Summary post

Hi everybody ^^ it's been week 10 of my 1st semester in university and i'm kinda gettin' used to everything here and things seem to be on proper path now. This course is the first GE course i took in cityU and luckily it's been positive experience for me.


u may check this out and it's one of my blog post
http://lockeissolid.blogspot.com/2011/10/multitasking-and-attention.html
I discussed multitasking and attention structure under info. age in this post. i was against the possibility of multitasking with a youtube video embedded in that post and mentioned the possible causes of "continuous partial attention" to social networking sites. the post was ended with a "nut dude" video i posted which was meant to illustrate "attention economy" phenomenon.


that post ended up with 4 comments and 1 of them was left by our prof :D!! i have to say my blog experience is positive and fun. the best part of my blogging experience is receiving readers' comments. i enjoyed the back-and-forth interaction between me and other readers. it feels like people really are paying attention to my works whenever i receive comments on blog. i think this is why web2.0 is being seen as such a great breakthrough of internet development becoz of its interactive nature.

moreover, with all those videos and multimodal materials just like the "nuts dude" i posted on the blog post above, i can nicely illustrate my idea in a more expressive and impressive way which was never possible in the past.

As i mentioned i like my posts to be commented. meanwhile i like to comment on others posts as well so that i can have some back&forth interaction with writers of other blog pages. Here're posts i've commented on.
http://ge2216amy.blogspot.com/2011/10/online-culture-and-communication.html
http://ge2216amy.blogspot.com/2011/10/multitasking.html
http://ge2216amy.blogspot.com/2011/09/visual-dreams.html
http://ge2216jack.blogspot.com/2011/09/reflections-of-lecture-on-week.html

In a relationship, real or fake??

Last lecture we've discussed some of the online culture. We've discussed how true would the relationship status be on facebook. I feel so related to this topic, as my first love was started from facebook relationship status. My experience is a good example to illustrate the power and effect of virtual world(internet) upon the real world.

When I was in high school, it used to be popular for students to make fake relationship status just for fun. It's observed that even some of the girls have stated themselves "in a relationship" with the other girls. Obviously these relationship statuses are fake but it somehow becomes a popular online culture of Hong Kong's high school's community.

Last year there's one time a girl initiated a chat with me on facebook (in fact we've been knowing each other for years). She asked me to turn my facebook's relationship status to "in a relationship" with her she said "JUST FOR FUN" and see how people responded, she said "it'd be so funny", then I goes "OK" and became "in a relationship" with her on fb. After a little while we received a whole lot of "likes" on our relationship status. People started to gossip and talk about our "affair"(i admit, we enjoyed all those gossips and rumors at that time). Just little over a week afterwards, finally, I fell in love with her for real. That's how an online-virtual affair evolved to a real deal. So, facebook has given me my first love, or to say the least, facebook is where my first love took place.

The impact of internet should never be underestimated. Though internet is kinda like a virtual world(is like the 2nd space), which was deemed to be unreal, it anyway exists in our real world(the 1st space) and has been an effective channel that transmits information and connects people together. Things happening on internet may end up offering real outcomes in real world(the 1st space).

MultiTasking And Attention Structure+Economy

Do you believe multitasking really is possible? Last lecture we've discussed multitasking behavior as a result of the use of digital technology. If we define multitasking as doing multiple tasks simultaneously, then i personally think it's either impossible, or very hard to carry out multitasking. There's a lot of time I got working on my assignment with the music played by my computer. In this case, my computer is actually multitasking but i'm not. I actually didn't pay any attention to the music as i fully focus on my assignment(or it could be the other way around sometimes). that is even after an hour or so playing just one song over and over, i cant even recall any lyrics of the song.

So I dont believe in "multitasking" but I do believe that digital devices, or social networking sites like facebook, have made us harder to concentrate on one particular task. First off, digital tech. has created a sense in our mind that kinda "reminds" us to check out our facebook, twitter, email, and so on, on a regular basis. It is a concept similar to what we call "continuous partial attention". We habitually check out social networking sites or email inbox becoz we're afraid to miss anything important, like the messages from our employers and love ones. It distracts us a lot and it is proven by the fact that almost every teenager would check out facebook before they start to work on their assignments.

Second, we're used to the hypertext, which is a product of digital media that enables us to get everything at hand easily. With hypertext we can get information we need by simply clicking on some links that direct us to the right pages, we dont have to deal with a massive amount of printed documents or search for information we need throughout some lengthy articles. Our ability to focus is, in fact, gradually amputated by such kinds of channels.

That's why attention is so scarce in nowadays world. In fact, digital media has created new opportunity which is what we call "attention economy", a lot of people posting their articles and videos on web for drawing attention, of couse including doing stupid things, just becoz it's fun? NO, it's a business. Do you think this guy below is really that silly as he seems to be? very doubtful. Whatever, let's check it out it's gonna be epic!

Visual Effects Have Changed Hollywood?!

Hi there last lesson we're asked to find some works of visual effects. This video has amazed me so much because it records a bunch of films with visual effects from 1900 to 2008. This video has shown how visual effects in films evolved. It proves that visual effects have played a crucial role in our contemporary culture.


Other than visual effects, we've also gone through some other multimodality elements. We've gone through different forms of webpages' layout (e.g Left-Right, Top&Bottom, Centre). It recalls my memory that I used to have my own webpages when I was in junior high. I created my webpages by using a software called "Frontpages". I have a lot of things in my webpages, but my webpages weren't as popular because I did not organize my webpage' layout very well, things're presented in the way just too chaotic. If I took this course a couple of years ago, I could have been another Jerry Yang or Mark Zuckerberg!

Greeting!

Hi there I'm Locke. It's been great to meet everyone of you in this class. I haven't done blogging for years and this GE course now seems to be providing me with motivation to stick with this online-social platform again. Here I would like to share the most commonly used platform of mine and my expectation of this course.

Blogging is but one of many examples of "web-based social platform". There's another example of it called Facebook, which is the most commonly visited website of mine. As far as I'm concerned, Facebook's a fantastic and revolutionary invention because it connects people together and facilitates the building of our social networks. More specifically, it allows me to be friend with my friends' friends.

These Facebook and blogging things have altered the way we communicate with the others as well as the way we use languages. It's too obvious to require any proof of it. Hopefully I can have a better understanding of how these internet platforms have affected our use of languages after this course.