Learning Log for module 2.4 - Time & Space

Harris, Laurel. 2003. Time, space. In Theories of Media (University of Chicago). Archived by WebCite.

Comments on this article:
'The work of French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) posits understanding as existing in the mind alone and casts doubt on experience produced through corporeal sense perception. ' 

Comment: To understand this sentence replace corporeal with bodily.


Comment: Important finding by Isaac Newton:
'...absolute space exists because, while objects may be moved in relation to each other, space itself cannot be moved.'

Comment: Important by Lessing on Des Cartes and Newton:


'In 1766, German writer Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Laocoön applied the Enlightenment sensibilities of Newton and Descartes to media theory.  Lessing states that pictorial representation (see drawing and painting) should strive for spatial purity and that poetry must represent time, or the changing moment.'

Laurel Harris:
'Media open and shape our experiences of time and space.  Experientially, if not literally, human beings can operate on radically different time-space coordinates through media from painting to writing to film.  Media also shape time and space experienced in "daily life" from forming space through architectural intervention to standardizing time to enable trade and communication.  Theories of time and space, whatever their diagnosis, must account for the radical physical restructuring of time and space which has taken place over the last century.  Technological developments in communications media (from the telegraph to the telephone to email), travel (the airplane), and the dissemination of information (television to the internet) are perceptually reducing and conflating the lived experience of time and space, as discussed by Harvey and McLuhan.'

Comment:
Being members of the Internet Society, are we about to loose the plot? It is true that we experience an increase of speed as we experience things happening quicker, being solved quicker and that there is a constant feeling of urgency. Things develop quicker and as a result the shear number of events happening around us almost simultaneously are simply overwhelming. As a result, I understand that the perception of time and space has changed, not time and space themselves.        

Soraj Hongladarom 2002:
The Web of Time and the Dilemma of Globalization

Translation: Ephemeral - short lived / mundane - profane


Chapter Modern Conception of time: 'The invention of mechanical clocks effectively divorced time from space, whose union was the basis of the medieval con- ceptionception (Giddens, I 990, pp. 1 7—1 8). Time becomes like modern space, which is empty and is the same everywhere (Burke, 1985, p. 276). With the advent of the mechanical clock, time ceased to be exclusively connected with natural phenomena and people’s lives became connected instead with its beat (Lee & Liebenau, 2000b, p. 47). Time be- came quantified and commodified. As Appadurai (1996) points out, time itself becomes consumable, and leisure time is as much work as work itself (pp. 79—85).'

Translation: Commensurable - Acceptably measurable 


'The advent of information and communication technologies has created a dramatic impact on the existing conception of time. Many computers come equipped with a connection through the Internet to one of the several provided NTP (Net Time Protocol) servers, which effectively tells the client machine the time according to the time zones set by the user. Since the time zone of the machine can be set by the user, the machine in effect does not stand in the local time zone. Instead it floats about and can belong to any time zone whatsoever. Time is completely disconnected from place, or even space. The clock in these computers is not set by referring to any locality, but is set through the network to one of the NTP servers very far away. Thus when one sets one’s watch after one of these wired computers, in effect one does not belong to the nation or the place where one happens to be in. One can be a citizen of the world itself.'

Comment: I belong to the nation of which I am a citizen. I may also accept the Internet Community as a seperate nation, making me bi-national. As this nation does not deal with borders, it is indeed a world nation. Although time zones might blurr, the sun will always stand above the earth at a certain time of day and the day will remain any equivalent of the modern standard time of 24 hours. As a result, changing the time on my clock does not change my nationality, it only changes the time zone I feel most familiar with. Further I don't think anyone would deliberately change the clock from local time to any other time around the world without purpose. The most popular purpose would be to align with somebody in a different time zone.

World time could be measured from the dateline in the Pacific, adding 24 hours separated by longitude slots of 15°. This would certaily create confusion with the traditional conception of time that regards Greenich (UK) as the centre of modern time, but it would ceretainly make sure it is noon, where the sun is in its zenith. Wherever we are in the world, our time is measured either Greenich time plus up to 12 hours or minus 12 hours.

Translation: Modicum = Minimum



 

Learning Log for module 2.3 - Users & Developers

1. With reference to Facebook, an online game, or any other Internet application or technology, look into how the developers and users negotiate its development:

   a. Are there examples of the developers and the users disagreeing with some change or other? What was the outcome of these?
   b. Have the people using the application found uses that the developers may not have anticipated?

Great examples to look at are Open Source Content Management Systems (OS CMS) like Joomla (Open Source Matters Inc, 2010), Drupal (Buytaert, 2010) or Typo3 (Typo3 Association, 2010). These applications heavily rely on the input by both users and programmers, also referred to as ‘the community’. They provide forums in which decisions are discussed, amongst them alternative program scripts, modules and what flows in to the latest release. All three are available free of charge.


My personal experience with an OS CMS goes back to October 2002 when we, as an ICT-department in a mortgage bank decided to use EgoCMS (Egotec, 2010) to implement a website on the Intranet of the organization. The web site should mirror the entire collection of rules and regulations in a reference book. Each web page would provide a set of instructions that would relate to other instructions creating one big weave of interrelated bits of information, each accessible to selected groups of employees.


However, the problem was that the CMS was programmed in PHP, while we were running Windows 2000 servers. As the business Egotec, providing the CMS, was still very young and they were keen to have the bank on their reference list, the management went to great extent in customizing their standard software to the needs and requirements of us, the customer. 


Why would the bank go through the lengthy process of heavily customizing a standard tool to implement something that would usually not fit together? Today this is an eligible question, but in 2002 options were still very slim. You could either use a CMS like EgoCMS for the total amount of 30,000 Euros or something like NBS Infopark (Infopark, 2010)which would have cost about 250,000 Euros in 2002.


An example from Australia in terms of collaboratition between users and developers  is Careerhub (Visual Eyes Creative Software, 2010). Careerhub hosts almost the entire set of 39 Australian university job engines. Maintaining the web site of Swinburne University, I am the middleman between staff and the provider, administrating our mandate of Careerhub called SwinEmploy Swinburne University, 2010). As we heavily use the application for posting jobs, registering students to our services, announcement of events etc. , we also retrieve all sorts of statistical data to give evidence of the efficiency of our services. It has happened randomly that we needed specific reports that were not available with the standard version. If it was of mutual benefit to other universities to implement a change or to create another report from the central database, Careerhub would be happy to fulfill our wishes without any extra charges. To help the community keep up with latest developments and tpo encourage discussions, founder Darren Hughes established a blog (Hughes, 2010).

The great advantage that all parties gain from collaborations like this, where issues are openly discussed in the community is that they learn through a trial and error process and gain insight into each other’s way of thinking. 


Reference

Buytaert, D. (2010). Drupal. Retrieved November 3, 2010 from http://drupal.org/community

Egotec GmbH (2010). Egotec WCMS. Retrieved November 3, 2010 from http://www.egotec.com/en/Applications/Web+Content+Management.html

Hughes, D. (2010). Careerhub Central Blog. Retrieved November 3, 2010 from http://blog.careerhub.info/

Infopark AG (2010). The Infopark Story. Retrieved November 3, 2010 from http://www.infopark.com/1036388/infopark-story

Open Source Matters Inc. (2010). Joomla! Retrieved November 3rd, 2010 from http://community.joomla.org/

Swinburne University (2010). SwinEmploy Login Page. Retrieved November 3, 2010 from http://www.swinburne.edu.au/corporate/careers/SwinEmploy_Welcome.html

Typo3 Association (2010). Typo3. Retrieved November 3, 2010 from http://typo3.org/community/about/

Visual Eyes Creative Software (2010). Careerhub Homepage. Retrieved November 3, 2010 from https://www.careerhub.com.au/default.aspx