Rachel

Two Articles

2007-12-05T23:22:54Z

Newsweek::"The Future of Reading," by Steven Levy

The book is the perfect technology, it doesn't need batteries, its hand-held,
there is no instruction manual, or hard drive, how could it possibly be
improved upon? Jeff Bezos thinks he did improve upon it with his new invention, "The Kindle,"
a hand-held e-book that uses amazing "e-ink"
technology that exactly duplicates ink on paper. This is a new type of ubiquitous computing,
a hand-held interface that downloads an entire library without a desktop computer using
whisperless Internet. Bezos understands that if you are going to improve upon the
greatest technology the world has ever seen, you not only have to meet its standards,
you also have to be better than it. "First, it must project an aura of bookishness;
it should be less of a whizzy gizmo than an austere vessel of culture (p. 57)."
(Like most ubiquitous technologies, it must blend in), the Kindle also has the same
dimension of a paperback, and the battery boasts a reading time of up to thirty hours.
Unlike a normal book, though, the Kindle allows you to change the font-size, and search
within your internal library through a single word or phrase. Best of all, and most
"ubiquitously," "the Kindle can venture out on the Web itself--to look up thinks
in Wikipedia, search via Google or follow links from blogs and other Web pages.
You can jot down
a gloss on the page of a book you're reading, or capture passages with an
electronic version of a highlight pen. And if you or a friend sends a word
document or PDF file to your private Kindle e-mail address, it appears in
your Kindle library, just as a book does ( p.58)." Just like a book, the
Kindle (and other ubiquitous devices) disappears.

The Kindle is more than just a new technology, though, "The Kindle represents
a milestone in a time of transition, when a challenged publishing industry is
competing with television, Guitar Hero and time burned on the Blackberry:
literary critics are bemoaning a possible demise of print culture....On the
other hand, there are vibrant pockets of book lovers on the Internet who are
waiting for a chance to refurbish the dusty halls of literacy (p. 57)." Bezos
would like you to be able to get any book in or out of print onto your Kindle
in less than a minute. Critics say that no one would ever sit down and read
a book off of a screen, but why wouldn't you? We read everything off of a
screen these days, from our mail to our work. Bezos understands the love of
a good book, but answers that it is not truly the book itself that we love.
He says, "Why do I love the smell of glue and ink? The answer is that I
associate that smell with all those worlds I have been transported to.
What we love is the words and ideas (p. 60)." The Kindle does not the end of print
culture, it could instead herald the beginnings of a revolution in printing.
Jeff Bezos has already helped revitalize the book-buying industry with Amazon
and now says that "Stuff doesn't need to go out of print," instead, the Kindle
will "shorten publishing cycles (p. 61)," making more items go either into print
or directly onto the Kindle. There are also hypertextual plans in the works to
allow readers to authorship of a book by subscribing to it while it is being written.
Readers could add to or correct non-fiction texts through Wikis, or find the excitement
in a novel as the author re-writes the ending.

The Kindle is an amazing part of what ubiquitous computing is bringing to technology.
It is part of the revolution in knowledge that has been going on for quite some
time for now, and a very exciting step in the digital world.

School Library Journal: April, 2007. "Do Books Still Matter?" by, Marc Aronson

This article looks at the ways young students get their information, (mainly via Google),
and examines how librarians, teachers and non-fiction authors can or should change
their practices. As in many articles and books of this type, the author answers
the question of whether books are going the way of the 8-track with a resounding, "NO!"

Instead, the Internet has been increasing literacy in children and adults. In this
article and the Newsweek article it is pointed out that people who spend their
time online actually read more than people who don't, not less. Also, while Web pages
can offer vast ammounts of information, a book can hold an entire argument, a much longer
narrative. Authors and readers still look to books to go more in-depth than Web pages
can. In terms of children, books can still hold more appeal. A lot of thought goes
into the craft of book-making, especially with children's books. The narrative
and the art-work draw the children in much better than a two-dimensional web-site.

Unless, of course that web-site involves gaming, which is a major concern
for educators and publishers. There are however, many educational games out there
that help children learn, including a version of Second Life that lets teens avatars
live through the American Revolution. While there are more appealing, less educational
games out there for children, it is still important to note that good games and good web-sites
still exist, if they are steered in the right direction. There should not be a fear that
just because kids are more used to visual stimuli than previous generations, and that
they expect those images everywhere that they will stay away from books. Instead,
"kids who are accustomed to picking and choosing their own forms of media accept books
as book--they don't need to resemble the Web. They just need to be good at being books
(p. 39)."

The digital world can make the print world even better, if not because the two are
being integrated, but also because the print world is scared of the digital world and
will thrive in competition. As Aronson wrote, "The digital world frees the print
world to do what it does best--present a crafted, composed, fully articulated argument
or story (p. 39)." There is no reason to worry about print culture.

(Especially not with The Kindle around).

Digital Ground

2007-11-16T08:05:54Z

Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing, by Malcolm McCullough is about Pervasive Computing from an architect’s point of view. Design will be an important factor in pervasive computing; without it the embedding of computers in everyday life will be overwhelming. There will be “information pollution,” with too many gadgets too handle. As McCullough wrote, “You don’t have to distrust technology to want to keep it in its place (p. 3).”

The new field of interaction design mediates how significant technologies will be in our lives by deciding how many degrees of interactivity there will be between humans and computing objects. With ubiquitous computing, there will be microchips in everything around us. In fact, there nearly already are. At Intel less than one-quarter of the chips made actually go into computers. The need for interaction designers is especially clear when one considers MIT’s Project Oxygen’s glimpse of the future, “In the future, computation will be human-centered. It will be freely available everywhere like batteries and power-sockets, or oxygen in the air we breathe. It will enter into the human world, handling our goals and needs and helping us to do more while doing less (p. 7).” Interaction designers need to take a hand in pervasive computing to stop information pollution from overwhelming users. “Its purveyors assume no more responsibility for information pollution than nineteenth-century industrialists did for dumping sludge in the river (p. 17).” Interaction designers must be architects, sociologists, psychologists, and management consultants all rolled into one in order to keep a firm hold on pervasive computing.

We are experiencing a paradigm shift from computers to computing, from cyberspace to ubiquitous computing. “Information technology has become ambient social infrastructure. This allies it with architecture. No longer just made of objects, computing now consists of situations (p. 21).” Users have certain expectations of what computing and technology will do to their lives. Interaction designers have to monitor “expectation management,” because “What technology can do may not be so important as what we want to do with it, and whether that is reasonable (p. 23).” With pervasive computing, the desktop computer will be obliterated. It has already been around for twenty years, a record for a piece of information technology. The technology and information that is having trouble being contained within the PC will be unleashed, “Pervasive computing has been hailed as an escape from the desktop and a chance to start over. On the other hand, unless design can intervene, it is also a chance for computer technology to become even worse, and far less escapable (p. 68).”

McCullough fears that designers and users are ignoring the new trend of ubiquitous computing. He fears that through their ignorance it is falling into the hands of major corporations and governments, who will use it for surveillance purposes. The fear of surveillance does not scare people as much as it should, however, because the benefits of computing outweigh this negative. Also, McCullough points out, “omnicompetance” will be low. There will be too much information gathered through the type of surveillance that can come through ubicomp, and not enough communication or time to keep track of it all. Once pervasive computing is paid attention to by interaction designers, it will be put in the periphery. It will become invisible, so as to be simple for users to adapt to in their lives, “…information appliances let you carry out particular activities without having to be aware of any computers that may be involved (p. 70).”

This book was meant to be a manual for architects looking to become intellectual designers. Although it was a bit bogged down with architectural jargon, it was still an interesting look at the futuristic trend of ubiquitous computing.

Everything is Miscellaneous

2007-11-09T01:18:19Z

In Everything is Miscellaneous: the Power of the New Digital Disorder,David Weinberger explains the new ways in which knowledge is being restructured because of the digital world. With the influxes of information streaming along the Internet, we must find new ways of organizing it all. Sometimes, though, the best way of organizing mass amounts of information is through the miscellaneous, through disorder. In the world of the miscellaneous, “we are rapidly miscallanizing our world, breaking things out of their old organizational structures and enabling individuals to sort and order them on the fly (p. 96).” Weinberger writes that “Over the course of the millennia, we’ve developed sophisticated methods and processes for developing, communicating, and preserving knowledge. We have major institutions—serious contributors to our culture and our economy—devoted to those tasks….Now we have to invent new ways appropriate to the new shape of knowledge. We are doing so at a pace unparalleled in our history (p. 102).” There is a revolution in knowledge coming upon us, but how are we going to keep it organized?
Weinberger begins by explaining old ways of organizing information, including how we organize our daily lives. He points out that we organize all parts of our lives to a tee, from our laundry to our books. “We invest so much time in making sure our world isn’t miscellaneous in part because disorder is inefficient…but also because it feels bad (p. 12).” Objects in our world always start out as miscellaneous, and humans work incredibly hard at reordering and straightening it up.
When it comes to the digital world, however, organizing becomes almost impossible. “Search Google for ‘American history,’ which is just one Library of Congress subheading, and you’ll get 750 million Web pages—about twenty-six times the number of books in the Library’s entire collection. The Library of Congress’s carefully engineered, highly evolved processes for ordering information simply won’t work in the new world of digital information (p. 16).” Even indexing experts have trouble controlling digital information. But it doesn’t really need to be controlled by them. Instead, it can be controlled by machines and by users. Sites like Wikipedia and Delicious are the best examples for ways the digital world organizes itself through the miscellaneous. Just as in Ambient Findablity, Weinberger compares these sites to the way early humans found their way in the world. They wore away paths, one person following the paths others had worn, until eventually paths began to fork, and signs (new tags) were needed to show which new ways the paths could take you.
When it comes to a site like Wikipedia “The best digital strategy is to dump everything into one large miscellaneous pile and leave it to the machines to sort it out (p. 88).” Wikipedia wouldn’t work if it were organized like a regular encyclopedia. Instead, Wikipedia’s servers log each way people use to access articles and uses algorithms to bring them their searches faster. This not only gives users what they need, it also gives them things they didn’t know they needed. “The gap between how we access information and how the computer accesses it is at the heart of the revolution in knowledge. Because computers store information in ways that have nothing to do with how we want it presented to us, we are freed from having to organize the original information the way we eventually want to get at it (p. 99).” A search for one thing leads to others because the servers have logged what people might be looking for. The miscellaneous factor of searching for information on the Internet actually adds to its utility.
The organizational structure of Wikipedia is completely differently than that of most knowledge, “but its shape, freed from the two dimensions of paper, better represents the wild diversity of human interests and insight (p. 100).” The usual structure of knowledge is like a tree. Things are put into categories which hang on branches. This can be troublesome because some objects can hang on many different branches at once. Putting objects into one category reveals the flaws of the indexer by showing the other possible categories it could have gone into. Delicious is a perfect example of organizing through the miscellaneous, because users can tag objects with as many tags as they want. This ensures that users will be able to find what they want in one way or another. “At Delicious, tagging a Web address with multiple tags in effect puts it on many branches. Yet despite the lack of a well-organized scheme of categories, Delicious can make a list of twenty thousand Web addresses thoroughly usable (p. 93).” There is no one way of organizing digital data. What works for one user might not work for others. Each person has different ways of ordering, which add value to the power of the miscellaneous.
Weinberger also discussed the ways in which knowledge is going through a revolution. By taking power away from organizers and indexers and putting it into the hands of taggers and searchers, knowledge is becoming more accessible.“…Physical limitations on how we have organized information have not only limited our vision, they have also given the people who control the organization of information more power than those who create the information (p. 89).”

Following is a brief summary of Weinberger’s 4 New Strategic Principles for organizing knowledge:

1. Filter on the way out, not on the way in
“…where there’s an abundance of access to an abundance of resources, filtering on the way in decreases the value of that abundance by ruling items that might be of great values to a few people. Filtering on the way out…increases the value of that abundance by locating what’s of value to a particular person at a particular moment (p. 103).”

2. Put each leaf on as many branches as possible
Delicious is a good example of this. Instead of categorizing items onto one specific branch, they are given as many labels as possible, allowing them to have better usability. This is especially important because the order of one may not be the order of another, but the many different orders of many people will be useful to at least a few.

3. Everything is Metadata and everything can be a label.
“Now that everything in the connected world can serve as metadata, knowledge is empowered beyond fathoming. We can not only find what we need based on whatever slight traces we have in our hand, we can see connections that would have escaped our notice (p. 105).”

4. Give up control.
Categorizing reveals missed information.

Everyware

2007-11-01T04:00:50Z

There are many amazing theories in Adam Greenfield’s book, Everywhere: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing, I have chosen to outline the theories that I found most pertinent. This book is about ubiquitous computing, also known as pervasive computing, physical computing, tangible media, or what Greenfield refers to as “everyware.” He is theorizing on a paradigm shift, in which we will all have to “…make sense of the wave of change even now bearing down on use (p. 3).”

Thesis 2: The many forms of ubiquitous computing are indistinguishable from the user’s perspective and will appear to a user as aspects of a single paradigm: Everywhere.

There are so many different pieces of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) that it is difficult to imagine that they are all one whole. The experience of ubicomp involves “…a diverse ecology of devices and platforms, most of which have nothing to do with ‘computers’ as we’ve understood them (p. 16).” “…When we consider the difference between our experience of PCs and the thing that is coming, it is clear that … (p. 16),” there is a new age dawning, something that is too difficult, scattered and large for us to understand.

Thesis 7: Everyware isn’t so much a particular kind of hardware or software as it is a situation.

There are so many objects embedded with technology right now that it is difficult to comprehend the world in terms of hardware. Instead, “…everyware isn’t so much a particular kind of hardware, philosophy of software design, or a set of interface conventions as it is a situation—a set of circumstances (p. 31).” It is in this theory that Greenfield best describes the intangible qualities of everyware. “…there is in fact a coherent ‘it’ to be considered, something that appears whenever there are multiple computing devices devoted to each human user; when this processing power is deployed throughout local physical reality instead of being locked up in a single general purpose box…(p. 31).” This “it” is something no one can ignore, and it is creeping into our lives at all angles whether we like it (or even notice it), or not.

Thesis 8: The project of everyware is nothing less than the colonization of everyday life by information technology.

A scary theory indeed, yet the introduction of technology to the monotony of everyday life is meant as a convenience. No longer would you have to ask yourself where you hid the remote control, or why there was nothing to do on a Sunday afternoon. Greenfield argues that this does have the potential to be scary, though, as we must all wake up and take control of the direction everyware will take our lives.

Thesis 9: Everyware has profoundly different implications for the user experience than previous paradigms.

Typically, a user sits down to a computer, types in commands and gets what he or she wants. With everyware, your wants are inferred by embedded software. You no longer give commands, objects just act around you and for you.

Thesis 16: Everyware can be engaged inadvertently, unknowingly, or even unwillingly.

Put very simplistically, engaging inadvertently can be described as, “I didn’t mean to hit that button, I wanted to hit a different one;” unknowingly can be described as, “I didn’t know that hitting that button would have such an effect,” and unwillingly can be described as, “What just happened? I didn’t push any buttons!” People will interact with technology they don’t know exists. Or they may interact with it knowingly, but comply anyway for convenience.

Thesis 19: Everyware is always situated in a particular context.

In the PC world, interaction and immersion are easy to do, we can take our laptops anywhere, and be connected to the Internet at all times. Everyware is different, though, everyware takes immersion to an all-new level. “By instrumenting the actual world, though, as opposed to immersing a user in an information-space that never was, everyware is something akin to virtual reality turned inside out (p. 73).” Everyware will change the user experience by taking them off of a computer screen and into the real world.

Thesis 31: Everyware is a strategy for the reduction of cognitive overload.
With the excesses of information streaming at the users at all times, there is a fear within ubiquitous computing that more computers will directly cause more stress. In other words, “If computers are everywhere, they better stay out of the way (p. 111).” With ubiquitous computing, however, computers can be everywhere without being in the way, “…the total cognitive burden imposed by a poorly designed ubicomp on the average, civilian user would be intolerable (p.111).” Computers can be put in the periphery and only used when needed, they will not necessarily need to be called upon, and they will just do what they do without human input.

Ambient Findability

2007-10-26T10:56:13Z

In Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become, Peter Morville accomplishes the lofty goal of discerning what wayfinding and findability on the Internet really mean. He asks the reader to join him in asking questions about findability and the Internet. Can you really find everything on the Internet? What kind of implications does this have for the user? Why is findability so important, and what can be done to make finding information on the Internet easier?
First, to be able to find things on the Internet, one must be skilled in keywords and categories, the two most important factors in finding what you need. The ability to find vital information is a new type of literacy that is becoming increasingly important as the Internet gains more and more information. Morville writes, “In the information age, transmedia information literacy is a core life skill (p. 7).” The ALA’s definition of information literacy is, “a set of abilities requiring individuals to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information (p. 8).” Morville explained the progression of wayfinding through tools and evolutionary adaptations throughout time. These facts gelled together with the Internet. However, “Architects and graphic designers have tended to see the user of their settings as a stereotyped, physically fit, attentive individual with only one perception—to explore and enjoy the settings they have created (p. 28).” Understanding wayfinding is important for web-designers and web users, because of the difficulty in navigating the vast amount of information found on the Internet. Web-designers and other wayfinding creators must keep in mind empathy for the user, because without it users will find it nearly impossible to find what they’re looking for.
Morville looks at the amount of information on the Internet as daunting and foreboding. He writes that we no longer need to produce information, we should instead focus on how to look at it. In fact, “Half a million libraries the size of the Library of Congress. That’s how much information we create in a year—92% of it stored on magnetic media (p. 44).” Is this amount of information really useful? Do people really need to make use of all of the types of information that are found on the Internet? Morville knows that “Its time we shifted our focus from creating a wealth of information to addressing the ensuing poverty of attention (p.45).” How much of this information is being ignored, and what can people do to give the Information that they found important enough to put on the Internet more attention? As always, “…the challenges of communication are part of the human condition, unsusceptible to the eager advances of technology (p. 15).”
What is information, and what is it about the information age that makes findability so important? He sees “the power of the Internet to engage people as participants in the collaborative, productive enterprise of knowledge creation and dissemination. For information is ultimately about communication (p. 15).” Findability is of vital importance in knowledge dissemination because it “…invests freedom in the individual. As the web challenges mass media with a media of the masses, we will enjoy an unprecedented ability to select our sources and choose our news (p. 7).”
This book helps to understand the importance of navigability on the Internet. As more and more information comes along there is a need for both comprehension and appreciation for the information age.

Convergence Culture

2007-10-10T17:26:33Z

In his book, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Henry Jenkins theorizes on the concept of “Convergence Culture,” which is a way of making sense of the trends in media and the Internet that have been changing the way society looks at itself, politics, and entertainment. Convergence culture is the convergence, not only of media technologies, but also of society and media technologies.
An important part of convergence of media technologies to remember is, “Printed words did not kill spoken words. Cinema did not kill theater (p. 14).” New media never replaces old media, the old media converges and co-exists with the new. Jenkins also argues that media never dies, only the ways in which media is delivered, which he calls “delivery technologies.” For example, while the 8-track may be obsolete, its media—music has evolved. Convergence of technologies has been occurring for decades. This decade the computer is converging with the television in the same way that cars converged with horses and word processors converged with typewriters. “Convergence does not depend on any specific delivery mechanism. Rather, convergence represents a paradigm shit—a move from media specific content toward content that flows across multiple media channels, toward the increased interdependence of communication systems, toward multiple ways of accessing media content, and toward ever more complex relations between top-down corporate media and bottom-up participatory culture (p. 243).”
Another part of convergence culture is that consumers are taking media into their own hands like never before, “The water-cooler has gone digital…media convergence enables communal, rather than individualistic modes of reception (p. 26).” Collective intelligence is an important part of participatory, convergence culture. Blogs, you-tube, message boards, and even role-playing games are an important part of participatory culture, each participant offers a knew piece of knowledge until the group as a whole knows everything. “…consumers are using new media technologies to engage with old media content, seeing the Internet as a vehicle for collective problem solving, public deliberation and grassroots creativity (p. 169).”
Jenkins gave a list of skills needed for participants in convergence culture on page 176. Many of these were for specific examples he gave throughout the book, but they can also be seen as real skills needed to actively participate in this new digital world, skills that will be needed by all within the next few years:

-The ability to pool knowledge in a collaborative exercise
-the ability to share and compare value systems by evaluating ethical dramas
-the ability to make connections across scattered pieces of information
-the ability to express your interpretations and feelings toward popular fictions through your own folk culture
-the ability to circulate what you create via the Internet so that it can be shared with others
-role-playing both as a means of exploring a fictional realm and as a means of developing a richer understanding of yourself and the culture around you.

All in all, this book was a decent attempt to discern the ever-evolving media-driven world around us.
Next weeks book: Ambient Findability.

Infotopia

2007-05-26T05:10:21Z

I find it interesting that we were all so trepedatious about using Wikis because they might not have looked official enough, yet the Department of Defense and other government agencies use wikis regularly. Yet I wonder, even though they're password protected, how safe are they? All someone needs is a password, which can sometimes be really easy to get, and they can change anything they want.
Also, I like how the Patent system was originally set up to promote intellectual freedom, but it has gotten so messed up in the centuries since that there is more freedom in open source. Is it possible that people now care less about money and more about intellectual freedom, thanks to open source science and software?

Queen Loana Paper

2007-05-26T05:09:41Z

In The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, sixty year-old, Yambo, loses his episodic memory, the memory tied to his emotional experiences, and goes on a journey into the caverns of his childhood to try to remember what made him the man he became before his amnesia.
Before his accident, Yambo was obsessed with fog, and after he really did live in one. He had some help through the fog; he said to his wife, “You know quotations are my only fog lights (p. 63).” His vast academic knowledge was all he remembered of his life, and as he ventured to uncover his childhood at Solara he hoped that his quotations and books would help shine a lot on the experiences he didn’t remember. Instead, these books of his childhood caused him to remember the experiences of all children living in fascist Italy, the experiences of a generation. It was difficult for him to distinguish which memories were his and which were of the public’s.
In losing his memory, Yambo also uncovered memories he was unable to face before. He was given a second chance at his life. Before his accident, he had repressed the memories of Solara, finding it difficult to face the sad events that had happened there. He hadn’t been to his Chapel sanctuary or the beloved attic for many years and found it difficult to go to the house at all. He had also cheated on his wife, not really knowing why. Thanks to his accident, he was able to uncover the causes of these events, something he would not have tried to do if he hadn’t lost his memory. He learned of the events of his childhood that shaped his identity, and he learned about his lost love, Lila, the woman he sought out with all of his affairs, and of Queen Loana, the character that sparked his love of Lila. If not for his accident he would have never learned the events that shaped his identity.

Weeks 6 and 7

2007-05-13T00:33:33Z

Unfortunately my copies of Straight From the Stacks and The Professor and the Madman did not come until today. So, the first book's blog and paper will be one week late and the second's will be a couple of days late. I apologize to anyone that is holding their breath in anticipation.

The Medium is the Message

2007-04-24T20:36:00Z

We have been talking a lot lately on the longevity of books, and whether or not they will still be around in the next century. One of the main arguments is that curling up with a good book and feeling the turn of the pages on your hands can not compare to reading a book online. Why should this be any different if the content is the same? It must be that the medium is the message. Also, the experience of watching a movie on the big screen cannot compare to watching it on a tv screen or on a video ipod. Would "Braveheart" have won an Oscar for best picture if the judges had watched it on a normal sized televsion? If the content is the same than surely it is more than that we are just used to reading books are watching movies in theaters, it surely has to do with the medium. This, mixed with the fact that we have an aversion to new forms of media taking over the old, is why we like it more.

For the Stylish

2007-04-03T20:14:17Z

When these conspiracy theories finally get to us, we can go out in style with these

The Librarian

2007-04-03T00:25:25Z

I haven't finished the book yet, because I only got it a couple days ago, but I'm trying! I like it a lot so far, though its true that a modern novel has yet to be written without mentioning male genitalia. Male HORSE genitalia at that. Its scary to think that this is pretty much how things really do go down in Washington, though it seems as though there are at least a few gentle souls left out there. I like how this is written as well. I like first person narratives, and I like that it is written in a series of run-on sentences, it makes it seem more like the way people actually talk.

Cosmopolis

2007-03-13T01:59:38Z

Did you know that there is a Cosmopolis, Washington? It is 50 miles from Olympia, started as a brickyard, and has a population of 1,540 people! Amazing!

This book was quite interesting. I find it hard to enjoy disjointed narratives like this one, because it usually means I have to pay closer attention than normal. 200 pages in one day is always an interesting read as well. I liked "the rat as currency" dialogue between Eric and Micheal Chin a lot. I also liked how Eric seemed disinterested and unattached to everything, a result of his life in a limosine filled with computer screens and of his career. Everything to him is outdated, including airports, stethascopes, and skyscrapers. Also, everything reminds him of his manhood, inlcuding skyscrapers and his limosine. He is so detached from the world he lives in that throwing away his money and his wife's (who he barely knows) is nothing to him. In fact, its amusing. Even being in the middle of a violent protest and the murders of his contemporaries is amusing.

Google Paper

2007-03-09T18:38:21Z

I need to work on my conclusions, and getting my points together a little more coherently.

]]> As John Battelle pointed out on page 95 of The Search: How Google and its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, it is hard to imagine a world without Google. Google has had a profound and global impact on culture, business, and internet-use. Google has even changed the role of the internet in everyday life so much that the future will be greatly changed by it as well. The predictions of John Battelle of a search-based life are an exciting, yet somewhat scary glimpse of a Google-laden future.
”What does the world want? Build a company that answers this question in all its shades of meaning, and you’ve unlocked the most interactive riddle of marketing, of business, and arguably of human culture itself (p. 17).” Thanks to Google’s “creature,” a veritable living being that trolls the web, eating up any information it can find and bringing it back to Google’s complex algorithms, Google does know what people want. In fact, “…Google ha[s] more than its finger on the pulse of the culture, it [is] directly jacked into the culture’s nervous system (p. 2).” Google can see an individual or a group’s personal preferences, by analyzing their clickstream, and even analyzing the sites they go to after they leave the site Google had offered them. Thanks to their e-mail client, gmail, they can even see what interests people have by analyzing keywords in their e-mails.
Google “Rewrote the Rules of Business,” by changing the way that small businesses run their Internet practices. To some small businesses, Google can be a sure way to get your site seen, without having to pay. But for some, Google can be tricky. Because of Google’s strategy of preventing “black-hat” practices, small businesses must make sure that their site code is clean, so that Google algorithms will know that a search for the site is truly organic. Otherwise, their site may be moved far beyond the first two pages of a search list. As Battelle pointed out, “Maybe the dot-com dream wasn’t dead; perhaps it had simply been hiding behind the implacable façade of a Google search box (p. 3).”
In a Google world, search is becoming more and more important to everyday practices of Internet users, both socially and commercially. When Battelle was writing about his views on paid subscriptions online he said, “More and more, I find that if I can’t share something (that is, can’t point to something using my e-mail or my own website), it’s not worth my time (p. 174).” This is a prevalent view among Internet users. Sources like You-Tube, Craigslits and Google are popular because users can simply copy and paste the URLS into their e-mails and share what they have found with the world. You can tell a friend to simply Google a phrase and they’ll find exactly what you have found. When finding a phone number or address, typing a business into a Google browser is so much simpler than pulling out the cumbersome and analog phone book. In fact, “Within one generation…the yellow pages will be viewed as a dead industry (p. 175).” This is no surprise. Search and Google are becoming more integrated into everything we do all the time. Battelle’s prediction of the future is on page 253 is undoubtedly true:
…In the near future, search will mestastize from its origins on the PC-centric web and be let loose on all manner of devices. This has already begun with mobile phones and PDAs, expect it to continue, viruslike, until search is built into every digital device touching our lives…. The lowliest object with a chip and the ability to connect—all will incorporate network-aware search.

For some, this prediction can be scary, but for the generation who won’t use a phonebook, this era will be one in which they won’t be able to imagine a world not driven by search. How odd that something created by two grad students who wanted to work with algorithms and learn about the Internet, could create something that would change the world so completely.

DIGHUMANWIKI!!

2007-03-07T02:19:42Z

Well, other than some editing, and maybe a couple more lines of content, I think I'm basically done with my project. I'm a little too burned out to completely finished right now, but boy does it feel good to be "basically" done. Check it out, mine is all the stuff about Digital Humanities, after the table of contents.