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!
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
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.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
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!
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!
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Post for Week of 11/10
Greetings from THE CLOUD.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
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.
Monday, October 31, 2011
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
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
Monday, October 24, 2011
Post for Week of 10/20
Book report week started off with a bang! We learned first that we are The Dumbest Generation. My group presented next on The Overflowing Brain. Basically, the author thought that we could be perceived as The Dumbest Generation because of the limits of our brains' working memory. However, we can get better at multitasking and retaining information with special training. On Thursday, the groups for Distracted and Against the Machine presented. Distracted has thus far been my favorite presentation because of the way the group members illustrated what it is like to be distracted on the internet. They all read different things at once and asked us what each person was talking about. Not only was it comical, it proved an important point.
Looking forward to the rest of the presentations, and good job classmates who have already presented.
Looking forward to the rest of the presentations, and good job classmates who have already presented.
Post for Week of 10/10
I wish that all of my classes had fun activities planned for the week of fall break like Dissecting the Internet. In our one class of the week, we learned all about cryptography from hands-on activities. What I found the most interesting was that the methods used thousands of years ago to encode messages apply the same concepts that encrypt data today. Though ye olde cyphers take only a little while to decode by hand and milliseconds to decode by computer, they still proved effective for the times in which they were used (usually).
Something I always like about this seminar is the amount of hands-on activities we do. It's fun and incredibly helpful in learning, especially when dealing with difficult concepts like computer science.
Happy fall break, everyone!
Something I always like about this seminar is the amount of hands-on activities we do. It's fun and incredibly helpful in learning, especially when dealing with difficult concepts like computer science.
Happy fall break, everyone!
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Post for Week of 10/6
Oh, 4chan... It brings back memories of me sitting by my one of my best friends with an incredibly puzzled look on my face while she looked through 4chan. Chris Poole seems like a cool dude, for one thing. I think 4chan is cool, if you're into it. Anonymity is so seldom found in todays internet culture that I think Anonymous, the group, is fascinating. Though they are capable of bad (and have probably done it many times), the stories of good things are just too cool to ignore. 4chan may be mostly porn and "bumps" and silliness, but it's out there for those who want to use it, and obviously, people want to use it.
Both sides had excellent points and argued passionately in this battle of wits, statistics, and popularity.
I am on the pro-Facebook side, personally. Yes, it can be a great distraction, but it is fun and nice. The privacy policy is a bit daunting, but I don't have things on Facebook that I don't want to share. I don't care if advertisements are tailored to fit my interests. I prefer it, especially when they get the ads SO WRONG. I think it's funny. I'll see ads for bands that I like that have shows nearby, and then one for "Modest Prom Dresses." 1. I am not modest, 2. I don't wear dresses, 3... Why on earth did you think that I'd be interested in this?
Post for Week of 9/29
This week, HON 1515 gets sketchy.
I had a lot of fun digging up dirt on the lovely Ms. Sydney Jones for our class assignment this week. I wished I was able to find as much stuff as some of my other classmates, but I think home address, home phone number, and similar things was quite sufficient. It was really cool to find out that Sydney's dad knows my stepdad and her little brother is good friends with one of my step-cousins. Canton is a pretty small town so I'm not surprised about this at all. Facebook was probably my best tool when I started research, but I was able to find things from a lot of other sources. It made me think about what I put on Facebook and who is able to see it. I put my cell phone number up so that only my friends can see it because it's really nice to be able to find the phone numbers of people with whom I am working in groups. I've been super thankful for that in the past and I'm not taking down my number. Something that is a bit unrelated is my default username. I use the same thing, iamnosamurai, for just about every social networking/email/chat account I create. It's a matter of convenience, though it does make everything I post on the web a little easy to find. I don't care if people see my tumblr or my twitter accounts. It's no big deal, as far as I'm concerned. Anyway, happy creepin'.
I had a lot of fun digging up dirt on the lovely Ms. Sydney Jones for our class assignment this week. I wished I was able to find as much stuff as some of my other classmates, but I think home address, home phone number, and similar things was quite sufficient. It was really cool to find out that Sydney's dad knows my stepdad and her little brother is good friends with one of my step-cousins. Canton is a pretty small town so I'm not surprised about this at all. Facebook was probably my best tool when I started research, but I was able to find things from a lot of other sources. It made me think about what I put on Facebook and who is able to see it. I put my cell phone number up so that only my friends can see it because it's really nice to be able to find the phone numbers of people with whom I am working in groups. I've been super thankful for that in the past and I'm not taking down my number. Something that is a bit unrelated is my default username. I use the same thing, iamnosamurai, for just about every social networking/email/chat account I create. It's a matter of convenience, though it does make everything I post on the web a little easy to find. I don't care if people see my tumblr or my twitter accounts. It's no big deal, as far as I'm concerned. Anyway, happy creepin'.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Post for Week of 9/22
Hi there.
Finally, a discussion of Born To Run! Before classes started, they made it seem like the first moth of seminar would be devoted solely to the Summer reading. I have to say that I'm glad it wasn't. I really enjoyed Born To Run but I don't think I would have liked wearing it out. Anyway, Dr. Russel was already a name with which I was familiar. I heard about Ray's Weather within the first few days of move-in from a few girls down my hall and it has definitely been my go-to weather site since then. It was interesting to see how Dr. Russel tied Born To Run in with our seminar topic. Tracking apps like FatSecret (I agree, an awful name) have really exploded over the past few years with all of the new smartphone technology especially. I remember having to keep a food/exercise journal for a week in 9th grade health class and it was absolutely awful to keep track of foods and calories and workouts by hand. Though I don't see myself using such a program any time soon, I'm glad to know that there are so many options out there in case I change my mind.
Now... Rescue time... I guess if it worked all the time it was supposed to it would have been better. However, on the short term, it took so long to set up that it was hardly worth the effort. I think it logged the proportions of time I spent fairly accurately, the times themselves seemed far off. I think that the program might be helpful for someone who works mainly on the computer, but for a student who uses their computer mainly for recreation, the software is pretty silly.
Hopefully my next post will be more timely.
Peace,
Z
Finally, a discussion of Born To Run! Before classes started, they made it seem like the first moth of seminar would be devoted solely to the Summer reading. I have to say that I'm glad it wasn't. I really enjoyed Born To Run but I don't think I would have liked wearing it out. Anyway, Dr. Russel was already a name with which I was familiar. I heard about Ray's Weather within the first few days of move-in from a few girls down my hall and it has definitely been my go-to weather site since then. It was interesting to see how Dr. Russel tied Born To Run in with our seminar topic. Tracking apps like FatSecret (I agree, an awful name) have really exploded over the past few years with all of the new smartphone technology especially. I remember having to keep a food/exercise journal for a week in 9th grade health class and it was absolutely awful to keep track of foods and calories and workouts by hand. Though I don't see myself using such a program any time soon, I'm glad to know that there are so many options out there in case I change my mind.
Now... Rescue time... I guess if it worked all the time it was supposed to it would have been better. However, on the short term, it took so long to set up that it was hardly worth the effort. I think it logged the proportions of time I spent fairly accurately, the times themselves seemed far off. I think that the program might be helpful for someone who works mainly on the computer, but for a student who uses their computer mainly for recreation, the software is pretty silly.
Hopefully my next post will be more timely.
Peace,
Z
Monday, September 19, 2011
Post for Week of 9/15
Hi there friends, neighbors, acquaintances, instructors, humans and non humans, alike.
This week we read an article quite extremely different from the Frontline video we watched last week. It was nice to hear a different perspective on multitasking in the form of a scholarly opinion. I was really amazed by the attention blindness thing because I hadn't been exposed to the gorilla thing before. I am not sure I agree entirely that attention blindness is bad -- I like focusing in on work, especially when I can enter a quasi-meditative state -- but her teaching methods definitely sounded interesting and appealing. I err on the side of traditionalism when it comes to debates of the education system, but her class sounded super fun. Unfortunately what I thought about the most during the article was the book referenced, This Is Your Brain On Music. I started reading it a year or two ago and never got to finish, and I'd really like to pick it back up.
Convocation (which occupied our normal class time) was a lot less unpleasant than I'd expected. It was fascinating to watch everyone process in their Harry Potter robes. Christopher McDougall was a great speaker and I was disappointed when he stopped. The ceremony as a whole was an interesting experience, though I am thankful it was as short as it was.
Love and Peace,
Z
This week we read an article quite extremely different from the Frontline video we watched last week. It was nice to hear a different perspective on multitasking in the form of a scholarly opinion. I was really amazed by the attention blindness thing because I hadn't been exposed to the gorilla thing before. I am not sure I agree entirely that attention blindness is bad -- I like focusing in on work, especially when I can enter a quasi-meditative state -- but her teaching methods definitely sounded interesting and appealing. I err on the side of traditionalism when it comes to debates of the education system, but her class sounded super fun. Unfortunately what I thought about the most during the article was the book referenced, This Is Your Brain On Music. I started reading it a year or two ago and never got to finish, and I'd really like to pick it back up.
Convocation (which occupied our normal class time) was a lot less unpleasant than I'd expected. It was fascinating to watch everyone process in their Harry Potter robes. Christopher McDougall was a great speaker and I was disappointed when he stopped. The ceremony as a whole was an interesting experience, though I am thankful it was as short as it was.
Love and Peace,
Z
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Post for Week of 9/8
Week 3, a little late again.
The week of the Frontline video.
As with most news media, Frontline was made just as much to entice as to inform. It was difficult not to get sucked into the journey through the extremes of digital overload. I definitely had an emotional response to the video and it took me a little while to figure out exactly what the emotion was. Without a lot of thought given to the information presented, obviously the first response I had was "ALL TECHNOLOGY IS EVIL! BURN THE COMPUTERS! (and little Korean children are precious)" but that's not really the way I feel. The host spent so much time on the negatives and extremes of technology that it was hard to have an accurate and truthful response right off the bat. Now that I've had some time to mull it over, I am feeling a lot less impassioned about digital overload. While I think there are a lot of negative consequences to technology overuse/abuse, these issues don't affect a majority of people. Most people don't stay up all night playing WoW. Most people aren't performing 7 different tasks at once all day long. Technology can be a problem for interpersonal relationships as well as safety in cases of texting and driving, etc., but I think that as a whole, computers and communication devices are good things. One thing I do think is that children should have limited access to digital media. When I was a kid, I didn't have TV or video games or a computer at home to entertain myself. I think it's important for children to learn to entertain themselves by interacting with other people or using their imaginations. I had a similar experience as Dr. Wilkes observing children in front of the TV. I was babysitting a 5 year old boy, and we were tired after running around outside so we watched a movie. If I tried to talk to him while the TV was on, he would ignore me completely or perhaps didn't notice I was talking to him at all. It really irked me and made me thankful that I didn't have a TV in the house. As for teenagers, it's hard enough to monitor, let alone control what digital media they have access to. Cell phones can definitely get out of hand (no pun) in my opinion, but I don't think access to technology affects older young-folks as badly as children. Adults should be willing to accept the consequences of their use of technology. My mom loves checking the weather on her phone when we go out to eat. It bothers me and bothers my step dad even more, but if she's willing to accept the resentment, there's nothing we can do.
Until next time,
Z
The week of the Frontline video.
As with most news media, Frontline was made just as much to entice as to inform. It was difficult not to get sucked into the journey through the extremes of digital overload. I definitely had an emotional response to the video and it took me a little while to figure out exactly what the emotion was. Without a lot of thought given to the information presented, obviously the first response I had was "ALL TECHNOLOGY IS EVIL! BURN THE COMPUTERS! (and little Korean children are precious)" but that's not really the way I feel. The host spent so much time on the negatives and extremes of technology that it was hard to have an accurate and truthful response right off the bat. Now that I've had some time to mull it over, I am feeling a lot less impassioned about digital overload. While I think there are a lot of negative consequences to technology overuse/abuse, these issues don't affect a majority of people. Most people don't stay up all night playing WoW. Most people aren't performing 7 different tasks at once all day long. Technology can be a problem for interpersonal relationships as well as safety in cases of texting and driving, etc., but I think that as a whole, computers and communication devices are good things. One thing I do think is that children should have limited access to digital media. When I was a kid, I didn't have TV or video games or a computer at home to entertain myself. I think it's important for children to learn to entertain themselves by interacting with other people or using their imaginations. I had a similar experience as Dr. Wilkes observing children in front of the TV. I was babysitting a 5 year old boy, and we were tired after running around outside so we watched a movie. If I tried to talk to him while the TV was on, he would ignore me completely or perhaps didn't notice I was talking to him at all. It really irked me and made me thankful that I didn't have a TV in the house. As for teenagers, it's hard enough to monitor, let alone control what digital media they have access to. Cell phones can definitely get out of hand (no pun) in my opinion, but I don't think access to technology affects older young-folks as badly as children. Adults should be willing to accept the consequences of their use of technology. My mom loves checking the weather on her phone when we go out to eat. It bothers me and bothers my step dad even more, but if she's willing to accept the resentment, there's nothing we can do.
Until next time,
Z
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Post for Week of 9/1
Hello everyone.
This is a late post for last week, the second week of this blog.
Class last week was a little different from usual because we only met once in CAP and we did... unconventional... things when we were there. I'm glad that there were activities to expound upon the reading about networking. While I understood the excerpt and why it was written in the style in which it was written, I didn't really feel like the material sunk in until we delved into it in class. The activity with the bowling pins was really interesting and remarkably fun (I'm a nerd... what can I say?). I liked how it felt to get the hang of it, especially after struggling at the beginning. It's cool that something as complex as computers can boil down to something resembling a children's game. I was not as successful with the colored paper activity, though I'm sure I could get the hang of it with practice.
Thursdays class was extremely helpful, and has gotten me pretty excited for our annotated bibliography projects. I used to help in the library at the school where my mom taught and am always amazed by the resources available in libraries. I expect to feel much more confident doing research in general after our special class and look forward to using the library in the next four years.
Until next time,
Z
This is a late post for last week, the second week of this blog.
Class last week was a little different from usual because we only met once in CAP and we did... unconventional... things when we were there. I'm glad that there were activities to expound upon the reading about networking. While I understood the excerpt and why it was written in the style in which it was written, I didn't really feel like the material sunk in until we delved into it in class. The activity with the bowling pins was really interesting and remarkably fun (I'm a nerd... what can I say?). I liked how it felt to get the hang of it, especially after struggling at the beginning. It's cool that something as complex as computers can boil down to something resembling a children's game. I was not as successful with the colored paper activity, though I'm sure I could get the hang of it with practice.
Thursdays class was extremely helpful, and has gotten me pretty excited for our annotated bibliography projects. I used to help in the library at the school where my mom taught and am always amazed by the resources available in libraries. I expect to feel much more confident doing research in general after our special class and look forward to using the library in the next four years.
Until next time,
Z
Monday, August 29, 2011
Post for Week of 8/30
Hello, this is my first blog post for Dissecting the Internet, HON 1515. I used to be on the IT Helpdesk at my middle school (it was more of a mini-class before school and helping teachers figure out how to use email) and since then I've been interested in learning more about how computers and the internet work. Learning the ASCII and binary codes were fascinating because I've always heard the terms thrown around. It was also exciting to get a little bit of perspective on the scale of data with respect to the history of computers. It really is amazing how far we've come from the ARPANET and early processors.
As for the classroom experience itself, I am having a great time. It's cool to be taking a class that is brand new at ASU because I feel like we, as students, have a lot of power over the material that we'll be delving into. I feel like this is especially important because of the rapid speed at which the field of computing and technology is changing. There might be developments in the next few months that require a shift in the curriculum because of their potential impact on the subject. It is an exciting course to study at this point in time and I'm looking forward to the new insight I'll gain into the technologies I have, for the most part, taken advantage of my whole life.
Peace and Love,
Z
As for the classroom experience itself, I am having a great time. It's cool to be taking a class that is brand new at ASU because I feel like we, as students, have a lot of power over the material that we'll be delving into. I feel like this is especially important because of the rapid speed at which the field of computing and technology is changing. There might be developments in the next few months that require a shift in the curriculum because of their potential impact on the subject. It is an exciting course to study at this point in time and I'm looking forward to the new insight I'll gain into the technologies I have, for the most part, taken advantage of my whole life.
Peace and Love,
Z
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)