Missed Tasks

In my haste to get everything finalized and uploaded I hadn’t kept abreast of the Discussion Board and, yesterday when I was going over it, I realized that I hadn’t done the requirements of Module Five. Not only had I missed Module Five altogether but I hadn’t completed one or two of the earlier tasks – I am so annoyed with myself!!

I have to admit that now that the assessment date has passed the motivation to finish this in terrible, but here goes.

Module 5 – Information Ecologies

I see ecology as the study of ecosystems; how these systems/communities grow and develop, how they progress or evolve over time and what we, as a society, can learn from these progressions

Before reading this module I had vague ideas about what the term “Information Ecologies” might mean such as the way in which people interacted with computers, used the available programs and interacted with other people on the web, how the programs and the web were changing and evolving to encapsulate the changing human society. After having read the suggested readings plus a couple of extras, I think that Nardi and O’Day probably come closest to conceptualising what I see as “Information Ecology”:

– A system of people, practices, values and technologies in a particular local environment;

– Focus attention on relationships involving tools and people and their practices;

– Responds to local environmental changes and local interventions;

– Individuals with real relationships to other individuals.

– Suggests diversity and implies continual evolution;

With this in mind, I looked at the questions “how might the metaphor of an ‘Ecology’ impact on the way [I] think about, understand and use the internet?”

Information Ecology is another term for the way we look or talk about how we as a community/society use and adapt to computers/technology to communicate, learn, develop, and advance. This is not something that I haven’t thought about prior to this course. Computers have become so ingrained in society that not to be able to use one or understand some of the jargon associated with them disadvantages a person considerably. The amount of knowledge/experience you have about this technology decides your position in the community or the sector which you belong (to use Owen’s metaphor of an ant colony – are you a queen ant or a worker ant?).

From participating in this course though, I am not only more aware of the wide variety of technologies and tools that are available to me to use and participate in this community, but how fast these technologies and tools are evolving and the need to keep abreast of the changes.

“Information” and “Communication” within the Framework of an “Information Ecology”:

Information and communication are closely intertwined, to the extent that I doubt you could have one without the other. Information is the knowledge communicated or received concerning some fact or circumstance and, communication is the means of transmitting, imparting, partaking of or receiving information (Macquarie Dictionary).

Communication in the Information Ecology takes on many forms that have not previously been available to everyone in society. The progress of Web 2.0 with blogging, chat rooms, Facebook and MySpace, along with Wikis etc has broadened the range of vehicles in which the information and technologies can be spread. It has also made technological information and communication easier and more readily available to most levels of society.

"Why don’t we talk of a “communication ecology?"

As mentioned above information and communication are closely intertwined, to the extent that I do not think you could have one without the other. However it is the information that is the knowledge, communication is purely the means of spreading the knowledge. I think that Julian explains it best in his blog “The concept of a ‘communication ecology’ isn’t refuted as a concept but it would be superfluous to try and describe communication to the exclusion of knowledge when the two elements are combined to create information.”

Module 2 – Newgroups

“Communicating in the Infosphere” moved me right out of my comfort zone and became quite confusing (to me) with all of the various groups, discussion boards and lists. I personally have only ever been exposed to email (which I use daily) and a couple of newsletters. There appeared to be very little difference between some of the groups and I wondered the purpose of having so many different yet seemingly the same forms of communication.

Newsgroups can be best summed up as:

- online bulletin boards where people can debate, deliberate, philosophize argue and rant;

- sometimes referred to as user groups or discussion groups;

- good for looking into very narrow, well-defined topics;

- generally not moderated – no-one removes objectionable material

- can be used to download image and music files and videos

I had chosen to follow/participate in a gardening newsgroup, the topics varied from when to plant potatoes, to how to keep the chooks in the backyard home, but the message that I followed was about remedies for hayfever. As a hayfever sufferer for many years I was interested to hear what other people had to say. Unfortunately there was very little response, and the information there was things that had already been tried. I added my slice of knowledge and have been watching since to see if there has been any response to the advice I gave.

Advanced Searching on the Internet

Learning to refine searches by using search modifiers such as ‘+’or ‘AND’, ‘-‘ or ‘NOT’, ‘OR’ and double exclamation marks helps to greatly narrow the number of hits of your search and make your search a lot more efficient. Refining searches can also be as simple as using the Advanced Serach feature on most search engines to select a specific domain, specific file type, regions and dates of articles.

“Advanced searching involves the development of both techniques (including, for example, detailed knowledge of Boolean logic, but also speed in filling out search engines), and also informational competence, in which you instinctively consider and apply your knowledge of the ways information can be categorised and organised, translating from others classifications into the pattern that you are establishing. Technical skill in searching is not, thus, sufficient” (Concept 3. Effective communication combines technical and communicative competence NET11).

The use of advance search options may differ from search engine to search engine, so it is best to check the help file before using them. Boolean Logic is the term used for using ‘AND’, ‘NOT’ or ‘OR’ to link words and/or phrases. It is a good idea to always use CAPs when using these operators. Implied Boolean Logic is the term used for use ‘+’ and ‘-‘.

AND or ‘+’: narrows the search by returning sites that contain all of the keywords entered – the more keywords entered the narrower the search.
Eg: attention AND economy
NOT or ‘-‘: narrows the search by eliminating sites that contain keywords
Eg: attention NOT economy
OR: expands the search by suggesting sites containing any the keywords, the more keywords used the more sites that will be retrieved.
Eg: attention OR economy
“”: narrows the search by returning sites with containing the exact phrase.
These are basic search strategies only, “Lost in Space” is an excellent tutorial that will guide users through more advanced techniques.

Best search technique for:

• Biggest number of hits relating to these key words – simply type in Attention Economy in Google, about 8,870,000 hits


• Information most relevant to what you ACTUALLY wanted to look for – “Attention Economy” in Google Scholar, selecting Advanced Scholar Search and selecting Social Science, Arts and Humanities sites, about 375 hits


• Information coming only from University sources – Attention Economy, typing “.edu” in Search within site or domain (although this may not necessarily be universities it could also incorporate schools and colleges), or by using Google Scholar as above.
  

We were asked to choose the best three sources found in the previous task and record the following information about these sites (URL; author; institution; blurb/summary/screen shot) using whatever software or tool we thought appropriate.

I have downloaded and been using delicious.com and had already recorded one or two of the resources that I used for the assignment. I did however download three of the sites retrieved from the above searches.

To save a site into delicious.com, you need to have the "tags" button on the toolbar in your browser, it is then simply a matter of clicking on the tag while in the page. A “Save a Bookmark” form appears on your screen with the URL and title of the page already in place, you then have the option of adding notes about the page and ‘tags’ to help identify what the page is suitable for.

I really liked this program because:
1. You are able to categorise your bookmarks with the tags
2. You are able to make quite comprehensive notes on the site, which can come in handy when you are doing an annotated bibliography, and
3. I am able to access this site from any computer that has Internet access.

Just as a side note, I have recently (last night) downloaded connotea.com, another social bookmarking program, and have found it to be really good as well. It offers a lot of the same features that delicious.com does, but I am still playing with it to see if it is as good!

Annotated Site:

This is one of the annotations that I used in my Concepts Assignment, although I have changed the comments marginally.

The Attention Economy and the Net – http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue2_4/goldhaber

Michael Goldhaber is the author of numerous papers and articles on the Attention Economy, and has been invited to speak at various conferences and seminars on the topic. At the time of publication of this article, he was the head of The Centre for Technology and Democracy, and a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Institute for the Study of Social Change. This paper is a draft of Conference Presentation, but I still found it to be comprehensive, explaining and covering in detail the concept of the Attention Economy. Goldhaber uses everyday comparisons and analogies to help students unfamiliar with the topic. Although written in 1997 it is still referred by current day advocates and I think is still relevant in today’s society.

In terms of my own personal future use, I think that the original body of information that I saved to delicious.com would be most useful. In delicious.com, I actually copied and pasted segments/paragraphs/abstracts from the webpage that gave me information about the relevance of the site, the sites were also tagged according to their use. The annotated version gave only some of this information, although the positive aspect to the annotation is that it verifies the validity of the site/author.

External users however would probably find the annotation more suitable; it gives the reader a brief overview of who the author is, why he wrote the paper, what the paper is about and whether it was still relevant in today’s society. From this information the external user could judge for themselves whether the site is worth visiting – relevance of information depends on why the reader wants to use it, and what is relevant to me may not necessarily be relevant to the next person.