Over the past 10 weeks I have talked a lot about technology has changed our lives and how it will continue to do so in ways that my mind has not even fathomed yet. I think it is important to say that we must be weary of any and all advances in this field and that the only way top protect ourselves is to learn how to use technology. I must reinforce my idea that this does not mean learning how to code.
It has been suggested that everyone learning to code would be a great thing, but as Sherlock Holmes said in A Study in Scarlet:
"You see," he [sherlock] explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."
If we were to tell everyone to learn code we may be elbowing something out that is more vital to their own happiness. Therefore we must offer that which allows the most for everyone. Classes on how to use social media are just as important as learning how to type these days. Technology is all around us, but we must learn how to use it not necessarily create it.
We started a discussion in class last week about Jaron's idea that we need to all be creators of the internet, and not use the things that are just given to us. First, I think that Jaron, is wrong. We need consumers just as much as we need people to create. And as much as i take the point that he is talking about the need for all of us to be creative and make everything our own, what we put on the internet can be some of our own best works.
Somehow in the midst of our conversation, It was uttered that HTML basics should be taught at the freshmen studies level. This is truly offensive to me. I have long been a proponent of the Freshmen Studies program here at Lawrence, because i hate the idea forcing people to learn things that they don't want to. But more importantly, i found it offensive because I have no need to know how to write CODE. I don't believe that anyone forces people to learn how to write sonnets here at Lawrence, so why should we be forced to do such a thing as write code.
There is a reason We all chose to come here instead of a Professional College. It sure wasn't because we wanted to learn code. For this institution to every enforce more mandatory learning than it already does, would be to ruin the beauty of this place.
Moreover, i think Jaron needs to chill out. the world will not come to an end if we can't all write code or make the internet our own. what will happen is that the world continue to turn, the sun will shine the next day (in 50000000 years i might be wrong) and the internet will continue to be the platform we need and more importantly want it to be.
My personal feelings about Jaron aside, he brings up a good point about the violation that happens on the internet. Kathy Sierra was the target of a several death threats over blogs and emails, when she was slated to be a guest on the O'Reilly Etech conference. But she isn't the only one. How many cases have been out there about Teenagers being bullied over the internet and even worse, how many of them have committed suicide because of it.
Even here at Lawrence we have seen a similar incident, as a twitter account @hatingonLU have posted some very defamatory statements towards the LU community explicitly towards the members of the GLOW members. But how do you combat these attacks? Bullying has been an issue in schools for years. When I was younger, it was always ignore them, they're just trying to get attention and when we get upset about what they say you give them the attention they want. Obviously when you get death threats you shouldn't just ignore them, but that's why step two tells us to get an adult. Again, Obviously the police need to get involved in certain situations but there is one thing that we also need to be teaching our children and ourselves about the internet and it's bullying.
First, that there is such a thing as blocking and reporting things as spam.
Second, that you can change the station- it's like TV if you don't like what's on, you don't have to watch it, I've been saying that for years.
Lastly, that there is an inflation rate inside the internet. Not everyone hates you or thinks the same way as other people, it's still ok to go talk to someone.
Bullying, death threats, and other violations are already locked into the minds of those on the internet, Trolls have made it so that people think that it is cool to do so and that is maybe the saddest part of the Internet.
In Habits of the Heart, Bellah talks a lot about the role of religion in the development of the self, even though the act of belonging clearly belongs to the realm of community. he says "Tocqueville saw religion as reinforcing self-control and maintaining moral standards but also as an expression of benevolence and self-sacrifice that are antithetical to competitive individualism." (223) but what does that mean: that's what I found myself asking. Now I grew up in church but I do not see myself as particularly religious, so it stands to reason that he is not speaking to me as he said earlier that being religious and believing are different. Religion is the place where normative behavior are placed above almost anything else. Self control is something that I needed to understand before I was allowed to express myself. Likewise, there is a sense of what have I done wrong that can only be found in religious services. There isn't many places that ask you to punish yourself and then forgive yourself.
But while the world is telling us that we need to show why we are better than someone else religion asks us to see and praise the good in others; to realize that we are not as good as we think we are and accept the fact that there is room for improvement. Now the self sacrifice part is tricky as most of us see that as laying ourselves down for others. At least that is where my mind takes me, the soldier who covers the grenade with his body to save others being the clichéd example. But I think what it really means is what Eric Thomas who I've posted about before says, "to be able at any moment to sacrifice what you are for what you will become." (The secrets to success). This seems to be exactly what Bellah means for us to realize.
The last thing I have is a prayer that I believe is the at the heart of this idea:
God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.
The issue of multi tasking is a particular issue when it comes to children and their study habbits. Obviously students need to be paying attention to their studies but in an age where so much happens online it's impossible to ask them not to multi task. Now i brought this up in class but i think it's important to reiterate that we do this all the time. We, as college students, talk and study at the same time (i would argue that this might actually help us understand the subject matter) but we read and listen to music, we read and work out, at least there are those of us who do. My problem with what Larry Rosen said at his talk is that there are some serious upsides to multitasking. http://consumer.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=663726 will link you to a article that talks about how multitasking may improve our ability to integrate sensory information. while there will always be downsides to any arguement about our use of technology, click here for that http://www.awovi.com/is-multitasking-making-us-stupid/ , there must also be an upside.
multi-tasking will never go away. It's apart of our world. But Dr. Rosen should focus more on how to make it better, or how we can use it better rather than just telling us the negative aspects of the world. What are the sociological impacts of Skype? how can we learn while multitasking better? if i have a youtube video open that takes me step by step how to do long division and i'm doing long division shouldn't that help me?
I don't want to make it sound like he won't say anything good. He has a solution- tech breaks in class, tech tower at meals, and a return to parenting- knowing what you're kids are watching, listening to, and even what they're searching for. and i've been telling people that for 18 years, because i'm anti FCC (or at least some of their policies).
on a different note: Can anyone explain the Harlem Shake?
The Social Network brings up points about the division of private vs public domains. In the two hour ordeal, in which Zuckerburg is made out to be a real douche bag, but that's a different story. Two quotes really popped out at me when watching the movie. and i'll take them 1 by 1.
It should be noted that these are in most likelihood taken well out of context. I'm using them as Individual and Complete statements.
Also note, i'm in a semi-sarcastic mood so be aware.
1. "Private behavior is a relic of a time gone by."
Nothing can be more true, since the dawn of the mass media internet. It used to be that you could have things contained to a small area, a town, the police, the neighborhood, etc. And you could deny it and destroy the evidence, believe me, I've burned the pictures of me naked in the bath, all that i can find at least. but not today, in ten years children who were born when facebook was founded will not be able to escape embarrassing moments in their childhood, because their parents, will have posted so many pictures on facebook of them. Maybe they can beg their parents to take them down. Thank goodness for non-digital photo albums- they burn easier.
2. Even a few people leaving would reverberate throughout the entire user base. Users are interconnected, that's the whole point."
IT IS!!!! I'll wait for the shock and awe to calm down.
Yes social media's point is to be social with others. Good job Zuckerburg. But more than that he's talking about community building. The Facebook was fastly becoming the place to meet people and keep in touch with them and as the movie does a great job demonstrating hooking up. But back to my point, Facebook is supposed to be this ever connected web of people, if a friend a of a friend b posts something on friend b's wall, you see it. NO MATTER WHAT TIME.
I'm. Not going to pretend that I understood most of this article, because I didn't. There are a lot of things in this article that I have no knowledge about or have even considered thinking about. That being said, I did understand that this is really about the beginning of computer based communities. Turing and Shannon were both doing the same thing but couldn't talk about it, so they talked about something that interested them both.
Much like today, when we use compunities to share with people feet to miles away, we share our common interests. On Facebook we can belong to groups, like certain pages and so much more. It isn't that we are sharing all aspects of our lives but rather that we are choosing to share small parts of the whole with anyone who will read what we post.
OK this seems like it could have been a great argument for why Google may or may not make us stupid. Now I'm a nerd, of the literature kind, and one of my favorite characters is Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Now the master of deduction makes a very keen point in "Scandal in Bohemia" when he tells Dr. Watson that he has seen but hasn't observed. He makes his point with stairs, now we all have daily encounters with stairs, like the WCC but do you know how many stairs there are from the bottom floor to the main floor? My point exactly, now we know that you can look up an answer on Google, but does this act of looking does not teach you anything else but what the answer looks like. To truly observe we have to know more than that. This exactly why Math teachers make us show the work, because then we have observed it.
I have never looked at
the "10 things we know to be true" page that is a part of Google's
philosophy. So when given this question asking me to name how one of
these tenets would reshape how someone can look at religion I was
kind of questioning how to do so. But I have learned enough through my
own looks into religion and my own religion (that is the religion I was raised
as) to know what I would have liked to change.
So back to this list, I
look, and it hits me, number 1, just like that. But I do the senior thing
and look at the rest of the choices just so I have a good idea of the rest.
Number 1.
So here is number one,
of Google’s things we know to be true
Focus on the user and all else will follow.
Since the
beginning, we've focused on providing the best user experience
possible. Whether we’re designing a new Internet browser or a new tweak to the
look of the homepage, we take great care to ensure that they will ultimately
serve you, rather than our own internal goal or bottom
line. Our homepage interface is clear and simple, and pages load instantly.
Placement in search results is never sold to anyone, and advertising is not
only clearly marked as such, it offers relevant content and is not distracting.
And when we build new tools and applications, we believe they should work so
well you don’t have to consider how they might have been designed differently.
Since
the beginning? Sounds like either the bible or a cheesy sci-fi story. But
that first sentence can be so easy to convert into the language of God: Since
the beginning, God focused on providing the best human experience possible.
Continuing it gets techy, and that language is somewhat hard to
switch around but by the end I might be able to convert the whole thing.
But this is what is important to know about Google+Religion. We
have to focus on the user, and the rest will follow. Now Eric Thomas aka
the Hip Hop Preacher (PLEASE PLEASE have him come to Lawrence, He'd be amazing)
in this clip and his YouTube channel emphasizes on YOU. What will it
take for you to be successful, maybe it's not going on twitter 100 times a day,
maybe it's you getting off your own phone.
Now this guy never mentions God, but that
first story, I see God there. God is there to push you, not to go to
Africa or Haiti, but to be successful, however you define successful, and we
have to tell God, I want to be successful more than I want to breathe.
Now this is where
I just didn't understand, I thought God was working for me. I'd pray and pray
and pray, but I wouldn't get anywhere. And my parents would just "keep
praying and if God wants you to have it, you'll get it" WRONG. If you want
something you have to go get it, this is not saying God won't help you, because
he could, a daunting task might not seem as daunting once you get past a
certain point, and what would you say, "THANK GOD" but you have to
want it.
Now, I know it’s
not just God that has to be looking to provide me the best me experience. It
has to be me too. I don't know how I feel about religion anymore, but I
know how I feel about me, and I want... I NEED to be SUCCESSFUL.
I know, its been nothing but APPLE APPLE APPLE lately but let's admit it, apple changed our lives. Whether you think about it in the sense of the iphone, the apple 2, imac computers, macbooks, or the iPad. Apple has kept their promise to deliver the most personal devices possibly ever. Now the iPad, obviously only comes in two colors, black and white. but the best part about it is the personal touches you can make to the on screen. When we started talking about it in class, i started to notice that you really could get an idea about who the person was just by looking at the apps they have on their iPad.
for instance if you look on my ipad you know where i like to shop, because i have the amazon and Walmart apps.
and better yet, you can tell where i bank, what kind of games i'm into and what my hobbies might be, like working out, social media, religion, health, because there's an app for that.
but i want to talk about one app that really lets me put my personal touch onto my iPad, PIMP MY SCREEN. catchy name isn't it.
Now this app, lets your iPad have a little more class, and makes it look like book shelves or at least picture frames around your apps. It comes with a ton of backgrounds and premade screen looks, but it also gives you the option to use your own pictures, whether they are of your family, friends, etc or things you've saved off the internet as long as they are in your photos you can use them for your background or lock screen.
In a world full of iPad users you can still be you, there's an app for that.
Ok, seriously, if i told you that Steve Jobs went all anal-retentive on the iPad you'd believe me.... right? well he did. And thank God, or we might have not ever gotten the non-computer computer. So the iPad has been around for a while now, and life has settled back into the routine. except I no longer really need or want my smartphone. In my backpack today, I had my laptop, my iPad and my smartphone in my pocket. The impact that anyone of these has on the other is exactly what I aim to talk about.
When you turn to Chapter thirty-eight the title and subtitle make it pretty clear what the iPad was aimed at: PCs. Now, Personal computers as we all should know revolutionized the world in the beginnings of Apple. So it is only fair that they make them obsolete... pysch. That's what Jobs wanted, he literally put up a question mark between an iphone and a laptop, isn't there something better to be in between these. His answer was the iPad. Now, just to be clear i love my ipad, and i loved my iphone, but now its just redundant. If Job's goal was to replace my iphone with an ipad, he did a great job, i can go back to that flip phone I had back in 1999 (text and voice on that baby). But to think that there is an argument to be made that Jobs, didn't craft this gem to replace laptops, arguably the PC of this generation, with no physical keyboard, don't kid yourself.
Now get this, i use my smartphone, less than ever before, but my computer sees about 70% of the same usage that it did before. I love my laptop, yes bulky with its keyboard and mouse but its still practical for me to have it, writing, music, tv shows--on both netflix and the itunes store-- and yes even surfing the web and google earth. SUCK IT JOBS.
Things that surprised me in this chapter: that they even thought about using an intel chip.... nope, the reasoning why they didn't go with the intel chip... not really, that Jobs.... no, stop it.
For me iPad killed the iPhone more than video killed the radio star.
One of the best things that Jobs’ new beginning at apple
created was the iTunes store. The iTunes
store is by far one of the great inventions as it allows individuals to select
partial parts of albums down to the smallest available part, an individual song
for only 99 cents (currently 1.29 USD per song). I would like to talk about this in two parts;
first what this meant to consumers and secondly how this concept relates to individualism.
First, I remember before the iTunes store, as most of my
generation might, when you had to go buy an album as a whole, and if you wanted
to buy a single song, it would cost you nearly a third of the album cost. This made it very burdensome for those who
only like one song, from a one hit wonder.
Furthermore, it was nearly impossible to find singles once CDs became
the medium of choice. So when the masses were first introduced to the iTunes
store, it literally blew people’s minds.
Music, videos, movies, TV shows, apps, podcasts all available in one
easy package. This coupled with iMac,
iPod, and now iPads make holding thousands of songs in one place one of the
most appealing things since the Apple that threw man out of Eden.
Secondly, it is my belief that the iTunes store represents
the most essential individualistic belief. That every man can make up his own
mind about what is and is not wanted by him.
Being able to choose is not only a right but much more than that. Steve
Jobs understood that we need to be able to make our own choices.
Steve Jobs has had to reinvent himself over and over again
and each time he has been labeled an innovator.
I believe this had everything to do with Jobs being able to go into
every new situation in the state of beginner’s mind. The idea of beginner’s mind, which in the video
metaphorizes as starting a job you have no clue how to do, can be seen in
almost every part of Job’s career life.
Starting Apple, Jobs has no clue how to run a company, just the idea of
what the product should be. Then he gets
kicked out of Apple, and goes on to start a film company. How do you start a film company? I am not sure
Jobs even knew how to do it, but he made it successful, a success that his
rivals have been trying to recreate since Toy Story came out. Then he goes back to Apple, which suffered in
his absence and he again has to go into it with Beginner’s mind—how do I turn
this around? Do I think that Jobs had
any idea how to turn around a company... no, no I do not.
Here, I’ll illustrate what I’m saying to you, in the Jobs
biography, on 240, Jobs initially let Pixar run itself, only to find himself
taking a role in the ideas it was churning out.
Now I am no computer programmer graphic artist or really anything close
to either of that, but I can imagine how terrifying it would be to go from one
side to the other.
Lastly, I think no chapter illustrates my point better than Think Different. Really, what else can
you say? Steve was back at Apple, the iCEO and he had to do something to bring
Apple back. By using the ideas of Beginner’s mind, Jobs had to think differently. Now I understand that the last sentence seems
like complete bullshit, and it is. That
is until you explain it. Beginner’s
mind- knowing nothing about anything you are doing. This is a principle problem
that the world has; we are all about replicating instead of innovating. You cannot innovate by doing the same thing
that everyone else is doing and expecting something better to come out, you
have to THINK DIFFERENTly. Jobs smashed
the preconceived notions of what apple had become and essentially boiled it
down to the basic idea of what he wanted apple to be, and said Go.
Reading Jobs' biography you gain a lot of insight into the world he created for himself. And just as the world around us is shrinking with smartphones, tablets, laptops etc. We have to look back to Atari and Jobs to see how it all started. He started with a simple task, let me play pong at home, and he did it, the world payed hundreds of dollars for Atari systems just as we do now for the latest Apple products. Steve Jobs' life has been about making things smaller, slimmer, faster, better. but smaller had to come first. When Apple 1 came out it was a breakthrough, Apple 2 another breakthrough. Think about how it is now that the Macbooks and iWhatevers are here, now we just want better. But soon we'll be thinking about smaller, and the iHead will be the first chip we can plug into our head to sync our minds with the cloud and then we might be satisfied with not getting smaller.
The idea
of individualism is a concept that we are all supposed to say is this big life
affirming concept. And surely as I sit here it is. Being an
individual is not about being different than everyone else, but making your own
choices on what to do, what not to do, and most importantly deciding for
yourself who you want to be in this world. If you watch his speech
from Stanford's 2005 commencement you undoubtedly hear talk
about innovation and creativity leading to success. The most important aspect
of Steve Jobs is that he has plethora of copycats, in his company
people follow his lead, use him as an example to determine their own lives and
how to better their work, and in the world computer companies try to make
things better than what he did, all at the same time coping his ideas.
Of the things Jobs tells us in his
speech we can start to gain inference into the way this man thought, I'd like
to share a few example and my thoughts with you here.
Jobs starts off his speech by
telling us that that day was the closest he'd ever gotten to a college
graduation, because he had dropped out.
Isn't that great, you all spent
thousands of dollars to go to school, He dropped out and has made more money
that you'll ever see in your lifetime! Now, I just made him sound like a prick,
and that might not be a fair way to articulate what he actually said. A much
nicer way to say it would be [as Jobs] "your graduation is the beginning
of something amazing, your own life. My dropping out of college was something
amazing, the start of mine." This individual simply states he did
what was best for him. Just as they are all doing what’s best for them.
Jobs tells us that his biological
mother wanted him to go to college, a term required for her to sign the
adoption papers, and he did go, but he also dropped out. Dropping out allowed
him to free him from the rigorous classes that everyone was required to take,
thus allowing him to make his own choices in the classes and subject matter
that he applied himself to.
To this point, I think many of us,
in a liberal arts community such as Lawrence, can appreciate.
Any given major gives you dozens of classes to choose from, and also
allows you to take classes in things you have no business taking, like an intro
to government class, or a linguistics class, or... well you get the
point. And no one holds your hand, no administrator is harking that you
have to take this class or that class, or trying to set you up for something that
you don't express interest in. I cannot begin to tell you how many times
I have been asked what I want to do AFTER Lawrence, before we begin to
discuss what I want to do AT Lawrence.
Steve Jobs idea of Individualism, based on this
speech, is all about finding what you want to do, what you love doing, and
doing it the best way you can. Even if that’s
not what or how or where other people think you should be doing it.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Life-hacking
Technology has
made our lives easier. There's no denying that fact. In my first
two sentences I had two spelling errors and a slight dyslectic, another
spelling error, moment. But because I'm on a computer with spell
check and delete keys and a mouse, I can edit my thoughts and words in a flash
instead of having to start over for each mistake. Computers more than any other
technology, in my opinion, have made our lives so different from those
who preceded us. And we've all heard it, how our parents, grandparents,
etc. had to walk two miles to school, uphill both ways. And they didn't have
computers, and some didn't have typewriters either, so you had to write
everything by hand, blah blah blah. The innovation of software and
hardware that seems to be everywhere is amazing. I didn't always have my
own computer, so I remember the days of CD players and tape decks and the
hassle in changing the songs until you found the one you wanted to listen to,
but now, my music is stored by individual song title, artist, album or any
other way I want to store it. Talk about reorganizing my thoughts, play
lists for every mood I'm in, one for workouts one for parties, one for
relaxing. Yeah, my life is a lot more gratifying than it was
when I was 10 because of computers.
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