A Post About Art

In the OSilas Gallery, there is always a number of different works of art that all revolve around a certain theme. This time, the exhibit is called "Drawing the Mind: Neural Networks and the Emergence of Complexity." What this means is the work that is being displayed has to do with your brain, which makes for a cool exhibit.

While the whole exhibit in itself was very cool, there was one piece that really stood out to me. It was called "Wall Drawing" and it was made by Margaret Neill. This piece is exactly what the title says it is. It is actually a series of curved lines drawn on the wall of the gallery. It took Neill 4 days to complete this work, and the lines she drew were based on the sounds she was hearing in the gallery. If there was little noise, the waves in the lines were softer, but if it was loud that day the lines got thicker and harder. This piece really stood out to me because I feel like my brain works like the way she drew this piece. I've noticed that when I draw in my notebook during class, if the lecture is giving me a headache the lines become darker and more intense. Overall it was a really cool piece.

photoshop images

So in this class called Intro to New Media, we have been editing pictures in photoshop to enhance them or just to make them look cooler. My portfolio has 31 images in it, but the ones that I am posting are just a few of my favorites.

Are we ready for change?

Let's face it, technology and the media is going to be changing around us. But do we really understand how much the media is changing?

Take for example Google.com. Just recently they have changed their privacy agreement. How many of us actually took the time to see what that was all about? According to Jasmin Melvin of huffingtonpost.com, Google is changing it's policy in order to make using Google more user friendly. However, this changes how data is distributed and shared with the world. It will also be collecting information on us through our Google accounts to make it better for us.

Consider also the new layout on Facebook called the Timeline. In this new layout, according to mashable.com, your whole life is put on display for the whole world to see, from birth until you last logged on. So all those posts that you thought were lost in the Facebook vortex are now going to be available for viewing once again. Are you ready to see that again?

Personally, I can see why people will see these changes as a problem. It's scary to think that websites like Google can now take what you like to search for and make it easier for you to find them without your consent. But I'll be honest when I say that I absolutely hate the new Facebook Timeline. It's not a fun layout, plus I just got used to the last one since the last update. So I'm going to hold off on the timeline for as long as I can. If you have nothing to hide, these changes aren't a problem. If not, start cleaning up your profile.

Facebook is also in the news recently for their IPO. According to Matt Silverman of mashable.com, the money that Facebook is putting into their IPO will be able to make Facebook worth $100 billion. Facebook is becoming one of the richest websites on the internet, and now it's going to profit off of the daily users of Facebook. With all this money that's coming in, where is it all going to go? Not to the users, that would just be ridiculous. I feel like we, the users of Facebook, should get some kind of benefit from all of this. Is that going to happen? Probably not, unless it's in some really small way, shape or form. 

Sources:
Google Privacy
Facebook IPO
Facebook Timeline

Apple Textbooks

We all know that Apple Inc. is one of the leading companies in new technology. Now they are trying to have even more influence in our education systems. They want to make it so we can have our textbooks be available on the iPad. So what is the reason behind this?

In the New York Times blog called Bits, there is an article about this matter called "Apple Introduces Tools to (Someday) Supplant Print Textbooks" . They talk about how Apple has created 3 programs: iBooks 2, which offers textbooks to be available to buy for your iPad, iBooks Author, which allows you to create textbooks, and iTunes U, which allows instructors to create digital curriculums and share them with the students. These programs allow digital textbooks to play audio, video and show interactive diagrams. With textbooks being so expensive, it is ideal to pay $15 for it online reather than spending $100 to print a book that could be outdated in 5 or 6 years. However, the hard part is finding money for schools to supply iPads for allow of their students, which sell in stores for around $500. Apple's only competition seems to be Amazon, who sells the Kindle e-reader, but Amazon hasn't had much luck in the education market.

Another article about this is on huffingtonpost.com called "Apple Introduces iBooks 2, iBooks Author, iTunes U App in Pish to Transform Textbooks, Education". In this article, it explains how the iPad is hoped to take the place of textbooks in the classroom. Like in the first article, it explains how each program that Apple released will enhance the learning experience. The textbook is not durable, portable, interactive, is too heavy and expensive. By having the iPad, the textbooks can be all of those things, while being lightweight.

I think the idea of having textbooks on iPads wouldn't be such a bad idea. I remember having to carry around many textbooks throughout middle school and high school it was always a pain. However, the schools might not be willing to drop a lot of money on very expensive iPads. Most schools are cutting departments because they can't afford to have it (so they claim), so why would they go out and buy iPads for every student?

We could use these tools to create the ideal interactive learning environment. The iBooks 2 app would have to be able to explain what we are learning so if we are studying at home and don't understand something, it should be able to explain it. This would be ideal because we do not live with our teachers. The rest of the apps would have to make it easier for teachers to communicate assignments with their students. For the part mentioned earlier about interactive diagrams, they would have to be engaging. Probably using bright colors or cool graphics would be best. As for the audio, it would have to keep our attention. Perhaps the voices could have accents. That would keep my attention.

Sources: Apple Introduces Tools to (Someday) Supplant Print Textbooks (nytimes.com)
     Apple Introduces iBooks 2, iBooks Author, iTunes U App In Push To Transform Textbooks, Education
   (huffingtonpost.com)

SOPA and PIPA.

There have been two bills that were trying to be passed this past week, one called SOPA and the other called PIPA. There have been many people and websites that have been protesting these bills. So what are these bills about that people are against them?

According to CCNMoney, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is a bill that is meant to stop copyright infringement on the internet. This means they want to restrict access to websites that have pirated things on it. Their main target is the websites that deliberately pirate copyrighted information. For example, you could go on a site called Pirate Bay and type in the name of a tv show or movie, and it will instantly download the entire season for free. So they basically want to shut down any website that resembled Napster. (Remember Napster? Yeah, I do too.) The issue behind SOPA is that the idea of cutting out the pirating websites means that search engines won't be able to do their jobs by providing all the information they can. While they claim to be promoting protecting content, they also appear to be promoting censorship, which is why many websites blacked out for 24 hours in protest of this bill and PIPA.

PIPA is another bill that was being protested on the internet. According to Forbes, PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) is a bill that has the same sort of goals that SOPA has, except that this bill is through the Senate and SOPA is through the House. PIPA wants to protect copyrighted information and if passed, would allow those websites to be shut down that have copyrighted material. It's really just two different bills sending the same message. Both of these bills have been shelved due to all the protest.

In my opinion, these bills deserve to be shelved. I understand how protecting copyrighted material is important, but these bills are on the side of that fence that leads to censorship on the internet. The internet is one of the few places left that we can have the freedom to look up whatever we want or express ourselves in any way possible. These bills would get in the way of that. We also wouldn't be able to access the information we need because a website is "flagged" because of these bills. For all we know, the site might just have a link to a Youtube video that is a song that is not owned by VEVO or the artist. So the whole thing is just ridiculous to me. I'm honestly also sick of hearing about it. They were shelved. They are not going to be worth my thoughts until they are brought up again. But I will be happy that my internet will not be censored now and for the foreseeable future.

Sources: http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/17/technology/sopa_explained/index.htm               http://www.forbes.com/sites/derekbroes/2012/01/20/why-should-you-fear-sopa-and-pipa/

Filter Bubbles

Source: http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html

Ever wonder why we see the specific things we find on the internet? Eli Pariser talks about this in the video Beware of ‘filter bubbles’. It’s a good video to watch because it points out a lot of things about the internet that we may not even realize. His main ideas in the video are:

1. The internet is filtering what we see in search results.
2. The filtering can be based on what type of computer you have, where you are located, and even what search engine you use.
3. Facebook does the same filtering in your news feed.
4. New sites are being personalized based on what they think we would like to see.
5. A “filter bubble” is your own personal unique universe of information that you live in on the internet.
6. Filter bubbles throw off the balance of information that we receive.
7. Our idea about the internet and gate keeping is wrong.
8. We need to be exposed to new ways of thinking.
9. The algorithms of the internet need to be encoded to allow us access to information we should be seeing.
10. We should have control over what gets through the internet and what doesn’t.

In my life filter bubbles mostly exist on Facebook. In my news feed, I usually only see what is going on in my true friend’s lives, because those are the pages I am usually on the most. There will be times when I will see a friend randomly show up in my news feed, and I won’t remember who they are because I don’t remember adding them. These days that is usually people I went to high school with. So these filter bubbles definitely exist and Eli Pariser is right to bring this to our attention.