Task 14: Final reflections

What I liked about the course:

• The idea of studying human interactivity through activity theory
• Receiving comments from Terje after every task (her responsible feeling for the course)
• Getting familiar with some new tools

What I did not like:

• The course did not have a clear plan
• The course was more theoretical rather than practical (how to apply activity theory into practice!)
• Tight deadlines
• Tasks were not practically useful (for example, summarizing an article!)

A few recommendations:

• Evaluation-driven approach might be obliging to bring theory into practice
• Teacher-to-student approach should change to colleague-to-colleague one

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Task 13: Redesigning activities

Thinking about an activity specially an activity in everyday life made me think of comparing myself in non-digital activities versus digital ones or to say offline in opposition to online! I feel that I am much more efficient and fast in offline activities rather than online ones. Even when a task can been done in both ways, I am faster when I don’t need to use the computer particularly internet. Some examples of these activities are like reading, writing, planning and more importantly thinking clearly.

The problem I have while using digital technologies is that although digital technologies’ aim is to enhance the effectiveness of a task and shorten the amount of time one could spend, it brings multi-tasking and lack of concentration. I suppose, the nature of digital technology as far as it comes with internet brings the concept of multi-tasking. Whatever I need to do on computer, it always comes with other activities around. For instance, when I watch news online or read an article, it cannot be done without surfing around, reading other things and having a glance at other pages. Sometimes I even get lost in other activities rather than the main task I wanted to accomplish.

By the way, how new technology itself can be useful to improve the effectiveness of people working with new technologies. How can it be helpful to prevent people wasting time online, or spend time when it is necessary? In my experience, there was nothing more practical than not staying online anymore. For example, when I had to write an article and reach a deadline, I re-designed the activity by stopping the internet and get myself to concentrate on work. To take another example, planning and time management always help me to organize my thoughts better and reach short-term outcomes. Writing down various tasks on a piece of paper and having it visible somewhere makes me check it all the time and carry it out.  Altering this activity to Google calendar had advantages and drawbacks for me. On one hand, it enhanced the long-term planning; sharing calendars with others, also looked nice and more organized. On the other hand, it was more difficult to remember my task, since each time of reading through, I also checked my emails and some other applications, sometimes even would have forgot to check the calendar.

Having this argument, I am not sure whether I am able to redesign an activity in a more efficient way by using new tech or not. Maybe for a part of an activity it is high-quality to use new technologies (especially when it needs to be done in cooperation with others) whereas recently I am getting to the point that I should keep distance from online world to be more concentrated and productive.

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Task 12: tool or medium?

As Rückriem points out, digital technology has its own logic concerning to be either a tool or medium and cannot be compared with previous tools (such as transportation tools) or traditional medium effects. Digital information and telecommunication technologies nowadays have a revolutionary character that goes further from the concrete concept of “tool” in the activity theory and needs a qualitative argument of a more abstract concept such as “medium”.

The argument he makes sounds logical to me, since computer technology is not used for algorithm and mathematical use anymore but it has an amazing feature to advance the communication and interaction in the modern society thereby, it is very influential on the society structure from the educational, sociology, and political perspectives.

The problem for activity theory is that it is not able to define the sociological changes; also it would not be a good solution to modify the terminology of “tool” to “medium”. I find activity theory inefficient to explain around the issue whereas employing the media theory to indicate the cognitive character of digital technologies would be more useful.

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Free software and open source

Free software is a kind of software that can be used and modified freely without any limitation. It can be shared and copied among consumers. In free software, usually the source code is available for users and released into the public domain. As far as I know, any software produced based on free software and its source code must follow the free software license; thus any modified version of free software is also free.

The difference between free software and open source software is that open source software has been developed under copyright which enables marketing. Additionally, open source software can have various licenses. It may get available under the public domain or open content licenses that forbid commercial use or allow selling the modified versions.

Apparently, although the terms look alike, there is a huge gap between the concepts. On one hand, free software is a way of freedom for knowledge and originated in a social movement that believes “non-free software is a social problem and free software is the solution”. On the contrary, open source brings ethical issues and legal status that could limit the freedom.

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Task 11: our components versus components of activity theory

To answer the following questions in relation to the components of activity theory (subject, object, tools, rules, community and division of labor); I tried to address each of initial items to an activity theory component:

– did we come up with all the necessary components for analyzing and describing interactive systems?
– what components seem irrelevant? Why?
– currently we have a long list of components, which can be definitely shorten. How would you do that?
– do what degree the list of components is concurrent with the components of the activity theory framework?
– are there components which are not covered by the activity theory framework, but the activity theory framework could benefit from?

Initial items versus components of activity theory:

time frame – rule
schedule – tool
time management – rule
process – rule/object
methodology – tool
options – ?
interrelatedness (relations) – ?
rules – rule
control – rule
aim/goal – object
task – object
start – ?
end – ?
result – object
effect – object
feedback – object
restrictions / limitations -rule
location (located)- tool
tools- tool
trigger / event
software – tool
actors- subject
role- division of labor
participants- subject
project manager – community
sequence – rule
plan- rule
evaluation criteria- rule
resource- tool
learnability-?
model / modeling- rule
quality – object
workmanship- division of labor

They are mostly relevant to the activity theory components but I could not think of any relevant component for some of them (the ones with a question mark in front: options, interrelatedness, start, end, and learnability). All the necessary components had been mentioned in the list but some of them overlap. We can shorten the list by having some general groups for example: aim, task, result, effect, feedback, and quality are all objects that can be under object/aim group. I was not sure about categorization of some components like time frame, schedule and process which I did not know whether I should look at them as method/tool or policies/rules. In addition, there could be more instances of community and division of labor in the list such as: lecturer, task developer, and evaluator/ assessor.

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Essay review!

Reading several essays, I chose following topics to write short reflections on:

Kerstin has explored the emergence of new media and how it became new. She investigated the new media to find out whether it is more of a technology or culture. This argument can be very crucial in the concept of new media since as an introduction to the field, it would be important to know how and why new media generated and what the origins are. So, in my opinion the topic Kerstin has chosen is well worth studying. The essay studies the relation of culture and technology with new media by explaining each in this respect. In the end, the conclusion is well-supported by essay argument around the topic.

I chose Argo’s essay on what characterizes new media; again another topic that grabbed my interest about new media and its principles. He starts the argument with the relation of new media and new message and what the new message stand for. He looks at new media as a part of technology has been produced by people for people. The text has a coherent flow from an introduction from new message to other principles of new media such as being interactive and ubiquitous. The references are relevant and well-selected whereas, the text has lack of in-text citation. As a suggestion, the essay should follow a referencing style for its in-text citation and references; for instance, APA, MLA, etc. referencing styles.

Another theme expressed by Valeria is online memes which I really enjoyed reading. It has a general overview on the concept of meme from the originality and new media perspective then continues to the characteristics of online memes. The essay is coherent and comprehensive to introduce this theme, additionally has benefited from a wide variety of resources which are mostly up-to-date and recent. The chosen topic is a sufficiently significant issue to study; also the abstract and conclusion are informative.

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Software licensing and copying restrictions

Future of software licensing!

It is not easy to predict the situation of software licensing landscape in five years since this would be a long time in the computer generation. In my opinion, the issue is sort of related to the issue of open source and the fact that whether it offers competent solutions for at least wide spread software or not.

If we compare the current condition of software licensing to five years ago, there are more and more open source software and more proprietary software went under free licenses. The reason can be the popularity of open source and which it applies different beneficial licensing approaches that are harmless for an ordinary user.

The reputation of free licensing would change the proprietary software landscape from ordinary and non-beneficial consumers to professionals and companies who earn money by using these kinds of software thus, they are able to pay for their professional use.

Applicability of copying restrictions!

Copying restrictions should be applied in a situation that both consumer and producer can gain benefit out of it. If the consumer of software or any digital products use it for commercial purposes, should share the benefits; in this case the copying restrictions can be more applicable because it is more manageable to control the digital rights when it comes to the commercial use. Whereas for individuals who use digital products as sources of education or entertainment, it would be more costly to apply restrictions and control them. So, it’s better to change the restrictions framework to a way feasible and advantageous for both users and creators.

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