Week 3 - Tutorial reflections

Having been allocated into the virtual class, I am now excited by the prospect of going on a little tangent away from architecture. Robert, our tutor has stressed that the outcome does not have to be architectural in the traditional sense but more a problem solved with architectural/designer thinking.

We have formed groups of 4 and this week we began delving into possible futures, drawn from last weeks tutorial, bits of media, movies, books and our imaginations. From week 2, I brought to the table the idea of data growth and the sustainability of it. After a discussion that followed similar lines to last week, we decided to move on to a fresh topic. Following a prompt from student work from last year, we started delving into hacking and online security. This seemed very relevant given the current status of Julian Assange. Cecilia brought the group round to online communities and how things said on social media have had legal repercussions since they have been recorded comparatively to spoken racism or bigotry. This got me thinking to an interesting point... What happens when we cycle through the changes of social media platforms. In a way, our virtual life may be divided into blocks of years when we were using myspace, bebo, facebook, or whatever is next to come. Do we essentially start our online lives and image again with each new platform? 

I began in my own time developing a flow of possibilities of this cyclic nature of the digital platform as shown below.

This then got me thinking and comparing our physical and virtual communities and how we are represented in both and how we understand and are connected to them. I aim to explore this with the group in next weeks tutorial.