LIS 201 - Section 304

Reflections

2011-12-15T11:15:00.001-06:00

Ah, my last blog post for 201. As I was looking into other hybrid course offerings from the University of Wisconsin system, I found primarily offerings in classes that had something to do with the internet and web applications. It seems that the administrators of these classes (and the programs they are a part of) see the need to diversity teaching strategies and the opportunity to do so over medium relevant to course material.

I enjoyed the distribution of class time over lecture, discussion, and online sessions. The material each session dealt with was usually addressed in some level of detail in the other two associated sessions, which made it easy to digest the information more completely than in the lecture-discussion setup used in most classes. It's a bit difficult to compare the three aspects of the class, but I certainly made the most connections with others in the class through discussion sections. It helped to have a fair amount of discussion in the sections. I feel like other classes I've been in didn't have as strong discussions due to the TA or class style, but discussion was pretty productive and interesting. I think having online segments of a class is not too far out and wouldn't be surprised to come across it in another class. I've had only a few other similar experiences in my four years at UW--one of my classes involved watching video podcasts of the lecture, and another class I'm in now involved a few Adobe Connect lectures-from-home.

I don't think that having technology- and internet-based subject material is necessary for a semi-online class to be appealing, but it does help because it the online context allows for a certain common lens through which to view the internet. Everyone in the class has used the internet in the context of an academic hybrid course, so we all had that much in common in conversations about communication technologies and the ever-shifting ways we use and view the internet.

Final Reflection

2011-12-15T11:00:00.002-06:00

When I searched for other hybrid courses, I found a little bit of information on how they work, how to teach and prepare for them, and the pros and cons of doing them. It seemed like Professor Downey did a very good job at keeping us all involved and he really did think about what we want to get out of the experience. He was very knowledgable about the online technology he asked us to use, which made the course much more manageable. I am in a strictly online class as well as this one, and I definitely preferred this mode of instruction. For my other class, my textbook is online and I have to listen to 3 power point presentations that she adds audio to (much like our Ignite presentations) once a week which gets very boring for me. I often find myself distracted and not paying attention, but with this course, I am always engaged with the online activities. Part of this, however, had to do with the fact that our readings were in print. I have a feeling if we would have had the readings online, I would have done them a lot less than I did.

I felt that the online portion of this class was often disconnected from the rest of the class, except when we reflected on our online assignments in discussion. My participation in class was definitely more effective than online, however the online communication really let me get to know my classmates better. I've never really used blogs before, but I didn't ever have a reason to. I'll probably go back to my old ways of not blogging after this course, but I think it's good that I had this experience in case I do. For future classes, online components can be effective, but only if the professor and TAs know how to work the online technology. There is nothing I hate worse than an instructor that can't do something that is asked of us (which wasn't the case for this class!).

The readings for this class really opened my eyes to how much the digital world is changing. I never really thought about how the digital divide affects people (including myself). Along with content from lecture, I am definitely coming away with a better perspective for online technology.

I definitely enjoyed this class more than I was expecting to. I have never really been a technology junkie and don't branch out online too much, but I did enjoy learning about evolving technology and how it is affecting my life.

Final Reflections

2011-12-13T23:15:00.002-06:00

I briefly looked online at some hybrid course information. I mostly found pages about the pros and cons of this type of class, but it seems like it is getting more popular as adding flexibility to a student's schedule. In my own experience (from UW-Madison and the University of Hawaii-Manoa) the closest thing to a hybrid experience was having online exercises on a textbook site like Pearson and that never worked out well. The professor's control of the site was very limited and often she/he wouldn't even know how to use the site.

Personally I think whenever there is an online/out of class portion involved, I tend to be a little more lazy with getting it done. I know with some blog post (like this one!) I'm a little slow and don't put the most effort in it because I feel like the instructor would put in just as much time reading/skimming it. I really like how interactive Professor Downey really made this course and actually thought about what the students were interested in. After a while I made the connection between my classmates and their online posts and it made it easy to follow them along. I'm not sure if it really helped me learn about them though.

I made definitely more comfortable with using blogs and wiki, but I don't think I'll be posting any anytime soon. I enjoy the exposure to different programs and what not that we get in class. The reader and lectures are a nice break from the standard structured textbook class. It shows the application of class materials with things in the world that we should actually pay attention to! I took this class because I was part of a bi-lateral conference in Japan this past summer and mainly discussed media issues. Although there wasn't a strong focus on the connection with politics or anything like that I feel that I've learned a lot more about the topics themselves. It was also really great to hear other opinions as well as share my own. I think the topics we covered in this class is very important especially since every student is an internet user! This has been one of my more interesting classes so far here at UW-Madison and I'm really glad I dropped my ENG 200 class to take this instead :P

Final Reflections

2011-12-13T15:45:00.002-06:00

When doing a search for other hybrid courses i was lead to a number of different cites, but the few that stuck out to me were actually offered at the university i used to go to: UW-Washington County. When I went there, the university offered many different "hybrid courses" in everything from music appreciation to religious studies. Although, from what I've read, it doesn't seem very similar to what we had to deal with, with all the blogging and stuff, but there are some similar aspect such as online wiki pages and homework assignments that require students to reflect on different websites and digital news articles.
I think that as far as my experience in a hybrid course, I would like to have the option to take more courses like this down the road. But as far as the aspect of learning more effectively online versus the in-class and face-to-face sessions, I think I got more out of our discussions and face-to-face contact because that requires a lot more attention and focus compared to just blogging online. However, I do feel more comfortable with blogs and wikis now, more so than i did before this class, because before this class i had used neither a blog nor a wiki, but i did end up enjoying them. But, I feel like if hybrid courses were implemented in other subjects, there would be a whole different feel to it - not necessarily a good feel either.
As far as how this class has affected me in my personal life, and whether or not I think this type of course would be different if it were not based on the "Information Society", I would have to say yes. I do feel like this class has given me a whole different perspective on the concept of digital dependency, specifically Google, and how in every aspect of life, whether it be school or personal, I rely heavily on Google for navigation. But, as far as my thought on this course: I do believe that this course would be completely different, as I said before, if it was not based entirely on the Information Society and around digital technologies. I feel like that aspect of the class allowed for a high level of cohesiveness that wouldn't be apparent in other types of classes.

Final Reflections

2011-12-13T15:23:00.003-06:00

Simply entering "hybrid courses" in a google search will return a plethora of results about the new phenomena of higher education through the classroom and online. My search gave me the impression that these courses are being offered on practically all campuses nationwide. With our economy so connected to the Internet, it makes sense that our higher education would trend that way. I read a review of the "Hybrid Course Project" at UW Milwaukee which describes its own initiative to reduce class time but increase educational presence online for participating classes in the project. I was struck most by the testimonies in the review that chronicled the increased communication with professors. With the decrease in class time, this seems counterintuitive but in reality online spaces like this blog truly increase an exchange of ideas and expressions.

This course definitely required more work online than any other course I have thus taken. Requiring my participation in a common blog, a wiki, and various online searches has facilitated a better understanding of these new technologies that are being fostered and used in many workplaces. Online assignments helped fostered my online literacy as I experimented with all the ways we can use the Internet. I had never used a wiki before and even simply learning the ways you link various pages has helped me conceptualize how information is gathered and presented in this digital age.

While many online assignments increased my knowledge, I thought some fell short such as some of the reflections required on the blog. Maybe it is because the Internet feels more informal, but it seems that some of the reflections assignments were too easy or mundane. I would say that the online assignments did not exactly encourage excellence. If this course taught me anything it is that technology is a positive tool but it is not simply an end to any means. I mean that universities shouldn't just encourage hybrid courses because the Internet is cool. Online assignments must be relevant and foster true learning. Many of our online assignments tied to lecture and our readings which made them very relevant. I think hybrid courses are here to stay and that is a very good thing!

My Experience with LIS 201

2011-12-12T00:58:00.002-06:00

When I searched for hybrid courses online, I found an example of one at the University of Minnesota called Linguistics in Society. The course alternates between classroom work one week, and online work the next. In this way, students are more motivated than in a traditional online class and it suits some people with busy schedules who do not have a lot of time to physically go to class. Obviously our class meets every week so that is a difference, but we also maintain both online and in class aspects. I didn't read that they use blogs or wikis, but it's a possibility.
I think that the online portions of this class definately connected with the in class portions and that they were a good supplement to the course overall. I think I am effective in both the physical and virtual world, but I think the virtual world interests me more. I was able to learn more about my classmates in the physical world because spoken words draw my attention better than simply reading a post. I do feel more comfortable with blogs now and I feel like I am a better internet user now. I think that only certain classes like this one should have online aspects to it. Although it can be fun, I think I prefer most classes to be all textbook and lecture run.
I think that the readings and online stuff brought better perspective to my online experiences and to my life. A lot of the readings were really interesting and the stuff that I read really stuck. I think that online course components work best in a class like this because it is so involved with the digital world and everything is extremely relevant to the class.

My experience

2011-12-12T00:12:00.001-06:00

When I searched for hybrid classes, I found the College of DuPage which offers many hybrid classes in their health and sciences division. They are described to have a 50/50 approach when it comes to content online and in the classroom. Having this approach, students spend half as much time in the classroom, but it is emphasized that it is not half the amount of work. Organizational skills are needed more for these kind of classes because a lot of time is spent outside of the classroom. I think that all of these things can be applied to LIS 201. The thing that differs is these classes do not use Blogger or Wikis.

I do believe that the online portions connected well with the offline portions of the class. I was definitely a more effective student in the physical world because when I am doing assignments online, I always get distracted and it takes me forever to do assignments. I think I learned about my peers equally in the virtual and physical worlds. When they would post something on Blogger, I saw many of their opinions; I also learned a lot about them in section when we discussed different topics. I do feel more comfortable using the Blogger and Wiki now, but I do not think I will use them again unless it is required for a class. I think the subject of the course should be a big indicator on whether more online content is needed. It did fit well with this class.

The readings and lectures opened my eyes to what technology and information really means to us today and how it affects every day life. The e-waste topic was pretty interesting to me too because I am planning on doing a major in something environmentally focused. The online components of this class would definitely differ from other subjects, because the assignments that we do online are a part of the information society within themselves.

LIS 201 Experience

2011-12-11T21:45:00.003-06:00

I would have searched for hybrid / blended courses on my student center, but it happened to have been down for maintenance during the time that I accessed it. So instead I search "Hybrid / blended courses Madison" in Google. The majority of hits came from the UW - Milwaukee - which actually had a home page devoted to Hybrid courses. It seems like UW - Milwaukee has a lot more guidance in taking hybrid courses than UW Madison does. It even has 7 tips to taking a hybrid course.
The online portion of the course was useful for connecting course material with outside sources for information. I also like the blog because it gave me an opportunity to connect to other students within the section while not just being in class, I liked this aspect. I really think that face to face class time was better than blog conversations because I felt a better connection with their argument when I could see body language. I defiantly feel more conformable using online resources such as blogs and wiki's, both of which I had never used extensively. I think an increase in online activity would depend on the course, for a course like this it is a great idea, but for a math course it would be impractical.
One of the biggest things that I learned / was exposed to is e-waste. I am defiantly going to think twice about how I recycle my used computer parts, also I will be more careful to destroy the hard drive so that my personal information does not get out to anyone. I think that the online portion of the class was appropriate to a course talking about technology, because we actually got to used the knowledge that we gained in class to do the online activities such as avatars.

My Experience in LIS 201

2011-12-10T12:38:00.002-06:00

Some of the hybrid courses that I researched had a lab component and were mostly found in biology classes. Students did the majority of research online and also had a discussion sections, similar to LIS 201. The University of Houston conducted research and found that students who took hybrid courses scored better than students who took the class in a more traditional format. Hybrid classes take advantage of the numerous technologies available to students, and as we have learned in this class, technology is everywhere. Students rely on it for many things in life, and feel comfortable using new technologies that will better help them learn.

I agree with these statements. The online portions definitely connected with the in-person portions. Many activities we did online went along with the readings we had to do each week and also went along with the lectures. I feel like I was more effective in the physical world. Talking about the topics with classmates and the TA definitely helped. It's harder to have a conversation or debate online than it is in person. I probably learned more about classmates online because we provided a background on our wiki and blog. In class we didn't really talk about ourselves or what we enjoyed. I feel more comfortable with blogs and wikis now that I took this course. I have never used blogs or wikis before I took LIS 201. Professors should continue to use the hybrid course because it takes advantage of the technologies that are available and also gives students flexibility by having a portion online and not requiring as much in class time.

The readings didn't really change my perspective of my online experience. I still use the internet just as much as I used to, but taking this course made me realize how much I rely on it. I believe online components would differ in another type of course. They may still use blogs or wikis, but they would be for different reasons, such as posting research or something on that order.

My experience in this class

2011-12-07T16:04:00.002-06:00

After searching hybrid and blended classes that the University of Milwaukee offers many hybrid classes. The classes consist of in class work as well as promoting online learning to help enhance the class. The classes are made to encompass the benefits of having an in-person class as well as the benefits of working online. Some examples of hybrid classes at Milwaukee are Advance Nursing Practice Interventions, Buy Me! Ads and shopping in American Culture and Cross-Cultural study of Religion. These classes are very different from the class we took but still incorporate the hybrid ideas. The Virginia Commonwealth University also had a similar class which incorporated online work but the class still had predominately in-class lectures.

I think that this class has helped me to develop more technological skills. Prior to this class I had never used a wiki before so it was interesting using that site but I found it to be very helpful. I also thought that it was helpful to have online assignments each week and look at various online site that hold different informantion. Many of the sites we used, such as the ProQuest and http://www.whitepages.com/reverse_phone were sites I had never hear of before. By using them I realized just how much information is online that people can access. I also think that the online work help me to discuss more with other students in the class than I probably would've if the different sources weren't available. I think that the university should somewhat enhance there use of online components because it is beneficial however I still think it is more beneficial to have face to face lectures.

The reader and online activities were helpful for this class, but sometimes it was difficult to see were they tied into lecture. I thought it was very useful to discuss everything in discussion because it helped to get a better understanding of everything as a whole. If the class wasn't about technology I'm not sure if the online components would have been as helpful since by using the online sites we discussed in class were then better understood through practice.

Overall I really enjoyed this class and feel as though I have learned a lot about our society today and also how to use different sites better.

A little more info on e-waste

2011-12-06T00:04:00.002-06:00

http://www.forbes.com/sites/philfava/2011/11/04/e-waste-what-it-means-for-your-business/

I randomly found this while looking at an article about NASA finding a planet that might habitable (random, I know). It's not a lot, but e-waste is quite the problem with our society. There are sites like Amazon and Zagg that'll buy your used product for credit, but unfortunately they will usually pay for more recent products. On the other hand, I think Apple and Zagg are willing to recycle it for you! Don't ask me if they ship it off to China to "recycle" it >.<

Back in the days...

2011-12-02T03:04:00.002-06:00

Unfortunately I did not go home for Thanksgiving nor did I make much contact with "old people." I had to call home and due to the time difference I could just catch my mom briefly at work. My family has an apparel printing and embroidery business back home in Hawaii, so they would know how crucial a piece of technology would be to the business. From my mom's point of view, the most important information technology would probably be the cell phone. Although one of my brother has brought in new technology (iPad, laptops, wifi, various types of printers, etc), she believes that the cell phone has been the most useful. Usually my mom keeps pieces of paper lying around the office with phone numbers and names. She does know how to email, but she would rather call a customer than type out an email (she even uses the fax machine from time to time). Also, at one point two of my brothers and I were scattered around the country for school so it's a good way for her to contact us no matter where we may be. I don't believe she really knows how to use a cell phone that well yet...(I usually have to enter in contacts for her)but she has the memory of an elephant so numbers aren't a problem!

Talking on Telephones

2011-12-01T22:19:00.001-06:00

It was pretty fun to discuss shifts in communication technology with my grandparents. To an extent, not much seems to have change in my life because I 'came of age' (in speaking about regular independent use of communication technology) a decade or so ago. I got a cell phone when I was 13 years old and have carried one with me since. I still haven't made to the change to a 'smart' phone. I also got an email address about that time and continue to use email extensively in my work and social life. Some things have changed about these communication technologies, but in no ways comparable to the ways my grandparents' use of such technologies has changed over their lives.

We talked mostly of telephones. My favorite part of our exchange was my grandmother's recounting of different types of phone systems/gadgetry and the periods of her life she associated them with. She grew up in Chicago, a city with a high enough population and density that it was quick to adopt the modern phone line system. Certain friends of her living in rural communities did not share this privilege.

"One of my friends lived on a farm," she told me, "far outside of the city. When you wanted to call someone on their phone, you spoke to an operator to let them know who you wanted to talk to. [...] Each house had their own ring* and the operator would make the proper rhythm for the ring of the house you wanted to call. The ring would play from everyone's phone, so you had to listen for your house's ring." How cool! I had never heard of this. Such primitive phone technology had its fair share of differences from the more modern Chicago phones: "Since the phones were all set up on the same line you could hear other people's conversations." Which is something I'm sure she never took advantage of...

* similar to today's culture of personalized ringtones!

Thanksgiving Technology Chat

2011-12-01T21:56:00.004-06:00

My Thanksgiving break began with me arriving home to the surprise that we would be having dinner with my ski coach from high school and his family. After dinner we actually came upon the talk of technology on our own, which was great because I totally forgot about the assignment to interview someone from an older generation. I was lucky also to be surrounded by three different generation of people. One generation was from the world war two era. The technology that they saw as the great information technology was the television. The television from their descriptions was a revolution in news, entertainment and advertisement. They described the change of structure of the family, sitting around the television waiting for information to be presented to them. For my parents, whose generation was the 70's, there was more variation in their response one said that the internet was the biggest information technology and the other said the cellphone. For my generation I would say the biggest technological innovation in our era would be the smartphone in which we have mobile nodes of information.

Technology Talks...Literally

2011-12-01T21:51:00.002-06:00

My uncle is a family practice doctor. At his first job in Massachusetts, he was required to learn the "Dragon Naturally Speaking" voice recognition software. In his own words, documenting a visit with a patient is the least desirable part about being a doctor. Therefore, learning this program that helps speed up the hours of piling up paperwork improved my uncle's job satisfaction. He raved about the program that helps dictate medical records. He described how after a 1/2 hour training session that involved speaking into a microphone, the software effectively understands your voice. You can also correct the software and effectively teach it to work better. His description reminded me of the iPhone's Siri but without the crass responses.

After working with the software efficiently on the east coast, when my uncle took a job with the Access Community Health Center in Madison, he had to get used to typing his records again. After a few years of this time consuming task, he is about to pilot the Dragon software at his new clinic. While his boss who is an exceptionally speedy typer foresees the new software as an impediment, another doctor who takes extensive notes believes the program will save hours of time.

My interview with my uncle informed me about an interesting new software program that I had never heard about. His tale shed light on the efficiency technology can induce and yet also how people still question it as progress.

Thanksgiving Technology Talk

2011-11-29T16:22:00.003-06:00

Over break I had a talk with my dad who is an investment banker at Robert W. Baird. He said that the most important technology that he uses on a day to day basis is the telephone, or a cell phone. He told me that he didn't have any formal training in using a phone, but then again most people don't - in my opinion, the telephone is kind of elementary and almost intuitive. He went on to explain that the telephone is the fundamental way that he and his co-workers coordinate with their customers. Specifically, it is a technology that helps to quickly communicate the wants of his customers in a way that he can best react upon his customers requests.

Now, before talking with my dad, I kind of automatically thought that the computer would be the most important to most people. So, when my dad told me that the telephone was the most important, I was moderately surprised. Although, I guess I didn't really think about something so basic as the telephone, but when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. I mean if there was no telephone technology, there wouldn't be a digital divide, there would be an actual physical divide - where communication is restricted by long distances.

Technology over the years

2011-11-29T16:14:00.003-06:00

During Thanksgiving break I talked to my mom about the effects of changing technology in her life over the years. My mom was a nurse for almost twenty years starting in the 70s and stopped when she started having kids, but within the last few weeks she started working again as a nurse part time. Obviously the changes in medical technology since the 70s has been extremely significant and now that my mom is a nurse again she gets to directly experience the changes. She doesn't work in the ER but said that the technology in surgery and in the ER have completely changed and everything is much safer and surgeries are much easier to do than in the past. Technology in hospitals has created a much more efficient system for patients as well as doctors, too. My mom isn't a technology wiz but she has not had a hard time with the changes, and she really appreciates advancements in technology in hospitals.

Technology Talk

2011-11-29T10:20:00.003-06:00

For the technology talk, I discussed some newer machines my mom uses at Land's End in the monogramming department as a machine operator. She first learned to use the machines by watching a supervisor during a training period but said it was much easier to learn hands-on once she got started with the job. She said the upgraded machines definitely improved her work experience. The new machines were much faster and more efficient than older machines which allowed for a much faster turnaround time with each order. This was really important to the workers, too, because they are evaluated on production rate and how many errors they have. The new machines eliminated a lot of problems that would result in a rejected bag, so the reduced stress was one part that really made my mom enjoy the new machines.

I thought this was interesting especially because my mom has little technological background--she has done daycare from home for over 20 years, and jumping into this job that was completely machine-based had to have been a change. However, it seems like my mom adjusted smoothly. She has a hard time with finding her way around on my laptop, but because of her training on these specialized machines, she is able to perform at her job much more efficiently than in the past.

Avatar

2011-11-27T19:38:00.002-06:00

For some reason, I always try to represent my virtual self as close to my real self as I can. I have never been a huge gamer but whenever I did have a chance to create something like a Mii in a game, they always look something like what is pictured below. That being said, all of my virtual selves would probably still have great differences between them because of the limited choices many times given in these types of games. Sure this Mii has brown hair and looks female. But my real features are much more unique than just that. I'm sure there have been many progresses in technology lately that provide opportunities to create more lifelike avatars but I would guess we still have a lot farther to go. Our bodies are all unique and I can't imagine any program that allows for as much diversity as there is in the real world.

That might be one reason why so many people choose to represent themselves differently in the virtual world. The New York Times article showed a wide variety of avatars that had a whole range of similarities and differences between person and avatar. I am more intrigued by the person who choses to represent their self as an opposite sex or with blue skin. In a way, this seems better than failing to represent your own self in all its uniqueness. I was more disturbed by the skinniness of the avatars in this article than any weird hairstyles, wings, or the like. In a world where obesity and anorexia are both problems, something seems off kilter in our psychology if the majority of us represent ourselves with as tiny a waist as possible. This phenomena can prove our preoccupation with being skinny. I don't think this phenomena necessarily makes humanity's struggle with weight worse but it does imply that it exists. It will be interesting to see what shapes virtual reality will show in the future. What parts of our own reality will we hide?

My dad and technology

2011-11-27T19:11:00.001-06:00

I interviewed my dad about which technology he believed was most important in his job. He is a manager at a cheese factory by where I live. He has worked in the milk and cheese business since he graduated from high school. Computers are the most important part of this business in his opinion. The reason he said this is because if any computers malfunction, the whole cheese-making process can be interrupted which is especially bad because cheese can become contaminated very easily if it is not made at the right temperature. At his job, they make sure that the computer specialists are very well prepared before being hired. If there is a problem with the computers and the process is delayed, there could be a very big loss in production and revenue. Once contaminated, all of thew machinery also has to be cleaned and this is also a bad way to lose productivity and revenue.

Technology Talk

2011-11-26T21:39:00.002-06:00

I interviewed my mom for this assignment. She is a hair stylist, and she said that the computer was the most important information technology that she used on her job. She uses the computer to book appointments, and learned how to do this from the receptionist. For her it was difficult to master, and she still doesn't know all of the shortcuts that the other employees know. She has never been very good with new technology, so this was kind of difficult for her. She now knows how to do everything needed in order to book an appointment, but it may take her a little longer than other people. Doing this didn't make her job less difficult, it was just as easy when she had to write down her appointments. The technology has not helped her at all. She doesn't enjoy her job any more than she used to, and putting appointments in to the computer doesn't affect how productive she is. Her clients still always come in and get there hair cut, and putting their appointments in the computer doesn't have an effect on her job.

technology discussion

2011-11-25T18:08:00.002-06:00

During our break I talked to my mom about the technology she had used while she was working as an accountant at Arthur Anderson years ago. The technology they used while she worked at Arthur Anderson was called portables; they were big lap tops that were almost the size of normal computers. On the portables they had to create a lot of spread sheets as well as work with tools that helped keep track of the time it took for certain projects and also tools that helped with the reports they had to do. The technology they had to work with was not user friendly. It was very hard to get used to and when there was a problem with the portables it was very difficult to fix. Even though at my mom's job they did not use the portables very often it was still mostly helpful when they did. Because of there work on the portables it made my mom enjoy her job less because she was afraid that something would happen to the portables that would cause her to have to go get the whole thing fixed.

Based on what my mom told me about the technology they used for her work and the difficulties she had with it, it seems to make sense because during that time technology was not advancing as quickly as it is today, so people do not adjust to it as easily. Also, the technology back then probably had many more errors than they do today. Since the advances in technology are so quick today people (young people especially) have a much easier time adjusting to the changes.

Tech Talk with my Dad

2011-11-25T09:02:00.002-06:00

My Dad said that the most important technology that he uses in his job is the Internet. My Dad works for GM and he works with dealerships around the state and there is a number of GM programs that run off of the internet. He went on to say in todays automotive market with all of the incentives and online data, there is not way that the car business would be anything like it is now without the internet.

My Dad learned how to use the GM internet programs through work training, but he explored the other aspects of the internet on his own.

He feels that technology - emails in particular have made it a lot easier to communicate with co-workers and dealers, but he said it also makes it harder to get away from work especially because he gets e-mails on his phone.

Technology has not really affected his working conditions because he has always worked from home while with GM. And technology has defiantly made him more productive because he no longer has to do things by hand, but now he uses excel and other productivity programs.

He said it did not really make a difference on how much he enjoyed his job.

My avatar

2011-11-24T14:41:00.003-06:00

I had slight difficulty creating my avatar. I was going to create it to look like me but had some trouble figuring out how to change the outfit and also the hair style. I choose this avatar tho because I wanted to represent me as well as I could with the "pre-made" avatars that I could choose from. I thought it was interesting looking through the different option of avatars you could choose from such as the option of a vampire. Since its called second life you would think that people would want to create human avatars to better relate to themselves but it makes sense that people would want to be something completely different. However when I created one I knew that I wanted to keep it as realistic as possible. I thought it was an interesting process to create an avatar, but I wish there would have been more options to choose from.

My Avatar

2011-11-22T11:18:00.003-06:00

Here is my avatar. I tried to as closely resemble myself as I could with this guy. I gave him long hair because I have pretty long hair and I also have a red winter hat that I wear a lot. I don't have the self confidence to rock a mustache in real life so I thought it would be cool to give him one. Otherwise he's wearing a normal shirt and jeans because I usually wear pretty normal clothes. I am a caucasian so I gave the guy lighter skin, and he's at the beach because I love going to the beach. I definately felt limited in the customization of my character because obviously there are so many other factors that make me who I am that you can't customize on DoppelMe (which is where I made this avatar). I used to play the Sims when I was younger and made some avatars that were much more like me than this guy here, but I no longer have the game so I couldn't upload any of those characters. I don't have second life, but I think it's very interesting how much goes into the development of the avatars.

How Am I Supposed To Type With These Hands?

2011-11-21T21:42:00.001-06:00

The options for designing a Nintendo Wii 'Mii' avatar are quite limiting. Game designers for the Wii accommodate the platform's graphics shortcomings by creating worlds that are especially cartoon-like. This phenomenon is exemplified in the structure of Mii avatars (notice the avatar's rounded edges). It doesn't take much imagination to figure that Wii developers realized that it would be impossible for people to model avatars very closely after themselves. Their wise response was to keep the characters to be portrayed simple and cartoon-like. Wii users have a moderate amount of facial features to choose from when designing their avatar, but they are all very stylized and limiting.

In a sort of commentary on this limitation, I chose to design an avatar of myself in a certain situation. The avatar I created isn't a great representation of me EXCEPT for the way I looked/felt on Sunday when I woke up to some crazy bedhead I wasn't able to calm down with a shower until I got home at the end of the day. The hair color is certainly a stretch, and the skin color was the only choice for a Caucasian skin tone except for a verging-on-white tone. For what it's worth, there is a light purple skin color option. It'd be nice if there were a sort of continuum to choose hair and skin tones.

Avatar

2011-11-21T16:42:00.003-06:00

Here is my avatar. I found my avatar really hard to create because I couldn't figure out how to maneuver around the website. It took me a really long time to figure out how to change the clothes, and it kept lagging so when I would make a change I wouldn't see it until about 30 seconds later. This made it really hard to know what was changing when I found new things to change, so I just gave up. I was going to try to recreate myself but ended up not doing this. Also I couldn't find out how to change the race, which limited how I would have portrayed myself through my avatar. There are a lot of different things I would have done, because I can remember playing the Sims when I was younger and this being one of my favorite parts of the game. It made a big difference as to what your avatar looked like because that's what they usually wore through the duration of the game. With Second Life, it was easier to change once the virtual reality began but there was not as much variation.

My Avatar

2011-11-20T22:44:00.004-06:00

I found it hard to create my avatar because I was trying to make it look like me. I couldn't figure out how to change my hair color to make it darker, and there was a limited amount of clothing styles and shirt choices. I wanted to represent someone who looked like me because I had no desire to try to change my appearance to make myself look better. I was able to find an avatar with glasses, and picked the one that looked mostly like me.

The race is best represented through the skin color. I had a limited choice of options, but the race and gender were straightforward even though they play a big part in the representation of your avatar. I was just surprised there weren't more options to customize my avatar, so that's why I found it frustrating.

Avatar

2011-11-20T22:04:00.002-06:00

So, obviously I didn't go for the super cartoon or super realistic. Since the Mii creator is very limited in options I kept it simple and a little silly. I have made a Mii before on my Wii console, but it was more accurate.

I am guilty of being a Sims player so I can imagine spending an hour with so many options to customize my character. The Miis are supposed to be a cartoon so I didn't put nearly as much thought into it (plus most Wii games just don't use Miis as the main character, unlike the Sims). Also I wouldn't try to create myself. It kind of gets into this weird grey area of virtual and reality mixing.

Honestly, with any customization of avatars there are limitations. I can remember playing the Sims when I was younger and never being able to make my characters look Asian (I'm Asian, so sue me -.-). Especially with the Miis, it was difficult to change characteristics of anything except for the face. Like professor Downey mentioned in class about second life, all of the avatars have this idealistic pop star body.

My Avatar

2011-11-20T17:20:00.004-06:00

I did not really try to represent myself with my avatar, I just created him in a way that I thought was cool and looks the best / funnest. For me it was relatively easy to create my avatar because I just tried out different looks, colors, and shapes to see what worked the best. In a way I kind of felt limited by the number of things that I could change, but at the same time I would not have liked to have had to draw my own avatar because it would not have turned out half as well.

As far as race goes, there was a number of different selections that I could have had, from white, tan, dark, etc. There is also a number of hair, face, eye, and nose options that I thought represented a certain race more than other. I kind of expected a representation of all the races when creating an avatar.

My race came out the most through the skin color, the rest of my avatar, I did not think about my race when I chose the face, eyes, nose, or mouth.

Sim Capital

2011-11-18T08:24:00.000-06:00

LIS 201

McKinley Olsen

Sim Capital

Stephen Kline’s et al., Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture and Marketing, analytically breaks down the video game industry as an interactive technology from it’s beginning as a groups of small programmers and hackers to the billion dollar industry it is today. The section Sim Capital in the book, asserts that the gaming industry is a system with technological managers, marketers and sociologist to “play” consumers to receive maximum profits. The section Sim Capital has great implications to consumers and is an incite to the expansion of interactive technologies, also supporting this many other articles have been written describing the importance of understanding these technologies.

Digital Play, replays three concepts throughout its literature. The first is the cultural circuit, as described by the authors as linking the player through the game to the producers. The second is the technological circuit tying the computer user through his or her machine to its developers, and the third is the marketing circuit connecting game consumers through money to the corporate producers. With these three elements the author’s make the statement that the corporate industry of innovation technologies are playing the consumer as an object. Similarly in the Sim’s the player has to his or her subjects in order to raise more money for the player. The author’s also point out the contradiction, in the three circuits, to their argument. The first is the expansion of variety in the gaming industry away from the mass production of masculinized violence. The second is the issue of enclosures and access to digital technology, which deals with policing hackers from destroying commercial profits. The third contradiction is between the profits of advertisement and sales from the producers and the profits that players receive from selling gaming commodities such as skill points or gold. The action the author’s desire from the reader’s is to understand the mechanisms of technological industry’s to produce social choices to be free from the persuasions of this new economy.

Since the print of Digital Play scholars of informational technology have used it as a source in analysis of information technologies. The reason many authors give for using video games, as an example is there strong connections with current technological advances, which produces the need for current market and cultural understanding. An article called Brand Recall and Recognition: A Comparison of Television and Sport Video Games as Presentation Modes describes sports marketing in video games and sites the ideas of Digital Play found in the contradictions of market circuits, in which product placement is used in sport games to subliminally affect players. Another article called IT and the Video Game Industry: tensions and mutually shaping, builds on ideas of the technological circuit in Digital Play, by describing how the computer industry drives and hinders video gaming and vice versa. Also many authors’ love to write about the ultra-violet games that are affecting the culture by as Digital Play pronounces allots the player to be in ideological roles that are indispensable to the world market. One such article is Locating the Wrongness in Ultra-violet Video Games, which brilliantly analyzes the disappearance of wrongness as the main consequence of violent video games.

Even though Digital Play was published in 2003, the circuits in which the video game industry still plays through are the same. The styles and controls may have evolved, but if the user knows his own game subject so should he or she know how not to be the game subject outside of the virtual world.

Bibliography

Allen, Jonathan, and Jeffrey Kim. "IT and the Video Game Industry: Tensions and Mutual Shaping." Journal of Information Technology 20.4 (2005): 234-44. ProQuest Research Library. Web. 14 Nov. 2011.

Waddington, David. "Locating the Wrongness in Ultra-Violent Video Games." Ethics and Information Technology 9.2 (2007): 121-8.ProQuest Research Library. Web. 14 Nov. 2011.

Walsh, Patrick, Yongjae Kim, and Stephen Ross. "Brand Recall and Recognition: A Comparison of Television and Sport Video Games as Presentation Modes." Sport Marketing Quarterly 17.4 (2008): 201-8. ProQuest Research Library. Web. 14 Nov. 2011.

Man power

2011-11-18T08:23:00.001-06:00

My search on the Manpower site mostly consisted of location around where I grew up in the northwoods. The contract and permanent positions were about the same for the locations that I specified. All of the jobs had a salary that was above eleven dollars an hour and needed prior experience or education. This fact reminded me of the modernity work force movies that we watched in class, in which the main character needed prior experience to receive a higher paying job and more interesting job. The positions posted that were permanent were mostly engineer and mechanical jobs, which says something about the area that I specified. It shows that mechanical jobs are still needed in rural communities and more innovation jobs are needed in urban areas.

Manpower

2011-11-17T19:42:00.003-06:00

When doing a job search I searched in Madison, Milwaukee (my home town wasn't offered), and Chicago (where I would like to work someday). What I found was that there were a lot of jobs that were offered that required the obvious technology skills like being able to use a computer. For example, word processing and excel and mainly just the basic skills people generally think about when talking about computers. Most of the jobs that were offered were mainly on a contract basis, but there were a few that were permanent. However, most of the more permanent jobs that were offered required a lot more than the average contract jobs. For example some of the permanent jobs that I saw included: Executive Director of the Board of Directors of a non-profit organization, sales accounting executive, and Human Resources - Vice president. So most of the permanent jobs were at a higher level than the typical contract jobs.

Out of the jobs that were being offered, I don't think that I would be overly interested in apply for any of them. None of them really stuck out and appealed to me. Furthermore, I found that most of the permanent job positions that were being offered were either located in Milwaukee or Chicago, there were not many permanent jobs in Madison. But I also found that the temporary or contract jobs were, for the most part, equally dispersed among Madison, Chicago, and Milwaukee.

Manpower

2011-11-17T13:46:00.003-06:00

When I searched Manpower, there was very little that I found. I only found two jobs in Madison, and each were average-pay jobs: either a truck driver or in a call center. Since I live basically in the middle of nowhere, the closest place I could find any jobs on the site was in Madison. I also searched San Diego, and this came up with a few more results. In San Diego there were 15 results, and a lot of these positions were technology-based. A few jobs were permanent, but most were temporary or through contract. There were also some secretary or engineer jobs listed which shows how much the change in location can affect job availability. None of the jobs appealed to me, because none of them seemed to be as people-based as I would like my future job to be. I want to work with people, not behind a desk or on a machine all day, so the jobs I am looking for will be easier to find through networking, and not as much by searching the web.

Manpower: Close to Home

2011-11-16T16:34:00.003-06:00

As I was born and raised in a suburb of Milwaukee, I was shocked to discover that this global company that assists people find jobs was founded in the Cream City. I knew the name sounded familiar and now I know why. Reading about the history of the company, starting as a humble business in a Wisconsin city in the 30s and growing into a billion dollar corporation, was very interesting. Corporations tend to exploit their workers on at least some level--this is the nature and the temptation of capitalism, to take advantage to get ahead--it therefore seems ironic that a corporation makes its business in helping workers find work. I would have to research the company more, but it is interesting to think how Manpower might at some level want to keep unemployment high so they have a product to sell. This being said, their corporate website does show them participating in many campaigns such as opposing human trafficking.

I was very surprised by the very few jobs available when I searched Madison, Wauwatosa, and Denver. I found only 2 results for Madison, 15 for Wauwatosa, and 20 for Denver. This might be the result of poor economy and you might find the same results on other site, but my overall impression was that the job search done by Manpower was not helpful. Many jobs were temporary, paying between $8-12 per hour, and required previous work experience in the particular area. Employers always want experience but what is one to do if they haven't any? They have to start somewhere. I also found some administrative positions requiring higher than a 4 year degree. While many of the jobs are geared toward manufacturing and lower service jobs, Manpower does help one find higher up positions like a director of a non-profit. This experience made me happy I am not looking for a job right now.

A Rape in Cyberspace

2011-11-15T15:19:00.001-06:00

This article was written by Julian Dibbell and was first published in The Village Voice on December 23, 1993. This article was intended for adults to read and gain an understanding of what can happen in cyberspace. This article provides further information on what can happen in virtual societies that many people are not previously aware of.

Julian Dibbell is an American author and also a technology journalist who has a specific interest in writing about online social systems. The majority of his articles consist of different online site that people can create accounts for and become apart of the online “community.”

This article discusses the problem of online crime. Dibbell begins the article by describing that the crime takes place in the online world of LambdaMOO, which is a large mansion and people are able to create characters to live in this mansion. People command their characters by typing in what they want them to do. Dibbell then explains that Mr. Bungle (a virtual member of LambdaMOO) committed a sexual violence act. Mr. Bungle had typed in the command for a few other virtual characters of the LambdaMOO world to sexual assault either themselves or a different member. Once this happened Legba, one of the victims files a complaint on *social and requests for Mr. Bungle to be toaded (be erased from the site). The rest of the article discusses whether or not a virtual crime should be taken seriously and require punishment such as being toaded. In the end Dibbell decides that even though virtual crimes are not physically harming someone, it is emotionally scaring.

The purpose of this article is in order for people to think about how they act online. Even though in real life people could be very respectful and law abiding they feel as though they are free to do whatever they choose while online, however this should not be the case. Even though what people say or do online is not physically hurting anyone it can get into a person’s head and effect them physiologically which can be just as bad. Since there are so many websites today where people can be apart of a virtual community it causes a virtual society to be created where rules need to be passed in order for everyone to act appropriately and not act in a way that would hurt other people. In Mr. Bungle’s case, he may be a normal person in real life, but he took his virtual freedom too far and ended up hurting other members of LambdaMOO. Mr. Bungle created an unfair situation for Legba, Starsinger, and the other members that he harmed. The other members were minding their own business and enjoying the virtual world of LambdaMOO until Mr. Bungle decided to rape them virtually.

Even though what Mr. Bungle did to those members did not cause direct physical harm, it caused mental harm to those people and caused them to think about the virtual world differently. Virtual harm is just has bad as what can happen in real life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Dibbell

Manpower

2011-11-15T14:44:00.003-06:00

For my search, I choose Madison, Minneapolis, and San Francisco. I found that a lot of the jobs listed were for inspectors for various jobs, most requiring high technology competence. There were not many permanent jobs listed, and most were contract jobs. Besides the inspector jobs, there were a good amount of jobs requiring manual labor or low technology needs.
Most of the jobs were not highly specialized and seemed to be bottom-of-the-barrel work, such as data entry or customer service. I would not consider any of these jobs to be potential jobs for me as I want something much more out of my job than simple goals to be accomplished everyday, and none of the jobs seem to be more than an avenue to make decent money. Suprisingly Minneapolis had the most jobs available, Madison second, and San Francisco third, which was the opposite of my expectations. The most highly specialized jobs were in Minneapolis and most physical labor jobs were in Madison. San Francisco only gave two job listings.

Manpower

2011-11-14T16:11:00.002-06:00

While I surfed around on Manpower's site I noticed how they constantly note that corporate jobs are available through them. The site looked pretty typical for a company and they promote their services such as software training and professionalism classes, but interestingly enough when I looked up jobs, these services aren't that necessary in those fields.

I searched Madison, Seattle, and Honolulu for jobs. Honolulu and Madison had either notices for job fairs or jobs in construction or truck/bus driving. Both of these cities tend to have a high amount of development so temporary jobs are always available. Seattle also had many low tech jobs, but in the Bellevue area (which I consider to be the Silicon Valley of Washington) had about two jobs available in accounting or finance.

Manpower in Madison?

2011-11-13T21:17:00.002-06:00

I went the Manpower website and found out that they have a location in Madison, this was something that was very surprising for me! I looked over their website and thought it was really well designed.

As prompted in the over the weekend section of the syllabus, I looked up jobs around Wisconsin to see what I could find - I did not search any specific job title, just a number of different cities in Wisconsin. Here is what I found:

There were a number of different job postings, but these were the first 4 that came up on my search. I was surprised that some of these jobs paid more than minimum wage because I thought it was kind of the unspoken rule that temp workers get paid minimum wage.

Another thing that was surprising to me was that these jobs were not unskilled labor positions, they are positions that require skills and licenses like a welder and a truck driver.

Waukesha seemed to be more industry related positions such as welder, distribution worker, and machine operator.

Madison only had one position listed and it was a truck driver.

Janesville seemed to have a larger variety of job postings and it had by far the most out of these 3 locations.

Manpower

2011-11-13T16:58:00.003-06:00

The majority of the jobs I found were temporary or contract jobs, and only a few were permanent. I searched jobs in Madison, Appleton, and also California. Most of the jobs were in California, and only one was in Appleton. Here are my results:

Appleton:

Graphic Artist - Need experience with Adobe InDesign, Microsoft Publisher 2, Word and Excel.

Madison:

Truck Driver - Knowledge of construction needed, along with a clean driving record.

Customer Service/Call Center - High School education or equivalent. Minimum of 6 months to 1 year general administrative experience.

San Diego:

Marketing Manager - Bachelor's degree required

Associate IT Support Analyst - Excellent problem solving skills and good knowledge of computers. Associate's or Bachelor's degree

Food Services Supervisor: Knowledge of HAACP controls and proper storage and use of food.

Manpower tries to make all their jobs look appealing to outsiders, but none of them really interested me. Most of them were temporary, which isn't something I desire. I found a lot of call center jobs, which I found interesting because we talked about call centers in our last discussion. I was surprised at how well the jobs paid, and none of them were under $20.00, which I found hard to believe. After watching the movie Secrets of Silicon Valley, I thought negatively of Manpower. Doing this assignment hasn't really changed my views, because they will make their jobs look appealing even if they're not.

Manpower Inc.

2011-11-11T10:27:00.003-06:00

Madison, Wisconsin -

Part Time Truck Driver position - Knowledge of construction wanted. May include pulling tools from warehouses and loading/unlading trucks. No technology skills required

Customer Service/Call center - Responsible for preforming general administrative tasks, assisting other employes with different tasks. There is a lot of computer work with the Customer service position. Specific level software skills

Both of the jobs that were listed for Madison were by contract, neither of them were permanent positions

Milwaukee, Wisconsin -

Maintenance technician - repair, troubleshoot, and maintain mechanics. Working knowledge of SPC, lean, FMEA, Six Sigmas and process involvement. Permanent job

Executive director - Marketing, Program development. permanent job

Many of the jobs in Milwaukee were based on a contract, just a few of them were permanent jobs

New York City, New York

Office support - handling spread sheets, transferring data - by contract

Tape Operator - control inventory of tapes, maintain complete records of tapes - by contract

Business Developer Manger - Experience in Sales, able to use Microsoft office programs, Word, Excel, and powerpoint. - Permanent Position

There were some jobs in New York City that were permanent but the majority of them were by contract.

Based the jobs that were offered in these three cities, the ones I would want to do would be the Executive Director position in Milwaukee or the Business Developer manager in New York City because those jobs are permanent and that way I would know that I would be secure in that job. The other jobs that are offered seem to be good jobs and people who are looking to get any job, even short term ones would have many options available. The jobs that are listed do require a certain degree of education depending on what the job is. This site seems very helpful to anyone that is looking for a job because it provides many different job options so people have a greater range of options.

Madison did not have many options for people to choose from. Trying to find a job in Milwaukee or New York City provide many more opportunities to finding a job.

My Summer at an Indian Call Center

2011-11-11T09:54:00.002-06:00

Andrew Marantz is the writer behind the the short story / document titled "My Summer At an Indian Call Center." The subtitle of this work is as fallows "Lessons learned: Americans are hothead, Australians are drunks - and never say where you're calling from." This subtitle gives the reader a little insight on what the story will be like.

Andrew Marantz is described as a free lance writer who has written for multiple news and publishing organizations. He wrote "My Summer At an Indian Call Center" when he was on a semester abroud in India and decided he wanted to become and Indian call center trainee.

This article was first published in the Mother Jones magazine which is self described as "a leading independent news organization, featuring investigative and breaking news reporting on politics, the environment, and human rights." Just by knowing what kind of articles this magazine publishes, you can kind of guess that Marantz is going to bring up some contrivance points in his article.

This article is about Marantz's experience when he took a training course at an Indian call center. It is about the culture, the people, training, and how he feels about the call center industry and experience. I like this article because there was plenty of dialog. I feel that Marantz used dialog because he wanted the reader to really feel the emotions that he was feeling, and also to understand the difficulty that he faced while training at the call center.

If any of you have seen Slum Dog Millionaire - I feel that this movie may have inspired Marantz to adventure to India and see what it was actually like to work at the call center like the one in the movie. There is a definite class system in India and it was interesting to find out how an American fit into the system.

It was also interesting and shocking to see how people were living in these large urban cities such as Delhi. For me skimming through the pictures of the article was the most interesting part. It gave an insight on India that words could not describe.

The outsourcing of call center jobs to India from America has been a heated topic throughout the past couple of decades. I think that Marantz does a good job on giving Americans and other readers of this article the tragedies, problems, and hard work that Indians have to go through in order to answer our phone calls on problems we are having with various products. Before reading this article I never realized how much work went into the training of call center employees.

I read an article that criticized "My summer at an Indian Call center." "Mother Jones Falls Short with 'My Summer at an Indian Call Center'" - criticized Marantz's work for 4 reasons. This counter article was written by Kirti Kamboj - a columist born in Mubai and later moved to New Orleans.

1. A couple of important quotes by Marantz fail to show that the middle class of India has little money.
2. "The most interesting, as well as most questionable, parts of the article were those which talked about the cultural training call center agents are required to undergo."
3. Marantz makes statements that may not be based on hard facts - such as about populations
4. Marantz gives a skewed picture of the effects of the global market system

Drowning in the Sink-or-Swim Economy

2011-11-09T13:44:00.002-06:00

Virginia Eubanks fostered a passion for fighting for social justice through technology when she lived in the Bay Area when she was active in the community technology center movement happening there. After transplanting these passions to the city of Troy, Eubanks cofounded the non-profit welfare organization that fights poverty called, Our Knowledge, Our Power. She is also a professor at the University of Albany- SUNY in the Women’s Studies Department. Thus, the chapter “Drowning in the Sink-or-Swim Economy”, from her book, The Digital Dead End: Fighting for Social Justice in the Information Age (2011), that we read for this week comes from a very credentialed author. In this chapter, Eubanks argues that the new information technology economy does not inherently remove hierarchy and result in social justice. Instead, she firmly, almost radically, claims that the new economy depends on the exploitation of the poor and working class so much so that “our investment in high-tech is thus an investment in injustice” (71). According to her, the phenomenon of volatile continuity, a characteristic of this new age, merely reforms old configuration of inequality into new ones.

Volatile continuity is marked by flux, or the rapid toppling of old structures for inventive new ones, and creates dual economies and classes. In this structure, the “creative class” reaps benefits from the rapid changes while keeping the lower classes employed in service and care giving industries. As the rich get richer, the cost of living inflates for all, making it harder to climb the social ladder. Eubanks takes a statistical look at the city of Troy to show the topographies of inequalities and how, despite the introduction of information technology investment in the area, they do not change but even get worse.

Among Eubank’s analyses of poverty and employment, she analyzes how inequities in education are perpetuated in the information technology economy. To attain a job in the top tier of the economy, one needs high education. With marginalized groups receiving fewer degrees, they are kept from reaping the benefits of the new age. The introduction of technology investment in Troy did nothing to change these inequities.

Instead of removing the inequalities like popular theorists predicted, the vulnerable, especially those working in the service industries, became more vulnerable. The women Eubanks interviewed with jobs in high-tech industries were paid low wages, most less than $7 an hour, and worked in poor conditions, in which repetitive and physically demanding jobs resulted in injuries, such as cysts and damage to vision. The idea of democracy and self-determination promised by this new age was also observed by Eubanks to be a myth because of the extreme surveillance in the workplace.

Eubanks explains that “high tech equity will not be achieved by ‘fitting the poor into the new economy,” because they are already an integral part of it. They are at the bottom being exploited. Instead, she calls for new policy that protects the workers that share the burdens of servicing those in the new economy. The volatility of our current culture should not be an excuse to overlook the consequences of our actions. Eubanks reminds us to question our romantic views of technology and actually use our progressive gains for the progress of all, not just the few.

No Internet For the Weekend

2011-11-08T21:12:00.003-06:00

Even though I mentioned in discussion that I feel like I "unplug" all the time, this challenge to refrain from using the Internet for 48 hours proved to be difficult for many reasons. First, I immediately felt compelled to fail the challenge as soon as it began. We did not mention employment in our list of rules when we began this assignment but I think it should have been included in acceptable uses. I only use email to communicate with my catering job and when last minute details needed to be dealt with a day before the event I, alas, used the gave in and used the Internet. The Internet pervades so many facets of life, most importantly, parts like school and work that form our livelihoods and futures.

While I failed on the email front, I did not use the Internet in any other ways. I found myself wanting to check my facebook. It is almost a reflex to quickly check my facebook whenever I come in my room. Not only did I feel out of the loop when I was away from my social circles but I felt out of the loop when I was with them. On multiple occasions, my friends vocally mentioned invites or statuses when we were together in person. This exemplifies the convention we were talking about in section. Facebook actually helps facilitates face to face socialization.

One qualm I had with the film, "Unplugged," was the lack of mission of the protagonists. I understand that it was mostly experimental, to try out a life with no computers to see what that meant, but I think it would have had more meaning if there was a method to the madness. I chose not to conform to obsessive use of technology because I value person to person relations and space to think. This experience this past weekend was not devastatingly difficult because I have these values. Yet, I was still inconvenienced and had to cheat to communicate with work. If anything, this experienced confirmed that technology is something I can survive without but also that it is something extremely useful.

My Weekend of Telephone Calls

2011-11-08T11:22:00.002-06:00

In high school we had a day where students in a certain psychology class tried to go the whole school day without drinking any water. In an environmental studies class I took last year, we were challenged at about this time of year to spend a day without using any plastics. Compared to those challenges, I thought two days without using the internet would be easy. I didn't succeed, but it was pretty eye-opening and a pretty fun exercise.

All of my jobs require me to use computers pretty extensively. Email is an invaluable tool for communicating with clients and partners in other cities efficiently and provides a 'paper trail' that telephone conversations do not. My first breach of the no-internet rule was checking email once each day. In addition to those jobs, I have an internship where my primary responsibility is to check and respond to email. This isn't very much fun so I considered it a pretty benign breach.

The hardest thing for me was text messages. I had the great advantage of not having a smart phone, so the temptation of using the internet did not follow me out into the streets. However, texts did. Communicating via SMS is so second-nature to me that there were a few times I responded to a text without even thinking about the assignment not to. The majority of the time I had fun calling people to respond to their texts. This seemed to catch certain people really off-guard. There were also a few times that someone sent me a text and didn't answer the phone when I responded with a call. Hopefully this was a testament to the text message's utility in allowing communication when the sender is in a situation that prevents him from talking, although I wouldn't be surprised if there are some people that don't feel comfortable talking on the telephone because they are so used to texting.

Getting away from Facebook and the like was not too hard but I will admit I was very excited to log on at about 4:55pm on Sunday. It was liberating living (mostly) without the internet for two days, but it sure was nice to be reunited with it.

Logging Out -- Riley Gaynor

2011-11-08T09:59:00.003-06:00

To be honest, I was really looking forward to logging off this weekend. Ever since watching the "disconnected" documentary in class, specifically what the girl in the video was talking about, and about what spencer talked about in discussion - that when you aren't connected or plugged in to the network, you find yourself with a lot of time on your hands. So since the class last tuesday, I really haven't gone on Facebook or the computer a lot, only when I really need to. So over the weekend, it was really easy for me not to use social networking tools because I had already begun to slowly phase out those types of things like Facebook and Twitter. The only thing that was a problem for me was texting; I have always been really involved with texting, even though I think a phone call is more productive, texting is a key part of the way I communicate with my family and friends. So, I did end up breaking the rules and using texting over the weekend, but as far as email and other forms of communication, like everyone said in discussion, I don't find myself sending a lot of emails, most of the people that I talk to on a daily basis I connect with via texting and my phone.

Overall though, I didn't find it that difficult to disconnect from social networking with the exception of texting. What I have found, just as the documentary talked about, is that social networking sites, at least for me, are more of a distraction that anything else. This is really important for me, because just as in the documentary, I could easily be on the computer writing a paper, and get caught up in Facebook or whatever for an hour or so and not even really realize it. So I think disconnecting, is really important for me as a student because it affords me more time to spend on the things that I really need to do, instead of being sucked into the snares of the internet and social media.

Logging Off

2011-11-07T21:17:00.002-06:00

This weekend was particularly tough for me because on thursday I bought my first iPhone ever and consequently was very excited to use all of it's awesome features at all times. However, this weekend my family came to visit so I was pretty much at all times with my family and had a reason not to be social networking or communicating with my friends. Since we were able to call people it wasn't a big deal at all to talk to my friends when I needed to and I didn't miss texting at all. I find that calling people is much better than texting because you can fit an entire, time-consuming text conversation in a relatively short phone conversation. I've always preferred talking on the phone to texting anyways so it wasn't hard.
Had it not been for my family being in town I might have been annoyed about not being able to social network cause I am a pretty big Facebook and Twitter user. I usually use my computer a lot expecially for ESPN, Facebook, and Twitter and would definitely miss it if I couldn't use them. Again, I was busy all weekend doing family-related activities so I didn't really notice not being able to do these sorts of things. I would like to become less dependent on technology but can't really see myself disconnecting unless forced to.

Logging Off -- Justin Feist

2011-11-07T11:20:00.002-06:00

For me I was actually looking forward to logging off of social network sites. Whenever I go up to my cabin up north, there is no cell phone reception, so I get a chance to get away for the weekend. This logging off experiment for class was a way for me to get away from Facebook, and that aspect of it was nice.

One thing that I had a really hard time with was the fact that I could not text. Up north it is nice because you do not receive texts, but when you are within range of cell phone towers, and get text it is very hard. This was the hardest part, the fact that I would receive texts and not be able to text back ( I know I broke the rules with not receiving texts, but it was to tempting). So most of the time, if it was something trivial I would not even respond. If I got a text that needed to be responded back to, I would call the person. - Most of the time they would answer the phone confused to why I was calling rather than texting, but I explained to them the class project and they were understanding and interested.

The other hard part for me was not being able to use my weather app on the phone, which normally I check frequently.

So for me this weekend was not to bad, but if I were to have to go no computer at all, I would have a very hard time with school work. And I would not want to do this for a month like the people did in the video.

Experiment Disconnect

2011-11-06T23:54:00.000-06:00

FREE AT LAST!

I have never looked forward to 5pm of a Sunday afternoon as much as I did this weekend. I have to confess that the attempt at disconnecting had been frustrating as well as enlightening. One major realization that I came away with was the clear distinction between my use of web-based communication tools to maintain weak ties and my use of phone-based communication tools to maintain strong ties. I didn't find it too difficult to stay away from web-based communication such as email and facebook for the weekend. I use those tools to keep in touch with more distant friends who wouldn't even notice that I was offline for a couple days. Phone-based communication was a whole nother story... I desperately need the phone to survive in my daily activities and to keep in touch with my closest friends and family.

This fact was brought out most poignantly when I missed the opportunity to go to my very first UW football game. My husband and I have been planning to go the game this weekend because neither of us has been to one yet. But, to make a long story short, we missed the game because we were trying to abide by the "no phone" rule and therefore couldn't tell each other where we were and where we needed to be.

The inability to reach others instantaneously drove me nuts. Thinking back, I probably could have carried out my daily activities smoothly without a cell phone, but I needed to completely readjust my daily routine. For example, I would need to make a detailed inventory of everything in my fridge and cupboard before I go out shopping and not count on being able to call home to ask my husband to check whether we have enough milk. What became undeniably evident through "Experiment Disconnnect" is that I use the cell phone to maintain and reinforce my "strong ties", including the ties with my husband. The mediated communication via the phone led to more meaningful, face-to-face interactions.

Looking forward to hearing about everyone else's experience and discussing this more in class!

Weekend Assignment

2011-11-06T22:29:00.003-06:00

This weekend's assignment wasn't easy for me at all. I did as best as I could, but eventually gave in Saturday night. Not good I know! I didn't use my phone at all to text or call though, and didn't check Facebook until later tonight. The one thing I did do was check my fantasy and set up my team for Sunday and also look at stats for certain players. I was planning on not doing this, and it was much tougher than I thought! I take fantasy football pretty seriously, so I wanted to make sure I had the best lineup I could have.

I think what made it tough was having such easy access to my computer. I would just be sitting down watching tv and I knew my computer was right in my backpack. It was so tempting to go on it Friday, but I managed not to then. I also Skyped with my girlfriend on Saturday night because she worked all day, and didn't want to tell her no. So I pretty much failed this assignment in many ways, and I now realize how much I rely on technology and computers for many aspects of my life. I am so used to having such easy access and being able to check anything I want at any time. Living in a world with no computers would be something I don't think I could imagine. The extent to which we use and rely on technology is only continuing to grow, and I feel like the same goes for me.

This weekend's Assignment

2011-11-06T22:15:00.005-06:00

I didn't think that this assignment would be too hard. I underestimated it. I was tempted to go on Facebook and Twitter a lot. I am used to checking up on it more than I should. It's just what I do when I'm bored sometimes. The no texting thing was definitely a lot harder though. Every time someone would text me, I would have to figure out how to let them know that i couldn't text them back. That was probably the hardest part.

This whole thing gave me a perspective on how it would be to grow up in the age without all of these things. I've had a cell phone since 6th grade and it was really amazing how hard it is to communicate without using one. Then I realize that the older generations grew up without all of these technologies, and now I respect that a lot more.

Offline

2011-11-06T21:31:00.002-06:00

Surprisingly this weekend wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Luckily Friday was my friend's birthday party so I was with a bunch of my friends anyway, then Saturday I spent all day either sleeping or watching the Discovery Channel and slept in Sunday morning as well. I was worried about not being online since I was planning to Skype with friends getting together in Philly this weekend, but it seems like they were busy until Sunday night anyway. Also, I already had planned to spend Saturday with my boyfriend so it wasn't so uneventful.

I didn't think being offline was so painful, but it was probably because I spent the time entertained by another device (my tv or boyfriend in some cases :P). Luckily this weekend I wasn't bombarded by homework and I had talked to my parents earlier in the week. If this assignment had lasted any longer I think I would either be suffering trying to get work done or my grades would be suffering.

Logging Off

2011-11-06T20:12:00.002-06:00

This weekend's "online" assignment was pretty interesting. I found a few things really difficult, because I rely SO MUCH on the internet (Google). I wanted to look up a recipe but couldn't because I didn't have the internet to fall back on, and don't have cookbooks around because I know I can always just look online. I also needed to find directions but couldn't, because I don't have a real paper map to look at. I found that I really didn't miss much by not texting for the weekend, because any time I wanted to text someone it was basically just to make later plans to hang out. I didn't miss anything on Facebook either, but I'm not as attached to that website as I could be (or once was). Basically I found that I rely on Google searches for a lot of my life...even finding websites. I needed to find the website for the writing center, but my first instinct was to do a Google search on "uw writing center" as opposed to just search wisc.edu. If Google crashed tomorrow, I'd probably be at a loss as to how to find information on the internet.

The Weekends Challenge

2011-11-06T19:54:00.003-06:00

It was very difficult to not use my phone, or internet (for things other than school work). At first it was easy and it was nice not to bother with texting or using twitter or Facebook. It did get hard though when I ended up nannying longer than I was supposed to on Friday and simply wanted to waste my time by going on Facebook. Not using texting was probably the hardest part because I'm used to communicating via text all the time. When ever I received a text I really wanted to respond to it and it was very hard not to. I just began calling people which was pretty easy through the game on Saturday. Before the game I had to contact my dad in order to meet up with him but calling to find him was easy. After the game on Saturday is when I gave in on texting. I stuck with not using the internet for anything other homework until five o'clock sunday though. That part was pretty easy since I had a lot of other stuff I needed to do.

Overall I found it difficult since I'm so used to constantly being on the computer and being able to do whatever. I am also use to texting a lot so that was very difficult not to use. Even though it was a good challenge and I am now very much aware of how much I rely on technology I will continue to remain to use it as much as I do.

Memex

2011-11-04T14:45:00.003-05:00

What struck me the most about Bush's two articles was his vision of a tool to augment human intellect. As an English and History major, I know how thoughts can get lost in the billions of words I read everyday. At the end of the day, my brain and a printed text do not result in the most efficient intellectual output. Bush points out how technology helps us get past mundane tasks to perform what is truly human, to think. His vision or a device that is a supplement to our memory, somthing being realized with computers, tablets, and software today, helps a person sift through the monumental amount of data to actually do something with it. When I was reading these articles, I found myself making an analogy to the technology of transportation. You never hear someone make the argument that cars or plane are evil in the sense that they are keeping us from the natural way of moving ourselves, our own two feet. Just as technology is beneficial when it cuts down on the tiring and mundane task of walking, technology is beneficial when it boost our intellectual ability. If we have tools to make us move faster, it should not be crazy to have tools that help us think faster.

The 1995 conference that reviewed Bush's work thought that Bush belittle human collaboration too much. Bush does stress the importance of each individual having a device to augment her or his intellect but, I think this is necessary to have human collaboration.

All this talk of personal and advanced technology also makes me think of the digital divide. I hope these personal device can truly be used as tools but we must remember to share these tools with everyone.

As We May Think - And the World's Waking Up

2011-11-04T10:41:00.001-05:00

As We May Think, first published by Vannevar Bush in The Atlantic Monthly in 1945, is a mind-blowing work of prognostication on the future potential of technology. Bush reminds me very much of Ray Kurzweil who in many ways is the futurist/technology profit of our times. It's interesting to think that Vannevar Bush's conceptualization of the Memex as a collective memory machine was in part inspired by the horrors of war. I have often thought about mankind's pattern of generational wars in this way. It's as if each successive generation loses the memories of the previous generation and feels instead the barbaric impulse for war that is endemic to our mammalian nature. This leads more or less directly to the thought that if we, as a society, had a collective memory machine then horrible apocalyptic wars, such as WWI and WWII, would not be possible, (since the current generation would remember all the terrible lessons of the previous generation, and so on).

Vannevar Bush anticipated the Internet and the World Wide Web as well as hypertrext, computers, speech recognition and Wikipedia. All have come into being with greater or lesser efficacy and usefulness for people. But have these tools given rise to a collective memory that will end all wars? These technologies have taken strides in this direction, one might argue. The world is connected in a way never before seen in human history. But we're in an experimental phase. Consider Julian Assange leaking all those top secret cables. This creates a world of open information but it also creates fissures in the fabric of world order that can be exploited--it's unclear whether such actions lead to a safer or a more dangerous world. Ray Kurzweil, our Vannevar Bush, envisions the singularity, the downloading of our brains, our merging with machines, and the world's waking up. Based on the unlikely success of Bush's ideas, have we any reason to doubt Kurzweil's?

SS

Memex

2011-11-03T20:30:00.004-05:00

I thought this article was really interesting. I was really surprised to say the least, because Bush thought of all this in 1945! He, in a sense, describes a slightly altered form of the modern day commuter but a larger, more expanded version where it appears to be more like a desk instead of a personal unit-like tool. On a side note, I thought it was really interesting the way that Andy Van Dam described the way that Bush "turned out to be not so much predicting the future as creating it through the influence, both direct and indirect, of his compelling vision..." in the symposium response to the Bush article. I thought this was interesting because, he gives reference to the fact that Bush didn't come up with these idea, but rather he shaped the ways in which people thought about the future of technology.

When searching for the term, "memex", I found many 3-Dimensional pictures and diagrams as to what the Bush's "memex" would look like in real life. Many of the pictures were the same: spinning wheels, mass chords connecting various internal contraptions, buttons, screens, and a paper-tablet-like surface to draw on. This is of course what Bush was describing, but it was really interesting to see his idea rendered into a diagram.

In my opinion, the "memex" is essentially an altered version of a modern day computer. There are of course clear differences, but at the core, both tools are fundamental informational tools. The big thing that strikes me is that Bush describes the memex as assigning codes to certain documents, which can lead to mass confusion because you are then looking at another document to find your desired document - overall I can see how things could get confusing. The modern computer on the other hand creates a series of file and folder options which makes the whole process of finding and searching through documents easier and more effective.

The Young and the Digital

2011-11-02T21:02:00.001-05:00

S. Craig Watkins is a professor at the University of Texas-Austin in the departments of Radio-Television-Film, Sociology, and the Center for African and African American Studies. Interested in young people’s social and digital media behaviors, Watkins wrote “The Young and the Digital” to examine the relationship between young people and technology and social media. Contrary to the common thought “technology will dehumanize us,” Watkins argues in his book that the opposite is really happening.

Out of Watkins’ extensive research subjects, the chapter The Very Well Connected: Friending, Bonding, and the Digital Age examines teens and twenty-somethings and their interaction with social- and mobile-media technologies. He first addresses the common scene of a typical teen on the side texting her friends instead of interacting with the other people who are physically with her. Some may say that she is being unsociable, but Watkins argues that she is actually being the most social by holding multiple conversations through texting with friends that aren’t there. Although she may not be physically with her friends, the only thing that is different than talking with the others who were around is the way that she decided to communicate. Watkins claims that youth aren’t that interested in technology, “but rather the people and the relationships the technology provides access to.”

Since this article focuses mainly on youths’ interaction with technology, of course parents have anxiety about this subject. One of the main concerns that parents have about their children using the internet to communicate is the possibility of strangers talking to their kids. Watkins negates this common concern with his statement, “despite all of the hype and hysteria about cyberpredators and the alleged thrill of meeting strangers online, the research literature confirms that most young users of social sites do NOT mingle with strangers on the Web.”

In actuality, Watkins claims that we use social sites to further connect with people we know in person. To expand on this point, Watkins interviews individuals in their early twenties about their experiences with using social media. One interviewee, Chase, tells Watkins that without Facebook he would probably be still in contact with a fourth of his high school friends than he is now. Even interaction through Facebook can be seen as impersonal and passive, Chase believes that even leaving small notes such as “Hey, how are you?” makes all of the difference. All of the notes, status updates, or sharing of links help paint an “intimate” picture for the person reading.

S. Craig Watkins provides great insight into the “other side of the story” when it comes to youth using social sites. Instead of stating the obvious and pessimistic truths, he tries to show readers how this type of interaction is perfectly natural and should be more acceptable. As a user of social sites, we all can relate to his sense.

Memex

2011-11-02T19:22:00.002-05:00

The articles by Bush are important to look at as some of the first to capture the need to make make advancement in information sharing and communication. After reading his articles I felt that he was very realistic in his ideas of the future, probably because he had a great understanding of where technology and production stood at the time. Another important aspect of Bush's article was that he didn't get into the specifics of the technologies to come but that the technologies had the ability to enable humans to a higher potential in their technical, social and political lives. The symposium about Bush's writings created additional support of Bush’s significance in the technological community in the respect of creating an agenda, which was followed by engineers and scientists of the next 50 years after its publication. Upon searching the web for hits for the memex, I found a news article from two weeks ago after which many journalists chose to look to past technological writers after the death of the one of the largest technological pioneers, Steve Jobs. In the news article, Hayden Welles writes about the history of the Internet and the personal computer crediting Bush as the first to preach the need for technological advancement. Most importantly Welles points out the importance of Bush as the front-runner in the technological push of the 20th century.

Memex

2011-11-02T17:18:00.002-05:00

Looking at this article is very interesting. Bush was able to basically predict what was going to be the future of technology. What is crazy is that he predicted this from what seems like raw knowledge - and so many of his ideas at the beginning are what we use now in our computers. I watched the video Alex posted, which was exactly what Bush described but we are now able to watch it in the form of a video instead of read about it in an article. This is just an example of how our technologies are obviously becoming more advanced with the use of our modern-day "memex." In another class of mine, we watched a video on how in the future, functional MRI brain scanning might even be able to read our minds. Here is a link of the YouTube video that shows this in action, and it's pretty crazy to see what we might be using in the future. I am wondering if in the future, people will look back on a video like this and laugh at the idea that we have to be inside of this large scanner in order for our minds to be read. Will this become something of common use? The future is coming quick, so maybe we'll know in our own lifetime.

Memex

2011-10-31T20:35:00.002-05:00

Vannevar Bush's ideas in As We May Think and Memex Revisited were truly ahead of their time and have had a lasting impact on technological innovation. He imagined a system for managing and storing huge amounts of data called a memex which looks like a piece of furniture but has capabilities that reflect present technologies such as the internet, online encyclopedias, hypertext, and many more. Those influenced by Bush's ideas went on to create technologies including the mouse, word processor, the hyperlink, and concepts of new media. When I googled "Memex" I found a YouTube video showing the machines capabilities. Although our present technology is much more advanced than Bush's predictions, Bush was able to predict present technologies and his ideas most likely facilitated the inventions of technologies he described. The amount of space information takes up is extremely small whereas Bush thought an encyclopedia would be held in something the size of a matchbox. The size of the Memex also is very large whereas computers nowadays can fit in the palm of a hand. Regardless, Bush's contributions have had an enormous impact and continue to be felt in the world of technology.

Memex

2011-10-31T20:11:00.001-05:00

It is very interesting to see Bush's view of what he believed the future of technology would look like. His idea of a "memex" is sort of what we are very close to today. Most of the technologies that he described back in 1945 are very similar of what we have today. I did look up a visual version of the memex that bush described, and it did not look extremely technologically advanced. If his ideas were produced today, I believe that they would look a little more high-tech. His ideas reminded me of the video we watched in lecture about the personal device that the professor had where he has a bunch of information stored in one spot.

Laptop

2011-10-31T20:09:00.000-05:00

I chose to look up the word "laptop." The definition according to the Oxford English Dictionary is, "a computer small and light enough to fit on one's lap." The first recorded use of this word was in 1984 in "Fortune" magazine. The term was referring to a four pound Radio Shack computer that was released at the time. The first use of the term in the New York Times was in an article called "Compaq's explosive Growth." This article explains the growth of personal computers. The first mention of "laptop" in the Chicago Tribune was in 1984 in an article named "Computers: 'Laptop' computers, software steal the show." This article was written about a bunch of new technology comnig out at the time. The first article containing "laptop" in the Los Angeles Times was in an article named "IBM Unveils Lap-Top Personal Computer." This article was written in 1986. This term has stuck since it first came out. Although, we do have other names, such as notebooks, for our laptops now.

Memex

2011-10-31T12:56:00.002-05:00

The "Memex" was a technological device that compares to the computer of today. I read an article that talked about how the ideas of the Memex compared to computers today, and found some interesting ideas. The Memex was supposed to use microfilm for storage, but nowadays electronic storage and display are used. Many of the ideas of the Memex can easily compare to computers nowadays, such as leaving a trail of your work and building on that trail. Bookmarks are ways to save web pages, and this is what I do when I am conducting research. I will open new tabs on my web browser, and bring up all of the information I have come across. This is similar to Bush's idea of the trails he described. We can also share information via email, which occurs in hardly no time at all, and can reach anybody who has an email address.

The personal computer of today is also way smaller than what Bush envisioned the Memex to look like. It was basically a desk turned into a computer space. My laptop weighs a few pounds, and the advancements of technology are occurring so rapidly. Phones nowadays can store more and are faster than some of the first computers, which is just crazy to think about. I'm curious of what computers will look like in the next 10 or 20 years.

The Memex and its ideas have been made possible through the personal computer. The Memex idea will continue grow, and soon we will be able to retrieve any information we want without having to search for it. This idea of the "Web 3.0" that we talked about in lecture will be the next step in developing the personal computer. It's weird to think that this is possible, but when I look at the advancements that have already occurred in my lifetime, anything seems possible.

Memex

2011-10-31T00:44:00.002-05:00

I was really quite surprised to read Bush's description of an organizing super machine which resembles the modern day computer. Along with some of the other predictions he made in his piece, they was almost always a modern day device that fit his description such as being able to instantly see pictures without using liquid (for instance a digital camera with a screen).

I also saw part of the video Memex Animation that Justin had mentioned in his post. After seeing diagrams of it I thought it looked like something out of a operating room in a power plant instead of something you would use at home or in a library.

Comparing the idea of Memex to modern day computers I think that Bush was very innovative to predict such a device. The Memex probably resembled early computers more than current ones, but the some of the basic actions are the same.

Vannevar Bush - Memex - Justin Feist

2011-10-29T10:25:00.003-05:00

After reading both of Vannevar Bush's Memex articles, I found the youtube video "Memex animation - Vannevar Bush's diagrams made real." After getting a picture of what I thought the Memex looks like, it was kind of interesting to see what it was intended to look like. It looked like they just modified a normal desk with pull out drawers and placed the Memex components into the storage space of the desk. I did not think that this was too creative.

I also found another video on youtube: "Protocol 3-Memex," this was a short video, but in it the narrator described the Memex as a "memory enhancing machine." I agree with this statement because the Memex was designed to store files, much like computers today.

I think that the Memex was a stepping stone to get to the computer that we have today, it was interesting to read about what people thought about what the future would be like. Some of the depictions of the future were very wrong, and others were almost dead on. For example Bush said that every desk worker would have a Memex, this is much like almost every person that works in an office now, has access to a computer.

Information Fatigue

2011-10-28T10:40:00.004-05:00

The term “information fatigue” was first coined in the 1990sby British psychologist, David Lewis. But as history shows us, people have beencomplaining about information overload for thousands of years.

The topic is explored in Harvard historian, Ann Blair, in her latest book, “Too Muchto Know.” Dr. Blair reveals through sources that humans have been feelingoverwhelmed by the accumulation of knowledge in encoded form—as a scroll, as ahandwritten codex, as a typeset book—basically since the moment thesetechnologies created gluts of information. James Gleick traces the history ofinformation technology and computer science in his book, “The Information,”about which he says in an interview on the Bat SegundoShow:

Gleick: …I’mhesitating to call it “problem” of information overload, of information glut —is not as new a thing as we like to think. Of course, the words are new.Information glut, information overload, information fatigue.

Correspondent: Informationanxiety.

Gleick: Informationanxiety. That’s right. These are all expressions of our time.

The question that really intrigues me is how to deal, as amodern human, with the double-edge sword of information ubiquity. On the onehand, this is what human beings have always craved, since the Stone Ages, wheninformation was very hard to come by and major world-changing ideas came alongonly once every few thousand years. Nowadays, via the network effect, groundbreakingresearch is happening around the world, all the time. But on the other hand,though we live in a golden age of information availability, we don’t quite havethe tools to deal with it, at least on an individual level. Personally, I thinkemail is an example of a poorly designed and failed method of digital communicationstechnology—simply the worst. We need information systems that truly work to enhance the individual and the society.

The question becomes: how to have our cake and eat it too?(Or is the cake a lie?)

'How Google Dominates Us' - James Gleick for The New York Review of Books

2011-10-28T00:09:00.000-05:00

Popular American journalist James Gleick is no stranger to scholarlytechnology-focused literature. Since pursuing a degree in linguistics andEnglish at Harvard in the 1970s Gleick has had stints as a writer, reporter,lecturer, editor, and publisher. His focus on new technologies and theimplications of their relationships to modern American life earned himnominations for the Pultizer Prize and the National Book Award, but also a spotamong the modern elite technological journalists. In this article, written forthe New York Review of Books, Gleick surveys recent publications on the searchengine giant Google.

The New York Review of Books, founded in 1963, is agenerally reputable publication known for its scholarly yet readablediscussions of timely publications. There are staples in its staffing, such aslongtime editor Robert B. Silvers (and, until her death in 2006, co-editorBarbara Epstein), but part of the magazine’s appeal is its wide rotating castof high-profile journalists. Understanding this, one might assume the Reviewchose Gleick to tackle recent publications about Google because they thoughthe’d be the best person to do so—and they may well be correct in thatassumption. Gleick has high enough stature in his field (in this case,journalistic commentary on advances in communication technology) to commandrespect and attention.

Gleick’s article (published August 18, 2011) deftlynavigates four recently-published books that approach Google through differentlenses. Critics of the New York Review of Books have argued that the magazineprimarily focuses on review books written by past reviewers but I found that noone of the five authors had ever written for the Review. What these authors haddone instead was draw on past experiences and research to compile sourcematerial on different aspects of the search engine/internet advertisingbehemoth.

From humble beginnings Google has risen to become anadvertising giant, a now-invaluable tool for professional and personalresearch, and a household verb. Gleick first shines the spotlight on an accountof the inside workings of Google by journalist Steven Levy. Numerous personalinterviews with Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the company’s founders, seem to bethe source material that sets Levy’s book apart from the rest. Google’s formerleader of marketing, Douglas Edwards, adds insight and a view from inside thecompany. Having established a solid foundation of the history of Google’sfounding and rise to prominence with the Page book, Gleick throws in a fewquick supplements from the Edwards book to the Google narrative.

Siva Vaidhyanathan’s TheGooglization of Everything is, according to Gleick, a possible ‘sober andadmonitory companion’ to Levy’s generally positive account. He addressesconcerns raised in Googlization aboutthe nature of Google’s advertising and gives a rundown of the site’sdevelopments in ‘smart’ advertising. This is perhaps the most informative partof the review. The least essential part of the review comes next with a quickdismissal of Scott Cleland’s Why You Can’tTrust Google Inc. in which Gleick brings up the book only to compareCleland’s ‘blunt club’ approach to Levy’s ‘more measured’ account of thecompany’s shortcomings.

‘How Google Dominates Us” fits well with the time-tested NewYork Review of Books style—academic, yet an easy read for a casual reader. Hedwells on Levy’s In the Plex,although in this context it is evident that this lack of balance is more of atestament to the book’s worth than anything else.

Texting

2011-10-26T23:30:00.004-05:00

When I searched the newspaper databases for the term "texting," I was bombarded with results for documents that had the word "testing." This was not an error of mine but I am assuming one in which occurred when the old newspapers were digitized. It is wonderful that we are able to search old newspapers, but we must remember that these search engines are yet imperfect. When fonts are letters are hard to read, the digitization process can make mistakes. When I searched the databases for the term "texting," results from 1987 (Proquest) and 1995 (Project Muse) used the term to mean documenting, typing, or word processing. To text something meant to type or write it up. It was not until 2000, that the New York Times used the term like we use it today. It was first found in an article describing how Muslim insurgents in the Philippines were texting their enemies. The article had a long explanation for what texting was and even described it as "e-mailing on your cell phone." My research showed me the failing of the digitization process as the evolution of a word when technology adapts it.

World Wide Web

2011-10-25T22:32:00.003-05:00

The first newspaper database that I used was the Los Angeles Time . The first article, which dates to 1951, was about the red scare. The article used the word to describe the large conspiracy of communism that has spread from Moscow. The New York Times was a little more modern with their use of the word dating back to 1996. The article chronicles the amazing abilities of the World Wide Web being able to spread the information of the opera singer Cecillia Bartoni. Using ProQuest again to search for the modern informational society catch word, I found several article from the 1992. These article write about the power of the technological advances in glass, that in their opinion were going to make a fiber-optic world wide web. Using the Project Muse search feature I found article dating back to 1994 at the early beginnings of the internet. The article gives a background understanding of the world wide web as client-server system for sharing photos,videos and information across the internet. Finally using the JSTOR search for scholarly articles I found many articles from the early 20th century using the catch phrase. One article uses it to describe the weather forecast system that is going to be built and another using it in a science report about the web of mankind around the world. The modern informational society catch phrase world wide web is really a very vague term that can be applied to many aspects of science and sociology, it is no wonder than that the word is found in so many decades and articles.

Music Piracy in 1905 and Beyond

2011-10-25T19:38:00.000-05:00

The current state of the internet allows for startlingly quick easy crimes against copyrights. Peer-to-peer networks and mp3 blogs help facilitate a culture of file sharing characterized by nearly-instant gratification. I know tapes caused similar problems in the 80s, but I did not know that the problem of music piracy was such a longstanding one.

The first mention of "music piracy" in the newspapers I searched was in a 1905 Chicago Tribune article about John Philip Sousa publicly taking issue with the United Kingdom's failure to enforce international copyright law. By some particularly bizarre coincidence, the next headline in the paper mentioned John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin fame (not quite, but this has to be a premonition of some sort). I hadn't thought about it, but it makes sense that plagiarism in music first emerged long before the advent of cassettes. Most of the articles about music piracy in its earliest days detailed unauthorized reproductions of sheet music.

The other articles from throughout the last 100 years included one reporting a 'music piracy ring' shut-down and one about the government of Singapore lamenting the country's reputation as "a haven for tape counterfeiters." On Proquest there was an article from 1984 heralding a database that would allow you to listen to music in a booth in a record store. I thought this was very interesting as there are many parallels between the database listening booth and modern streaming services such as Rhapsody and Napster. The article foresaw this technology having the capability to squelch music piracy. I would imagine that Rhapsody users pirate much less music than they might without access to the service, which seems logical.

Cell Phone

2011-10-24T19:53:00.002-05:00

I chose to look up the term cell phone and found that the idea of a cell phone was created in the late 1800s. I was very suprised to find that people have grasped the idea of a cell phone for over a century and that it is not a new term.

New York Times: 1886, "A long-distance Telephone"
Chicago Tribune: 1884, "Long-distance Telephoning"
Los Angeles Times: 1894, "How Electricity Acts in the Speaking Industry"
ProQuest: Sept 1984, "Future phones: Talk gets around"
Project Muse: 1990, "Hacking Away at the Counterculture"
Jstor: 1878, "Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences"

I found it interesting how the newspaper searches showed me results that were much older than ProQuest and Project Muse. I found that in pre-1900s the term cell phone was not used but the idea of a cell phone was becoming a common idea. However, because it was such a long time ago, people were not yet grasping the idea of a wireless phone, but a phone that could make calls anywhere in the country with good quality. In the 1980s and early 90s the actual definition of the cell phone become a common idea as it then became a reality to have a wireless phone that could make calls virtually anywhere.

Googling

2011-10-24T12:30:00.003-05:00

I looked up the term "Googling" to see when it was first used in the context of the search engine online. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, to Google is to use the search engine to find information on the Internet, and was first referenced in 1999. There was not a definition for Googling, but this is the same context I was looking for. Here are the results I found when I searched Googling:

New York Times: June 2002, "Dump Dem Buns"

Chicago Tribune: none

Los Angeles Times: none in this context

ProQuest: January 2001, "Googling is good for friendship"

Project Muse: Winter 2003, "Voiceprints (review)"

JStor: October 2003, "Review, untitled"

I thought it was very interesting that Googling was never found in the Chicago Tribune or the LA Times used in the context of finding information on the internet. I tailored my search to look only for Googling used in this context, so it did appear at earlier dates in a few of the search engines, just not the version I was looking for. It has changed its meaning since its original appearance in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1907.

Vlog

2011-10-23T22:33:00.003-05:00

I decided to search the word "vlog" because it is something unique to the internet and has become such a powerful tool in the internet age. You no longer need to be "special" to have an audience. As long as you have a camera, free time, and connection to the internet you have millions of possible viewers.

New York Times: 2005 "Watch me do this and that online"

Chicago Tribune: No result

Los Angeles Times: No result

Proquest: 1996 "Design System"

Project Muse: 2008 Computer-Mediated Communication and the Gallaudet University Community: A Preliminary Report

JSTOR: No Result

From the results I came up with I think it is safe to say that "vlog" is a relatively new term. The Proquest result seemed that it referred to a different kind of vlog. Otherwise, "vlog" has always seemed to mean something along the lines of a video journal.

Cyber Culture -- Justin Feist

2011-10-23T17:10:00.003-05:00

I looked up the word "cyber culture" in the Oxford English Dictionary, and the earliest recorded use of the word was in 1963 by A. M. Hilton in his article titled "Logic, Computing Machines, and Automation."

It was defined in the dictionary as: The social conditions brought about by widespread automation and computerization; (in later use also) the culture surrounding computers and (esp.) the Internet.

Cyber Culture was first used in the New York Times in the article "Seriously Wired," it was used as the overall category of the word "Cyber Punk". The earliest use was in 1993.

In Project MUSE cyber culture was used as a word to describe cultures in cyberspace - this is how I would used the context of the word. The earliest use was in 1997.

Terabyte

2011-10-23T13:03:00.003-05:00

I decided to conduct my search on the term "terabyte." I was curious to know when this amount of storage became available. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term was first used in 1982, stating that a terabyte of information will be made feasible with stacked optical disks.

The New York Times: "Not So Limited", 1987

The earliest use of terabyte I could find was in 1987. The term was used to describe Intel's microprocessor and defines how much information a terabyte actually is. "A terabyte is one million million bytes," according to the article. The article made people aware of this somewhat new term, and provided many definitions to familiarize people of the amount of information a terabyte can hold.

The Chicago Tribune: 1988

The earliest use of terabyte in The Chicago Tribune was in 1988. The term was used to describe the amount of information one of the systems that was presented could hold.

JSTOR: Computer Music Journal, 1982

I found the term terabyte used in 1982, which is the same as year as the Oxford English Dictionary. Terabyte was used to show the address space three chip Intel processor.

I found no uses of terabyte in the Los Angeles Times, and the earliest use was in 1982 based on my finding. The term terabyte had the same meaning in all of my articles. It meant the amount of storage that was available on some sort of system that was being used. I wasn't really shocked by this, and I figured the term would have been used some time in the 1980's or 90's maybe. When searching in ProQuest, the term was used in 1988 to describe a two-terabyte storage system. As time goes on, more and more terabytes are possible. This just shows how rapidly technology changes, and the amount of storage space that will continue to grow in the future.

Neuromancer -- Justin Feist

2011-10-23T10:49:00.003-05:00

Before I started my book search I had a good idea about which book I wanted to read. I had been wanting to read William Gibson's Neuromancer for a while, and I never had the time to.

To find other possibilities I searched "technology" in Amazon and found a really interesting book called Alone Together. In the caption it explained "Why we expect more from technology and less from each other." This book sounded really interesting to me.

The next search I did in Amazon found a book titled Designed in Nature. The sub-caption reads "How the constructal laws governs evolution in biology, physics, technology, and social organization" I thought it would be interesting to see how nature has effected the design of technology.

I decided to go on with my search with three books: Neuromancer, Alone Together and Designed in Nature.

I looked all of the books up in Google, and Neuromancer had great reviews, I believe it had 4.5 stars out of 5. This really made me decide that I wanted to read Neuromancer for this project.

I found a couple journal articles on Nueromancer and narrowed it down to the two that I thought would work best. The first is "Postmodern Imagery in William Gibson's Neuromancer" by Tony Myers. The second is, "The Narrative Construction of Cyberspace: Reading Nueromancer, Reading Cyberspace Debates" by Daniel Punday.

"Computer"

2011-10-21T19:54:00.002-05:00

The Oxford English Dictionary has three definitions for the word, “computer”:

1. A person who makes calculations or computations; a calculator, a reckoner; spec. a person employed to make calculations in an observatory, in surveying, etc. Now chiefly hist.

2. A device or machine for performing or facilitating calculation.

3. An electronic device (or system of devices) which is used to store, manipulate, and communicate information, perform complex calculations, or control or regulate other devices or machines, and is capable of receiving information (data) and of processing it in accordance with variable procedural instructions (programs or software); esp. a small, self-contained one for individual use in the home or workplace, used esp. for handling text, images, music, and video, accessing and using the Internet, communicating with other people (e.g. by means of email), and playing games.

One of the earliest uses of the word “computer” in the New York Times was in February of 1853. The term was used in reference to a man who had died - an obituary. The clipping talked about how the man was “a great astronomical computer” – meaning that the man did a lot of scientific calculations, particularly in the field of astronomy.

http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/hnpnewyorktimes/docview/95805460/fulltextPDF/1328E5519BB8217995/1?accountid=465

The earliest use of the “computer” that I found in the Chicago Tribune was in May of 1853, which mentioned and idea for a tool to instantly compute business problems. It was only a small article, but nevertheless was more geared towards our modern definition of a “computer”.

http://ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/docview/168663249?accountid=465

The earliest uses of the word, “computer” that I found in the scholarly article databases were all around the same time (1966-1968). All three of the databases gave reference to the very simple concept of a tool used to compute mathematical formulas and algorithms.

http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/journals/journal_of_the_history_of_philosophy/toc/hph4.2.html

Overall, the word “computer” started out meaning one thing, and then over the course of a few hundred years, ended up meaning something very different. Previously, the word “computer” was merely used to describe a person or tool that was utilized in order to solve mathematical problems. Today, the word “computer” is representative of the ubiquitous tool of the 21^st century that most people now call a “personal computer” or PC.

"Digital Divide"

2011-10-21T14:02:00.003-05:00

“Digital Divide” – term first used in 1995 according to the Oxford English Dictionary

1. A division of those in favor of the increased use of digital technology and those who are against it

2. Divide between those who have access to technology and the people that do not

· The New York times is 1996 – “A Nation Ponders its Growing Digital Divide” - Proquest

In this article "digital divide" refers to libraries wanting to have more access to technology. Different librarians wanted libraries to have access to computers in order to utilize the internet and they also wanted grade school to have computers so children were able to have access to internet sources. Congress explains in this article that educational institutions should have access to technology so people from every background have equal opportunity to use different technological systems. At the time the article was written only 9 percent of American classes had access to internet, but it said that this would be changing in the next five years. School and libraries would be receiving free access to internet connection.

· 1999 was the early article found in projectmuse.com -Alliance for Community Media Keynote

"Digital divide" refers to the new advances in televisions and internet-based communications people now have more options for everything. There is now the opportunity to create more new advances in technology. Since people now have more options it enhances certain aspects of technology and diminishes others. Televisions now have the to spread more information quickly which can be a positive or negative thing. Because of these new advances it creates a greater divide between the people who do not have access to the new advances.

· JSTOR – 1998 “Global Knowledge: A US NGO perspective”

This article refers to the "digital divide" being the complications of implicating information technologies into communities. One of the complications was having a lot of information but not having a very useful way to search through all of the information to find what your looking for. Another complication that was noted by those conferences with the US NGO was that there is a lack of resources and support from dominate institutions and there needs to be a way to change this in order to have better access to different information because the US is creating a much more complex infrastructure.

The Internet: For Better or for Worse

2011-10-21T09:06:00.002-05:00

This article was published in the New Yorker by Steve Coll on April 7, 2011. Coll analyzes the effects of the Internet, social media, and communication technologies on political communication and political liberation. The article begins by describing the murder of Khaled Said, an Alexandrian, by a brutal public beating at the hands of the Egyptian police. Because the assault was recorded on several cell phone cameras and uploaded to Facebook and YouTube, Said’s death became a public and international outrage over the Egyptian police force and government. Led by Wael Ghonim, a Facebook protest group “We Are All Khaled Said” attracted 473,000 online adherents.

Ghonim, in response to the massive popularity of his protest group, said, “This revolution started online…if you want to liberate a society, just give them the Internet.” Coll goes on to analyze this statement by looking at the beliefs and findings of a few scholars, but establishes that social networking can speed up political communication and protest organization, and that government abuses are spread quickly with the current information technology.

Evgeny Morozov, writer of The Net Delusion opposes Ghonim’s belief that the Internet is a force for liberation. He argues that “social media have been overestimated as tools for political liberation…[and] overstates how these same tools may provoke bad governments into repressive actions that they are obviously inclined to take anyway” (Coll 4). He supports his argument by referencing his own unsuccessful personal experience attempting to promote democracy and media reform in the USSR and the Obama administrations actions during the Green Movement uprising in Iran. Morozov sees communications technologies as being tools for both good and evil uses. For example, Facebook not only organizes protests, but can also be used by the government to enhance surveillance. Large-scale funding of pro-government bloggers/tweeters to support regimes can also quiet dissenters that are necessary in a free and democratic nation. Morozov concludes by saying “there is no good blueprint for dealing with modern authoritarianism.”

Jared Cohen and Eric Schmidt (Chairman of Google) argue that faster and faster computing power combined with social media is constructing “an era when the power of the individual and the group grows daily.” They view the Internet as possessing the potential to change global politics in ways that other communication advancements have not, which decentralizes power. Future dictators and regimes must embrace the technological wave or be at odds with their citizens.

Hilary Clinton, on the other hand, said that social media have become the “public space of the twenty-first century” and that protest and revolt is not a product of the Internet and social media, but of violations of rights. The Internet is simply a medium that allows for faster communication and organization, not as the sole contributor for the uprising in Egypt and around the region.

Finally, Tim Wu, in The Master Switch, depicts that the ideas about the radio during the early 1900s were very similar to the current ideas about the Internet. Although people believed that the radio would completely change American politics, we no see these hopes did not come true. The radio did not improve or broaden American democracy. Wu explained that how the industry is structured “determines the freedom of expression in the underlying medium.” Wu is worried that large corporations could turn the Internet into an oligopoly where a small percentage of people control the information in a society.

Coll ends the article analyzing the Internet’s favoring of bottom-up political activity due to the lowering of economic barriers and giving peer-to-peer and group-to-group interaction in a fast, widespread context. Coll goes on to explain that the preservation of an open Internet requires those benefitting from it to fight to keep it. He wraps up the article by stating that Western societies greatest contribution to empowering repressed populations abroad is to fight for Internet openness at home.

Coll asks if the Internet will remain an open system, favoring users over authorities or if it will begin to favor authorities, like governments. My thoughts on this topic are that if we can maintain a system that disallows government or other types of regulation on the Internet and social media, the Internet should continue to favor users over authorities. Once the government can regulate and manage different communications technologies, there is a possibility that authorities will overstep their bounds and use communication technologies in the wrong ways.

Steve Coll is a contributor to the New Yorker magazine and president of New America Foundation. He has one two Pulitzer Prizes and is the author of six books and has previously worked as a foreign correspondent. He specializes in matters on foreign policy and international relations.

Works Cited
Colll, Steve. "The Internet: For Better or for Worse." The New York Review of Books 7 Apr. 2011: 1-11. Print.

What Technology Wants - Kevin Kelly

2011-10-21T03:00:00.003-05:00

The books I didn't choose are: "The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing" written by Lisa Gansky, and "The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires", written by Tim Wu. These were both really awesome books, but in the end I felt like my final choice would be the most interesting.

The book I chose to read is: "What Technology Wants", written by Kevin Kelly. I chose this book because I have read some of kelly's other work and really enjoy the way he writes. He is a really funny guy, and truly loves the topics that he writes about.

http://www.amazon.com/What-Technology-Wants-Kevin-Kelly/dp/0143120174/ref=pd_sim_b4

http://www.librarything.com/work/9897361/reviews

The Internet of Elsewhere

2011-10-20T22:28:00.002-05:00

After looking at the books, "Language and the Internet" as well as "Race and the Internet," I chose this new book by Cyrus Farivar, "The Internet of Elsewhere." One of the reviews I read on Amazon.com stated that in this book Farivar explore the parts of the world, many unexpected, that actually are just as advanced or more so than the US when it comes to the Internet. Farivar explores Estonia (the country that invented Skype), Korea (the most highly wired country in the world), Sengal, and Iran to show how the Internet is growing in places worldwide. I thought this book might be interesting to compare to our discussion of the digital divide and western domination of cyberspace. I was also drawn to this books presence on the Internet through its own website, twitter, and facebook. I don't usually experience books through those mediums. I thought reading this book might be interesting in order to explore how books are finding a niche in the Internet. In other words, instead of being replaced by cyberspace they are harnessing its power for their own gain. The book is already in many academic institution's libraries, including our own, so I figure it is relevant and scholarly.

When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth

2011-10-20T22:00:00.000-05:00

I found this article to be extremely interesting. Cory Doctorow is a technology activist and a science fiction novelist. His article on “When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth” basically talks about the Internet and its systems crashing and the effect it has on the world. Felix is the main character, and he gets a call late in the morning from a mechanical voice of the systems monitor, and he has to go into work to try and fix the problem and to make sure everything keeps running the way it should. When he is there, a series of biological and nuclear attacks start sweeping the world, killing his son and wife. All the system administrators are safe in their building, and stay there hoping this “biological thing” will eventually pass. They figure that the bad guys who are doing all of this are using the Internet to cause all this destruction, and they debate about whether or not they should disconnect the Internet. Will believes this would disadvantage the attackers, but Felix says he has ”nothing to live for but that,” meaning the Internet. Felix is then announced Prime Minister, and they try to recover the Internet. This process isn’t easy, and they have limited fuel to do so. Many of the administrators leave to search for their families and also for food. Felix eventually leaves himself, trying to make the best of this world he now lives in.

This article was unlike anything we have read so far, and it really got me thinking about the Internet and the impact it really does have on us. I was watching a show the other day about the Internet and they discussed how a massive sun flare could potentially cause blackouts and the Internet would be down for who knows how long. There was a solar flare in 1859 that burnt out telegraph wires, and if something like this happened today, it would be catastrophic. How would we survive without the Internet? We obviously would somehow, but it would be complete chaos. Most jobs rely on the Internet or the use of computers in some way, and just the thought of having no access to them or even cell phones is something I cannot even imagine. The Internet is definitely something amazing that is continuing to grow and grow, but being without it would make people be more aware of how much people in the United States rely on it.

Something I also thought about is how terrorists use the Internet. Al Qaeda is one of the first terrorist groups to use the Internet to arrange bombings, training sessions, and also to organize terrorist movements. The Internet obviously provides communication for the good and the bad, but like Will states in the article, why don’t we disconnect the Internet for these reasons? Now I know this will never happen, but it’s definitely something to think about. All of this new technology is great in many ways, but it also allows people such as the Al Qaeda to plan their attacks, and much of the organization of 9/11 was done using the Internet. Could this have been avoided if there was no Internet? Nobody will for surely know, but reading this article definitely raised some great questions and thoughts about the Internet and what it does offer, both the good and the bad.

The Master Switch - Tim Wu

2011-10-20T17:54:00.003-05:00

First off, the books I didn't choose: 'Pulse: The New Science of Harnessing Internet Buzz to Track Threats and Opportunities' by Douglas Hubbard and 'Search Engine Society' by Alexander Halavais. All three seemed quite interesting and relevant to the course. I had started out focusing on books highlighting digital media studies and found that these two and the one I chose were recently published and well-reviewed.

The book I ultimately chose was Tim Wu's 'The Master Switch'. It made a number of respectable publications' end-of-year lists in 2010, including the New Yorker and the Washington Post. 'The Master Switch' examines arcs of communication technologies' use (primarily telephone, television, and the internet) through different periods of varying industry control. I am really quite excited to get my hands on this book!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Wu#The_Master_Switch
http://www.librarything.com/work/10059237
http://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Information-Empires-Borzoi/dp/0307269930/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319147618&sr=1-9

The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains

2011-10-19T23:18:00.003-05:00

This assignment was much more difficult than I anticipated, because I ended up being picky about which book I am ending up choosing. I looked at The Nature of Technology and What Technology Wants, as well as the book I chose: The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains by Nicholas Carr. I chose this book because of the three I was considering, it was definitely the one most-talked about in the review process. It also came up with the keywords "Internet physiological affect" and "Internet psychological aspects" under WorldCat, which I thought could be very interesting. I really like psychology so bringing that aspect into new technology seemed like the best fit.

Here are some academic reviews I found:

http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/pqrl/docview/366901490/132850D7C7834260687/6?accountid=465

http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/pqrl/docview/595188848/132850D7C7834260687/2?accountid=465

http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/pqrl/docview/762514349/132850D7C7834260687/5?accountid=465

2011-10-19T20:13:00.000-05:00

In choosing a book for this assignment, I found many interesting books about the information society. I narrowed my choices down to three. The first book I found was about the network society in general. This interests me, but I just felt that it might be a little too broad. The second book I looked at was about the rise of the post-industrial society. This also seemed kind of interesting, but again, it was a little too broad. The third book, also the one I chose, is called The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World. I wrote my paper about Facebook, so this seemed the most interesting to me. This book has gotten favorable reviews from almost everything I looked at while choosing my book. It is just interesting to see how much social media is involved in our world today.

http://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Effect-Inside-Company-Connecting/dp/product-description/B005OHSS58/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/books/review/Pogue-t.html?pagewanted=all

Book Choice

2011-10-17T22:56:00.002-05:00

I choose Alone together; why we expect more from technology and less from each other by Sherry Turkle because it is a book that is relevant to the impacts of technology. I think I will enjoy this book but it does not solely provide facts but provides different opinions which makes its more interesting.

In her book she provides accurate information along with her own opinions on the matter. The reviews on Amazon we're very positive and said that the book was very interesting and a good read. Reading reviews of the book I feel confident that I will enjoy the book and be able to relate it to what has been talked about in class. The book discusses how people should not be against technology, but should be working with it and benefit from it.

There were a few reviews on Proquest but I was able to find more reviews on Library Thing. There were mostly positive reviews and from reading them I'm excited to start this book and learn more about her aspect on how technology affects our everyday lives.

http://www.amazon.com/Alone-Together-Expect-Technology-Other/dp/0465010210/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318910845&sr=8-1

http://www.librarything.com/work/10592896

The Facebook Effect

2011-10-17T21:51:00.002-05:00

I chose The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick. I chose it because I am very interested in Facebook and social networking and it really relates to the network society. The book was written with full cooperation of Mark Zuckerberg and gives a history of how Facebook was created and it's role in society.
I also considered two other books including Theories of the Information Society by Frank Webster and The Network Society by Darin David Barney. Theories of the Information Society Webster critically examines the major post-war theories and approaches to informational development. The Network Society is simply an examination of the network society and information technology. I decided to do The Facebook Effect because it interested me the most and it is a smaller topic than the other books. The books all got good reviews and it eventually came down to which book sounded the most interesting.
The Facebook Effect got a bunch of online reviews from virtually every book review site, and since the book was wrote with cooperation of Mark Zuckerberg, it is a highly read book because so many people are users of Facebook and have a strong interest in it. The book analyzes the history and current impact that Facebook has in the world today. It looks into what will happen with Facebook in the future, and depicts Facebook's role in our network society.

http://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Effect-Inside-Company-Connecting/dp/1439102112

http://www.librarything.com/work/9728696/reviews

2011-10-17T00:22:00.002-05:00

A friend actually recommended "You Are Not a Gadget" to me this summer, but I haven't had the chance to read it and thought this would be the perfect opportunity to! The reviews on Amazon were very positive. The majority of people gave the book five stars, and my friend absolutely loved it. The book is about technology and how it is shaping us for better and for worse. Sometimes I find myself thinking about the Internet and what life would be like if it never had been invented. Would it be better? I am looking to learn a lot in this book, and see what Lanier's view is on this question of whether or not the World Wide Web is a good thing. There weren't any reviews on Proquest, but LibraryThing had some. The reviews were generally positive, and the ones I read sounded interesting. I have always been interested in technology, and always want to keep up to date. I believe this book will look at technology from a different perspective, and I am excited to start reading it.

http://www.librarything.com/work/8749061/reviews

http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-Gadget-Manifesto/product-reviews/0307269647/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

2011-10-16T17:42:00.003-05:00

I decided to choose "The Filter Bubble" by Eli Pariser for the book review. Honestly, I did not have other books I was considering for this assignment because this summer for the conference I attended this past summer I had watched a TED Talk by Eli Pariser which was also about the filter bubble concept. Through out my stay in Japan I often referenced his filter bubble idea. I really like the way he explains the filter bubble and I think the concept itself is something every participant of the global networking society should know about.

http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/journals/portal_libraries_and_the_academy/summary/v011/11.4.rowland.html

http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/pqrl/docview/874666495/13274663B1B10BB3FEF/3?accountid=465

2011-10-11T00:03:00.002-05:00

Anybody think we should know about what Paul states as the Third Industrial Revolution in Player Piano?

Inclusionism

2011-10-10T19:15:00.000-05:00

From "After the Flood" page 385

Individuals that "take the broadest view of what belongs in Wikipedia." (Opposite-Deletionism)

One more definition

2011-10-09T21:24:00.001-05:00

Thanks so much for starting a study guide!! So far I have found one missing definition:

The Library of Babel. The mythical library that contains all books, all information. Yet no knowledge can be found here because falsehood is shelved along side of truth. (After the Flood).

Study Guide

2011-10-09T19:03:00.003-05:00

Heyy everybody, Kayla and I got together and compiled some short definitions for what we have for terms for the study guide...but we couldn't find a few. Inclusionism, informationalism, and The library of Babel. If anybody has anything to add feel free to add it too!! Thanks!

Better-never: we would have been better off it the whole thing had never happened. The world that is coming to an end is superior to the one that is taking its place and that, at a minimum, books and magazines create private space for minds in ways that twenty-second bursts of information don’t

C.P. Snow’s “two cultures” (libraries books and the information age): argued that the sciences and humanities had split into two separate worlds, each unaware of the other.

· Scientists had little reference for books

· Humanists were even more ignorant of science than vice versa

cathedrals of commerce (industrial rev?) – skyscrapers are the middle of the network, they’re like the “cathedrals” in which all the people network and are dependent upon together

digital divide: younger generation are the ones using the internet; income and education can help mediate this

EPICAC: a computing machine in Carlsbad caverns (Piano player)

Ever-Wasers: insist that at any moment in modernity something like this is going on, and a new way of organizing data and connecting uses is always thrilling to some and chilling to others- something like this is going on is exactly what makes it a modern moment

feminization of office work: many rules for women; segregation in business’s; they couldn’t take their hair down, had to wear black

· the telephone operators was one of the first occupations to be feminized in offices

· confined to well-defined tasks that did not involve expert knowledge

hybrid forms of literacy – new developments in how to teach literacy

inclusionism -

industrial society: goods producing socities. The world has become technical and rationalized

informationalism -

infrastructure: kinds – railroads, waterworks, highways, telephony, business communication systems, the internet

internetwork (understanding infrastructure) – systems into networks into webs; leads to path dependence; part of cyberinfrastructure

library as a community center: a democracy to bring information to everyone. A place were people to go and access a lot of different information

literacy crisis of World War II – the modern military required more literate manpower than the nation’s school system could supply

Never-Betters: believe that we’re on the brink of a new utopia, where information will be free and democratic, news will be made from the bottom up, love will reign

path dependence – staying on a patch because everybody is dependent on that path; focus on one form of technology because that is what everybody is doing until something better catches on for everybody

post-industrial society: signified not only by the change in sector distribution –the places where people work- but the pattern of occupations, the kind of work

· based on services

· increasingly a communal society wherein public mechanisms rather than the market become the allocators of goods as public choice, rather than individual demand, becomes the arbiter of services

Public Library Inquiry – urged that both state and federal government start financially supporting libraries; defined library as “people’s university”

Reeks and Wrecks (piano player) – the “poorer” people that lost their jobs to machines; could repair his car but can’t get a job as an engineer; manual labor

S-curve model (understanding infrastructure – graph page 20)-pattern of adoption for successful large technical systems

· Duration of the curve is typically 40-50 years

separation of administration from production – administration is not at the same work level as what a machine can do, but production is taken over by machines because the machine does a better job

services sector – post-industrial society; white collar jobs; education and government’ services lead to leisure time;

sponsorship of literacy learning – evolving through learning because of what is socially normal for advancement in learning; it used to be normal to skip high school, now it’s normal to finish college; what’s expected

technological systems: libraries, data bases (internet)

The Library of Babel -

Third Industrial Revolution – technology based; when internet technology and renewable energies merged together

urban society – the city center evolved; living in urban cities used to be what’s normal (skyscrapers); now living in suburbs happens because it’s easier—the network has grown and it’s easier to reach people (telephone)

“educated labor” – professionalism; because factory work was gone they needed to specialize in something so they all were educated on one aspect of technology; was demanding of jobs (you couldn’t get a job unless you were specialized in that area)

“Wiki is not paper” – going back to print culture—because Wiki is printed does that mean it is part of print culture?

How Google "Sees" Me

2011-10-07T10:21:00.003-05:00

I find this exercise very interesting because I teach aclass at UW-Whitewater that I developed called Social Media Optimization andthe New Web. One of the first things I ask students to do in this class is toGoogle themselves using a variety of modifiers, such as: Google Search yourname, image search, video search, news search, add limiters such as “Wisconsin”or “Whitewater,” then try all these same techniques in Yahoo and in Bing, etc.Students are almost always weirded out by some the results they weren’texpecting. Often they’re disappointed to learn that they are the equivalent ofcyber-ghosts, invisible to the web. In other words, they have no search visibilityor social media influence. In building up my project, GameZombie TV, I used tosearch (or egosurf) “GameZombie” religiously, looking to improve the SEO andSMO of the project online. This assignment has given me the opportunity toegosurf myself, which I haven’t done in a while.

A social networking analysis of the term “Spencer Striker”returns a lot of results because I set virtually everything to public and havepublished content online for five years or so. I have linked tons of my socialnetwork profiles to my Google Profile which helps Google know which onlineidentities are mine—it’s kind of like submitting your website to Google’sspider index: Google would have found it anyway, but this way there’s noambiguity. SEO is still pretty imperfect, as I’m always totally frustrated bythis image ad of a hammer that shows up when I search myself—it’s a hardwarestore bid on a “Spencer…Striker” hammer. Doh! And during image search, uploadsto Google Plus show up as me, because they were uploaded by me, but of coursethey are not me—they are the subjects of the photos I have taken. This happensbecause Google is blind, and can only associate tagged words in an algorithmic attemptto generate relevancy. This tech will get better and better in the future andwe should all keep an eye on how Google “sees” us.

Understanding Infrastructure: Dynamics, Tensions, and Design - Spencer's Article Report

2011-10-07T10:02:00.000-05:00

For this week, I read the article called “UnderstandingInfrastructure: Dynamics, Tensions, and Design.” The article is in fact a “Reportof a Workshop on “History & Theory of Infrastructure: Lessons for NewScientific Cyberinfrastructures,”” published in January of 2007 by the scholars,Paul Edwards, Steven Jackson, GeoffreyBowker, and Cory Knobel. This report summarizes the findings of a workshop thattook place in September of 2006 at the University of Michigan--a three-dayNational Science Foundation-funded “think tank,” so to speak, that broughttogether experts in social and historical studies of infrastructuredevelopment, domain scientists, information scientists, and NSF program officers.The goal was to distill “concepts, stories, metaphors, and parallels” thatmight help realize the NSF vision for scientific cyberinfrastructure.

To begin, this workshop and report on cyberinfrastructure ishighly technical, so I will attempt to translate some of the work and findingsthat are directly relevant to our class, LIS 201: the Information Age, aspresented by Professor Greg Downey. The authors utilize Steward Brand’s notionof the “clock of the long now” to remind us to step back and look at changes occurringbefore our eyes that are taking place on a slower scale than we are used tothinking about. Citing Brand, the authors argue that the development of ourcurrent cyberinfrastructure has occurred over the course of the past 200 yearsduring which time an exponential increase in information gathering andknowledge workers on the one hand and the accompanying development oftechnologies to sort information on the other, has led to a “cyberinfrastructure.”Manuel Castells, a Spanish born and highly influential sociologist andcommunications researcher—whom Dr. Greg Downey mentioned in class—argued thatthe roots of contemporary “network society” are new organizational formscreated in support of large corporations. While James Beniger—another scholarProfessor Downey mentioned in class—described the entire period from the firstIndustrial Revolution to the present as an ongoing “control revolution.” As wehave seen in class from such examples as the old corporate education films and CharlieChaplin’s “Modern Times,” the control revolution describes the trend in societytoward efficiency, commodification, compartmentalization, specialization, andof course control—of both information flow and how people carry out their workand lives. The authors ultimately define cyberinfrastructure as the set oforganizational practices, technical infrastructure, and social norms thatcollectively provide for the smooth operation of science work at a distance.The cyberinfrastructure will collapse if any of those three pillars shouldfail.

I find this last thought particularly interesting because thevery idea of a functioning modern cyberinfrastructure depends upon the implicit“buy in” or “cooperation” of the society. It reminds me of what the greatbiologist, E.O. Wilson once said, that if all the ants were suddenly removedfrom the world, our entire ecosystem and the world as we know it wouldcollapse. The same is true of human beings’ presumed complicity with the rules,regulations, and norms that comprise our modern cyberworld—if we suddenlystopped playing by the rules, the whole house of cards would come crashingdown.

My Digital Representation

2011-10-06T21:47:00.003-05:00

Wow, the internet is a powerful source of information. This assignment is a bit disturbing how much a person can find on another's digit personality. The first search I was linked to put me right on my home town house, guessed my age and knew my siblings and parents. I was glad to see that my Facebook search was to no avail because I don't want others to see some photos and posts that I have made. The census data from my hometown represented me as a white man. The google search was probably the most powerful since I am the only person in America with the name McKinley Olsen. The google location feature also narrowed the hits down. Many race results were shown from ski and bike races that I have completed. The UW system also showed my work in Engineers Without Borders and in grant programs. So from my limited search I could describe myself as a white engineering student at UW Madison, who is from Minocqua, Wi, and is competitive in many sports.

Myspace, Myoutdatedwebpersona

2011-10-06T19:15:00.001-05:00

Excited to see what I’d find, I set out to scour theinternet for my life story.

My residence in area code 53703 gives my online identitya very strong likelihood of being a student, probably at either UW Madison orMATC. There’s a good chance that I’m white, a very good chance that I’m over 18years old, and a very good chance that I graduated high school. Whitepages.computs my phone number in Fond du Lac, which makes sense as plenty of relatively recenthigh school graduates are on family plans. Access Dane shows that a small localproperty company owns my home. Strikethree for giving the impression of a college student!

My Google+ account throws a curveball with a profile ofme sitting on the Terrace in middle school. My secondary profile picture is ofJohn Mayer and my only public ‘post’ on the site is about not understanding howto use Google+, which might lead to the conclusion that I am fond of doing goofythings.

I never deleted my Myspace account; that’s the firstthing to come up under a Google search for my name. Again, like my Google+profile picture and most of the barren wasteland of Myspace, this is prettyoutdated. Unlike Google+, I actually used Myspace and have plenty of more goofythings on my profile there. My Twitteraccount is private, but my public bio mentions ‘growing up in fonduland [Fonddu Lac] on The Strokes and Mars Volta’ and has a link to my last.fm page.

I stopped using last.fm in May but the website still hascharts and statistics of the music I listened to on the site and iTunes betweenthen and October 2008. A music nerd such as myself could draw all kinds ofconclusions from the amount of plays I have for certain tracks, but I won’tbore you with that.

Following Twitter on my Google search, I’ve got links tomy personal blog, my LIS blog, and a brief personal profile on another blog I’ma part of. It might be these posts thatgive away the most about me, namely in the voice and subject matter of mywriting. The information published about my zip code and address is eye-opening,though thankfully I find it interesting and exciting rather than unsettling. I don’t necessarily think any of the things aboutmy online are terribly embarrassing, nor do I think they would discouragepotential employers. We live pretty transparent lives online, and it should bea surprise to no one that information about ourselves is hard to come by.

My Online Identity

2011-10-06T12:49:00.002-05:00

First of all, I was really amazed at the amount of information that I was actually able to find out about myself. I mainly messed around with different search entries on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and some other sites, and what I found was pretty interesting.

Most of the information I found was primarily based on the data that I put on the different social networking sites (Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkterest, even this blog) over the years. I was kind of mad at the fact that I uploaded all this information, maybe in high school or something, with the presumption that I would have control over who has access to it. Now, apparently that is not the case, I guess anyone with an internet connection can see a large percent of my posts and pictures that I have posted over the years. This isn't a big problem to me though, because its not like I have anything to hide.

The person I am online and the person I am in real life are clearly two different personas. The things I have put online over the years were primarily things that I thought were funny or interesting - but didn't really convey my thoughts. Making presumptions on the person that I am based off this data would be a false representation of who I am. Mainly because there are many different people with my name, and many different pieces of information that all came from different snapshots of my life. And people change over time, and my online identity doesn't really account for the change in personal nature, but rather an accumulation of everything I have ever posted into one identity.

Thank you google for telling me to expect an Academy Award very soon.

2011-10-05T19:07:00.003-05:00

Who knew that a personal search of myself on the Internet would basically inform me of a nomination for Best Actress? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I, Hannah Weinberg-Kinsey, am an actress. At least the movie sight IMDb says so. And believe it or not, it is accurate in the sense that it truly is referring to this Hannah Weinberg-Kinsey (I don't even know if there is another with the whole hyphenated last name thing). A family friend who makes short films and sends them to film festivals asked me to star in one of them when I was in high school. A couple of her films won awards but as far as I know, the film I was in never made it to a festival. It truly is remarkable that this small, obscure film is recorded on the Internet and that someone took the time to at least begin an IMDb page for me. I would love to fill it with upcoming films but I don't think that is going to happen.

There is a lot of random information about me on the Internet. Most of it revolves around school awards in high school as well as athletic stats and news articles from high school and college. The sports information was extensive. Besides one website in which I recorded information about myself to potentially get recruited, I had no hand in making this information available. There have got to be a lot of people creating these random websites of insignificant prep sports statistics. There seems to be no method to the madness as some sites were empty and others had incomplete information. I want to know who took the time to put record a particular 400 meter run time and why they choose to memorialize that particular time.

This internet search raised a lot of questions. Overall, I was struck by the amount of information out there but also the lacking of many other things. The information present provided a skewed image of myself. The census searches revealed some information about myself and I can only image how it could be used to market to me. I don't like the idea of the judgement that comes from the availability of this information. It's interesting that seeing so much information about yourself actually makes you think of how much is left out.