Just wanted to say to everyone how much I have appreciated being in this class with you. I have learned so much from all of your different projects and presentations. Even when the content seems far removed from my situation, there are nuggets of ideas that apply to me or serve as reminders or inspiration about how much great work you all are doing.
I am glad the class is finished, esp. since it was the last step in my degree, but I look forward to returning to the Ning and the wiki to steal all your good stuff.
I hope to see you back here as well.
Enjoy your last few minutes before the 2009-2010 race begins.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Saturday, August 8, 2009
History of the Internet
I loved the way this article was a conglomeration of print and audio. I enjoyed listening to the speakers in their own voices. I love the variety of points of view. I could see the global idea (and if I had been unaware, the repeated chapter lists would have reminded me!)
However, I did find it choppy in some ways. Even with the italicized transitions, I sometimes felt the authors/compilers did not finish talking about one idea before the author went into the next one.
Some other points of interest:
1. The involvement/interaction of government and political issues with the development and use of the technology – need for reliable communication and also way of preventing war – communication.
2. As someone else said, I always wondered where the name Internet came from and how Al Gore could state that he invented it.
3. “Everything else—commerce and entertainment and financial services—was secondary. We thought community trumped content.” – While this comment was about times prior to Facebook, doesn’t it also seem to fit with the evolution we are currently seeing for the common, non-scientific web-surfing populace.
4. "I tease my libertarian friends—they all think the Internet is the greatest thing. And I’m like, Yeah, thanks to government funding." This just struck me as funny.
However, I did find it choppy in some ways. Even with the italicized transitions, I sometimes felt the authors/compilers did not finish talking about one idea before the author went into the next one.
Some other points of interest:
1. The involvement/interaction of government and political issues with the development and use of the technology – need for reliable communication and also way of preventing war – communication.
2. As someone else said, I always wondered where the name Internet came from and how Al Gore could state that he invented it.
3. “Everything else—commerce and entertainment and financial services—was secondary. We thought community trumped content.” – While this comment was about times prior to Facebook, doesn’t it also seem to fit with the evolution we are currently seeing for the common, non-scientific web-surfing populace.
4. "I tease my libertarian friends—they all think the Internet is the greatest thing. And I’m like, Yeah, thanks to government funding." This just struck me as funny.
Digital Trail – Hard to be invisible these days
1. Collective intelligence could make it possible for insurance companies, for example, to use behavioral data to covertly identify people suffering from a particular disease and deny them insurance coverage. Similarly, the government or law enforcement agencies could identify members of a protest group by tracking social networks revealed by the new technology.
Rather scary to imagine. Does make the Big Brother allusion fitting.
2. Google and its vast farm of more than a million search engine servers spread around the globe remain the best example of the power and wealth-building potential of collective intelligence. Google’s fabled PageRank algorithm, which was originally responsible for the quality of Google’s search results, drew its precision from the inherent wisdom in the billions of individual Web links that people create.
At least that was true until all the advertising became a part of Google and we had to start wading through “sponsored” links, etc. It seems to be better now, except that Bing now invades my space when it is sometimes unwanted, a tendency I’ve also found with other tool bar search boxes.
3. For the commercial use of such information, he has proposed a set of principles derived from English common law to guarantee that people have ownership rights to data about their behavior. The idea revolves around three principles: that you have a right to possess your own data, that you control the data that is collected about you, and that you can destroy, remove or redeploy your data as you wish.
Tell it to Erin Andrews or any of the other celebrities who have their images, etc., splashed all over. Yes, they have in some ways put themselves out there, but we choose to put ourselves out there in ways as well. There is a common saying in our teachers’ lounge about “weighing your public utterances.” A word to the wise…
4. “Privacy may turn out to have become an anomaly.” From MIT researcher
Not quite sure what to make of that. I like privacy. It’s not necessarily a big part of my life in a small town, but it is important to me. Old-fashioned values I guess.
Rather scary to imagine. Does make the Big Brother allusion fitting.
2. Google and its vast farm of more than a million search engine servers spread around the globe remain the best example of the power and wealth-building potential of collective intelligence. Google’s fabled PageRank algorithm, which was originally responsible for the quality of Google’s search results, drew its precision from the inherent wisdom in the billions of individual Web links that people create.
At least that was true until all the advertising became a part of Google and we had to start wading through “sponsored” links, etc. It seems to be better now, except that Bing now invades my space when it is sometimes unwanted, a tendency I’ve also found with other tool bar search boxes.
3. For the commercial use of such information, he has proposed a set of principles derived from English common law to guarantee that people have ownership rights to data about their behavior. The idea revolves around three principles: that you have a right to possess your own data, that you control the data that is collected about you, and that you can destroy, remove or redeploy your data as you wish.
Tell it to Erin Andrews or any of the other celebrities who have their images, etc., splashed all over. Yes, they have in some ways put themselves out there, but we choose to put ourselves out there in ways as well. There is a common saying in our teachers’ lounge about “weighing your public utterances.” A word to the wise…
4. “Privacy may turn out to have become an anomaly.” From MIT researcher
Not quite sure what to make of that. I like privacy. It’s not necessarily a big part of my life in a small town, but it is important to me. Old-fashioned values I guess.
Digital Intimacy – Concepts I found interesting
1. When they do socialize face to face, it feels oddly as if they’ve never actually been apart. They don’t need to ask, “So, what have you been up to?” because they already know. Instead, they’ll begin discussing something that one of the friends Twittered that afternoon, as if picking up a conversation in the middle.
While I don’t Twitter with my friends, I do find that Facebook does serve the same purpose. You see someone, and you can immediately ask a relevant question. I definitely get to know more on FB than I would otherwise, and for some of my relationships, that’s a huge step up. Since I don’t have a huge number of friends on FB, they tend to be more than just “‘weak ties’ – loose acquaintances, people [I know] less well.”
2. Ambient intimacy becomes a way to “feel less alone,” as more than one Facebook and Twitter user told me.
I suppose that’s true. Each advancement in technology does allow me to be closer to my family, all of whom live at least a state away.
3. In contrast, ambient updates are all visible on one single page in a big row, and they’re not really directed at you. This makes them skimmable, like newspaper headlines; maybe you’ll read them all, maybe you’ll skip some.
While that may be theoretically true, some days reading my FB news feed (and responding as the mood strikes me) can take a significant chunk of time. Perhaps if I were connected via my phone, it would be different.
4. Sociologists have long found that “weak ties” greatly expand your ability to solve problems. AND Parasocial relationships can use up some of the emotional space in our Dunbar number, crowding out real-life people.
I thought the way the article evaluated the possible positive and negative consequences of digital intimacy to be enlightening. As I’ve stated before, I still have a fear about the lack of human-to-human, face-to-face contact with all these various new means of intimacy. I guess it’s a good thing that people are studying it.
5. People in their 20s who were in college when Facebook appeared…have never lived as adults without online awareness. For them, participation isn’t optional. If you don’t dive in, other people will define who you are. AND “If anything, it’s identity-constraining now,” Tufekci told me. “You can’t play with your identity if your audience is always checking up on you.”
It’s scary to think about other people defining who you are in the absence of your own online presence. It was something that has happened in the past to me (don’t want to get into it in a public forum), and in some ways, it’s a concern I have as a teacher. I don’t expect all my students to love me, but I don’t like for their complaints to have a wider audience than their close circle of friends or family.
On “identity –constraining”” I went to a high school where only 3 of my earlier classmates attended. Then, I went to college out of state with no one I knew. I’ve moved three times since then. All opportunities to reinvent myself. Sometimes, this was a good thing. I needed or wanted to move forward.
While I don’t Twitter with my friends, I do find that Facebook does serve the same purpose. You see someone, and you can immediately ask a relevant question. I definitely get to know more on FB than I would otherwise, and for some of my relationships, that’s a huge step up. Since I don’t have a huge number of friends on FB, they tend to be more than just “‘weak ties’ – loose acquaintances, people [I know] less well.”
2. Ambient intimacy becomes a way to “feel less alone,” as more than one Facebook and Twitter user told me.
I suppose that’s true. Each advancement in technology does allow me to be closer to my family, all of whom live at least a state away.
3. In contrast, ambient updates are all visible on one single page in a big row, and they’re not really directed at you. This makes them skimmable, like newspaper headlines; maybe you’ll read them all, maybe you’ll skip some.
While that may be theoretically true, some days reading my FB news feed (and responding as the mood strikes me) can take a significant chunk of time. Perhaps if I were connected via my phone, it would be different.
4. Sociologists have long found that “weak ties” greatly expand your ability to solve problems. AND Parasocial relationships can use up some of the emotional space in our Dunbar number, crowding out real-life people.
I thought the way the article evaluated the possible positive and negative consequences of digital intimacy to be enlightening. As I’ve stated before, I still have a fear about the lack of human-to-human, face-to-face contact with all these various new means of intimacy. I guess it’s a good thing that people are studying it.
5. People in their 20s who were in college when Facebook appeared…have never lived as adults without online awareness. For them, participation isn’t optional. If you don’t dive in, other people will define who you are. AND “If anything, it’s identity-constraining now,” Tufekci told me. “You can’t play with your identity if your audience is always checking up on you.”
It’s scary to think about other people defining who you are in the absence of your own online presence. It was something that has happened in the past to me (don’t want to get into it in a public forum), and in some ways, it’s a concern I have as a teacher. I don’t expect all my students to love me, but I don’t like for their complaints to have a wider audience than their close circle of friends or family.
On “identity –constraining”” I went to a high school where only 3 of my earlier classmates attended. Then, I went to college out of state with no one I knew. I’ve moved three times since then. All opportunities to reinvent myself. Sometimes, this was a good thing. I needed or wanted to move forward.
Yeah, back accessing this site.
I guess it's good to have it happen to me so I can imagine what it would be like for kids, but I'm having a heck of a time with maintaining my access to this site. The best I can tell from the millions of "help" files I've been reading is that it has to do with my security settings, but so far changing things hasn't helped my laptop. At least my dinosaur desktop is more cooperative.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Ah, Jeff, they need you at SMU (but DON'T leave!)
I was checking facebook and had a news feed posting (terminology?) from NCTE about this article. Of course, any article that encourages teaching naked: 1. piques my interest and 2. makes me very happy to be a verbal not a visual person.
Having listened to Dr. Pelligrino's presentation last week (was it only a week ago?), nothing in the article is surprising. Did he not decry the same boring PPt lectures? Still, it was validation to read the struggle from another learned person's POV. I also enjoyed the comments at the end.
Having listened to Dr. Pelligrino's presentation last week (was it only a week ago?), nothing in the article is surprising. Did he not decry the same boring PPt lectures? Still, it was validation to read the struggle from another learned person's POV. I also enjoyed the comments at the end.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Twitter lawsuit - really?
I expect by now you've all heard of the lawsuit wrangling surrounding twitter, Horizon Realty, and an apartment tenant. If not, here is one source for some details. I like it as a teachable moment and good fodder for discussion of where is the line between expressing one's opinion and slander.
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