A buffet of food for thought …

After today’s lecture I have a few more ideas for the next project … probably too many, and this is where I get into trouble! 

All these ideas bounce around in my brain, like those metal balls inside a pinball machine – with lots of noise, lights and frantic banging of buttons, as I try to hang onto all the ideas, instead of just focusing on one and making it worthwhile.

So on this quest to make a speedy (but informed) decision for the next assignment, it’s time to read up on infographics, dataviz, ajax, creative commons, javascript and XML – which should help to determine what can realistically be achieved in 5 weeks!

I was pleased to learn about Creative Commons (CC), and am interested to find out more about how this came about and how long it’s been around.  I used to feel a bit wary of this huge open source world we seem to live in now, but I’ve realised it’s just an extension of what you see and hear in the real world every day.  Twitter puts random thoughts of there, of anyone who wants to get them out there, for anyone who wants to know what’s out there.  The Twistori site is interesting, because it demonstrates how these random thoughts can be narrowed down, and constantly fed out into the world.

All of this kinda blows my mind, and makes me think about the constant shifts that must be happening in the world today, based on the amount of information that is ‘out there in cyberspace’.  Do people live their lives differently since the introduction of online shopping, dating, socialising, job hunting, house hunting, holiday planning?  I know I do, by shopping online to avoid the mall at Christmas, by sharing photos online instead of ordering extra prints for friends, by going straight to Google when I have a question rather than asking someone in person (or remaining clueless).

In many ways all this convenience is unbelievably awesome, and you’d think it’d free up some of our time, but it seems the more we can do the faster the world gets.  On one hand I think Facebook seems like a huge and depressing waste of time, but then I wonder if that’s just what’s needed?  Maybe it’s the virtual world’s way of allowing us to stop and smell the roses … although stopping and smelling the roses in real life, doesn’t leave you with a hunch back and red eyes.