From the history of technological development in "Bendito Machine III" to the fatal side-effects in the grim future in "New Media" - dystopian films compared #edcmooc

"New Media" draws a picture of a very grim future indeed and its many fetures remind of "Bendito Machine III". It feels like the first film is a logical continuation of  the second one: whilst "Bendito Machine" presents the stages of technological development and stresses out its destructive side-effects (read one of my previous posts), "New Media" is an insight into the grim future of humanity when fatal effects of technology reach their culmination (watch on Vimeo). When comparing the two films, I noticed that even if there are any differences in the presentation of their main points, it is only to show that the choices still available to humans during the stages of technological progression are disabled when technology reaches the highest level of its development.

Popplet on gains and losses of technological development in "Thursday" #edcmooc

What is humans' role in the tension between a natural world and a technological world? Even though short animated film "Thursday" presents a rather dystopical account where technological development has its side-effects, i.e. it displaces the natural world, the film creators do not seem to take a perspective of technological imperative, where an ability of accessing existing technology leads to its inevitable application, but rather embrace voluntarism and suggest that people are active agents and it is their choice to give up the natural world in favor of technology. The latter is neither good nor bad, but nutral.

InBox as utopian view of technology #edcmooc

InBox is a light, enjoyable and positive film, which to me is by all means a projection of utopian vision of the role of technology in people’s lives. 

Did you notice that the two red boxes were connected when we saw them first time in the shop, so as designed in such a way as to be linked? Those beautiful boxes present a bright metaphor for modern communications technology, which brings magic into the life of lonely people, like Priya, who buys a cuddly toy to replace a friend but rejects any attentions and turns down every opportunity to engage in a face-to-face communication, and Karthi, who is jealous of people in relationship but is way too shy and unconfident to initiate a conversation. Two people, who got connected purely by accident and found themselves tempted to beat own fears and experiment with the boxes, had a chance to get to know each other better without leaving their personal comfort zones. They could exchange information and emotions, play entertaining games to flee boredom and loneliness.

4 features of strong technological determinism spotted in Bendito Machine III video #edcmooc

Through the film “Bendito Machine III”, the creator (Jossie Malis) expresses own vision of the relationship between the technology and society, and to me her perspective appears to be that of strong technological determinism, that is to say that in this short movie emergence of new technology is presented as the sole condition determining social organisation and development of the little community featured in the film. I would also suggest that there are noticeable features supporting the concerns of technological non-neutrality, technological imperative, technological animism and technoevolutionism.

Brief notes on Daniel Chandler's "Technological or Media Determinism" #edcmooc

What debates have become formative for the field of online education? What is their relationship to popular digital culture? What light do they through on the current and future state of digital education? Is technology just a tool or is it a driving force of social and historical changes? 

The answer to each of those questions depends on a theoretical stance on the relationship between technology and society a commentator would adopt, and technological or media determinism is one of the theories with a number of associated features. Have a look at my Prezi notes on some of those!

All you need to know to get started with Prezi - in 5 steps

Prezi suggests to "say goodbye to boring slides and set your best ideas free!"

With traditional slides, your audience looses the big picture of your presentation. Prezi changes all that by giving you the ability to create zooming presentations, zooming out to see the big picture of how your ideas are related, and zooming into the details.

So then, what do you need to know to get started with Prezi? Well, let me share my learning path with you - that is just 5 steps long so far.

My EDC MOOC Introduction via VoiceThread #edcmooc

I'm delighted to open this blog by introducing myself to the EDC MOOC group. 

This is a mixture of starting a kind of a reflective journal, giving a brief insight into my background as well as into my reasons for signing up for this MOOC, and, mainly, identifying the goals which I hope to achieve by the end of the course. 

For the first time ever, I tried to produce a Voice Thread, which took me much longer time than I anticipated. The tool definitely has its benefits for sharing ideas and comments, but I probably need to use it more than once to get a feeling of "an easy task to do". Well, it was worth trying anyway. I now hope to get a couple of comments, at least for the sake of seeing the tool working. So, let's learn together! ;)