My Video

Here is my 2-3 Minute Video. 

I use a simple method of strongly communicating a point. 

Week 6 - Tutorial Task - Politics Online

What opportunities can you find for political participation via the internet. How many of the following can you achieve while sticking to your political beliefs?

Sign an e-petition.
I signed a petition for the Mackay to Gold Coast plains to begin to operate instead of just to Brisbane. This petition was found at; http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/mkyoolflight

Respond to a professional blogger at a major news site.
I put a response to Mayor Tom Tates blog requesting that he be sure not to use his Mayoral power to improve his own personal business prospects... eg.... the Islander being right next door to a new casino..

What is Barak Obama up to today? Can you send him a message about the importance of freedom on the  internet?
I went directly to Barak Obama's twitter page in order to see what he was up to today but most of it was links to his campaign and his store where he sells items to raise funds for his campaign and has a little to say about Mr Romney.

What are the Australian Government's plans to censor the internet (the so-called "Clean Feed")?
The govenments clean feed filter is an attempt to filter out sites that don't have a registerd URL though the Internet Service Prociders. This process is intended to reduce the potential of illegal sites, especially those with child abuse content. Some of the problems with this is that filtering the internet is no easy process and the governments ability and right to filter content could be difficult. The filtering can be bypassed, torrent file sharing would not be able to filter it and more.

What place does censorship have in a democracy?
Censorship is a delicate issue. Freedom of speech and the freedom of the people to see and do how they please is at the heart of democracy. There is sometimes a fine line between freedom and bondage. The freedom to not censor certain things could lead people to find the freedom to harm others. The freedom to not censor things from children could lead them to not developing properly. There is a difficult balance here, one that I don't pretend to have a definitive answer for.

When will the NBN get to your place? What are the benefits?
According to the NBN website for the southport/labrador area December 2013 is the start date of putting it in and the last work in scheduled for June 2015. The main benefit of the NBN is the fast speeds that are stated to be 100 times faster than the current average speeds (NBN, 2012).

Find out who your local, state and federal representatives are. Send one a message.
Local representative is councillor grummit for the local government. Verity Barton is my state representative for the state government and then Stuart Robert. These people represent me.... Supposedly...  I emailed Verity Barton and frank asked her what she has been doing for Broadwater lately. Her predecessor Peta Kaye Croft was a really involved member and contributed to our Church and Youth Community and I am genuinely intrigued to see what exactly this member is planning for the area.

Look up the Queensland or Australian Hansard to find the last time your local member spoke in parliament.
29/5/2012.... Her Maiden speech was don on this date but I have seen nothing since then..... Not apparently the most active politician.

Let your local member know what you think about their last speech.
Not an easy thing to do when you don't want to be mean but want to be truthful.....

Week 6 - Lecture Content - Democracy?

This weeks lecture content went through ideas about democracy, cyber politics, edemocracy and liberal democracy and its different forms. The part that I found most intriguing was the discussion on democracy and how it is currently seen as the 'end point' of of political evolution, a statement I find hard to agree with.

I am currently completing my fourth year of my Urban and Environmental Planning Degree and one of my current courses is called 'Public Involvement and Community Development' and consequently I have been exposed to a substantial amount of academic journals on the topic and on neoliberal thought. I appears evident from many of my prescribed academic articles that there is beginning to be a push away from top down management to community empowerment (Ansell & Gash, 2008). Collaborative governance where people get to directly be involved in decision making is becoming a reality due to the possibilities created by the internet and new developments in communication technology. More and more it appears that people can have a voice, millions of people can communicate in a single space and be involved in matters that are physically located thousands of kilometers away from them.

Is there really no greater form of political representation that representative democracy? I find myself highly critical.

The problems with representative democracy can be rattled off by anyone with something to say on politics. Corruption, lies, dishonesty, media manipulation and more. Regardless of how much better than hereditary monarchy, constitutional monarch or other forms of governance democracy is, there is still room for improvement and the possibility of mass referendum style voting on political issues can really bring the power into the hands of the people more and more. Many of the elements of democracy are irreplaceable but there are certainly areas where people having more power before and after election periods that should be improved. Hoven (2005) stated that;

There are many optimistic views on the way the Internet may revitalize and reinvigorate our democracies. Many internet-supported democratic experiments have been undertaken in the last 10 years and the experimentation continues (p. 51)

I found this article by Hoven interesting and agree that there is certainly space for eDemocracy to improve the democratic processes in the western world.

Ansell, C. & Gash, A. (2008). Collaborative governance in theory and politics. Journal of Public Administration 

        Research & Theory, 18; 543-71.

Hoven, J. (2005). E-democracy, E-contestation and the monitorial citizen. Ethics and Information Technology, 

        7:51-59. 

Week 4 Tutorial Task - Timeline

Cyberpunk Timeline

Below is my Timeline of some of the key moments in the development of the cyber punk movement;

http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/the-history-of-cyberpunk--5

Time toast was a really simple and easy to use program that allowed you to very simply insert dates into a timeline of whatever distance you like. One thing I found irritating though was the fact that if you weren't exactly sure of the specific date of an outcome you couldn't just put it in generally, it required a specific date, therefore for the dates I wasn't sure of I felt forced to 'make up' a date because only the months were available...

Week 5 - Tutorial Task

Task 1. Create a Survey - 

The survey I created through Survey Monkey was created to find out peoples perceptions about Social Media through a set of different questions.

To see and fill out the survey follow this link:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8DCQXRD

After Some people have filled out my survey I will post some findings from my Survey.

Week 5 Readings - Social Media

This weeks readings were on social media and I particularly enjoyed the news article reading on Facebook. I am personally a pretty committed user to Facebook simply because I was sucked in..... In order to stay 'connected' I decided to join and since then, I've used it exactly for that. Certain tasks like sharing funny videos with a few friends I know would enjoy them and writing messages to people I don't often see.

The reading really went through some of the weakness of facebook and google and how their overbearing invasion of privacy has the potential to scare people off. I find this point really relevant because I really get frustrated by the level of dishonesty for these corporations, selling details, saving information for marketing and taking more information than is necessary for subscriptions. One of the readings also outlined how facebook has limitless rights to your content once you upload it to your site. These facts are particularly frustrating and makes me want to escape from the grip of these companies if there arose a convenient alternative. Its strange how these companies can make you feel like you 'NEED' something you never really needed before.

One of the articles stated that people will eventually grow tired of these companies, they just need something NEW and EXCITING to come around the corner. People will always want something new and fresh, now matter how many times facebook gives itself a face-lift eventually people will want to move on to a newer, younger and more exciting thing.

Week 3 Task 2 - MySpace.... What's MySpace?

MySpace.... Whats MySpace?

Myspace was a craze that disappeared as fast as it appeared, its rise to fame was unprecedented but now the site remains comparatively unused. Like fashion, internet sites can become fashionable and in the next season become entirely 'uncool'. This technology was heralded as a means of creating better friendships but this is highly challenged in the academic world and some seem to think that this creates divides between people (Thelwall, 2009). In 2007, 55% of all  American youths that were aged between 12 and 17 had profiles on soicial networking sites like MySpace (The MySpace culture, 2007). After only a short time now Myspace is "lagging behind Facebook and Bebo" (Ramsay, 2009). In 2006 Myspace was the most viewed site on the internet, and even got higher visits than sites like Google and Yahoo (Ramsay, 2009). But despite its best efforts to maintain its popularity Myspace has fallen down into the hallows of the past.

Although MySpace was not the first social networking site it was undoubtebly the one that put social networking on the map. After this came the epic rise of Facebook which has now dominated the market and boast tremendous annual profits. MySpace changed the online world and influenced the way that people engage each other on the internet, especially young people. Although its influence on the online world is undisputed the reality is now that the MySpace is commonly perceived as the 'neanderthal of social networks' (Ramsay, 2009).

One of the main reasons why MySpace has 'fallen from grace' is because it "assumed it had won the race, focused on ad sales and forgot about the audience' (Ramsay, 2009). For anyone that is up to date with Social Networking they know that MySpace has seen its last day, the only question is 'how long can Facebook last'. Those who think that Facebook will be timeless will be surprised, as surprised as the team working for MySpace were when the death knell sounded.






References

Thelwall, M. (2009). Homophily in MySpace. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci., 60: 219–231. doi: 10.1002/asi.20978

 The MySpace culture. (2007). Voices from the Middle, 15(2), 59-60. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/docview/213930584?accountid=14543
Ramsay, F. (2009). MySpace. Marketing, , 17-17. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/docview/214939128?accountid=14543