Week 1 - Introduction

I'm thinking I may think of digc202 global networks in terms of a mission or journey, very corny!  The first manned space flight to circumnavigate the moon was Apollo 8 in 1968.  The year before I was born.  The mission was undertaken by the US and didn't land on the moon but entered the moon's gravitational field.  I thought it was interesting that the mission was number '8' as the flight path took this form because the moon's orbit runs counter to that of earth.  I would like to look in more detail at the cultural and social properties of what earth and moon represent ie. senses (visual and aural), time and space, wave and particle, light and dark, male and female etc.  The Apollo 6 mission had problems surrounding hydrogen and helium which were addressed in the Apollo 8 mission, I would like to look into this also in more detail.

The Apollo 8 mission was the first time that human beings witnessed through the naked eye 'the dark side of the moon'.  Subsequently, images of this were picked up by the media and televised ubiquitously.  I'm am interested in the impact that this has had on Western culture, and also global culture through the process of globalisation over the last 40 years.  I think that it would be particularly interesting to look at how cyberculture both reflects and reproduces our curiosity and desire to experience the exploration of previously undiscovered terrain.  I'm still thinking about what my digc202 theme could likely be to encompass all of this and am wondering if anyone else is interested in how culture reflects and enables our desire to experience and replicate space exploration through cybercultural embodiment.

I really enjoyed the Manuel Castells reading.  It was particularly interesting I thought where it discussed the tension between democratic centre and the media as an information/knowledge hub and how in global society power resides in the networks and joining fibers rather than in traditional hierarchies, structures and power elites.  The fact that power and struggle combined with alliance and cooperation are characteristic of all (Western?) societies was an interesting point.  Global society seems rather to empower the agency of the individual and cyberculture addresses our need for community and social contact.  It seems that rather than society being subservient to 'structure', post-modern society is 'using' structure for its own purposes.  Structure and content seem to be reversed or turned inside out in global society, or perhaps society has 'expanded' or moved further out to the edges and the boundary has grown?  Perhaps centre and edge are still two classes like Marx discusses but their status has been reversed by post-modern culture (Castells 2004)?

Rebecca's pocket made an analogy between weblogs compared to journalism are like rubbish/waste compared to value/quality.  Does digc202 examine what we have previously 'thrown away' as worthless with regards to knowledge and information??  Rebecca's pocket mentioned cyber ethics and the importance of; transparency, acknowledging doubt, providing links, leaving a trail, building, keeping permanent records of any online changes/edits and disclosing conflicts of interest (Blood 2002).  Time to tweet now!

References:

Blood, R 2002, The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog, accessed 27/7/2011, http://www.rebeccablood.net/handbook/excerpts/weblog_ethics.html

Castells, M 2004, Afterword: why networks matter, accessed 27/7/2011, http://www.kirkarts.com/wiki/images/5/51/Castells_Why_Networks_Matter.pdf