I was rummaging around the wiki last night when a realization dawned on me: The thing, in my opinion, that makes our wiki interesting is how our opinions inform the entries. The coolest pages on the wiki are ones like the Apple page - where it's basically a list of different people in the classes' views on Macs. Also, the Arrested Development is a good example - it contains nothing whatsoever about the show itself, but it is still a good read. And does it matter that it doesn't list the show's info? We have the real Wikipedia for that. I like the concept of our wiki being a sort of OpinionWiki, an amalgam of an entire classes' views on the things that touch their lives.

I came into this class thinking I would learn about new forms of video editing and modern art, but on the first day I had a radical paradigm shift. As I learned, New Media has very little to do with traditional media or artwork. The first assignment, as we all know, was to write a blog post on something, anything. I, being the constant cynic, blogged about the uselessness of blogging. I could not wrap my mind around the idea that people could blog for fun; it felt disconnecting and meaningless. However, my prejudices were quickly swayed as I dove head first into the blogosphere. While I still don't consider myself an avid blogger (I only blog for the class), I have come to understand what is so special about blogging, it is, in fact, the community. I still can't quite understand why people would create their own blog that nobody reads, but knowing that our blog leads to a discussion amongst peers and friends seems extremely pertinent and important. Much like facebook, I live in the community I comment about and that's where I derive the drive to post and connect with others.

For starters I definitely agree with most of the people in our class in that having to blog, edit the wiki, and do our final presentations/projects (not to mention class reading) has been a lot. I still think it was overall a good experience though, I only wish we had had more time to dedicate to one project as opposed to trying desperately to get *something* posted on the blog & wiki.

What surprised me the most was that once I got the hang of the wiki, I was much more interested in editing and reading it than the blog. It's funny because I've been a very enthusiastic blogger over at LiveJournal for four and a half years now, updating an average of three or four times a week. I've never had any real trouble thinking of things to post over at my personal journal, it's pretty compulsive. On the other hand, I found it in general to be extremely difficult to come up with things to post in this class blog of ours. Maybe it's because I'm not used to blogging about academic topics? Or that I prefer to have discussions about class material that are engaging and can evolve than posting something flat?

Professor F mentioned in passing today that when someone tweaks a new media technology to use for a different purpose it revolutionizes that medium in some way. Well, wikipedia received that kind of tweak during the VT shooting. While it stayed true to its roots (no one posted original material) it became the spot to get up to date information on what was happening at VT. The article pertaining to the shooting had over 2,000 editors working on it and over 140 footnotes. It received, on average, 4 hits a second for the three days following the shootings. Imagine a newspaper with over 2,00 editors being updated constantly. Off course, because nothing is original material, the newspaper would not be quite as up to date as the newspaper the editors got the info from, but it differently consolidates all the information into one, easy to find place.

A quick update on the wiki: as requested, file uploads have been turned on, so you can now upload and link to images. I've also given you guys permission to delete pages -- please use this power wisely, however. It would be best only to delete pages that you've created. Also make sure you check to see what pages link to the page you're about to delete (using the "what links here" link in the tools menu), and make sure that no one else is relying on that page continuing to exist...

So, yesterday during class, when Professor Fitzpatrick was showing us some of the pages already created on the Wiki, I saw that there was this "Jim Morrison" page, and this "The Doors" page, and being that I am a music obsessed, I was wondering how others were going to link musicians to their pages.

Is anyone going to create a list of the musicians that he/she likes in his/her page? And then link to another page describing the musicians? Should there be a page just for music, and from there different genres? I've no clue. Because, I was thinking on figuring out a less boring way in which I could possibly make this work other than just a list of musicians.

Hey guys, I have been working a little on our wiki over the past week and I wanted to get your opinions. Here is my page, Bumpkins. Basically, I have been throwing a bunch of random information on the page that maybe someone else in the class could have in common with me. Hopefully, everyone was envisioning something like this. Secondly, here is an example of a page, Bowling. I basically put a little bit of info about bowling, and then said why I put it there.

A couple of us have posted our personal pages on the class wiki. If the pages are titled as our names, we'll never really find them, so I suggest that we categorize them under the Special Pages > User List > "Your name" page, which gives the page the "User:Crazy Enough" style of title. This way they're all at the same place -- that user list. I basically linked every proper noun and then some on my page, but I haven't yet filled in any of the pages to which it links. Links with the destination page filled in are automatically blue, links with to-be-created destinations are automatically red. I will fill in the pages to which I link later. There's also nothing wrong with editing other people's pages. For example, I mention the word "art" on my page, but I don't link it. If you are an artist so you create a page for "art," feel free to make that word on my page link to it. Make sense?

How are we going to make a class wiki by seeing all the things we have in common and not make it like facebook? In facebook you can click on pretty much any personal information you list and it will bring up other users who have posted the same items. I like the idea of uniting our class with wiki, but I'm not sure if Wikipedia is the best way to do this.

After our discussion on Monday, I was thinking about how we could make our wiki actually make sense. I really like the idea of linking up our lives with each other, but I don't really understand how we could also include notes about the class. I was wondering if it would be interesting to connect in the emergence of new technology into our own autobiographical entries. When we were talking about cyborgs today, there were interesting ideas brought up about the cell phone and bluetooth. I started thinking about when I first saw and used a computer, discovered what America Online was and encountered dial-up internet. I still remember some of the feelings I had when I "discovered" and interacted with these new forms of media and technology. I think its also a good idea since there are some people in the class who have had more experience than others in dealing with technology.