Post #3

When first reading Vannevar Bush's article, I was confused.  The devices he was talking about seemed familiar  but he spoke about them in an unfamiliar fashion.  I did not even finish the first page before I went and researched the article.  That's when I found my answer.  Written in 1945, Bush was ahead of his time.

Considering the different methods of information including Claude Shannon's simplification and symbols, Joyce's repetition, and Bush's idea of combining the two complexities for ease of use; I believe that Bush had the right idea.  Predicting, even, our future use of technology.

Bush's idea are already infiltrating into classrooms that I think we could take his ideas one step further to a ubiquitous computing classroom, or Smart Classroom.

"Man cannot hope fully to duplicate this mental process artificially, but he certainly ought to be able to
learn from it. In minor ways he may even improve, for his records have relative permanency. The first
idea, however, to be drawn from the analogy concerns selection. Selection by association, rather than
indexing, may yet be mechanized. One cannot hope thus to equal the speed and flexibility with which
the mind follows an associative trail, but it should be possible to beat the mind decisively in regard to
the permanence and clarity of the items resurrected from storage." - Bush, July 1945, Atlantic.

How incredible would it be to sit in a classroom and create connections to the material you were learning with information you already knew and information you could access at your finger tips?  Computing is infiltrating our daily lives, and not just the tech savvy, but the entire spectrum including the elderly. (Reference: http://ubiquitouscomputingdtc375.blogspot.com/2012/03/ubiquitous-computing-and-elderly-sara.html )  Now medicine bottles can do the thinking, leaving the patient free to remember other key facts instead of worrying about whether they took their medication or not.  A Walgreens commercial now touts an app where you can take a picture of your medicine bottle to request a refill.

I believe that Bush accurately describes an idea of a future classroom where, "If the user
wishes to consult a certain book, he taps its code on the keyboard, and the title page of the book
promptly appears before him, projected onto one of his viewing positions."

Even more so, "when numerous items have been thus joined together to form a trail, they can be reviewed in turn, rapidly or slowly."  Making the information digestible in varying speeds helps students who could be struggling with the material.  One way to increase Bush's ideas would be to deliver the material in multiple formats.  There are those who take in information easily through reading, but others who needs hands on, or discussion.  These could all be met in a Smart Classroom environment.

Comment #1

Response to Adam Ward: http://acweng356.tumblr.com/post/41217292944/the-freedom-to-upload-anything-and-kim-dotcoms-mega

Great post on Megaupload.  I think it is interesting to see the different reactions that people have to Aaron Swartz and in comparison Megaupload.  Megaupload’s shutdown came a midst SOPA and PIPA and internet blackouts by Wikipedia and many other websites.  In your third paragraph you say, “United States’ archaic laws” and this couldn't be more true.  I think this touches briefly with a comment made in class on Tuesday regarding culture and laws.  Are laws keeping up with culture, or holding it back.   According to computer ethics (CS 401, Spring 2012), the major violation that Megaupload was guilty of was the cataloging of information and where to find it. This carries even more similarities to YouTube and its searchable database of videos.  Even more to the point is the reference to Google.  Google’s search engine now tells you when content has been removed due to the DMCA, it seems odd that it would appear to be calling out DMCA’s overstepping, but still allow for YouTube to host content.  It will be interesting to see if YouTube adopts a similar call out of its removed videos.

  

Post #1

On Thursday we talked about the relationship between reality, information and context.  I feel that that discussion is relevant here as well. “Mathematics is a language.” So says Josiah Willard Gibbs. Even more so, math is considered a universal language. Numbers are similar if not the same in every language. The class discussion on Thursday was heavily centered on the translation from one language to another, of the speaker, to the drums, to Morse code, etc. However, when the mode is the same no matter the language of the speaker, math being the mode, then the same message can be delivered and received. There are very few conceptual ideas to grasp in mathematics to confuse the receiver of a message.

I was recently watching a Korean drama on Netflix, and came across this tutoring scene in Episode 4, of Playful Kiss. In the scene Baek Seung Jo is explaining the equation F=ma. This equation is used in Physics and makes perfect sense to me that F=force, m=mass, and a=acceleration. It wasn’t until I was watching the scene that I realized that although the speaker says, “eff” for the sound that F makes, that letter most likely doesn’t exist in that same form, and the likelihood that the word “force” begins with and “F” in Korean even more unlikely. 

Whole video can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id9kNX7XDTI


I think these ties greatly into culture. Who is it that makes the rules and the equations? Clearly in this physics equation it was an English speaker who created the formula. I think it is statistically probable that there are mathematicians from other languages.

I think that our mathematical equations say a lot about who is “in charge” of the message. But what is it that we are calculating and quantifying. I believe that we are calculating everything. Right now my word processor is calculating the length of this post, and the grammatical correctness. As societies we turn letters, words, figures, ideas, and concepts all into numbers and equations. Mathematics offers answers, and in a world driven by answers, it is easy to see why math is used everywhere.