Welcome and First Thoughts

 Good Morning, Vietnam and welcome to my blog. I have never in my life managed to keep a blog, so this will be a first. Maybe I should have assigned a letter grade to myself before now. 

There didn't seem to be a blog topic anywhere I could find. I thought, perhaps, that the assignment was simply to create a blog, but the syllabus instructed me to write a post. So here we are.

We were instructed to take a Digital Knowledge quiz, which was somewhat interesting. 


Of course, my inner perfectionist wants to take it again and get it right, even if there's no grade attached. I missed a question regarding "incognito mode" which I have never used in my life and can't really imagine why I would use it to begin with. I suppose lack of exposure is how we don't know things, so I should forgive myself for that.

We were assigned 4 articles this week:
The Internet and the Pandemic, (https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/09/01/the-internet-and-the-pandemic/) was an overview from PEW research on the growth and opinion of the Internet's importance since COVID 19. Unsurprisingly, it was generally considered more important in daily life and the worries about consistency and access disproportionately affected marginalized peoples. 

What is Web 2.0? (https://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html) is a difficult article. It's massively outdated, written in 2005, and uses a lot of technospeak that is obviously for a disciplinary audience. It's talking about a mostly-defunct term, Web 2.0, that was used during the transition of the internet as a daily interaction. To reflect how very out-of-date but prescient this article is, let me quote this interesting tidbit about Wikipedia:
Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia based on the unlikely notion that an entry can be added by any web user, and edited by any other, is a radical experiment in trust, applying Eric Raymond's dictum (originally coined in the context of open source software) that "with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow," to content creation. Wikipedia is already in the top 100 websites, and many think it will be in the top ten before long. This is a profound change in the dynamics of content creation!
This article would seem fairly useless to a modern understanding of digital intake, though it was an interesting read. It was a somewhat spooky read as well, for how accurate most of the predictions were. From a year where the idea of consistent and accessible video chat was still a science-fiction concept, they projected that cross-platform applications that were crowd-supported would dominate the market. However, for a class assignment, perhaps a more updated article would be more useful, as Web3 is already a concept being bandied about. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web3)

Quantum Computing, CloudOps, Smart Home Solutions and more from the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show (https://sdtimes.com/softwaredev/quantum-computing-cloudops-smart-home-solutions-and-more-from-the-2019-consumer-electronics-show/) was a review of the annual show in Las Vegas, and it talked about some of the standout offerings presented there. IBM rolled out a commercially available quantum computer, which is cool because quantum computers are designed to handle a massive amount of data, reportedly almost 100 million times faster than a standard computer. Lots of offerings for smart homes, some integrated with Alexa, might mean a new push for the smarthome aesthetic. I don't follow the bits about edge computing or Engineer.ai's merger with DigitalOcean - they have just enough techspeak in them that I don't understand their appeal. Samsung also put its foot down in the smart home market. As this article was written in 2019, I wonder how many of these pushes for tech expansion got shelved or shot in the arm. The screen-free coding playsets caught my eye as a future teacher, and I want some.

The Weirdest and Most Interesting Tech at CES 2022 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/01/05/ces-2022-new-weird-gadgets/) is an updated version of the previous in many ways, but covering this year's show. And, oh, these are cool and terrifying. It starts with haptic clothing (Ready Player One, anyone?) AR glasses, and an inflatable space house. [People apparently had some real creativity time due to quarantine.] Also, since humans pack-bond with anything, from the company that gave us a pillow with a tail, we have a robotic cat that chews on you...comfortingly. The giant foldable screen is extremely cool, but the glossed-over mention of the AI software that instantly generates a deepfake human is terrifying.

Well, I hope I covered them fairly well. I still can't find what is supposed to be the assignment for this week. I'm certain I'll be more informed next week.

C'est la vie! 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stress, Harassment, and Bullying in Cyberspace

Image
     Good evening, and welcome back! So today we're going to cover stress, harassment, and bullying when it comes to the digital space. This is a major topic for today's educators, especially those who are digital immigrants and struggle to understand these problems from the perspective of the digital natives they teach.      Some of the more prevalent thought and chatter has blamed cell phones and other technology for heightened levels of stress and bullying, particularly in students. The popular thought would say, if we don't know what they're doing, they're getting into trouble. While there may be some merit to that, the issue is far more complex than "just turn it off". For instance, digital natives have naturally adapted communication styles that align with faster-paced online presence. The idea of limiting online "screen time" is not actually beneficial to adolescents in any way other than limiting access to them. ( source ) On the other ha...
Read more

Net Neutrality

Image
 Well, it's a rainy Thursday in February. Peering out the windows, the world is white noise made of water while the tree branches beat a merry tune on the building. And here we are, looking at net neutrality, a particular hot button issue over the last few years.  Let's do this in layman's terms. The internet, at least since Net 2.0, has been a constant. You pay for access to whatever provider worked best for you, but after that you could go anywhere and do anything. Welcome to the Internet, as Bo Burnham would say. But there is a significant threat to this way of doing things.  Net Neutrality is "the principle that the companies who provide access to the internet (so-called “internet service providers”, or ISPs) cannot block or throttle internet traffic, or prioritize their business partners or other favorite web sites or services." ( source ) Comcast or AT&T, for instance, can't partner with Hulu so that it has the highest speeds and then throw Netflix b...
Read more

Online Advertising

Image
Good Tuesday Morning, if there is such a thing, and welcome back! So I just got back from New Orleans and I have to say, the weather up here is not my favorite comparatively. Speaking of things that are not in my wheelhouse, let's talk about ads. More appropriately, we're talking about online advertising and marketing strategies. Now, I am good at many things. I'm an author, a minister, a crafter, an artist. I can make beautiful things with my hands and my mind. I can sing, play the piano, operate a Class B vehicle, somewhat fly a plane, rewire a house, change the oil in your car, and format a manuscript to look like it was published in New York. I can write poetry, dance, cut your hair, and reassemble machinery. I can even help you do your taxes or pass the ACT. What I cannot do is marketing.  I do not understand it. I am terrible at it. Anyone who's read my novels, whether they knew me or not, have begged me for more. Anyone who's picked up one of my handmade boxe...
Read more