Lecture 8 - Summary

Our eighth lecture was presented by Jason Nelson whose eclectic, semi-hostile, spontaneous and thoroughly engaging way of presenting left us all surprised, amused and a little shocked.

To briefly summarise (as taking notes proved difficult), Jason discussed torrents and the legalities surrounding them and asked for a show of hands to who in the class downloads them. Unsurprisingly, and to Jason's dislike, no-one offered to volunteer.

He began to talk about the Internet Boom, where companies invested millions and millions into online endeavours, specifically mentioning Pets.com and taking suggestions from students he also conceded that other companies like Amazon and Ebay were included. He spoke about Ebay, Myspace and Yahoo's downturn in popularity and then visited Archive.org - looking at old code archives of websites such as Google, Yahoo (again) and even GU. He briefly mentioned Google Wave but never went on to describe it.

Jason moved onto the popularity of Social Networking sites and pointed out that all social networking sites come and go - and after Facebook and Twitter, there'll be something else. Jason directed us a little closer to niche' social networking - small Social Networking sites that surround a shared common interest. Introducing Elftown: a social networking site to do with a users fetish with anything Elvish. And then VampireRave: same thing but with vampires.

The lecture then became a slideshow of interesting websites. Next was Uncyclopedia, an anti-wikipedia that parodies the site and which allows anyone to add, vandalise and fabricate any article they so wish to choose. Next was HomeStarRunner - an internet cartoon.

Then things became interesting when Jason asked the class (also including other attending lecturer's) whether he should venture onto 4chan.org. Interestingly, a student behind me shouted "No, dont go to 4chan!" which I guess only served to encourage Jason. Adam expressed hesitation, but Jason went onto to briefly summarise that 4Chan was a place for people (particularly hackers and spammers) to come together and change the way things run. It's basically an online community that has the power to influence Governments, companies, organisations and websites. I believe a lot of their stuff is illegal.

The last cool site was EDIS (The Emergency Disaster Information Service) which is a map of the world displaying current real-world emergencies. And then we finished with Jason's site secrettechnology.com - a site that includes bizzare and unsettling flash games that I believe are meant to be a form of digital art. Only 15 minutes ago, before writing this summary I gave one of his games a go - it was interesting.