent him leaving. He considers giving up his career to save his sanity.

Tropical
Originally uploaded by Trois Têtes (TT)

Went to Peace in the Park on Saturday. Some interesting stuff to photograph and saw a wonderful band Just Potatoes. The lead singer had the most beautiful rich Blues voice but could also belt out Waits’ Chocolate Jesus, giving a momentous performance.

(This is the singer from Just Potatoes.)

I found out about the event in several ways – all of which were to do with my ‘life online’ Firstly I took a photo last week of a a performer advertising the event – but only found out about the event after I took the shot for my Flickr stream (not yet uploaded); secondly I heard about the event on a discussion thread on Flickr; thirdly I heard about it via a contact on Ian Jones came up to me and said ‘Hi you’re DrJoolz aren’t you? I recognise you from Flickr …

So I went to an event prompted by online stuff… and when I was there I did stuff just so I could enhance my online activities… life online and off line have blurred boundaries …. and all this stuff about DrJoolz… Am I DrJoolz?? There is this thing about a textual self that I present … am I becoming it? (Or is it vice versa)

Life Online, huh? Blending Identities.

(Thanks to TT for the images.)