Assessment 3: 2 minute animation "Facebook Horror Story"

The video posted below is a 2 minute video I made for my New Communication Technologies course for my 3rd piece of assessment. It is called: "Facebook Horror Story". The site I made it on is giving me a lot of grief about uploading the video to YouTube and is trying to charge me $29 to download my own video.The clip aims to bring a new perspective on how social media sites such as Facebook can run parts of  your life in a negative way. Including the theme of social exclusion from a friendship group due to not being 'in the loop' with Facebook.I also tried to give the animation a silly twist, using different kinds of transitions and animating different objects within each frame.  If there is any issue with the clip not working please do not hesitate to let me know!

Week 10 and tutorial tasks

This was the first experimental storyboard I made for the tutorial ask and though I ended up filming something different, the shot sizes are the same. 

1501HUM NCT Assessment 2: Essay

1501HUM New Communication Technology
‘The Limitations of Communication’
By Katie Hall
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Communication is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as; ‘the successful conveying or sharing of ideas and feelings’ and ‘the imparting or exchanging of information by speaking, writing, or using some other medium.’
The way human beings interact is just one tier of the multi-layered communication cake. The use of body language, facial expression, voice volume level, the way we stress certain words more than others and our current relationship with the person we are communicating with have factors in how what we are saying is expressed and transmitted to others. Communication is not just a human occurrence though, it is absolutely universal in the amount of uses, users and also the amount of limitations communication can come with.
Though just what and who communicates? And is it purely a human occurrence? It most certainly is not. Every living organism has the capability to communicate and often it is the communication occurring between organisms that enables the survival of those organisms. Communication between; humans and machines, human-to-human communication (even communication with oneself), and human and animal communication all have their limitations and failures. This essay will explain the various forms of communication and also discuss the limitations and failures that come hand in hand with communicating. 

In the last decade alone it has become ever more obvious that human and computer communication has grown. Using various styles of coding (such as html code); humans can create and edit images, websites and even music with computers by inputting a command and as a result, having an outputted reaction to the command. Simply, an input of certain information and circumstances results with an output of information that is deemed ‘appropriate for the situation at hand.’(Suchman, Lucy A,.1987). A specific type of communication going on with human-computer communication does not require a specific tone of voice or a commanding facial expression to highlight the command’s importance. A specific way people communicate with computers is through the process of writing up a web page.

The art of writing with HTML code to create images and web pages is something to get excited about, an understanding of basic HTML code is necessary to fully grasp how by using the language, the overall image of the ‘artwork’ can be manipulated. Though, computers do not speak English, Japanese or Spanish, they speak computer language and it takes time to learn. For the computer to understand the command, it must be written in its own language. Which is hard to understand for those just beginning to understand programming. There are many ways to gain knowledge on basic code-writing and entire websites are devoted to it. For example, W3 Schools is an excellent way to read up and practice writing html code and great to learn new things.

By writing with HTML code, a computer does not need to recognise various human facial expressions, sounds or tones to follow a command and present the requested output of information.  Though there are certain problems associated with writing HTML code, though it is usually the code-writers fault. If a mistake has been made it is usually not the computer that is ‘broken’, accuracy is important with writing code and if one word is spelt incorrectly, it could alter the appearance of the entire document or web page. Correct communication is vital between humans and computers.  

Just as writing with HTML code can be complicated and meticulous, requiring upmost accuracy to be used, human-to-human communication is sometimes just as equally complex. Often there are many 'conversations' occurring at once even though there may be two people discussing one topic of interest.

One example of the different 'conversations' humans can have simultaneously with one another is through the use of select body-language. A person may be caught up in a situation that intimidates them and even though their words reflect the surface of the physical conversation being had with the other person, a simple note of their body language can explain much about how they are feeling and what they are communicating to others: Their eyes- that may be looking nervously from side to side, their arms that may be hugging themselves for protection. "Even when only one person speaks at a time, other participants exchange information continuously among themselves and with the speaker through gesture, gaze, posture and facial expressions.” (Morency, L.2010).

A notable question on intrapersonal communication and its viability is: though people can have conversations with themselves, is it really considered communication? As a person is actively discussing topics with themselves by inputting a question and having a successful output of information as a result, then by the Oxford definition of communication it would appear to be just another form of communication. Donald E. Wasbhurn states “communication ordinarily presupposes a relationship between at least two persons […] The outside person is represented internally.” (Washburn, Donald E, 1964). Then intrapersonal communication is the person having a thought process and transmitting information is the sender and receptor in the loop of communication.

Human and animal communication stems from the original domestication of animals. It is also more difficult to get an animal to respond in the desired way than having an intrapersonal conversation with oneself. Having animals as pets also opens up the way we communicate every day with animals. People have to find different ways to ‘talk’ with their pets. Online, on websites such as YouTube there are many examples of the communication gap between humans and animals. Such an example of this can be viewed by following this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgJb7GPTHAo

When an animal is physically expressing an emotion, humans can recognise some similar traits of certain emotions because of the way we also express them. Shyness, fear and reaction to pain are easy enough to identify. Is it wrong to say that certain communication between animals has little to no emotional factor? Animals feel emotions such as fear, so their communication should convey elements of those emotions through their individual methods of interaction.

It should be said that animals are able to use different calls/ expressions to convey emotion. Primates have been known to use facial expression to show different emotions. Waal states that, "(By) the emotional content of a particular vocalization. We certainly have the impression that some alarm calls or grunts are more emotionally charged than others."(Waal, 2003). Humans are able to ascertain elements of the different responses animals give to different situations based upon our own reaction to a similar situation.

Limits of human communication do exist and communication between humans and other organisms is limited. Human communication between animals, infant humans, elderly humans and even people engaged with on a daily basis can be misinterpreted or misunderstood. This can come from a lack of understanding the topic being discussed, not having the communication skills needed to understand what is going on, being unable to speak the messenger’s language fluently and various health problems such as blindness and deafness. The transactional view of human communication shows an important dynamic between communicative behaviours where each person serves simultaneously as the speaker and listener. “At the same time you send a message, you also receive messages." (Morency, L. 2010).

Shannon and Weaver’s model of Communication states that a sender is the information source of the message and after passing through the encoder, channel, decoder (reception) and receiver it is possible to be interrupted by ‘noise’. Noise can be only related to external noises occurring around the people communicating at any one time. Communication happening between two people sending emails would not be affected by noise, but communication over the phone, face-to-face and through video chatting such as Skype chatting can be.
Noises such as: vehicle noises, other people talking and animal noises can have an impact on the messages that are being sent and received face-to-face or over the phone.

Sounds that interrupt the flow of information can act like chunks of flour in a Sieve used when cooking. It mixes in with the thin powdery flour and takes more effort to sieve through. Unwanted data interrupts the original message or response and as such, creates a miscommunication and limitation of communication between the speakers.

Receiver’s beliefs and understandings also play an important factor in the model posed by Shannon and Weaver. As the receiver discerns what they in turn shall respond to the response of their initial message. It is found most commonly that disputes between two parties are based off a misunderstanding of a message. Religion, politics and personal matters all gather different responses according to what was initially insinuated by the messenger.

 In conclusion, the basis for communication is the sending of a message to a recipient, the successful input and output of information and turning a request into an action that is expected to be completed. The communication between humans and computers, has developed and if compared to Shannon and Weaver’s model for communication, cannot be impacted by noise. Though requires prior knowledge to make any progress with communicating to a computer. Communicating to other humans and gaining a response from them is the most basic form of communication, it does not even require words sometimes. Actions such as hugging, kissing and hitting all convey particular meanings that not even words can properly depict. Human interaction with animals can be observed but there are only certain things a human can ascertain from animal behaviour, such as primal emotion such as fear and warning cries to it’s fellow animals. A message will always be sent from a messenger and received by a recipient, though the modes of how the message is sent vary and the limit on who and what can communicate is limitless.

Essay outline for week 8 tutorial

For the essay due on the 20th of September I will be discussing the topic of communication and it's limitations. What and who communicates? Is it purely a human occurrence? I believe not,
it is universal. I decided to change the topic of my essay very suddenly as I believe I have more of an interest in delving into this topic and will enjoy writing about it in-depth more than the previous topic I had chosen. (That had been about Churn impacting new media industries).
Below is a brief look at the research I have been undertaking in preparation to write the essay.

Research Question: What is communication? Do whales communicate? Do birds? Do atoms? Does DNA communicate? What would you suggest as the limits to communication? When does a failure of human communication occur?

Communication with humans and machines-
"Practically the goal is just a machine that, given some input, produces behaviour that i useful and appropriate to the situation at hand."
Source: Suchman, Lucy A. (1987). Plans and Situated Actions The Problem of Human Machine Communication. New York, United States of America: Cambridge University Press.

In the last decade alone it has become ever more obvious that human and computer communication has grown. Using various styles of coding (HTML code in particular), humans can create images, websites and even music with computers by inputting a command and as a result, having an outputted reaction to the command.

Basically an input of certain information and circumstances results with an output of information that is deemed “appropriate for the situation at hand.” The idea to create a machine that mirrors a human’s reaction of certain goings on around it from the input of information is one way that a computer can be interacted and communicated with by humans. Which, in modern day society is becoming ever more necessary. Communication with computers and through computers is an imperative and ultimately important factor of living in these times of technological advances. 




Human-to-human communication is sometimes complex, often there are many 'conversations' occurring at once even though there may be two people discussing one topic of interest.
An example of the different 'conversations' humans can have simultaneously with oneanother is through the use of select body-language. A person may be caught up in a situation that intimidates them and even though their words reflect the surface of the physical conversation being had with the other person, a glance at their eyes- that may be looking nervously from side to side, their arms that may be hugging themselves for protection..


"Even when only one person speaks at a time, other participants exchange information continuously among themselves an with the speaker throught gesture, gaze, posture and facial expressions. The transactional view of human communication shows an important dynamic between communicative behaviors where each person serves simultaneously as the speaker and listener. At the same time you send a message, you also receive messages."
Source: Morency, L. (2010). Modeling Human Communication Dynamics (Social Sciences). vol. 27, issue. 5. CA, USA: University of Southern California (USC).



Human and animal communication stems from the original domestication of animals. Having animals as pets also opens up the way we communicate every day wth animals.
When an animal is physically expressing an emotion, humans can recognise some simila traits of certain emotions because of the way we also express them. Shyness, fear and reaction to pain are easy enough to identify. Is it wrong to say that certain forms of communication between animals has little to no emotional factor? Animals feel emotions such as fear, so their communication should convey elements of those emotions.
So it should be said that animals can use different calls/ expressions to convey emotion. Monkeys, have been known to use facial expression to show different emotions

Further information can be gathered from this source:
Preuschoft, Signe. (2000). Primate Faces and Facial Expressions. Social Research. pp. 245-271. New School for Social Research, Graduate Faculty.

"the emotional content of a particular vocalization. We certainly have the impression that some alarm calls or grunts are more emotionally charged than others."
Source: Waal, Frans B.M. (2003). Animal Communication. Annals of The Ne York Academy of Sciences. vol. 1000, pp. 79-87.




Limits of human communication exist, communication is limited between animals, infant humans, elderly humans and even people we engage with on a daily basis. This can come from a lack of understanding the topic being discussed, not having the communication skills needed to understand what is going on o

"The infant and adult are participants in an affective communication system. A central hypothesis is that the operation of this system has a major influence on how well the infant accomplishes his or her goals, the emotions the infant experiences, and the infant's developmental outcome. If this hypothesis is correct, then the key issue is to understand how this system works. We need to explore the inextricable links among infant emotions and behavior, caretaker emotions and behavior, and the success, failure and reparation of interactive errors that the infant experiences when striving to accomplish his or her goals."

Source:
Tronick, Edward Z. (1989). Emotions and Emotional Communication In Infants. The American Psychologist. Vol. 44, issue. 2, pp. 112-119. Amherst, USA: University of Massachusetts.




(More to come on the issue of limitations of human communication)

I feel I may run out of space to write about each different topic to the length that I would like to. I have decided to write about each topic and then have a summarisation of the limitations of communication for each topic at the end of the essay.

Week 7- Video Games and Tutorial Tasks

Video games are a way that people can experience new and exciting challenges and adventures, defying death without the worry of actual death from the comfort of our own home or video game arcade. 

I found this website that is a basic timeline of the history of the Mario games, as a child I used to play a lot of Mario games so I found it interesting to see the evolution of the graphics and story line behind the game itself:
http://www.noupe.com/graphics/the-evolution-of-mario.html

Often it is a bit concerning to read about the adverse health effects that excessive gaming can lead to, 

but you don't often hear about some of the POSITIVE health effects that gaming can lead to! 

http://theweek.com/article/index/241121/7-health-benefits-of-playing-video-games This informative article explains some of the ways that video games can actually add to aspects of your health. Improving motor skills, relieving stress and improving decision making skills are just 3 of the listed benefits of video games.

For the upcoming essay I've chosen to base it around question 3- Though I was originally going to choose the topic question relating to Churn. I decided to change it as I think I can write a better, more concise essay that I would actively enjoying researching and writing. 

3.  What is communication? Do whales communicate? Do birds? Do atoms? Does DNA communicate? What would you suggest as the limits to communication? When does a failure of human communication occur? 

Week 6 and Tutorial Tasks

When you think of the word 'hacker', what image immediately pops into your mind?
A masked bandit furiously typing away at a highly modified computer? A person experienced with computers pushing the boundaries?
In a world where humans speak the language of computers, hackers are able to move from one computer system to the other, rummage around and take information that they deem important. This can be your bank information if you're not careful.
Though just because hackers have a  bad name, does it mean that all hackers are in fact out to grab your bank details? Of course not. There is always good intentions thrown in with the bad, it's our interpretation of what hackers do for the 'good' that is up to us.

"Hackers seek to free information and are at pains to distinguish themselves from crackers, intruders who damage or steal data whether in simple forms such as denial-of-service attacks or in systematic and clearly fraudulent ways such as credit card manipulation." (Stockwell, 2013). I feel that it's important to have a distinction between hackers and 'crackers', it allows people to make an informed decision on the motives of hackers and the crackers. The practice of taking information through a computer is going to appeal to many people for different reasons
I decided to take a look at the full The Hacker's Manifesto, written in 1986 by 'The Mentor'.
I found it in full on a website called Technozen. http://www.technozen.com/manifesto.htm

What I further realised whilst reading it, is that hackers are pursuers of knowledge, unsatisfied with the menial tidbits of knowledge that are passed through society by people of importance such as school teachers or politicians. They actively seek it out and as a consequence they are classed as criminals. "You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals." (The Hackers Manifesto, 1986).


References: 
Stockwell, S.(2013).Politics Now. (NCT week 6 lecture notes)
Mentor, T.(1986).The Hacker's Manifesto.


Tutorial Task: 
I completed the voting compass for the 2013 Australian election and found that I was closer to agreeing with the Greens than the Labor or Liberal National party.
Though the results brought up a few anomalies, such as giving me results that supposedly linked me to the Greens even though I  had answered with a completely opposite response and belief. Though I am most likely going to support the Labor party.

Another online political participation scheme I found was the opinion polls from the Sydney Morning Herald.
http://www.smh.com.au/polls/opinion
Where you can go through and select different answers to questions/ opinions posted by the Sydney Morning Herald.

Week 5- Social Media, Web 3.0 and Tutorial Task (Survey)

Tutorial Task: If you would all like to fill in a survey I made for this weeks tutorial task that would be great, I'm excited to see how varied everyone's answers will be: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CMPPSLP
Thanks!
For the purpose of this task I will also post the link to my Tumblr as I do not have Facebook.

Week 5 focused on Social media and web 3.0. With the lecture covering the evolution of social media and the concept of 'churn'. It's a destructive concept, churn, the prospect for an entire website and the different intertwining streets of ideas and culture around that website could completely disappear as soon as another improved version of it comes along. Take the churn from Myspace to Facebook for example. Myspace was immensely popular and when Facebook came along, it shifted in popularity until Myspace was scarcely used! The company has been completely shadowed by Facebook in a short amount of time! I feel that it is only a matter of years until Facebook is overtaken by another improved version of itself. Already, we see blogging websites such as Tumblr, bought by Yahoo for '$1.1 Billion cash' (Zennie, M. & Boyle, L), become more popular by internet users. Is this because of the fact that you don't have to post pictures of yourself or personal details of your life if you don't wish to? As a tumblr user, I can attest to the fact that I have never had Tumblr ask or pressure me for details about where I work or where I was born or what I ate for lunch that day.

Below is the article from the Daily Mail about the sale of Tumblr to Yahoo. I think it'll be interesting to see if Yahoo makes any significant changes to Tumblr, and if those changes will make users more inclined to find and use another blogging or social media website. Perhaps churn will eventually occur to Tumblr?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2326998/Yahoo-buys-Tumblr-1-1billion-Founder-David-Karp-tech-tycoon.html

This week the lecture spoke of Web 2.0. From my understanding, Web 2.0 has meant ease of posting information to the web and increased ease of finding information, not just ease of ability to read it as was seen in Web 1.0 where the main focus was also simply building the web.
Whilst researching the concept of Web 3.0 further, I came across a website that had on it a graph showing a brief history of; the PC era, Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and even Web 4.0. The graph also had dates showing the years when these events occurred, or will occur in the case of Web 3.0. Which, according to the graph started in 2010 and also in the case of Web 4.0, which will supposedly begin in 2020.
Here is the link to the website! It also holds an expanded definition of Web 3.0.
http://lifeboat.com/ex/web.3.0

References:
Zennie, M & Boyle, L.(2013). Billion Dollar Deal Makes 26-Year-Old America's Next Tech Tycoon: High School Drop-Out behind Blogging Site Tumblr Sells It To Marissa Mayer's Yahoo!. Mail Online.