The second to none

So, here I go once more! For the first time in my life I have a second post on my blog! I don't know about the others but it is quite an achievement for me. But of course I did have the right motivation to push me along but anyway, cheers to this second!

Ok, enough about blabber about my first second blog. Right before the CNY holidays, we managed to learn about how the internet is a social media. About one or two decades ago, traditional media dominated much of society. This becomes a problem when the institutional control of information meant that news and entertainment were generalised and not all people were getting what they need and what they want.

Introducing the internet. Because of the personalised nature of the web, each and every person in society has the power to mould it. This power shift of institutional control to consumer control gave birth to platforms like weblogs(hi there!), podcasts and forums. This meant that consumers now have the power to find, receive and create whatever news and entertainment that they want or need.

We went on to cover things like web 2.0 and RSS but I know all these are all dry and technical. Having reflected upon what I have learnt last week however, the most important lesson wasn't about power shift or podcasts. It was about walking through the forest searching for firewood because you know you need firewood. It was about asking the right question in order to engage in further learning. I find that very meaningful because amidst all the assignments and projects that we students rush to complete, we often lose track over what we are supposed to learn in doing the assignments/projects in the first place. I realise that I find this even more meaningful when I honestly haven't actually asked myself, what do I want to learn in this module.

Such a simple question and an essential one, yet I have no answer. It is an important question and hence I will ponder over it, but for now, I guess 'what can I learn from this module that i do not know' will have to do first.

Well, I know this post is a little too long but hey, comes to show how much you can learn within a week! Till the next post, happy cny and happy learning!

The first of many

So, I am here once more typing my first blog after almost a decade. Yup, it was that long ago and my so-called blog then had just one post. Clearly that shows my motivation to maintain a blog.
But with a new blog now, I'm glad that I have a new motivation to continue posting, which is using this blog to reflect on the things that I have learnt every week in COM 125 and also trying earn a good grade (well, true motivation actually lies in the latter).

I have never been a good friend of all this online stuff so I am really relieved to find that java and all that coding extravaganza will not be forced upon me on this course and if the first week were to be to most technical-driven, I have no qualms.

In general, the past week we have had a chance to learn about the history of the internet, how it started of as a military project as ARPAnet and went on to conquer the world. Well, not exactly the whole world but at least the 15% of the world that own computers, and we got watch a few clips too.

Terms like intranet, browsing, groupware and networking were explained to us and its interesting for me to recall that using the intranet can be safe/fast yet extremely troublesome as months in NS has proved.

Essentials like URLs and IP addresses were also covered and basically all this are gearing us up for the weeks ahead which I am rather interested to see what else the syllabus has in store.
So, cheers to my first blog in almost a decade, cheers to my first post and cheers to the one more binding chain to an alternate reality that has once again proved itself to be as important or even more important than the real thing. cheers!