Wikipedia

For this week’s blog we have been asked to search wikipedia for 2 topics we are familiar with and answer some questions about the information available on each. For my first topic I chose to look up information about the computer game the sims 2. I picked this because I enjoy playing this game and I think I have basic knowledge about it. After I search the words ’sims 2′ a page dedicated to information about the game appeared. There was much more written on the page than I expected there would be.

I found that the information about the game was accurate (to my previous knowledge) but I did find out something that I did not know earlier. I found out from reading the article in wikipedia that the makers of the game are planning on making a live action film based on the sims 2. I searched this on Google to find out if it was true. I found that other websites also claimed that the makers announced this information in 2006 and the film would most likely be released in 2009. This taught me that using wikipedia to find out whether ‘facts’ on the site are true is a good way to help you learn how to research online for other sources.

To evaluate this article, I will answer the questions for this blog entry. I found that this was an accurate article of information. It does cover all the basic facts you would need to understand about the game, plus additional information that is not required. I believe that this article is balanced and not particularly biased to one side, because the article is mostly about game play etc. I don’t think that I would need to make any changed to this article to make it better for the wider wikipedia community.

The second topic I have decided to look up is the website Ebay. Being an Ebay user, I thought that I had some basic knowledge about it in general. I found that this wikipedia article seemed to have a lot of accurate (as far as I knew) information about Ebay. I feel that it contained adequate knowledge about the website and the features included. I feel that it did have a bit of a negative spin in some of the chapters due to them mentioning fraud and unsafe shopping on the website. But I think this is just part of the risk of buying online, so the information doesn’t really make the piece biased.  I believe that this page is easy to read and would not need to be changed to suit the wider wikipedia community.

Contemporary Digital Media

It is common knowledge that nowadays, just about anyone who owns a computer and camera can make a work of ‘art’ in a few simple steps. Contemporary digital media is a large part of modern day life since most young people have online website profiles etc. But is it ok to call any digital photo graph or photo-shopped image real art?

Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ (1936) explains that art was originally copied by Greek people long before the digital devices we use today. But apart from what they could reproduce, anything else made was unique and different. Benjamin’s idea was that something made by the creator first hand had an ‘aura’ that disappeared after it was copied. This meant that anything mechanically reproduced broke tradition and decreased the worth of the piece. It would be easy to say that Benjamin believed that copies are not real and valuable art.

This means that in today’s world, the definition of art is much more complicated then what it used to be before technology. Now it is hard to know what is original compared to what is copied. According to Benjamin’s ideas, digital photography shouldn’t be considered real art because it can be printed multiple times, which would decrease the aura of the work. If digital media was considered as real art, it would mean that it is easier to make and copy. According to Benjamin, the pieces would not be worth much artistically, but realistically, more people would be open minded and consider the more modern forms of art as just as valuable.

Another issue with modern day technology is whether ‘photo-shopped’ images are authentic. Photo shopped images are usually described as photographs that have been edited using computer software to create a more ‘perfect’ image. Magazines commonly use photo shopped images on their covers, this is to create the illusion of perfection. I believe the original photograph taken with a digital camera is authentic, but the changed version is not. This is because there has been a process in between the photo being taken and the photo being printed that makes the picture lose the real subject being captured. If a digital photo was able to maintain the aura of an artwork, the photo shop process would definitely remove it.

Digital things do not have an aura in Benjamin’s words because they can easily duplicate the original product. This detaches the artist from the work and breaks tradition.

More Answers

1. How do search engines rank the stuff they find on the internet?

Search engines find pages that are about your key words and try to make the most relevant options appear first.

http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2167961

2. Who, or what, makes one page (that you might get in your search results) more useful than another one, so that it is put at the top of your search results?

A location/frequency method determines how relevant a page is for your search results. If your keywords are in the title or address of the page, the search engine assumes that it is more relevant, and it is at the top of the results. Also how often the words appear on the page adds to the ranking process.

http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2167961

3. What are some of your favourite search engines? why do you like one more than others?

My favourite search engine is Google. I think this is because it is very simple and you don’t get distracted by news stories and images as soon as you go on the page. I am always able to find what I am looking for on Google, so I never really need to use any others.

Scavenger Hunt

1. Who was the creator of the infamous “lovebug” virus?

Onel de Guzman, from Manila, Philippines.
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/01/06/08/010608hnbug.html

2. Who invented the paper clip?

William D. Middlebrook
http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/paperclip.htm

3. How did the Ebola virus get its name?

The virus gets its name from a river in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
http://ebola.emedtv.com/ebola-virus/from-what-place-did-the-ebola-virus-get-its-name.html

4 What country had the largest recorded earthquake?
The largest earthquake ever recorded occurred along the Pacific coast of Chile in South America in 1960.
http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/earthquake_worldbook.html

5. In computer memory/storage terms, how many kilobytes in a terabyte?

There are 1,073,741,824 kilobytes in a terabyte
http://www.dis.unimelb.edu.au/staff/tanya/hwtute/How_to_measure_data/measure.htm

6. Who is the creator of email?

Ray Tomlinson
http://www.livinginternet.com/e/ei.htm

7. What is the storm worm, and how many computers are infected by it?

It is a worm that is attached by email and whoever opens it becomes infected. Between 1 and 50 million computers are infected worldwide.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/10/the_storm_worm.html

8. If you wanted to contact the prime minister of australia directly, what is the most efficient way?

Send mail to Parliament House addressed to him.
http://pm.gov.au/contact/index.cfm

9. Which Brisbane-based punk band is Stephen Stockwell (Head of the School of Arts) a member of?

The Black Assasins
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~toxicoh/blackas.htm

10. What does the term “Web 2.0″ mean in your own words?

Better internet
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html