User talk:Everynameistaken15

This is the discussion page of Everynameistaken15 (discuss • contribs) 13:47, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Educational Project #1 - Screen Time
With the first episode uploaded on YouTube on 29th June 2011, Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared is an on-going mini series of five episodes. Created by Joseph Pelling and Becky Sloan in an art studio in Shoreditch, it consists of five short videos (around four minutes each) that combine animation, stop motion and digital. Each episode takes the form of a Sesame street-style educational programme for kids, with puppets and goggly-eyed, felt-made objects. Here, the three main puppets, Duck Guy, Yellow Guy and Red Guy, guided by a 'teacher of the day' learn about different topics such as creativity, time, love, computers and food through catchy and funny songs. That is, until around half of the video, when the scene takes a delirious, disturbing turn, revealing the true nature of the mentors and capturing the insane world in which these puppets live. Blood, raw meat, gory organs and frenetic dance moves mix with paint, leaves and glitter, all while the diegetic music accelerates, the room spins and characters scream in close-up shots. The viewer can catch hints about the turn that these scenes are about to take. For instance, in the first episode, which is themed on creativity, the mentor-notepad encourages the three protagonists to be creative and think creatively about the world. Then, it covers in black paint Yellow Guy’s portrait of a clown saying that 'he might need to slow down' and also gives him a cutout X when he chooses green as his favourite colour, despotically asserting that 'green is not a creative colour'. Similarly, in the second episode, about time, when the mentor-clock is philosophically questioned by the characters about the reality of time it starts screaming and makes their ears bleed. Then, they start to rotten and decade in high speed as if they were growing older all at once, all while they beg him to 'make it stop'.

The first episode, originally posted on Vimeo, was later uploaded on YouTube and given the opportunity to be screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012 after going viral. With its second episode, funded by Channel 4 Random Acts, the series caught the eye of larger companies that wanted to sponsor it. However, the creators responded that they wanted to keep it fairly odd and have the freedom to do exactly what they wished to do. Likewise, they felt that because the series was born out of the internet, it was fair to keep it there. Indeed, around the miniseries has grown such a following that the other episodes have been funded by a KickStarter of £104,905. This same fanbase also elaborates theories and creates its own stop-motions beyond and within the original narrative, under permission of its creators, who explicitly leave open the episodes to any and anyone’s interpretation. --Everynameistaken15 (discuss • contribs) 16:14, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Comments
Comment: When I saw the first of those terrifying videos a couple years back, it creeped me out in a way nothing else has. I admire the sheer production value of the videos, even though I only watch them reluctantly or when forced. I never realised the series had gotten funding from Channel 4, or that any company had wanted to invest in it. I'm glad to hear the twisted creators decided to keep as much creative freedom as they could though. I'm also a big fan of any piece of work that's open to so much interpretation and fan theories, even if hearing them all makes my head spin. -ReluctantCyborg (discuss • contribs) 02:22, 19 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi, yes the series is definitely disturbing but I personally think that creativity beats creepiness in this particular case! I am also a fan of these kind of theories but they can seriously blow your mind away sometimes. However, thank you for your comment :)--Everynameistaken15 (discuss • contribs) 10:01, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise 1: Formative Feedback
This post offers a good overview of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared and offers a good explanation for why you have chosen it. It's also good to see some use of footnotes, although unfortunately the text of these have been swallowed by numbers in the actual footnotes. Your comments are thoughtful and demonstrate a good level of engagement.

A post of this standard roughly corresponds to the following grade descriptor: Good. Among other things, good entries will make a clear point in a clear way. They will relate concepts to original examples in a straightforward fashion. They will make effective use of the possibilities of the form (including links, as well as perhaps copyright-free videos and images, linked to from Wiki Commons). They may also demonstrate a broader understanding of the module's themes and concerns, and are likely to show evidence of reading and thinking about the subject material. The wiki markup formatting will be very clear. Sprowberry (discuss • contribs) 10:10, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Educational Project #2 - Visibility and Online Footprint
Despite having a profile on most common websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkdln, Snapchat, Instagram and Tumblr I tend not to be very active on them. That is, I prefer to look at other people’s posts and comments than actually share and engage with my acquaintances through content production. Moreover, I do not use my real name or one linkable to me directly on any sites except for Facebook and Linkdln, where I try to be very careful about what I post too for precaution towards future employers and vetting processes. On the contrary, on other websites, I use usernames that vary according to the platforms so that all my profiles are not, at least at first sight, linkable together as owned by the same person. Despite the idea that just as we present different ‘versions’ of ourselves in real life equally we modify behaviour and public image on SNSs, I do not change my behaviour in order to interact differently with different audiences by changing my persona. In fact, even on identity-based websites my content reduces to a few songs shared from YouTube, a profile picture that most of the time does not include me as a physical entity or silly images that have no meaning or aim whatsoever, except for either confusing people or being funny or ironic. This too is the kind of content that I share on non-identity based websites. This in part matches but also contradicts Murray’s idea that the pictures we post are deemed worthy of recording and preserving, and that SNS has expanded the range of photos deemed worthy, including the everyday and banal. Namely, the pictures I share are not worth recording and I would not, in real life, print and frame them. That is, they are not the result of a convergent practice of personal photography. They are indeed banal and meaningless but a meaninglessness that I find amusing and valuable within a flow of 'important', committed pictures that I often see on my timeline.

For what concerns my self-representation, as Mendelson and Papacharissi suggest in real life we consciously and unconsciously work to define how we are perceived and we try to construct positive impressions by emphasising certain characteristics through dress, hairstyle, behaviour and/or speech while diminishing others considered flawed. I believe that my presence online does resembles my real identity, as the characteristic I think of as flawed is my whole physical appearance and my way of interacting with others. For this reason, I don’t post pictures of myself or with other people because I do not like to see myself; if I am tagged I usually untag myself and hide the picture from my timeline. This matches my real life behaviour where I actively ask people not to take picture of me or of me and other people, even in the background, if I happen to be at an event. In this sense, my presence online is a sort of 'asceticism' that offers me the chance to shed my physical form through a withdrawal from the contingent life of the body and social relations and instead pursue a set of inner-self values and interests. Likewise, I tend not to disclose my thoughts or feelings unless the situation requires me to say something and my comment actually contributes to the discussion or issue. Therefore, I never post status updates, rarely spontaneously comments or like other people’s posts and never share appeals or online petitions if I am not already doing something 'in real life' for the cause. Regarding privacy settings, I try to be careful, for example by sharing with friends and not publicly on Facebook. Equally, on all other websites I do not edit my profile with private information and generally do not follow anyone whom I know offline. For what concerns websites like YouTube, Amazon or any type of website that stores your data for companies to trade I do have a blocking tracking ads extension but I am not an expert enough to prevent other forms of tracking.

In conclusion, does my actual identity align with my online one? I think so. I disclose little information about myself where people know me in real life, either because I am not very active or because I have no interest in representing myself. On non-identity based websites I try more to construct a reflection of my values for my ephemeral amusement through pictures and videos that are self-referential, indulging in a exhibition but not interacting with my potential audience. While this approach may seem detached and pretentious I think it offers me an equilibrated way to be connected, to be in control of at least my own narrative and to remain conscious of my small relevance within this myriad of information. --Everynameistaken15 (discuss • contribs) 00:00, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Comments
Hi, I think this is really interesting! The point you make that you like to disguise your identity and disclose information is very rare in this society. It is different to see that you only share certain pictures as a way of demonstrating your values and ideals and it seems that although you do use social media to keep up to date and look at others pages, the purpose of your platforms are different. It is obvious that by doing this you feel your account and information is more secure and this is something which I might look into doing in order to feel more safe online. LucyClaire (discuss • contribs) 13:36, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi, thank you for your comment. You understood perfectly what I meant, hopefully I did not come out as too pretentious! But yes, this way I feel more in control of the way I am perceived and at the same time I gain enough knowledge about the people around me not to be out of depth completely. Thanks again! Everynameistaken15 (discuss • contribs) 15:29, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi, you talked, interestingly, about asceticism, describing your online life as an act of self-actualization and sublimation: Papacharissi also gives us a brief account of Heidegger's theories on identity and privacy, where the German philosopher, who of course comes from a pre-virtual era, describes ascetic self-actualization as only applicable to state of loneliness, and in the relationship with the nature, but if asceticism is possible online, and I think that it is possible, is cyberspace a part of nature? GABRIEL9 (discuss • contribs) 11:31, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Educational Project #3 - Information Overload!
The relationship between humans and technologies, in its most primitive term, has always caused different reactions, with some bursting in a cry of fear that was reminiscent of good, old values and other who saw in the medium the chance to finally seize the moment and have unprecedented abilities. For instance, books were labelled by Seneca as a distraction and by Leibniz as an horrible mass that kept growing. Likewise, the communisation of printed information following the invention of print was seen as a plaguing excess of information. Recent media technologies and data that they constantly make available surely have increased the scale and the speed of information availability and proportionately both concerns and curiosities of the two previously stated positions.

What I believe is fundamental to recognise here, within these two narratives is the power and also limits of humans and their mind. In fact, the information that are made available through social networks, email, messages, rss feed, blogs and videos are not to be treated neither as a scary flood from which we are left gasping nor as a something we think we can control in its entirety. What this interaction certainly shows is that we need to be able to find among this abundance the information we find useful, that is, we need to learn to prioritise and layer information on top. To do so is part of our cognitive process, where we draw from the chaos the data that we repute more important, elaborate them and eventually make them part of our field of knowledge by internalisation. Thinking of the web as something that lives by itself and simply washes over us, prevents us from recognising our impact on it. Namely, we are part of a digital ecology less of a human vs. technology dichotomy. For instance, while multitasking makes me feel like I am more in control because I can manage more than one activity at once, I will be forced, as regretful at that may be, by my own body to stop after a while because I cannot cope too much in that situation, as I will get mentally tired sooner and my eyes will ache.

One of the issues mostly brought up is the impact that this overload has in a work or study environment, with a study commissioned by Hewlett-Packard reporting that the IQ scores of knowledge workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls fell from their normal level by an average of 10 points and professors claiming that academics are often distracted during classes by their need to be constantly reachable. While recognising the impact that work-related overload has on workers by companies might necessitate a change in behaviour and company's policy, we can help ourselves and try to filter our own flow. Some methods can be used to pre-select information, for instance by discerning the people we follow on twitter and thus relying on fewer, indispensable sources. Other apps like Twine, a collaborative bookmarking tool, keeps me informed only on those topics that I find interesting by channeling to me online content that other people who subscribe to my twines have already found interesting. Obviously, this requires a certain amount of trust. Equally, some email softwares like outlook have recently developed features to automatically filter junk email and spam based on you email history. For academics and people who need to set aside time to study without interruptions, like me, applications such as SelfControl block pre-chosen distracting websites like Facebook for a pre-set amount of time to prevent you from checking them. Of course, the necessity of relying on applications and websites to prevent us from accessing similar sites is quite ironic. However, it emphases the idea that convergent technologies are no longer something that simply causally determines us but something that echoes an historical matter: all technological knowledge ultimately becomes part of the medium with which we experience the world. Everynameistaken15 (discuss • contribs) 00:26, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Comments
Hi, this is a very well-written piece and your philosophical twist to the two narratives is an interesting take on how we view this information overload. It is true, however, that when looking at the amount of information, our minds prioritise certain information over other information, even on a subconscious level. The downside to this is that because of this 'always on' culture it that people might prioritise their Facebook feed above their academic work, which as you mention is a problem. I love how you mention the irony about having apps to keep you away from other apps, I hadn't quite noticed that yet. In the end, I believe it is all a question of how much self-control a person has in this environment. Marinieuw (discuss • contribs) 10:52, 4 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi, thanks for your comment! Yes, I certainly agree with you on that: in the end is only a matter of self-control and will power, at least in non-work-related overloads. One day, perhaps, new technologies will literally modify our brains to receive and store more information but however sci-fi this may sound, I'm not sure I would want that either! Everynameistaken15 (discuss • contribs) 11:07, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Educational Project #4 - Wikibook Project Reflective Account
As noted by Fuchs, Wikipedia is one of the best example we might want to bring up if we are talking about collectively created knowledge and the process of transforming self-knowledge in collective and group-based thought. The collaborative nature of Wikipedia and its content represent in a prototypical and new way an adaptation of communist stances both in its mode and means of production. Assessing the nature of our chapter in the Wikibook Project by comparison to what Wikipedia as an example of collective intelligence is is therefore crucial to understand some of the problems we have encountered.

When creating content "Wikipedians develop an ad hoc decision-making process which is based on debate and consensus and enables them to collaboratively edit Wikipedia articles". A similar cooperative work did not come naturally and easily for us. In fact, we struggled to find a clearcut decision-making process, mainly for one reasons: within the group of people working on the chapter there was not a mutually recognised starting date, although that was provided and suggested numerous times throughout the course. This meant that some people, myself included, started sub-dividing and providing a decision-making and topic-approving system that resulted not congenial to others once they joined the discussion. However, there was simply not enough time to redo an assessment on of how to proceed from scratch without compromising the work already done.

Notably, as Lévy suggests, in an intelligent community no disorder should occur if individuals acts are coordinated and evaluated in real time. This is precisely what lacked in our group: communication in real time, which stalled the decision-making and content-creating process. One reason for this issue is the nature of Wikipedia itself, as it is not platform for chat-like and instant communication such as other social media. This made difficult to communicate with each other on the Wikipedia discussion page, for often it was simply impossible to tag everyone in order for them to get a notification perhaps explaining a rule or an update. Indeed, individuals would have had to spontaneously check the page and scroll through many comments in order to see changes and indications and, despite some efforts, this did not always happened. Hence, a jammed communication did not comply with Fuchs’ theory about communication being the first and etymologically linked preferred form for commons-based project. Indeed, our small group of four people met offline and we helped each other, especially with markups, hyperlinks and page structure, but organising a meet-up with all other groups was not successful. Likewise, the number of people working on the page, although certainly difficult to control, is not an excuse for our poor communication system as articles on wikipedia usually count from seven up to twenty-one contributors.

Nonetheless, I think that we ultimately did a good job in promoting skills diversity by acknowledging others’ points of interests and strengths. This facilitated the "subjective implication of other individuals in a collective project". In fact, after initial disagreement on how to proceed we almost all managed to contribute with topics that we were greatly interested in, thus providing better content and creating around our set topic an interdisciplinary environment that was able to draw from different fields of knowledge. Indeed, the heterogeneity of people within our group was an aspect that in this case proved to be successful for "skills mobilisation" while other times, like mentioned before, signified an absence of shared preferences on how to proceed.

In addiction, a phenomenon that did happen was what I believe would be at most called an accidental hierarchy, if anything. Both Fuchs and Levy discourage a hierarchical structure for the building of collective intelligence and, while I am not able to say precisely why this happened, a form of it formed among groups, for most of the disagreement and anger was direct towards the same people. One of the reasons for this might be that commons-based projects, just like the communist theorisation that Fuchs compares Wikipedia to, does not allow for meritocracy, as individual merit is secondary to the greater public good created. Nonetheless, while it would have been a good thing if we all had the same motivation and effort-investment, this is simply not foreseeable when you put different people together. In particular, although a hierarchy is what most people would speak of, I would say that it was more a matter of zeal, regardless of merits' recognition: in a hierarchy some people are legitimately above others, while in this case some have only tried to be a step in front of others, possessing no other tools and knowledge than the ones available to all.

Furthermore, Fuchs emphasises how on Wikipedia Wikipedians derive pleasure from knowing that what they have created as encyclopaedic knowledge that is available to the world as common good. This means that their work is self-determined and, just like communism, its final product is shared by potentially everyone. For this reason, the workforce they produce has no exchange-value, is non-commodified and has a voluntary nature. Of course our intentions were genuine and we were not being coerced, but it is undeniable that being a graded course, our workforce was commodified and consequentially had an exchange value in the shape of a reward that equals to our given grade. This is not to say that our work was maliciously committed but that inevitably the incentives that we had were ultimately individualistic, even though they depended on our ability to cooperate with each other.

A feeling of frustration was definitely given by what Olson calls the free rider problem, where a small percentage of people in the group exploit the greater part. Now, to say that our group had free riders would be harsh but it’s evident that at various points instances of this type of strategy were shown,and also prevented by others. Indeed, the goal was for people to continuously edit the shared content, hence creating an always-better version of the arguments presented. However, this also entailed that if people who had joined later did not have anything more relevant to add, they wouldn’t have been able to contribute. Asking to purposely leave out empty spaces for people to later fill in, thus lowering voluntarily the quality of the content, is an issue that we had and that I believe was part of a free rider strategy.

Moreover, we faced a challenge also known in game theory as the prisoner's dilemma. An hypothesis says that if the game is repeated over and over again eventually a stable equilibrium of collaboration is reached. Because of time boundaries and users’ participation from the start, several more takes were not possible by the time we were all working on the project, which is regrettable as only towards the end we did actually manage to work collaboratively. Similarly, only towards the final day we really engaged in a peer-review process, by correcting references and adding content and links to other Wikipedia pages. This certainly reassess the idea that this type of collaborative intelligence building has to be taken up across time and cannot be done in one or two days.

Finally, although the environment was very competitive in some stances and careless in others, the final page that we created in Wikibooks is actually surprising and well articulated, perhaps showing that despite strenuous effort in communication and coordination we indeed contributed to the public good of communal knowledge. Everynameistaken15 (discuss • contribs) 19:27, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Comments
Hi, do you think prisoner's dilemma is inevitable or is it solvable? GABRIEL9 (discuss • contribs) 19:20, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, I think it depends on the variables. For instance, if there is no way for the two prisoners to get back at each other then according to the Nash Equilibrium betraying your partner always gives a better payoff than not doing it. However, there are numerous studies that actually prove that humans put in this situation do cooperate . Therefore, I think in the end really depends on the people and the circumstances in which they are put and the reason for which they were put there. Personally, it would depend on who my partner is and my relation to them, but generally blind trust on both parts makes it hard to say whether cooperation is possible or not Everynameistaken15 (discuss • contribs) 19:44, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Marker’s Feedback on Wikibook Project Work
There's a lot to commend here, and it is very clear that you have a good understanding of both the module content, and how the wiki platform is effectively used to explore these themes. Well done! Your engagement extends beyond discussion with colleagues and generous feedback on both exercises and ideas in the chapter talk page, but also through engagement with the teahouse. Your contribs show a constant engagement with the assignment, and an accumulation of knowledge and critical debate through appropriate secondary reading. It would, however, have been useful to see a greater variety in wiki markup, as some of the content is a bit flat.

Content (weighted 20%)

 * Your contribution to the book page gives an excellent brief overview of the subject under discussion in your chosen themed chapter. There is an excellent range of concepts associated with your subject, and the effort to deliver critical definitions, drawing from relevant literature and scholarship, and your own critical voice in the building of a robust argument is very much in evidence. The primary and secondary sources you found about the chapter’s themes cover an excellent range and depth of subject matter.

Understanding (weighted 30%)

 * Reading and research:
 * evidence of critical engagement with set materials, featuring discriminating command of a comprehensive  range of relevant materials and analyses
 * evidence of independent reading of appropriate academic and peer-reviewed material to an exemplary level
 * Argument and analysis:
 * well-articulated and well-supported argument through considered judgement relating to key issues, concepts or procedures
 * exemplary evidence of critical thinking (through taking a position in relation to key ideas from the module, and supporting this position);
 * comprehensive evidence of relational thinking (through making connections between key ideas from the module and wider literature, and supporting these connections);
 * considerable evidence of independent critical ability

Engagement (weighted 50%)

 * Evidence from contributions to both editing and discussion of content of an exceptional standard (i.e. volume and breadth of activity as evidenced through contribs)
 * Considerable levels of engagement with and learning from other Wikipedians about the task of writing/editing content for a Wikibook
 * Highly original reflexive, creative and well-managed use of discussion pages using deployment of considered judgement relating to key issues, concepts and procedures

Overall Mark % available on Succeed

FMSU9A4marker (discuss • contribs) 14:47, 3 May 2016 (UTC)