You Are Not A Gadget: Part One

First off, I would like to thank Jaron Lanier for his brilliant observation. I am not a gadget, as it turns out. All sarcasm aside, I found a couple of points in this book very interesting. Because I'm not very involved with computers besides going on the internet, I had never really contemplated the complexity of programming, and the idea of a "lock in". It seems like that would be a major inconvenience for someone attempting to improve on a previous program design, and might even severely hamper the progression of the internet. However, I feel like that was not the main point of the chapters.

Lainer was more concerned with civilization and the human race being "locked in" to the internet. The internet is rapidly becoming an integral part of the human experience. I can't even imagine a world without internet. That being said, the increasing importance of the internet and technology brings along with it some serious downfalls. The most convincing argument that Lainer had was concerning "cloud consciousness", and how the the knowledge of many contributors will never rival that of an individual specialist. Taking the example of wikipedia, sure it has a very wide breadth of information, but personally I would rather go to a specialist on a specific subject that cite a wikipedia article.

I was also surprised that in his dissection of "trolls", Lainer didn't bring up the imageboard website 4chan. It's pretty notorious for being one of the most hostile places on the internet. It's mass trolling has captured the attention of many large news organizations, in particular after it mobilized and shut down the online portions of a number of different credit card companies following the initial wikileaks scandal.

(http://blogs.computerworld.com/17493/4chan_helps_wikileaks_julian_assange_shuts_down_bank_website)

The main problem I have with this section of the book is that Lainer doesn't recognize the uniting and organizing power that the internet wields. In particular, I am referencing the recent Egyptian protests. I saw on the news the other day that the protesters have been rallying and organizing themselves via Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites. Lainer doesn't even mention the benefits of the internet in a situation like this. Instead he paints a picture of a unified movement on the internet as only being for a negative force, like facism or communism. I can't agree with him on that point.

Sitting In Class: Thoughts About the Curve

I don't think the curve is intrinsically bad. I completely understand the reasoning: Professor Dean wants to motivate us to work hard and consume more information than would we would in a class that grades us strictly on content. I can respect this. However, as I mentioned earlier, I feel as if anyone who felt threatened by the curve has dropped by this point. The people who remain in the class are the ones who believe that they had the intellectual power and motivation to "beat" the curve (or who just didn't give a shit about it). That being said, is it a good idea to keep the curve intact?

Shane mentioned that the exam/essays are also unfair. It favors people who are good at test taking and writing. I can agree with this.

I guess my final thought is that implementing a curve in a class full of intelligent people just complicates the learning environment, and ultimately isn't conducive to it.

Thoughts?

First Blog Post: Blog Readings

So I just finished the readings due for tomorrow. A few of them I found quite interesting, but others made very little sense to me. I'm going to go through each reading and highlight what I liked or didn't like about each.

After the Dotcom Crash

I know very little about the "Dotcom Crash". It happened during my elementary years, when I was more concerned about getting sweet Pokemon Cards than large economic happenings in The United States. That being said, this article was hard for me to comprehend. Although I believe I understood the basic assertion of the article (the dotcom crash lead to different business practices within the industry), a good deal of the jargon was lost on me. If anyone can sum up this article in a comment below it would be appreciated, although I'm sure we'll go over it in class.

History of the Internet and Flexible Future

Definitely my favorite article. One quote that resonated with me early on was "The secret power of the internet lies in the fact that it encourages everyone to contribute their creative ideas, knowledge and works and make them available to others interactively on the internet". I find this to be very true. The appeal of the internet is the mass amount of data available to you, social, political, scientific, you name it.

One thing that kind of freaked me out a little was the prediction of "Body Net". I think that yes, one day computers and humans will be linked, but not in the way that the author was describing. The idea that my thoughts, biometric readings and other "personal" aspects of my body might be susceptible to cyber assault or hacking is not very pleasant.

However, the last section of the article on smart phones was spot on. Technology is rapidly condensing into one single unit, namely the smartphone. I was not a believer in this until I played with my girlfriend's smartphone. It's amazing! You can do anything on it, and I'm currently in the market for one.

Market Ideology and Myths of Web 2.0

Not as big of a fan of this article. If found the first half to simply attempt to dispel any sort of preconceived notions I had about the internet. Namely, that recent developments that people are heralding as "breakthroughs" are really decade old norms of the internet. Does this affect me in any way? I think not.

The one thing I did find interesting was the idea of "crowdsourcing" and how it's not constricted to the virtual world.

A memorable quote: "The social web cannot be the all mighty teacher, healer and redeemer for everything that went astray in society"

Amen.

Mass Psychology of the Net

The author sounds like a burnt out beatnick reciting one of his poems. A lot was lost on me. However I did like the section (stanza?) where he discussed the coming regulation of the internet. This is something that I fear: that the internet might one day not be as free and open as it is now.

Recent Futures of the Internet

Oh, this guy again. To me it seems like the author is lamenting the loss of individuality and revolutionary momentum that the internet had in it's early days. Get with the times, man. The internet, like the people who created it, is a organic and ever changing body. We can't get hung up on what was, rather, we should direct where it is going.

The Past and Future History of the Internet

A lot of the content here I found while doing research for our timeline. Like the first article, a lot of the technical jargon was lost on me. I did, however, like the section where the author predicts the future of the internet. It's exciting to me to think about where technology could take the human race in upcoming years.