Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Thursday

Watched ‘Thursday’. Good news – took me only 30 minutes to download and view this animation. Depicts a blackbird and family and the human race. The blackbird is constantly thwarted by technology so takes a swipe at it and blacks out the city by splicing some wiring which it then uses for its nest. The humans seem to be dependent on technology – computers, mobile phones, street cleaning machines, even simple things like clothes and an alarm clock. The birds have no such dependency. When faced with technology it messes up their lives. One fledgling bird flies into a window and although not killed, is briefly stunned. Then off it flies with the family. The humans need technology to do what the birds can do. Question from the teaching staff: "Who has ‘agency’ in the clip?" I’m not sure what they mean by ‘agency’ but if we are looking at ‘utopia’ or ‘dystopia’ it’s a bit of both – the birds don’t need technology, the humans do, but given technology the humans can do what the birds do – they can ‘fly’ - in a machine of course - on Thursdays at 2 for the price of 1! Main moral is that humans have become technology dependent. But is that a bad thing? It’s the way things are. Graham ( my son) who makes a living from technology would disagree. He thinks technology has ruined the human world.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

It is 5.:00 am. I watch “INBOX”. Two young Indians make contact through ‘carry-bags’ inadvertently switched in a store where they bought separate personal purchases. The carry bags are ‘magic’ and turn into a representation of laptops that can create e-mail/chat exchanges. All is fine while the ‘technology’ works but when one of them – the male – in excitement breaks his carry-box the contact breaks down. Message to me is that technology is a wonderful tool for making emotional contact with others but only when it works properly. When it doesn’t work it is a curse. The good news of this clip is that the two eventually find each other without the aid of technology and re-create their relationship. Other good news about this is that this morning it only took me 15 minutes to download this 9 minute clip – so that’s a good sign too! I get through this in 30 minutes flat! Technology is utopia when it works, dystopia when it breaks (or like my painfully slow downloads, doesn't work like it should)

Monday, January 28, 2013

Watched The Bendito machine this morning. Took me 1.5 hours to download a 7 minute video clip from the internet. Moral of the Bendito Machine is, perhaps, that we worship technology until a new one, even though it doesn’t work as well as we hope, comes along, then we throw the old onto the scrap heap just when it is working the way it should. This is technology dystopia. What’s the next technology? You can be sure its coming, that it won't work very well (just like my 1.5 hours of download for a 7 minute clip)
Today I started my attempts to learn more about e-learning and the Digital Space. Well, I started 10 days ago actually with my first couple of tweets having enrolled on a "MOOC" some six weeks ago. I am like a fish out of water at present and with all the work I have at Payserv and ILM I now have to fit in some time to deal with this. That I will learn something is for sure, but just how much will depend on two things - (1) the time I can make to deal with it and (2) the speed of the Internet here in Zimbabwe. So the journey begins. More time to be spent tonight/early tomorrow before the sun comes up.