Notebook

I though it would be interesting to upload pictures of some relevant pages from my notebook. Because this is where I take notes in class and also where I write my thoughts about the project before putting them into this blog. I also make some checklists and diagrams. Instead of writing all this stuff here (in the notebook), from now on I will do my best to write as much as I can on the blog, because by the way I only have a couple of weeks left!! But lets not fall into alarmist thoughts, I know exactly what I have to do in the few days. So yeah... Lets start putting some hard work into this module! 

a KIT-KAT please!!

As you all know a Kit-Kat is a well known chocolate bar, but in Spain (the country where I was born) we    also use it as an idiom. Yes, I know, this sounds weird, when we say in Spanish "wait a Kit-Kat" is like if we were saying "wait a moment". This has a very rational and simple explanation, Spanish people is not that crazy... Back when this brand started to be sponsored in Spain they were advertised like a break snak.  That is why we use it like that. Whatever, this isn't what I really intended to write in this post. I was checking for some inspirational reading for this blog and I found "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell in our recommended reading list for this module. To be honest it was the only book that I managed to find as an epub to load into my digital book reader.

The fact is that I find some of this book's theories very interesting, so decided to share it along with all my incoming research.

"The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea, and the idea very simple. It is that the best way to understand de emergence of fashion trends, the ebb and flow of crime waves, or, for that matter, the transformation of a unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of work of mouth, or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and the messages and behaviours spread just like viruses do.

The rise of Hush Puppies and the fall of New York's crime rate are text book examples of epidemics in action. Although they may sound as if they don't have very much in commun, there share basic, underlying pattern. First of all, they are clear examples of contagious behaviour. No one took out an advertisement and told people that the traditional Hush Puppies were cool and they should start wearing them. Those kids simply wore the shoes when they went to clubs or cafes or walked the streets of downtown New York, and in so doing exposed other people to their fashion sense. They infected them with the Hush Puppies virus.[...] The second distinguishing characteristic of this two examples is that in most cases little changes had big effect.[...] Finally, both changes happend in a hurry. They didn't built steadily and slowly."

MY NETWORK DIAGRAM

This is the diagram I made of my personal connection with people. I ordered them from places I have lived. 

Weak & Strong Ties

I retained something that my lecturer mention today that I found especially interesting. This matter was weak and strong ties within a network. I looked at Raymond's Trend forecasters handbook but I wasn't completely satisfied with his explanation of the subject. So I kept researching about it a bit more and I found this clearer vision of weak and strong ties.

"In Mark Granovetter's social world, our close friends are often friends with each other as well. The network behind such a clustered society consists of small, fully connected circles of friends connected by strong ties, shown as blod lines. Weak ties, shown as thin lines, connect the members of these friendship circles to their acquaintances, who have strong ties to their own friends. Weak ties play an important role in any number of social activities, from spreading rumors to getting a job." 

(Barabasi, A.L. (2002) Linked: The New Science of Networks. Plume: Penguin Group)

I have been thinking about it and I came out with the conclusion that for my own network is going to be much better to use weak ties. Because I am interested in getting as many different opinions as posible. 

PERSONAL NETWORKS

A few days ago we were told in one of this module lectures to visualize our own network. So we all tried to draw a diagram of it in a piece of paper. (Later today I will be posting and Illustrator version of mine) This matter reminded me of something very similar that I had seen in Raymond's Trend Forecaster's Handbook, "The Friend Wheel". It is an application developed for Facebook and Tweeter by Thomas Fletcher, this app basically connects all your Facebook/Tweeter friends to each other in a coloured wheel. I tried use it and make my own friends connections wheel, but seams to be having some problems to generate new ones, so I will just post a screen-shot from someone else's wheel that I found on the internet.

NETWORK = CONNECTIONS/LINKS

What is good about networks is that we get to know about people thoughts way more than "in real life". Lets for example look at facebook. We can see all this information about what loads of people (that allow us to see their profile) post, that otherwise we could have never knew. Things such as pictures of the summer vacations of someone that I met in a party, or maybe I could discover that someone I know is a great writer because they published their blog site. Networks give us the opportunity to get in touch with interesting matters and people very easily. That makes researching much simple.

Fine. So how can I use a network as a research tool? What kind of information can I get from it?
As I wrote in my last post, information on the internet is not always reliable. What it is reliable and extremely useful is the fact that because anyone can write, anyone can give an opinion or expres a feeling. about something.

I post therefore I am

Yes... I know I should have being posting every day so I get used to it and I do it as a habit blah blah blah...  But I was looking for the motivation to be dropped down from the sky just like doughnuts or something. It didn't. So now I find my self writing at almost 3am trying to find that motivation by my self. Lets start.




"The network is the dominant culture ideology" ok... Singers create new singles based on fan's opinions/petitions on their web sides, politicians check Tweeter for feedback from the population, designers rely some of their advertising to not necessarily profesional people that have many followers in their blogs . Apparently if nowadays our ideas aren't posted somewhere on the internet they "don't exit". Therefore if we intent to be known for our interest, work, ideas we see our selfs in the need of getting them online exposing our thoughts.

Lately anyone can write about anything and they will be published, because we can actually publish whatever we want for free! This can be extremely useful sometimes but because anyone can do it, how can we decide which of that information is reliable???