Blog 4/9/13

Bruce Sterling’s “Meet the Spime” article seriously blows my mind. I was super confused when I was first reading, but it totally makes sense towards the end. It’s something I truly never even thought about. This section out of that whole article was the one that fascinated me the most because my friends and I are avid wine drinkers; and I never would have even thought about this.

“For instance, when I described that “bottle of wine” a while ago, everybody presumably knew that I meant a particular, coherent object. Yet that “bottle of wine” was a momentary congelation of material and energy flows. It has now become nameless, but it remains a process, still pre-bottle and post-bottle underway and mostly unknowable to me. That “bottle of wine” was once sunlight on Italian earth, lakes of grape juice, yeast in fermentation tanks, wood pulp for the label, colored inks, cork from Spain or maybe Portugal, plus a Californian grocery chain reacting to consumer trends and stocking a brand with some shelf appeal. Then I found it, bought it and consumed it. It continued as a dissociated flow of recyclable glass, consumed paper, hydrating fluids and a narcotic in my bloodstream, long since metabolized. When I bought that “bottle of wine” I was also financing a situation that names and defines those complex flows as a “bottle of wine”—a technosocial set-up that allows me to interact with that object as a consumer item first and only, blindly uninvolved with its extensive history as pre-bottle and post-bottle. Buying and drinking it was my own business, and the rest of it is none of my business. How much of that business ought to be mine?”

I especially didn’t realize this was barcoding. I know barcodes exist because that’s how we scan products to inventory and for pricing. That’s also how we keep track of our inventory and how we ring up products for customers to buy, but while I was reading the passage about wine the word barcode didn’t even pop into my head. I definitely didn’t think of autonomy. I’m not even sure I 100% know what autonomy is or how it relates to barcoding. Here are a couple of links describing autonomy and barcoding:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6aR1k-ympo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O36nETf0ems

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/autonomy?s=t

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/barcoding?s=t

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Universal%20Product%20Code

4/2 blog

Johnson’s article about social media relates to both Baker and Schneier’s articles. A section of Baker’s article states: Information Operations are activities undertaken by military and nonmilitary organizations to shape the essential narrative of a conflict or situation and thus affect the attitudes and behaviors of the targeted audience. As you can see information operations relate to social media because they do the exact same thing that social media does: influence. Social media is a huge influence on today’s society. My DTC 475 Professor Susan Ross helped write a book about social media and it’s affects. The book had stories about the impacts of peoples lives by social media.

Social media is the way to change lives, create opinions in people, and inform people. Social media does however have negative effects just like Information Operations may have. These operations to change attitudes of a direct audience may affect a different audience in a different way. The whole point of Information Operations promote the dissemination of information to create counterinsurgency, but these operations are directed to certain audiences just like all other social media is. However, the directed audience isn’t the only audience seeing or hearing this social media or information operations.

This is a video talking about the military and social media. It also relates to the information operations and the different audiences that are affected by this social media:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4mGX8csLds

A prevention method so that only the directed audiences are reached could be censoring. Schneier talks about how other countries censor the internet so that the people of their country can’t see some of the things posted by other countries. This would be a great thing for the military to do when they do their information operations so that the targeted audiences are  the only audiences that they affect.

Tues 3/19 Blog

The Nanolaw with Daughter article basically talks about how everywhere you go and everything you do is monitored by someone or something. Pictures and videos are often taken at events, everything you do on the internet gets recorded, audio waves can be traced and targeted, and the products you buy online are even monitored and linked to ads or companies. The article also talks about how common it is for people and companies to sue. One example that was used was when the father posted a picture of his wife’s ultrasound on the internet and he got sued for it because he did not own the rights to that image. He was able to get out of the lawsuit by buying the rights to that photo. I know so many people that have posted their ultrasound pictures on their facebook, twitter, tumblr, or blogs. It’s just something people do when they are expecting because they are excited and want to share their excitement with everyone. I bet no one ever thought that they could be sued for that. It just makes you think about everything you do online and if everything you do is actually completely legal.

The exhibition article by Robert Samuelson talks about how the internet has become a mass outlet and often people strive for popularity or celebrity more than they care about their privacy. Kate Raynes-Goldie’s article talks mostly about Facebook and the lack of privacy. She says that on could argue Facebook’s very purpose challenges conventional notions of privacy. Both of these articles are linked in the sense that there really isn’t a whole lot of privacy on the internet anymore. Kate talks about the loopholes that allow people you may not know or may not want involved in your life anymore to look at your information. When I use Facebook, it’s to share with my friends and I don’t accept anyone I don’t personally know. So the idea that loopholes can allow people to access my information freaks me out. However, I do have friends that accept random people they don’t know because they use Facebook as a way to meet new people.

This article from the Wall Street Journal talks about three of facebook’s privacy loopeholes:

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/10/12/three-facebook-privacy-loopholes/

Here is another article from CBS news about some of the hidden dangers of facebook:

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-3480_162-6469373.html

Lessig part 1 Blog

Lessig starts off with piracy. He talks about file sharing over the internet of copyrighted and uncopyrighted information. The first thing I thought about was google. I know that I use images from Google for my Facebook cover photo, class assignments, and just for fun. I’m sure most of the photos are copyrighted, but how am I supposed to know? Google has all of these images available for everyone to look at and to maybe even use. Some images are uploaded by personal users others are uploaded by professional users; professional in the sense that they are a company or organization. The first thing that comes to mind when I hear the word piracy is the video that used to be at the beginning of most DVDs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmZm8vNHBSU

On page 32 Lessig says, “Creative work has value; whenever
I use, or take, or build upon the creative work of others, I am taking from them something of value. Whenever I take something of value from someone else, I should have their permission. The taking of something of value from someone else without permission is wrong. It is a form of piracy.”

This reminds me of a class discussion we have about creative commons. Every idea we have is inspired by someone else. It’s inspired by something we’ve seen or heard that has been created by someone else ranging from a video, an image, a building, a website, etc. No one has original ideas. All of our ideas are influenced and according to the above definition of piracy we must ask permission from everyone whose work has inspired us, but that’s not the way it works. We look at websites, images, and videos to get an idea of what we would like to create for most of our DTC classes. We often even take images we have found and add a filter or edit the image in Photoshop so that it is no longer technically copyrighted because we altered the image. So, are we committing piracy?

Blog #3

STOCK:

“Within any consistent logical system capable of elementary arithmetic, there must be such accursed statements, true but unprovable.  Thus, Gödel showed that a consistent formal system must be incomplete; no complete or consistent system can exist.” – Kurt Gödel

Mathematicians before Gödel and Shannon believed there was an absolute perfection to mathematics.  From this belief, the telephone and telegraph were developed to communicate between people, cities, and businesses.  Mathematicians were used to develop a form of symbolism to effectively transmit messages between the transmitter and the receiver.  However, these systems were complex and most of the physicists and mathematicians working to discover a better way, always found a glitch that kept them from perfecting the transmission of the content. Examples of problems were the electrons causing static noise on the communication with the telephone and the rapid growth making the switch board operator job ineffective and impractical with too large of a system developed in large cities.  Mathematicians like Gödel, Shannon, and Nyquist worked to develop a mathematical equation to solve the amount of information that would be transmitted in a particular message based on the amount of content trying to be sent.  However, with each discovery came a problem, this is where I feel Gödel’s belief that no consistent formal system can exist.  Society must trust the system set in place by the qualified academia and believe it will be the most effective way. 

From this, I believe Shannon and Gödel best suggest how higher education will be in 20 years because math and science have been essential in the development of our current society.  Also, the belief that one formal system will be incomplete and no consistent one can exist is true because our education system is always looking to develop and improve the content of their classes.  Another example is the difference between colleges and high schools, whether they are private, public, universities or community colleges, the same class may be taught at each one, but the content and assignments used to convey the information may be different.  In the next 20 years, I can’t see our education system being much different than it is today.  With the number of schools across the World, it would be impossible to have one consistent formal system used by all to teach students the same subject.  It will be dependent on all variables, like the school, the professor, the teaching style, the learning style of the students and what materials are used to teach the subject. 

Blog #1

STOCK:

Mathematicians use problem solving and equations to “solve” information instead of talking and arguing about the information. When we are faced with a disagreement of information we generally argue about it because we know we are right; we have to be right. We often turn to google to look up information to help prove or to actually prove the point we are trying to make. Technically this could be looked at as problem solving skills. Mathematicians use their problem solving skills to solve their “arguments” or problems with numbers and equations they create or pull out of the information that is given to them. We are basically doing the same thing that mathematicians are doing just not in such an obvious direct way.

In math we are quantifying the answers to the problems that we are presented with, with the information that is given to us. Often in math it is all given to us, but it doesn’t always have quality. Sometimes there isn’t enough information given in the problem to actually come to a definite answer at which point you are left wondering what the answer would be if there was more information given. That’s where rhetoric tends to exceed math with the ability to research information.

Information that is researched usually can be found in many different sources; the same information can be found multiple times in multiple places. This allows us to know that the quality of the research is good. Sometimes there is an overabundance of research available to us and sometimes there is very little information available about a subject. That’s where quantitative can be a little less useful in research. The quality of the information can also be low if only one source can be found with the necessary information and if that source isn’t a credible source such as an organization or governmental source.

It’s all basically relatable if you think about it like this. Everything has a quantitative and qualitative option, but you have to be able to determine which is most important and which is most accurate when talking and arguing about information and while using research for support.