Week 2 :)

How exactly do I feel about blogging.. well it is something I havent really considered doing before, I have always kept a written diary until a few years back, so I am surprised I havent upgraded to this virtual form, I guess it's just me being too afraid of who exactly would be reading what! With a written diary you always know that once that lock is on it and once its under your bed, no one can dare read it! But I guess the whole point of keeping it online is the total opposite, so that finally your views can be heard! hooray! So yes, I do find blogging a lot more convenient and accessible so i shall start blogging away....

I found today's lesson on HTML really informative as it was something I had not really touched on much. I did not realise the simplicity of the codings, as when you first look at it it looks rather scary and difficult, however when I learnt of the tags and the attributes of the tag I could identify how it was all put together and on such a simple program like notepad. I also learnt the different ways of inserting images and videos into the html codes; either by using a relative address, which doesn't have a full path detail or by using an absolute address which is a full adress taken from an actual web adress.

I realised that like with everything the internet too has competition between different founders and companies. Marc Andreessen's mosaic brower and the battle between netscape and microsoft, and how although netscape made a lot of money it was an open project meaning that anyone could develop it. It was interesting learning how different browsers read html differently. Bill Gates cleverly created html tags which can only be read using the internet explorer browser, and this went on for a long time. Internet explorer us used by 80% of web users and microsoft remains dominant. This to me exemplifies the extent of competing ideas surrounding the web and how these form part of the culture of the internet. I shall be reading into Raymond to further my ideas on this.

I looked at the video on you tube titled The Machine Is Us/ing Us (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g) and looked at just how much we use and control the web today. It stated how as html expanded more elements were added however form was not separate from content, however xml simplified this because with this the elements only defined content, this has made it less complicated as users did not need to know complicated codes to upload content to the web. It was weird learning off a video made by another user on the internet, this to me showed just how easy it is to globally exchange your knowledge so virtually with other users. Although I always knew about blogging I was surprised at how widely used it was, and how every minute a blog is made on the web to me this showed just how liberal the internet is in allowing peoples views to be put out to the rest of the world. I agreed with the main statement of the video 'we are the web' , as it is us who post links, videos and images however it is right in saying that we will need to re-think commerce, ethics, copyright, authorship, privacy and indentity as these are on-going issues that surround the web.
I have been looking into issues of identity and the web which I could raise with my group when we have our group meeting this friday. I am particularly interested in online deception; how people pretend to be a different person online to manipulate other users and create a fantasy world for themselves by lying about their age, gender, background, physical appearances etc and more so what motivates them into doing this. Looking on the web I found useful research on the MIT Media Research Lab site (http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html) and also a website: http://www.nps.navy.mil/Content/CS/ncrowe/virtcomm160.htm this looks at different types of online deception concerning indentity and cyberspace and the motivation of those that do it.

I shall look into this further and address the group at the end of the week with my ideas.