Sunday, March 25, 2007

WEEK 3

After learning about the history of computers in the lecture last week, i realised i already new a fair bit about its origins as i studied multimedia certificate course all through highschool. So i decided to do something interesting for this weeks blog so i researched microsoft conspiricy theories and see if any are credible, which i hardly doubt they would be. I found a website that makes up new theories each week for entertainment purposes but would not be surpirsed if microsoft utilized these ideas as part of their PR campaign as some are quite good.
However there are a few extremely obscure ideas such as the idea that miscrosoft computers were invented to spy on its users....

Some people on this website believe that Microsoft, the software company that dominates our computers today, is spying on everyone who has microsoft software on their computers. They claim that Microsoft has hidden files that records all the websites you view, even if you did delete them and all emails you've ever sent. I choose to believe that computers and microsoft were invented for better reasons than to simply spy on its users as people are just not that interesting enough. it would be terribly boring seeing every website that every microsoft user has acsessed and i couldnt see anyone being employed to do this..... i think there are too many paranoid people out there!

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

WEEK 2

My notes from the lecture week 2

The origin and introduction of French new wave cinema and its elements: Notes

The 20th century saw the introduction of film, newspapers, television and radio thus delevoped careers to expand these new industries, ie: Communication, cultural and media stuides which needed journalists, PR workers, advertising, marketers and disigners. Computer related industries demanded need for cyber studies, internet studies, cyber culture and web studies. All new technologies and the need for them can be dated back to France where Ferdinand de Saussure established semiotics: the study of signs.

Semiotics contained 2 components: the signifier ie; the library sign
and the signified; the library itself with all the books

Denotation is the actual meaning of the sign ie: sign reads dangerous curves ahead the denotation would be 'drive carefully'.

There were many new and differnt reasons for communications studies in the 1920's in the US due to the new effect of mass media after times of war which began to have a more minimal effect in the 30's. The 80's saw a return of mass effect which could be due to the increased fear of nuclear war and the hype such theories create lead to mass media frenzies and society beoming more heavily reliant in knowing what is going on in their world.

French New Wave cinema wanted to make films about these more important issues like the looming threat of nuclear war rather then hollywood cowboy movies. They did this by using different techniques such as:
- Shooting on location
- Using natural lighting
- Improvised dialogue and plotting
- Direct sound recording
- Long takes

All of these tehcniques and reasons for using such techniques are talked about in more depth on this website: http://www.greencine.com/static/primers/fnwave1.jsp

French new wave was encouraged by the cheap, cameras and audio equipment and the need for a more cultural take on hollywood cinema They used simple methods to tell complex, challenging stories like La Jetee which became the basis for Twelve Monkeys and Alphaville which might be claimed as the first work of cyberpunk.

I recently watched the movie 12 monkeys to see a modern take on French New Wave cinema and researched the technology elements of the film ie: time travel and why it was relevent in relatin to new technologies and came across an interesting analysis of this element here is the link: http://www.mjyoung.net/time/monkeys.html

The theory behind the time travel element and why it is relevant today, is that in the time these movies were made, the thought of the internet and other such tehnologies seemed just as far fetched as the theory of time travel. In an age where anything is possible, technologically speaking, the idea of time travel in the not to distant future is very plausable.

I found the movie interesting and at times a little confusing but as far as modern cinema goes, there were definitely elements that reflected the simple methods used to tell complex stories of french new wave cinema ie; time travel. I have not read the text however so could not tell whether they stayed true to the story without adding that 'hollywood' element.