Post for Week of 12/6

The last week of Dissecting the Internet was definitely a fun one. We learned to use software called "Scratch" that uses a simple programming language to create animations. It was a little hard to get a hang of Scratch but once I did, I found it a lot of fun. I made a few extra animations for fun, but even then, I don't think I took advantage of all of Scratch's features. This week was also cool because I felt like the class was really bonded and we were able to collaborate more since we knew each other.

As a final reflection, I think this class was awesome. Having heard my friends' stories from their honors freshman seminars classes, I am incredibly glad that I chose this one. I thought the work load was really good and classes were extremely interesting and engaging. The assignments and discussions were rewarding and I think everyone was able to get involved in class. I feel like I have gotten to know my classmates a lot through the class, too.

Thanks for the great semester!

Post for Week of 11/28

This week we began to play around with programming language. I had some experience with HTML from middle school when I was in a sort of technology club at school. It was cool to recognize some of the code, but most everything we learned was new to me, or rather it had been so long that I had forgotten. My website turned out alright I think. It's really nice that ASU gives us all our own webspace. I think more people should be informed about this service and have the tools to take advantage of it. After making our rudimentary homepages, we moved on to simple animations. I thought animating was really fun, although getting it to work on my website was extremely frustrating. I finally got it running after some expert help from Sydney.

Post for Week of 11/21

In our one class this week, we had a very special guest come to speak to us. As a former advisor to the presidential cabinet on cyberspace defense, Colonel Barry was an extremely informative treat for the class before break. He was an excellent communicator and I wish more of the class had been around to learn from him. The part of his presentation that I found the most interesting was when he talked about the origins of the term "cyberspace." It made me think of 1984 because of how the government knew that it could have more control over something if it controlled the language.

Post for Week of 11/17

I may have mentioned this earlier, but it's really nice to be in Dissecting the Internet and Society and Technology at the same time. Right as we were discussing the Internet for social change in this class, we were discussing the invention and implications of the Internet on society in Society and Tech.
I feel like I've said pretty much all I wanted to say about the Internet for Social Change in my paper for the class, but I didn't mention anything about the OkCupid Blog, OkTrends. After doing our surveys, it was really cool to see how other people collected and compiled data. Also, it was just really cool to see all these funny dating trends. Until next time!

Post for Week of 11/10

Greetings from THE CLOUD. 

The cloud is the future of computing. Instead of people relying on the computing capacity of their personal devices, they use someone else's servers to handle what they need. Date stored in the cloud is available anywhere where internet is available, making it great for all kinds of users. Before this week's lecture, I was a little apprehensive of the cloud's security, but Dr. Wilkes proved a great point. Companies that exist solely to store your data are a lot safer than personal computers. If your machine is compromised by, I don't know, spilling a cup of coffee on the harddrive, your data is probably caput. However, with the cloud, you don't have to worry about spilling coffee on anything (except for, really you do because computer parts can be pricey and there's some data you can't put on the cloud).

Post for Week of 11/3

Never will I look at a Captcha the same again... 

Basically, this week was super fun. We played games and learned about how the internet sucks at translating and had a blast. It was difficult coming up with our own crowdsourcing games but worth it. Now I keep noticing all these different examples in class and life and whatnot. I'd share what I thought of but I've forgotten already. Anyway, 'til next time.

Post for Week of 10/27

This week was incredibly interesting in Dissecting the Internet.
On Tuesday we had a very special visitor, a serial entrepreneur who came to speak about digital marketing. I can tell you, my jaw was pretty much unhinged just after the first little intro video he showed us. I had no idea about some of those statistics he used, especially how much money Google makes off of paid advertisements. I really hand't thought that much about the ads before, usually just ignored them unless I was searching for a site that happened to have a paid ad. Also, on the subject of peer reviewed products/services, I wholeheartedly agree with our guest's statement that people would rather hear from people like them than a business. Everyone can sympathise with trying to be sold a product that they don't want by a person they don't want to hear from. If someone is pushing something that hard, they obviously have ulterior motives for telling you about it. When a consumer seeks a product themselves, they want to hear from people like themselves, not salesmen who just want to make money.

Thursday was the last of the book presentations. Good job, guys!!!

Peace, Love, and Happy Halloween,
Z