DrJoolz Snapshotz on Life

I have been at this conference today and tomorrow I will be giving my paper… ‘Chilli, stylist’s own: Online presentations of the Domestic’.  I really enjoyed meeting people from across the university today and it was great chatting in the breaks and finding out what everyone is up to.

This week has been fun on Flickr. I took a series of photos on Monday, telling a particular story:

Then TT uploaded this image to Flickr (while I sorted out the alcohol). Strange though because having uploaded that picture of alphabetti spagetti on toast (don’t ask) TT got abuse from other Flickr people … which he had to delete. All very weird as I would have thought the picture was pretty inoffensive, but there you go. He deleted the offending comments and blocked the users from his stream, after which the offending parties’ fiends all started with the aggro. Quite rare on Flickr but there you go. 

Anyway, that’s a glimpse of our domestic life this week.

Well the UK Celebrity Big Brother is in the news globally it appears… housemates are being accused of racial harrassment and bullying by watchers of the show.

Shilpa Shetty the Bollywood star is said to be the subject of racism and its been on the news everywhere. The BBC reports here. And even the Indian government has taken up the issue.

There is debate though since it seems that while in theory we can define racism, in practice people disagree with each other.

Frankly I think that some of the housemates are being racist … Jack has used the word ‘Paki’; Jackiey referred to Shilpa as ‘The Indian’; and the others have variously referred to her country as ‘never never land’; ‘India or whatever’; and ‘wherever you come from’. They comment on her being dirty for eating with her hands (presumably they eat crisps with spoons and burgers with a knife and fork?)

Well it is all fascinating; Reality TV hits the news big time and is rocking the boat. people are wondering whether it is important that a few people are being racist towards each other. Does it become more significant when it is played out n Natinal TV.

This website however seems to be misconstrued as racist and I am convinced it is ironically jibing at racists.

I have received a range of information about new things happening digital literacy wise.

Has anybody else received about fifteen emails informing them about ‘One laptop for every child’?  If like me you have, then I am sure you will not click on  the last link … oops sorry if I misled you there into clicking.

Frankly I am not sure I agree that what every child needs is a laptop, but think that what everyone needs is free and easy access to online tools and social networking. This may or may not be Internet based in the future. Laptop technology is not necessarily here to stay.

Next up, I got an email telling me about Suzanne. Now that is worth a visit. You get emails everyday which  provide a narrative over a period of three weeks. (Mind you, only the first three emails are free; after that it really is a mere snip at $4.99)  The emails comprise the correspondance of characters in a story. I wonder if it will be as spooky as online Caroline was?  (Here is Jill Walker talking about online Caroline.) Walker calls this kind of thing ‘personalised narrative’. The reader has choices to make and affects what Caroline does. Caroline emails you if you don’t make any decisions or visit the site. It is, as I say, spooky. Have a go. Get spooked.

The best of all I think was the email telling me about this new publication ‘Their Space’  from Demos. It is very good, a booklet giving details about young people’s use of the Internet.. If I were you I would save the free download on your pc.

All this stuff. All part of my digital world.