Time to take a breather

Week three in the world of Wintec Media Arts 2008 means Spark Week; a break from normal classes in order to view presentations, showcases, workshops and screenings from established industry people. A very interesting informative week that helps students, such as myself, pick up tips, learn exciting bits and bobs and just enjoy the work of someone who has been successful in their chosen field.

One presentation that I went and saw was that by Wintec's Editor-in-Residence, Julie Starr. She further reiterated my fear that there is a never-ending amount of sites on the Internet that in someway inform people or help them interact with one another.

One I want to mention is Twitter. This site allows you to tell everyone what you're doing at that point in time. You have a certain amount of characters you are allowed to use, and that's it. Write anything; what you're doing, something about yourself, recommend something, practically anything. It seems all pointless and quite trivial but it can be quite entertaining once you get into it. Although I'm not one to talk, at the present point I have made two posts, nothing exciting but there are people, such as Julie who talk to a lot of people on twitter and follow heaps as well.

I also found out that there is just an inconceivable amount of information on the Internet. Blogs are fast becoming the new way people get their information. For example, Julie said she heard about the Chinese earthquake through a Chinese man on Twitter. And he wasn't even in China at the time, meaning he had to source his information from someone else who was possibly there. But this in turn means, that during or straight after the earthquake, someone went on to their computer and started blogging about it.

This somewhat worries me. Is blogging that much of someones life that they must report the news to everyone else as quickly as possible? It seems very trivial to me. Perhaps my skepticism is blinding me from this wonderful cyber-space world though. Hopefully, this doesn't turn into something from a bad sci-fi movie where the technology consumes the human race and we become it's slave. But that's a whole other topic.