Instagram: Graffiti and meaning in text

‘Putting cues of affection, affiliation and other communications-clarifying elements happens through new symbols, or electronic ‘paralanguage’ such the familiar ’emoticons’…, intentional misspellings, absence and presence of corrections and capitalisation…’ #mscedc #digitalculture #shakespeare #punctuation February 11, 2017 at 02:46PM
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While reading Understanding Culture Online (Kozinets 2010), I  was reminded of how Shakespeare left clues for his actors on how to deliver lines in his plays by using punctuation. Centuries from now, are our digital graffiti in the form of tweets and posts going to be understood by future generations?

Kozinets, R. V. (2010) Chapter 2 ‘Understanding Culture Online’, Netnography: doing ethnographic research online. London: Sage. pp. 21-40.

Comment on Linzi McLagan’s Visual Artefact #mscedc by cpsaros

Linzi, thanks for this beautiful and perplexing image. The colours are wonderful and very tranquil.

When I first saw it, it made me think of life in utero, perhaps this was because of the fetal position of the body and the heart-rate reading over-lay. Are you trying to portray us as the creators of technology or technology as our protector and nurturer? Thanks for this thought-provoking artefact.

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Prevent (and) discrimination. Week 3

Students protesting Prevent Duty Photo: @BeMedia

I’ve been grappling with how Donna Haraway’s utopian metaphor of the cyborg relates to our relationship with technology and contemporary politics, as well as how it fits in with digital education.

If we are to live as cyborgs as Haraway’s metaphor suggests, we cannot divorce our own nature and history from that of our future selves. This seems implausible, unachievable and very much like an allegorical fairy tale from bygone times. But much like those fairy tales about power and loss, we see the dominations of ‘race’, ‘gender’, ‘sexuality’ and ‘class’, by those in positions of power, evident throughout our technological world.

There are countless examples of oppression in relation to technology. There are examples of the disparities; of how wealthy (white) companies still exploit poor (black) countries and their people for their resources without supporting the connectivity needs of those countries. Since The Cyborg Manifesto was published we have seen the gender gap in careers in technology widen. The digital divide is persistent in developed countries with regards to location and income and ethnic background; while undeveloped countries struggle to find alternative ways to access information with the lack of infrastructure.

In relation to education, Watters in her article Ed-Tech in the Time of Trump gives examples of how universities can use data to carry out surveillance on students and staff. She demonstrates how this happens through the collection of data. Using data, universities, big companies, governments and powerful individuals are able to control what we see, where we go and how we access information. This is evident in the UK with the Government’s Counter-Terrorism Strategy and how universities are tasked with monitoring extremism with the Prevent Duty agenda. Students are being monitored more than ever before.

The ‘ubiquity’ and ‘invisibility’ of the cyborg that Haraway dreams of is simply not possible because the technology and the spaces that we inhabit when online, have been taught to recognise us. Technology has been taught to read us, tasked to find out what we like, see what we look like and with whom we engage. It knows what we buy, sell, watch, read, and search for. It knows where we worship and who we love. It knows us. Most importantly technology has been taught to remember this information, this information then shapes our experiences online.

The control universities, companies and governments have over our information perpetuates the injustices and exclusions that occur in the physical world. If individuals are not aware of the information that is being collected, and of how that information is being used, they could marginalised without knowing it.


Haraway, D (1991). “A cyborg manifesto” from Bell, David; Kennedy, Barbara M (eds), The cyber cultures reader pp.34-65, London Routledge

Watters, A (2017). Ed-Tech in a time of Trump. Retrieved: 6 February 2017 http://hackeducation.com/2017/02/02/ed-tech-and-trump

Comment on Colin Miller’s My Artifact#1 – Do Minecraft avatars dream of voxel sheep? by cpsaros

Comment on My Artifact#1 – Do Minecraft avatars dream of voxel sheep? by cpsaros

Colin, what an original fun way to interpret what we’ve been doing on the course!

The thing that probably struck me about your post is the ease in which you move around the Minecraft environment. I never managed to do that well in Minecraft. Are you using it as a metaphor for how we navigate digital spaces in terms of technical ability and where we feel comfortable online? How we interact with others? I noticed some places were more populated than others.

I also like how you managed to enhance your artefact with the soundtrack from the film referencing Sterne. Thanks for your unique perspective.

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Comment on Daniel Jackson-Yang’s visual artefact by cpsaros

Daniel, what a wonderfully personal artefact! I love your first image. It’s quite beautiful. The light from the screen and the rapture on your face definitely suggests that there might be some form of enlightenment hidden beyond what you are seeing. The blurriness add too because it supports the idea of the lines between the body and technology being blurred too.

Comment on Helen Murphy’s visual artefact by cpsaros

Helen, what a fantastic idea to turn your artefact into a commercial! I think it was very astute to play on people’s fear of being unwell in order to go for the hard sell. In the UK it is sometimes easy to forget that health care is big business and I suspect if you were to sell a product like this your biggest customers would not be people scared of being ill; the best customers would be the drug companies trying to keep any product affecting their profits off the market.

Amazon did something similar by buying out the company which developed the robotic technology for use in their warehouse and thereby taking the competitive edge in online shipping. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-29/how-amazon-triggered-a-robot-arms-race

Thanks for providing this unique perspective.

Tweet: Ed-Tech in a Time of Trump

This article really helped focus my mind on how racism, misogyny and homophobia are embedded within the technologies we use. It states very clearly how data can be used marginalize different groups and in particular with regards to education. Will the data that universities collect will ultimately become a tool to discipline students and academics alike? Is evidence of freedom of thought a risk to our future education or professions?

Comment on Anne Power’s MSCEDC Visual Artefact A. Powers by cpsaros

Great video Anne! It’s incredibly unsettling. The disorientation and repetition you manage to convey so well is often evident when navigating new digital spaces. Sneaking skating in there, making it relevant to your own teaching, was interesting, perhaps that disorientation is exactly how I would feel on a pair of skates.

I really love how you manage to incorporate bodily functions like a heart beating and breathing connecting the body to the digital.

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Comment on Helen Walker’s Visual artefact by cpsaros

Comment on Visual artefact by cpsaros

What a wonderful contrast of past and present Helen. A really thought provoking artefact and very visually stimulating.

It made me consider how educational institutions view students as data because so much of their funding is dependent on results. This aspect of education dehumanizes students which in a way (if I stretch Haraway’s metaphor even further) transforms them into cyborgs where their past, gender, race, or class are inconsequential.

What was also interesting, and since I don’t know what period the older images are from, is how little has changed in the way we perceive the physical space of classrooms, even in the digital age. I only comment on it as I used the same kind of space in my artefact.

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