Lecture Week 9
The lecture of week 9 saw a special guest all the way from Gold Coast called Jason Nelson. He enthusiastically and humerously spoke to us about the internet and it’s facets of utopia.
When the internet started out many years ago it was a very simple, basic feature. Now, the internet is growing so fast, people don’t know how to handle it. It has been marked as another world; cyberspace. One facet of utopia on the internet is the infatuation and craze that society encompasses over certain websites; programs such as Myspace, Facebook and Twitter. In the beginning, everyone was infatuated with myspace, it earnt the creator billions, and it was sold for billions. Soon after though, the craze of myspace slowly died and everyone moved onto facebook. The utopia that created the wealth of myspace is now very rapidly declining in value. With that, the value of facebook has earnt it’s creators billions of dollars. Although the craze of facebook is still going strong, the hype over twitter is greatly becoming more apparent. So a trend is easily identifiable that the infatuation with one site is rapi and fickle, which in turn makes the value and wealth of that site also rapid and fickle. As new sites come into effect, peoples infatuations move on.
Although these sites earn people immense amounts of money quickly, the value of their money can wind down just as quick. Social networking sites that are worth the most money long term are those that are created directly for a market, for example Vampire Raves. Vampire Raves is a social networking site which is catered for people who have a ‘fetish’ or infatuation with the vampire fantasy world. This site has been around along time; long before teenage girls started sweating over Edward Cullen from Twilight. Social networking sites like this are steadfast and ensure longevity, proving to be of great value to the creator.
Another form of Utopia on the web are sites such as ‘unclyclopedia’. Uncyclopedia is a site which is able to be updated by anyone, with anything they want. Another form of this site is the urban dictionary. These websites prove most entertaining as some of the entries are quite colourful.
Another aspect of utopia on the web is people’s ability to create and share their interests. Sites such as 4Chan is a site dedicated to allowing people the ability to share images (within reason). Another website such as this is a website where photos of cats are added daily with humurous captions placed on the photo’s. Sites such as these have a large cult following and prove entertaining.
All up, Jason was very entertaining.
