MIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNDD CONTROL!!!!!!!

The article "How Computers Change the Way we Think" I one that I understand and agree with on the most part.

The only part that I didn't get was the part about "transparency", cause it's not a computering concept that's thrown around much anymore. Cause most of the people who might be considered part of this internet generation, have only been using computers since around Windows 3.1 at the earliest.

But the individual issues brought up are both important and relevant.

•Privacy: I've been using the internet for a decade or now so I'm pretty sure that all my personal info is out there somewhere, cause when I was younger I didn't know any better about putting my name and email and other things put there. But in recent years I've mostly just made fake email addresses, and given fake name whenever something required registrations of any sort. I have an email that I only use for fake registrations so that it gets most of the spam. Though I disagree with the statements about not caring about the incursions into privacy. I just watched "Enemy of the State" last week and I certainly wish to keep my life out of the surveillance of anyone else.

•As for the whole issue of powerpoint, I've never really been affected by it, I've only used it about 4 times in my life, and three of those times were in middles school. But I guess those were so that info could be presented as a visual representations of facts, and easily understood without all the hubub of a lecture. Though that might be good for some younger people, cause they do have shorter attention spans. Though the points brought up about the losing of the narrative in the presentation of information do seem valid.

•I love the word processer myself, I type faster that I write, and I do find myself able to be more productive with a keyboard than with pen and paper. I have a better ability to just make information flow, and that combined with the ability to edit what I've said makes writing for me much easier. I can type fast enough that my hands don't have to play catchup as they would if I were writing.

The part about the constrained environments provided by most computers Is indeed and accurate. The portrayal of video games as a pattern of danger/safe danger/safe is like one my dad always provided.

He always said that he didn't like the same type of games I did because they were just wanering through a maze and shooting monsters, the environments and the monsters changed but the activity stayed the same.

And it is this sameness that the author fears. I agree with what she says in her closing that it's something we have to work against, and that we still need to ask the who's, what's ,where 's, why's, and when's.

"When I first began studying the computer culture, a small breed of highly trained technologists
thought of themselves as "computer people." That is no longer the case. If we take the computer
as a carrier of a way of knowing, a way of seeing the world and our place in it, we are all computer people now."

Where's Zack de la Rocha when I need him?

Frankly the Youtube video didn't seem to me that important.

Sure It points out some helpful evolutions that the internet has gone through, but really just about every technological advance starts off complicated and over time becomes more streamlined and user friendly. The whole "The future is now" aspect of the video kinda seemed cheesy and very much like some sort of student project. (Which I'm pretty certain it is).

So while yes all the new Web 2.0 stuff is cool and all, being it's all happening in the present, I just don't really have much appreciation for it, cause really the internet has always been a helpful tool, and only when new stuff is created can we look back and say "Gee I can't beleive nobody though of that sooner".

And also I thought the music was kinda annoying.

I still think that "Generation X" sounds cooler than "The Myspace Generation"

I read this article about 4 times before I realized where it was coming from.

To me it was a deceptively written piece talking about social networking. It was written for "Business Week". All I can imagine is some old crusty CEO-type guys sitting around saying things like "Those blasted kids and their newfangled internet might be a use for making us some money". It seemed as though the writer was really trying to hide the clear intent of the piece, but I think that the article was written more as a social networking primer for out of touch business types than for anything else.

It gives numerous examples of all the sorts of tactics that the bigger companies are using to try and entice teens and tweens and kids with their brands. But the article itself seems to do the same thing, it starts off with a neat little anecdote about some teenager using the internet to find other people who like her favorite band, and then it devolves into business practices. After the part about the girl it talks about "Buzz Oven". The article says, 'hey local social networks are cool aren't they? look at this one that's growing.' Then it gives examples of the bigger ones and tells of how much advertising goes into them.

After reading the article I felt that if I were some crusty old CEO-type guy, I would be telling my peons and subordinates to check out this newfangled internet and try to understand what sort of things the kids are into these days.

BUT, I'm not a big CEO-Type guy at all. I'm a college student who uses or has used many of the sites mentioned in the article. I used to have a xanga, back when it was about blogging and not much else. Now I've got a myspace, cause that's where all my friends moved to, and currently use Facebook the most cause I like the nice organization, privacy, and ease of use.

The whole thing with companies trying to sell me stuff through social networking sites, really just makes me feel used, and less inclined to support their brand or products.

"Kids don't buy stuff because they see a magazine ad. They buy stuff because other kids tell them to."

I feel that's really the most truthful thing said in the entire article. And while the article gives examples of company driven social sites that have failed, miserably. It also talks of how major companies have been buying up most of the ones out there. So while major company influences may not be readily apparent, and they might claim to be taking a hands off approach; it's much more likely that they're taking the role of puppet master.

As we've already seen through large companies and their attempts at viral marketing, sometimes those other kids telling us to buy stuff aren't really other kids.

(Insert "The Crying Game" Joke Here)

After finishing the readings, the thing that stood out to me was how dated some of the jargon used was. "Snerts, MUD's, and a couple other things are terms I'd not heard in my decade or so of internet usage. It's because the internet has changed quite a bit from the days when the article was written. The advents of social networking, IM, youtube, and other such things have made the internet much different than it was in '96. now we have more advanced acronyms like MMORPG.

(My internet experiences back then pretty much were me logging on to AOL, and then signing off when I realized that all the content at nickelodeon.com would take around 15 minutes to load. )

Back in the day, when most people still used AOL, and IM wasn't a widespread means of communication, chat rooms were like a huge novelty, and one of the key features that the internet had. Chat rooms are where the stories of people talking to other people, pretending to be other genders come from. Chat rooms were a more mainstream thing, before they got the stigma of places that only scary perverts hang out. Now because of internet predators, and the general weirdness of other people, most people stay away from chat rooms and use more private lines of communication. So to come in contact with those who would switch genders in their online personas, one would probably end up on sites of ill repute.

In it's infancy IM was more of a way to hold conversations with random people one met over the internet, than it was just a way to converse with friends. There weren't all the security measures, like spam filters, and IM blockers. it was more anonymous, and impersonal. You could just go through the AOL database and IM another user with similar interests, so you never really knew who you were talking too. Now the focus has switched from doing that, to only talking with people you know, with there being waring messages against talking to strangers when you install the program.

The reason that people act the way they do online, has to do with the complete anonymity of the web. You can be a jerk, and it doesn't matter, cause you'll most likely never meet the people you bother online. I really don't see it as there being much more than that; one can act upon their impulses with little or no repercussions.

I have already said that in the years since the articles creation the face of the internet has changed. I think it has gone from, as the article shows a separation of online and offline selves, to a great integration of both. You just have to take a look at facebook.com to see that.

Less cool than a doomsday book, but still kinda interesting.

The first thing that struck me upon opening up the Domesday Book page was that this weeks material was being presented in a completely different manner than last. Instead of a straightforward article I got a webpage that had many, many branching paths of information.

The amount of info presented in pretty much overwhelming, with almost no linear structure, one must go about their exploration of the site in a somewhat planned manner, scanning the FAQ's for questions that one was thinking; finding the "W"s. The Who's, What's, Why's etc...

I assume this change in presentation was a very, very intentional one. The Site for the Domesday book is presented in a very hypertextual way, with highlighted links that lead from item to item. The connection between the two readings is readily apparent.

As for the Domesday book itself, I'm really amazed that it managed to get compiled. After reading through a portion of the site, seeing what sort of effort that went into the compilation process. I found it hard to believe that such a large scale undertaking managed to get completed.
Aside from the gathering of information, it is the fact that it was gathered multiple times in order to check for accuracy which really impressed me.

The most interesting thing though, is the ironic circumstances regarding the 1986 'New Domesday' survey. The fact that the original book has lasted for around 900 years or so, while the once created on state of the art computers, circa 1986, is now obsolete and almost unusable. Irony like that just tickles my funnybone. It's another one of those old tech vs. new tech ordeals. And it's another thing that connected this reading with the previous.

Hypertapestry

"People in the 21st-Century western world tend to understand their lives as literary narratives with beginnings, endings, and dramatic middle parts. Did people think about their lives in this same linear fashion when they weren't literate? Probably not. Before people used writing, they didn't read books, and they didn't think in words. They thought more in pictures, and relied much more than does today's college student on experience, memory, and their own eyes and ears. You could say life then was less like a book and more like a Web page."

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This is the part of the article that I found to be the most aggravating. (Not to say the article bothered me, just this part really.) This assumption that one views their life as a literary narrative, is one that just doesn't ring true to me. To say that the cycle of life is literary, because it has a beginning and an end, seems absurd. Things were being born, and things were dying far before written language. In old cultures with a predominantly oral history, how are their stories less linear? I don't feel that being linear and being literary should be so closely associated.

So sure, people probably thought more in pictures back in the day than they did now, but doesn't an understanding of a spoken language make one think in words? Word association alone should make one do that. I don't really understand why the author describes the way people used to think as similar to a web page. Most web pages are filled with text elements.

Though I do agree with the points made about the usefulness of new technologies in learning. The presenting of the Tapestry in a digital form allows a closer inspection than one that would be given in a book. In a book the tapestry would have to be shrunken down and reproduced upon many different pages. A scrollable, digital version allows for a viewing of the whole tapestry in any way that one chooses. With links to info regarding any section only a click away, one's view ends up being more of the tapestry as a whole and less of a simple progression in one direction through the piece.

So the newfound ability to associate the visual elements of information with the textual, is one that is quickly influencing modern education. The branching elements of hypertext learning allows for better ease of use. I think that eventually most schooling will end up being presented in a similar digital fashion. It would seem to be an important advancement in helping to grasp knowledge. New technologies such as this are changing the way we read and write by enabling us to become more informed with greater ease.