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Dear Everyone,
Thanks for coming today. Actually it was a pretty good cooperative work we did this time. Also thanks for those who came from Management School and Engineering Department. So hopefully we would send out the newsletter early next week. Thanks again for all your wonderful contribution today. I'll see you all next time!
Best wishes,
Jin
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Creative Cuppa 7th Coffee Meetup
(Event completed & newsletter coming out soon ... )
Theme: The Future of Communication / Future Technology
Time: 12:00pm - 13:00pm (Thursday, 28 May 2009)
Venue: ATT SB2.07 (Attenborough 2nd FLR), City Campus, University of Leicester
Guest Speaker: Zhang Lijun, Chih-jung Fan & Tony O'Tierney
Event description: by Tony O'Tierney, Chih-jung Fan & Zhang Lijun
Event Coordinator: Amit Chandraker
Over the last decade we have seen how increased computer networking has transformed society in unprecedented ways. What will be the future implications of such networking and other emerging technologies? How will developments in new sciences such as Nanotechnology alter our lives or those of our descendants? This time our discussion would be focused on the future possibilities of the communication development and the technologies mediating the development.
This time, we are going to have a purely collaborative and discussion-based event. At the time, Tony O'Tierney would like to share his original thoughts on the new scheme of UK's National Identity Card; Chih-jung Fan would have a discussion about 'Digital TV', which is of his research interest at the moment. Zhang Lijun will be talking about her initial experience of creating PBwiki networks for organizing team works online. Here below are their abstracts:
The government is proposing an ID card scheme for the UK, to which there is considerable opposition. The arguments in favour of it centre mainly on its purported ability to tackle identity fraud and terrorism, as well as the claim that it will serve practical purposes as a universal proof of identity. I intend to present some arguments countering these claims, and to highlight some significant issues often omitted from the public debate. (Tony O'Tierney)
The emergence of digital television is thought as the third television revolution. The advent of digital television would bring influences in many aspects. I would like to focus on the impact on audiences, especially viewing behavior. Will audiences only watch the programmes or channels they like? Will generalist channels be vanished? Will audiences viewing behaviour have a great change? Here I hope them can help you think the future of digital television. (Chih-jung Fan)
PBWiki changed its name to PBWorks in this April 2009. It is a free workspace service which allows collaborative editing of pages and files. PBWorks can make your group work more efficiently, effectively, and productively. It can be public or private space. You can invite 1-1000 persons to join the space. Everybody can edit and share the pages. All the change and edit can be monitored and trailed. The most important thing is it's easy to start. You don't need any complicated IT knowledge. All you need is a valid e-mail address. (Zhang Lijun)
Come along and share your creative ideas with others. Everyone is welcome. Beverage & snacks are served for free. You can pop in and drop out anytime. The most important thing is that you feel fun, relax, and really enjoying being with every one of us!
http://creativecuppa.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=60675201456
Best wishes,
Jin Shang
Project Manager
& Operating Director
Creative Cuppa Seminar Series
Department of Media and Communication
University of Leicester
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Thursday, 21 May 2009
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
Newsletter for 6th Creative Cuppa Meet-up
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On the 27th April, Creative Cuppa held its 6th meet-up in 324 KEB (Ken Edwards Building), City Campus, University of Leicester. Many thanks to Amit Chandraker, Bashia, Chih-Jung Fan, Hao Zhang, Li Jun Zhang, Mokhtar Elareshi, Patama Satawedin, Rosidayu Sabran, Sarah Cameron, and Ivy Chen, for their participation. We would also like to express our special gratitude to Dr. Gillian Youngs and Dr. Tracy Simmons for their attendance and active participation. This time, our discussion was focused on the topic of ‘Digital Avatar / Virtual Reality’, and Gillian shared her own initial experience and understanding, how ‘digital avatars’ should be taken as representatives of real ‘us’ in the virtual environment, and why this was important to the future of social transformation in the information age.
Basically the discussion was mainly focused on three aspects of the topic. In the first place, as Gillian introduced, though she’d been working in the virtual environment for over a decade, 3D was still something very fresh to her; and what made it so different from her previous experience was its non-linear mode of communication. To explain it, with the development in 3D technologies, now we could create our own ‘visualized’ identities or ‘digital avatars’ on the web; and these different and visualized ‘avatars’ would help us transact ourselves from our real life experience into a new virtual environment; and this new virtual environment was sometimes referred to as our ‘Second Life’. In contrasting to this, in previous time, such visualized images could only exist in people’s heads, which was believed having, to some extent, limited the interactivity between people and their communication technologies, such as computers and the Internet.
Within the virtual environment, now people could make more effectively use of the new media technologies for various purposes of their real lives, from learning new knowledge to solving real problems. For instance, as Gillian introduced, ‘Media Zoo’, which was a project based in the University of Leicester, could be seen as a very good example to see how educators were using new 3D technologies to ‘enhance the teaching-learning experience’ either for them themselves, or for their students. As Tracy added here, this was because the new multi-media environment would ‘articulate people more critically related to their avatars’, so that it would create some ‘more opportunities’ to improve dynamics in the teaching-learning processes. Certainly, after having being reminded by Li Jun of her question, Gillian also pointed out a big challenge in the development, which was that many people still simply treated the new communication technologies as ‘screen’ rather than the ‘infrastructure’; and this problem would tend to result in a fact that these people were more likely excluded from the benefits of the social transformation.
At last, in order to conceptualize her discussion, Gillian considered the 3D techno-social transformation as a further great push in the process of communication ‘horizontality’, which meant that the originally ‘hierarchical and vertical’ mode of communication of human society was going to be ‘disaggregated’ or flattened out; and such trend of change in the communication mode would probably hasten the emergence of a more effectively democratic and information-led society in the future. Certainly, Gillian wouldn’t refuse to accept the result of such a social transformation as a ‘plural mode’ of system in the end as Jin raised the point; and she added that, this could be the reason why we were going to be living in a more open and also more functionalized society in the future.
Generally the discussion this time was very theoretically based; Gillian’s in-depth perception and analysis has indeed improved our understanding of the new rising social phenomenon of ‘digital avatar/virtual reality’. From the feedbacks of the participants, we're aware that some people would expect more discussion time in the meet-ups; therefore, we decide to organize a strongly discussion-based collaborative event for the next time. The topic will be closely related to our discussion this time; it’s ‘the future of communication’. At the time, Tony O'Tierney would like to share his original thoughts on the new scheme of UK’s National Identity Card; Zhang Lijun would be talking about her initial experience, creating PBwiki networks for organizing team works online; and Chih-jung Fan would have a discussion about ‘Digital TV’, which is of his research interest at the moment. Again, we would like to thank you so much for all your great supports and wonderful contributions to Creative Cuppa. We look forward to seeing you all for the next time!
Video links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7TMQzzFFdQ (Media Zoo)
Best wishes,
Jin Shang
Operating Director
Creative Cuppa Seminar Series
04/05/2009
On the 27th April, Creative Cuppa held its 6th meet-up in 324 KEB (Ken Edwards Building), City Campus, University of Leicester. Many thanks to Amit Chandraker, Bashia, Chih-Jung Fan, Hao Zhang, Li Jun Zhang, Mokhtar Elareshi, Patama Satawedin, Rosidayu Sabran, Sarah Cameron, and Ivy Chen, for their participation. We would also like to express our special gratitude to Dr. Gillian Youngs and Dr. Tracy Simmons for their attendance and active participation. This time, our discussion was focused on the topic of ‘Digital Avatar / Virtual Reality’, and Gillian shared her own initial experience and understanding, how ‘digital avatars’ should be taken as representatives of real ‘us’ in the virtual environment, and why this was important to the future of social transformation in the information age.
Basically the discussion was mainly focused on three aspects of the topic. In the first place, as Gillian introduced, though she’d been working in the virtual environment for over a decade, 3D was still something very fresh to her; and what made it so different from her previous experience was its non-linear mode of communication. To explain it, with the development in 3D technologies, now we could create our own ‘visualized’ identities or ‘digital avatars’ on the web; and these different and visualized ‘avatars’ would help us transact ourselves from our real life experience into a new virtual environment; and this new virtual environment was sometimes referred to as our ‘Second Life’. In contrasting to this, in previous time, such visualized images could only exist in people’s heads, which was believed having, to some extent, limited the interactivity between people and their communication technologies, such as computers and the Internet.
Within the virtual environment, now people could make more effectively use of the new media technologies for various purposes of their real lives, from learning new knowledge to solving real problems. For instance, as Gillian introduced, ‘Media Zoo’, which was a project based in the University of Leicester, could be seen as a very good example to see how educators were using new 3D technologies to ‘enhance the teaching-learning experience’ either for them themselves, or for their students. As Tracy added here, this was because the new multi-media environment would ‘articulate people more critically related to their avatars’, so that it would create some ‘more opportunities’ to improve dynamics in the teaching-learning processes. Certainly, after having being reminded by Li Jun of her question, Gillian also pointed out a big challenge in the development, which was that many people still simply treated the new communication technologies as ‘screen’ rather than the ‘infrastructure’; and this problem would tend to result in a fact that these people were more likely excluded from the benefits of the social transformation.
At last, in order to conceptualize her discussion, Gillian considered the 3D techno-social transformation as a further great push in the process of communication ‘horizontality’, which meant that the originally ‘hierarchical and vertical’ mode of communication of human society was going to be ‘disaggregated’ or flattened out; and such trend of change in the communication mode would probably hasten the emergence of a more effectively democratic and information-led society in the future. Certainly, Gillian wouldn’t refuse to accept the result of such a social transformation as a ‘plural mode’ of system in the end as Jin raised the point; and she added that, this could be the reason why we were going to be living in a more open and also more functionalized society in the future.
Generally the discussion this time was very theoretically based; Gillian’s in-depth perception and analysis has indeed improved our understanding of the new rising social phenomenon of ‘digital avatar/virtual reality’. From the feedbacks of the participants, we're aware that some people would expect more discussion time in the meet-ups; therefore, we decide to organize a strongly discussion-based collaborative event for the next time. The topic will be closely related to our discussion this time; it’s ‘the future of communication’. At the time, Tony O'Tierney would like to share his original thoughts on the new scheme of UK’s National Identity Card; Zhang Lijun would be talking about her initial experience, creating PBwiki networks for organizing team works online; and Chih-jung Fan would have a discussion about ‘Digital TV’, which is of his research interest at the moment. Again, we would like to thank you so much for all your great supports and wonderful contributions to Creative Cuppa. We look forward to seeing you all for the next time!
Video links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7TMQzzFFdQ (Media Zoo)
Best wishes,
Jin Shang
Operating Director
Creative Cuppa Seminar Series
04/05/2009
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