Net11 Reflections

Well I have come to the end of my journey for Net 11, and what a ride it has been.

For me, this study period and Net11, has been an enjoyable, yet challenging, introduction to Internet Studies. Like many others in the group, I thought this unit would be a relative stroll through park, or Internet if you like, boy was I wrong. A lot of the material I have covered previously, whether through work or day to day mucking around on the Internet over the years. Yet when working through the material, I constantly found new things, new ways of looking at old things and was generally forced to really think about the way we, I, communicate on the Internet and what that truly means.

New becomes old and old becomes new
As a result of this I have explored many new technologies and found many new ways to share, and communicate what I have discovered: Twitter, Delicious and Blogs all spring instantly to mind. I have been exposed to fantastic concepts such as the Networked Student and The Machine is Us/ing Us. Seriously, check these out!

I have explored social networks and what impact they have on modern relationships and how they allow people to communicate on an intimate level with friends and family. In fact I think over the course of my studies this will probably be something which pops up again and again. I have explored old technologies such as IRC and Usenet which helped shape the early days on the Internet, and I have come to understand that without these legacy protocols, then many of the tools I have previously mentioned may not exist today.

Now as I rummage around the corners of the net, I feel my eyes and mind are more open and I am further aware of the power the Internet holds. I feel that I can see more of the potential the Internet holds for change to social interactions and the way we do business. This is an exciting time and I relish the fact that I am here, now, discovering all these things.

The human side of learning
Finally for me, and probably most importantly, this unit has been about the interaction with my fellow students. Whether this has been via Twitter or WebCT (oh how I loathe you) or each of our blogs. The communication and interaction has been amazing. The ideas we have shared, the help which has been forthcoming, it all has been amazing. In fact fellow Net11 student Tim Kennington made the comment in his blog "I can’t recall being part of an online unit before where I’ve actually felt like I’ve been studying right next to other students". I think that remark alone says volumes on how far this group has come with communicating on the Internet.

That's it for me, Net11 is done. See you in Net12.

So Frustrating I could Cry

So my concepts assignment is in and locked away (well and truly), yet now as I trawl the net as part of the research for modules 4 and 5 I have come across a number of sites which have further supported my concepts. Doh!

Oh why oh why is this so? Is it that my understanding of the concepts has grown and now I'm more aware of that which is around me? Or did I rush to get the concepts finished prior to a wedding and three weeks away from school?

Really, I suppose it could be a bit of both.

What did I find then...
The four concepts that I focused on were The Invisibility of Difference, Privacy and Security, Hypertext: Links or Structure and Information and Attention. Below are some examples of what I have come across.

In Privacy and Security I mentioned Jim Dempsey's comments about people presenting different aspects of themselves AFK in different social settings, different persona's so to speak, so why not online? Now I have found Chi.mp, a social networking site which allows you to bring all your online contacts and the like into one space and, create multiple persona's for various social groups; work, family, friends and the like. Cool!

In Information and Attention I talked about annotated search and the Google's SearchWiki project. This allows users to annotate search results for future reference and move more relevant search results to the top of the search. I mentioned that this type of social search would be the way of the future and also pointed to sites such as Delicious. Now I have found two such sites which all ready exist where users can rank the relevance of search results for future users and their searches. Xoost.com and Umibozu both provide this feature, and while not yet challenging Google, they are both challenging the concepts of search and relevancy.

Really what a dumbarse!
That's all I really wanted to share, I do feel a bit of a dumbarse for missing these nuggets, yet I know that 12 weeks ago these concepts would have been foreign to me and I would not have given any of these sites a second thought in the terms of implications of the development of the web and communication online.

Really I've come along way. Viva Le Net11!