Reflective Post

   You know, looking back, I see that I didn't really have any idea what I was getting myself into when I signed up for this class. I thought that "Digital Civilization" sounded like it would be interesting, but beyond that, I didn't know what to expect. This class has been challenging and even frustrating at times, but now, looking back, I'm actually really glad that I took it. It helped me shift some of my paradigms, particularly those that have to do with how I learn. In most classes, you learn the material mostly for the sake of the class, and little of what you learn actually gets put to use later, but in this class, the professors made a serious effort to make sure that the things that we've learned, like the principles of self-directed learning, social proofing, collaboration, and the use of different digital tools, could be applied beyond this class. Also, I don't think that I've ever been challenged to put in as much original thought into my work as I have been in this class. The blogging that we were assigned to do was a great exercise in personal creativity, and helped me formulate and refine my thoughts on whatever topic that I happened to want to blog about. Some of these topics had nothing at all to do with digital civilization, but the blogging still helped me refine and clarify my thoughts about them. See my posts on Criminal Records and  Fear and Paranoia for examples.
    To be honest, the requirement to blog frequently was hard for me. I enjoyed it because of how it helped me refine my thinking, but it was simply hard for me to blog as often as we were supposed to, and sometimes I didn't quite get enough blog posts out there. One problem for me was that I don't like putting out low-quality work for people to read, and so I always wanted to take the time to write a good, sincere, and well-written blog post, and I often didn't have that time. The other problem was my thinking process. I would often sit and think about a certain topic for a while before writing anything in a blog post, and then once I thought I had something to write about, I would sit and start typing. However, the difficulty was that I would still be thinking about the topic as I'm writing, and partway through, I'd have an epiphany or a sudden realization about my topic, some new thought or a different perspective that would completely change what I thought about it. Now, if I hadn't been trying to write a blog post on that topic I for sure wouldn't have thought so in depth about it, so that part of it was good, but at the same time it was really frustrating, because I would have to make some serious changes to what I written (if not entirely rewrite it) in order to account for the new thoughts or perspectives, and that could take a lot of time. I still have several drafts that never got finished because of precisely this. Here's a blog post that I wrote on this same issue (please remember that I was pretty frustrated at the time). Oh well. Overall, the blogging was still a very positive experience, and I'm grateful for it, even though it was challenging.
   I suppose that I better get to talking about the learning outcomes. I'll just talk about them in bullet point fashion, for simplicity's sake.

1. History:  I found the approach to the history portion of this class to be unique, because we were basically set loose to go and learn whatever most interested us about a certain time period in history. I appreciated that, because it let me focus on learning or talking about the aspects of history that actually interested me, like the creation and spread of new technologies, the rise and fall of empires and countries, and different forms of government and power. It was also interesting to me to see the approaches other groups took when teaching about their time periods. 
2. Core Concepts:  The digital concepts that we talked about in class certainly did offer a new way to look at history, as well as at our current society. I had thought about the concept of control some, though I thought of it as power, rather than control, and I was maybe a little bit familiar with the concepts of participation (I had heard of open-source) and information (we do live in the "information age", after all), and I had never even heard of the concept of openness, not like we talked about in class. I definitely think about all of these concepts a lot more now than I did before. I can't imagine talking about things like the government and society without considering openness, control, etc.
3. Digital Literacy:  Digital literacy revolves around three concepts: Consume, Connect, and Create. I think that I've learned more about these three concepts than our professors ever intended. I was a leader in the Inquiry group for our final ebook project, and though I don't think we ever realized that we were copying the learning objectives, these three points were the main sections of my group's content for the ebook. Of course, we were looking at these concepts from the angle of using them to do research, but still. I feel very familiar with these concepts now, and I'm actually really glad that I got to know them so well, because they will come in very handy in the future, especially when I begin to do research for my honors thesis and what not. Actually, the final project was probably what I learned the most from in this class.
4. Self-Directed Learning:  I hadn't ever really thought about being a self-directed learner before this class. I guess that this was because that before there was so much that I was required to learn about that I wouldn't have chosen to learn about on my own, but I had to learn anyway, that I just got used to not choosing what I would learn about, and letting others dictate what I needed to know. Now, I understand that while there is a lot of stuff out there that I need to know that I wouldn't necessarily choose to learn if it were left up to me, I'm still more than able and free to go and learn about whatever I want. I've been able to do that some for my blog posts. Look at The Digital World Outruns the Physical World and America's got a lot of credit card debt  for some examples of posts that I had to do some self-directed research for. Once I'm done with college, no one's going to be there to tell me to keep learning stuff. I'll have to do it on my own.
5. Collaboration:  I've learned quite a bit about collaboration in this class, mostly through the final project. I think that the most important thing I've learned about trying to do collaborative projects is how important it is that the people you are collaborating with be enthusiastic and interested in the project. If they aren't, trying to work with them to get stuff done is like herding cats: difficult and frustrating. If they are interested and enthusiastic, though, then it's pretty remarkable how much stuff you can do together. I think that this insight will be pretty important in the future for me.

All in all, I learned a lot from this class, and I'm glad that I took it. It was challenging in some ways (ok, a lot of ways), but nothing that's truly worth it is ever easy. I think that I would definitely recommend this class to a friend in the future.

The Event

I think that the event went quite well, despite setbacks with technical difficulties, and the audience that we managed to gather was quite impressive, for the last day of classes, at any rate. I invited quite a few people, but sadly, I have to admit that, as far as I know, none of them came or watched the event online. At first I tried to think of who I could invite that would be more likely to be interested in the event, but then I realized that I couldn't really think of anyone who would likely be more interested than anyone else, so I just started inviting everyone. I talked to my family, including two of my brothers who are up at BYU-I, and invited them to watch the event online, I invited a bunch of my coworkers at my job, I invited my roommates, and a few other people in my ward, I put up fliers around my apartment building, and I even got permission from a couple of my professors to announce the event in two of my classes. I also sent an email to one of the people on my group's "thought leader/interested person" list; a professor here at BYU named Amy Jensen, inviting her to the event as well as asking her if she could do some social proofing on our content for us (she never got back to me, though). Some of these people even came up to me later and asked me for more details on the event, but unfortunately, as far as I know, none of them actually came. Oh, well.
      The actual event went pretty well, I thought, and was actually pretty fun (especially once my presentation was over, because then I didn't have to be nervous anymore. :p). I gave the presentation for my group (Inquiry), and I thought that it went really well, much better than in the rehearsals. My presentation was also the only one that didn't have any technical difficulties, though of course I can't take any credit for that. :p
    I didn't have my computer with me, and I don't have a twitter account, so I'm not really sure if our group (Inquiry) got any questions from the online chat feed. At least, Jamie didn't have any questions for us during the event. I didn't really expect many questions though, seeing that research isn't exactly the most exciting topic, but it would have been cool if there had been a question or two.
   All in all, I thought the event was pretty fun. I'm glad that we did it. It was neat to be able to do something real, something that would be seen by real people.

The Create Section...

Create

            Why do people do research? Sometimes, people do research out of a simple desire for knowledge. They are simply curious about a certain topic, and they want to know more about it. More often, though, research is done with a purpose in mind. People want to learn more about a topic for a reason. What that reason is can vary greatly, from legislators considering new laws on unfamiliar issues to scientists conducting research about a new technology to a student preparing a research paper for class. Generally though, people do research so that they can use the knowledge they gain to do or accomplish or make something, or in other words, to create. Research done with the end goal of creating something is also the most thorough, effective, and engaging kind of research to do, particularly if the new material created is new, and also if the researcher intends for his material to be read, seen, or used by a real audience, for a real purpose.

            However, actually creating new material or content has for a long time been quite difficult, time-consuming, and even expensive to do, and getting into the hands of a real audience that might appreciate it can be even more troublesome. This is especially true of students writing research papers, as audiences outside of the classroom can be very difficult to find. This has led to the general belief that unless you are a skilled professional established in your field, you can’t actually create or do anything “real.” Students don’t do “real” research papers; they just write 10-page essays on some topic that they looked up in some book in the library, that will only ever be read by their teacher. Amateur filmmakers can’t make “real” movies that real audiences will see; they only make short video clips that they and their friends can enjoy. Amateur writers can’t make “real” books that lots of people will read unless they’re lucky or good enough for a publisher to want to take a chance on them.

            Fortunately, thanks to the technologies and methods of communication that have become available in today’s digital world, this isn’t the case anymore. There are all kinds of ways for quite a variety of content to easily be created and shared across the world with minimal effort. We’ll discuss some of these technologies later on, but the main point is that the average person can’t make “real” content. It’s not true that students can’t do real research, or that amateurs can’t make movies or write stories that many people will read.

            However, technology has moved a bit quicker than the mindset of the people. Many of us are still so unused to the idea that we can make real content that we don’t grasp the importance or the benefits of doing so. The following selection is a portion of a presentation given by Taylor Williams, a student at Brigham Young University and one of the authors of this ebook (particularly of this chapter), to a group of professors and students on this topic. He addresses many of the reasons why creating new and “real” content is important, mostly in the context of student research papers:

“Why create? And what do we even mean by “create?” By “create,” we mean coming up with new content, which can be in the form of text, books, pictures, videos, or any number of different formats. Technically, many students already do create new content all the time. Students pick topics, do research, study and work hard for hours on end, and produce a hopefully decent research paper or project to turn in to their professors. This isn’t bad, because it gives students valuable experience in how to write research papers, but there’s a better way to do it. As is, most of these papers are written for the sole purpose of getting a good grade.  Also, the only people who will likely ever read these papers (aside from the students who wrote them) are the students’ professors, and maybe their TA’s.  After the professor reads it, and a grade is given, usually the paper is then either thrown away immediately, or is shoved in a drawer somewhere for a year or two and then thrown away anyway. Though understandable, doesn’t this seem a bit ironic? We teach students how to do research and write papers on their research so that they can do it on their own for real topics and real audiences later on in their lives and careers, but while they’re in the process of learning how to do these things, most if not all of their research papers wind up going nowhere except the trash can. Not exactly motivating, and it’s not a realistic experience for the future, because when students move on into their careers and have to do research and whatnot there, they will be writing for very real audiences, and their research will going much farther than the trash can (we hope, anyways). Also, since the end goal of most students’ research papers or projects is to get a good grade and nothing more, many students will fall into the habit of coming up with stuff that’s only good enough to get the grade they want, rather than getting into the habit of doing quality research, which is the point of teaching them how to do research in the first place. So again, as is, most students technically create already, but since they know that stuff they create is only going to be read by one or two people, and because it’s written mostly just for the sake of a grade, these students aren’t creating for real. 

“We propose a different approach. Since the idea of teaching students how to research and how to write papers or do projects is so that they will be able to do these things on real topics for real audiences someday on their own, why not have them do it on real topics for real audiences as they are learning how to do it? This is what we mean by creating. Making real stuff to be read or used by real people.  We want to have students be able to actually create. While this might not have been realistically feasible in the past, it certainly is now, thanks to the options that technology has opened up. We’ll talk more about the tools we can use for this later on. Now again, why have students create? There are a number of significant reasons.  First, let’s talk about the motivation factor. Let’s say that we give a student an assignment to write a paper, and tell him that the only person who is going to read it is his professor. Now let’s take that same student, and give him another assignment to write another paper, but this time tell him that not only will his professor read it, but it will be made available for all of his classmates and maybe even other professors and students outside of his class to read. Which of the two papers do you think that he will be more motivated to do a better job on?  Students will be more motivated to put more higher-quality work into their papers and projects when they are writing them for a real audience. 

“Also, creating real content or material for a real audience is also much more personally meaningful to the student. The satisfaction one gets from successfully making something is always significant, and the satisfaction and sense of personal achievement that comes from making something real that real people will see and use is almost enough of a reward in and of itself to merit doing so. Think of the young teenager who spends hours putting together and editing a short video that he then posts on Youtube. Imagine his satisfaction when he gets thousands of views on it (or even hundreds of thousands of views, if it’s a good video). This same idea can also apply to research papers and other school assignments. I have a friend who in her first year at college was assigned a significant research project. However, her forward-thinking professor decided to have his students write articles on their topics for Wikipedia, the open-source online encyclopedia, rather than a traditional research paper. As you can imagine, knowing that what she wrote would be available on the internet for anyone in the world to read made the project a bit more intense for her than it would have been otherwise, but she said afterwards that it was the most satisfying and meaningful assignment that she had ever done, because she knew that she had actually made something “real,” that real people might read and use.”

Through the many digital tools available through the internet, it is remarkably easy for people to find ways to create content and find audiences for it, thus making “real” content and material. Most of the principles and tools behind finding audiences for your content are the same as those described in the “Connect” section of this chapter, such as utilizing social networking sites, finding websites or blogs of people who write about your topic, etc., so we will simply refer the reader to that section of the chapter for that. However, as for tools that one can use to create their content and make it available to see, we will list a few examples, though by no means should this be taken as a complete or comprehensive list. We encourage the reader to be creative in how they create their content.

●     As the friend that Taylor Williams mentioned in his presentation did, one could use a Wikipedia article as an effective way of making their research available to anyone who might have an interest in the subject. Also, a Wikipedia article is an excellent platform to use, because other types of content aside from text can easily be included or at least linked to it, such as videos, ebooks, etc.

●     An ebook (such as this one) is an excellent format for books, stories, research papers, and a host of other things. This could be a particularly useful format in an academic setting, as student’s projects could be done in ebooks, and also examples of works or assignments written by the professor or even former classes could be easily kept and made available for new students every year.  

●     Blogs are becoming increasingly common, as they are very easy to make publicly available, and are useful for inviting feedback on your content, through comments.

●     Video is an incredibly versatile and useful format, as it can easily be uploaded to the internet, and can also easily be included in other content formats, such as ebooks, blogs, social networking sites, etc. Video can be used to record many types of content, from interviews, animated presentations or explanations, recordings of live presentations, music, or just whatever a person wants to film.

Many of the tools listed can easily be used in conjunction with one another, to great effect.

            It is very easy for people to create new content with the tools that our modern digital civilization has provided for us. It is nearly as easy now to create new content as it is to learn about old content. Now we can learn in order to create, not simply learn in order to learn.

Let's try this again...

So, I've had a few thoughts about our Inquiry group's part in this class project, and about what we want to do for it. A lot of these thoughts were bouncing around in my head while we were discussing things in class, but now that I've had time to actually sit and think about them properly, we'll see if I can express them as coherent thoughts.

So, here's our thesis (or "tweethis", whatever. I don't really like the word "tweethis" at the moment, though I'm not really sure why. anyways) : "As students in the digital age, it is important to utilize available technology to maximize research time and let others use their research by using Library Research 2.0 techniques"

Here's our new thesis:  "In order to make research time useful, it is critical to use digital technology and Library Research 2.0 techniques."


These are some of the things that I've been thinking about. They're in no particular order, and some of them are interconnected, because, like most things in life, there's no straightforward, one-way relationship between what we want to say, who we want to say it to, and how we will say it(media). All three of these things affect each other.


The Thesis: we all know that our thesis isn't finished yet, but I was thinking that it may be good to take a bit more of a stance, like Sarah and Hwanhi were talking about with their TEDx talks examples. We could maybe change it a bit to talk more about the necessity of helping students adapt to and take advantage of the research technologies of the day, so that they don't get left behind during our rapidly changing times. The day will soon come, if it hasn't already, that much of the best/most relevant information out there available for use in research will not be found in libraries or in certain, specific science journals, but out there on the web, and if students aren't able to functionally use the web to do research, then it would be a serious disadvantage. Anyways, saying something that's more of a specific stance would be far more interesting for both us and everyone else, and would certainly help clarify for us everything us we want to do with this project.


Expectations: There are few things more frustrating to me than to be told that I can do something in whatever way I liked only to be told later, partway through or mostly done, that there actually were requirements or expectations that I was supposed to follow, or that there actually was a certain way that this something had to be done. It's frustrating because it means that I have to alter significantly if not entirely revamp whatever it is I'm doing to fit the requirements, and a lot of time and effort gets wasted. Despite all of our professor's desires and attempts to give us free creative license in this project, there are still expectations that we have to comply with, and I want to make sure that we get those figured out as soon as possible, so that we don't have to worry about them popping up later on in the project and making us change things. That's just some frustration that I'd like to avoid, especially considering that we're already on a considerably short timetable. Some of the expectations that I know of are:
-Historical context: I know that we have to incorporate history into our presentation somehow, but as for how and how much, I don't know. It's kindof difficult with our particular topic, and beyond brief overviews of research methods in the past, and references to those in order to prove some of our points, I don't know how to do that. Joe, I know that you had some ideas on that, and sorry that I got distracted talking to Dr. Burton when you were trying to explain them to me. I'd be happy to hear them, if you don't mind explaining them again. Also, Dr. Burton wasn't able to give me a clear answer on how much we should incorporate historical context into our project, so we'll have to figure that out.
-Video: we're apparently required to have at least one video that deals with our chapter, so we need to start thinking of ideas that we could do for that. I remember that we were talking before about the possibility of making a commercial or short video for the HBLL to use to advertise the tutorial that we were thinking about making on Library Research 2.0. Maybe that could work.
-Bibliography: Ironic that we need a research bibliography on a project about how to do research better. Any thoughts on how we might have a bibliography on the different research methods that we might explore and talk about? Also, Dr. Burton mentioned a book, "Reinventing Knowledge"(I think that's what it was) when I was talking about him, which apparently talks about the different forms of storing knowledge throughout the course of history. That might be worth looking into.
-Infographic: We'll have to come up with an infographic, and though I haven't really thought about what we might do for that yet, I don't think this will be much of a problem.


Target Audience: What we want to say very much depends on who we want to say it to. First, I think that we should just focus ourselves on BYU. Trying to direct ourselves to the rest of the world as well would result in a hopelessly broad presentation. Besides, it's likely that if we do come up with something meaningful about library research 2.0 for people here at BYU, it will be equally applicable to everyone else as well. Then, do we want to talk to the students about Library Research 2.0, or more to the teachers, or both? While it may be true that students might be more receptive of Library Research 2.0, there's still the problem that the first-year writing professors and others are teaching them different. Anything we might show the students might get taught out of them by these teachers who are against using internet and other media sources for research. Targeting the teachers for our project might have a more lasting affect, but that would require a different approach. Who we're talking to will have a big influence on what we want to say to them.

Goal of the Project: Also, another thought that I had was that we should try to make it a goal to actually accomplish something with this project. I, at least, would be so much more motivated and excited to work on this project if I thought that I might be able to see an actual difference that it made. Of course, that was Dr. Burton's and Dr. Zappala's purpose in doing this project, that we might all make something real, but I think we should go farther than that. Lynsie, you were talking about how many of the first-year writing professors and some of the librarians and others are pretty set in their ways against using the internet and stuff, and that the library research help people don't utilize Library Research 2.0 at all. If we could gear our project towards changing that, then that would make it awesome, and so much more worth it. We'd have done something for real, instead of just making some chapter in some ebook for some class, that maybe someone somewhere might think is kinda cool. Who knows? Maybe we could even help to change to curriculum in the first-year writing class (tell me if that's overly ambitious). Anyways, my point is that if we can somehow make this project into something that might actually have an impact and make a difference, we would be so much more motivated to do it.


Anyways, I know that this is a lot to read through, but thanks for doing so. These are just some thoughts that I've had about it, and please tell me what you all think, even if you disagree with my ideas. I don't mind being told that I'm wrong, because at least it means that we can get rid of ideas that are incorrect and find new ones that are. Good luck with the week, y'all. See you on Thursday.

Hey, Inquiry Group

So, I've had a few thoughts about our Inquiry group's part in this class project, and about what we want to do for it. A lot of these thoughts were bouncing around in my head while we were discussing things in class, but now that I've had time to actually sit and think about them properly, we'll see if I can express them as coherent thoughts.

So, here's our thesis (or "tweethis", whatever. I don't really like the word "tweethis" at the moment, though I'm not really sure why. anyways) :  "As students in the digital age, it is important to utilize available technology to maximize research time and let others use their research by using Library Research 2.0 techniques"
And here's our newer thesis:   "In order to make research time useful, it is critical to use digital technology and Library Research 2.0 techniques."
These are some of the things that I've been thinking about. They're in no particular order, and some of them are interconnected, because, like most things in life, there's no straightforward, one-way relationship between what we want to say, who we want to say it to, and how we will say it(media). All three of these things affect each other.
The Thesis: we all know that our thesis isn't finished yet, but I was thinking that it may be good to take a bit more of a stance, like Sarah and Hwanhi were talking about with their TEDx talks examples. We could maybe change it a bit to talk more about the necessity of helping students adapt to and take advantage of the research technologies of the day, so that they don't get left behind during our rapidly changing times. The day will soon come, if it hasn't already, that much of the best/most relevant information out there available for use in research will not be found in libraries or in certain, specific science journals, but out there on the web, and if students aren't able to functionally use the web to do research, then it would be a serious disadvantage. Anyways, saying something that's more of a specific stance would be far more interesting for both us and everyone else, and would certainly help clarify for us everything us we want to do with this project.
Expectations: There are few things more frustrating to me than to be told that I can do something in whatever way I liked only to be told later, partway through or mostly done, that there actually were requirements or expectations that I was supposed to follow, or that there actually was a certain way that this something had to be done. It's frustrating because it means that I have to alter significantly if not entirely revamp whatever it is I'm doing to fit the requirements, and a lot of time and effort gets wasted. Despite all of our professor's desires and attempts to give us free creative license in this project, there are still expectations that we have to comply with, and I want to make sure that we get those figured out as soon as possible, so that we don't have to worry about them popping up later on in the project and making us change things. That's just some frustration that I'd like to avoid, especially considering that we're already on a considerably short timetable. Some of the expectations that I know of are:
  -Historical context: I know that we have to incorporate history into our presentation somehow, but as for how and how much, I don't know. It's kindof difficult with our particular topic, and beyond brief overviews of research methods in the past, and references to those in order to prove some of our points, I don't know how to do that. Joe, I know that you had some ideas on that, and sorry that I got distracted talking to Dr. Burton when you were trying to explain them to me. I'd be happy to hear them, if you don't mind explaining them again. Also, Dr. Burton wasn't able to give me a clear answer on how much we should incorporate historical context into our project, so we'll have to figure that out. 
 -Video: we're apparently required to have at least one video that deals with our chapter, so we need to start thinking of ideas that we could do for that. I remember that we were talking before about the possibility of making a commercial or short video for the HBLL to use to advertise the tutorial that we were thinking about making on Library Research 2.0. Maybe that could work.
-Bibliography: Ironic that we need a research bibliography on a project about how to do research better. Any thoughts on how we might have a bibliography on the different research methods that we might explore and talk about? Also, Dr. Burton mentioned a book, "Reinventing Knowledge"(I think that's what it was) when I was talking about him, which apparently talks about the different forms of storing knowledge throughout the course of history. That might be worth looking into.
-Infographic: We'll have to come up with an infographic, and though I haven't really thought about what we might do for that yet, I don't think this will be much of a problem. 


Target Audience:  What we want to say very much depends on who we want to say it to. First, I think that we should just focus ourselves on BYU. Trying to direct ourselves to the rest of the world as well would result in a hopelessly broad presentation. Besides, it's likely that if we do come up with something meaningful about library research 2.0 for people here at BYU, it will be equally applicable to everyone else as well. Then, do we want to talk to the students about Library Research 2.0, or more to the teachers, or both? While it may be true that students might be more receptive of Library Research 2.0, there's still the problem that the first-year writing professors and others are teaching them different. Anything we might show the students might get taught out of them by these teachers who are against using internet and other media sources for research. Targeting the teachers for our project might have a more lasting affect, but that would require a different approach. Who we're talking to will have a big influence on what we want to say to them.

Goal of the Project: Also, another thought that I had was that we should try to make it a goal to actually accomplish something with this project. I, at least, would be so much more motivated and excited to work on this project if I thought that I might be able to see an actual difference that it made. Of course, that was Dr. Burton's and Dr. Zappala's purpose in doing this project, that we might all make something real, but I think we should go farther than that.  Lynsie, you were talking about how many of the first-year writing professors and some of the librarians and others are pretty set in their ways against using the internet and stuff, and that the library research help people don't utilize Library Research 2.0 at all. If we could gear our project towards changing that, then that would make it awesome, and so much more worth it. We'd have done something for real, instead of just making some chapter in some ebook for some class, that maybe someone somewhere might think is kinda cool. Who knows? Maybe we could even help to change to curriculum in the first-year writing class (tell me if that's overly ambitious). Anyways, my point is that if we can somehow make this project into something that might actually have an impact and make a difference, we would be so much more motivated to do it.
 Anyways, I know that this is a lot to read through, but thanks for doing so. These are just some thoughts that I've had about it, and please tell me what you all think, even if you disagree with my ideas.  I don't mind being told that I'm wrong, because at least it means that we can get rid of ideas that are incorrect and find new ones that are. Good luck with the week, y'all. See you on Thursday.

The Thesis of my blogs...

So, probably like many other people in this class, when I learned that I needed to go and look through my blog posts and figure out what my thesis was, I thought: there isn't one. Everything I wrote was unconnected. every blog had a separate, random topic. However, after a while, I did manage to pick out a common theme in many of my posts. A lot of them tended to be philosophical in nature, which surprised me, because to my knowledge, I'm not philosophical (or at least, I wasn't). Some of my blog posts truly were random and unconnected to my other posts in any way, shape or form, but a lot of them, regardless of whatever issue or topic or event that I was talking about, tended to focus on whether I thought that it was good or bad. It seems that I like to put things sortof in a moral context, deciding that they are either good or bad, and if they're bad, I like to talk about what I think it should be.
  In one post, I talked about whether permanent criminal records are fair, and whether they wind up having a greater negative impact than a positive one. In another post, I talked about how it was good that mankind didn't have ultimate control over the course of their lives, because we would inevitably choose to avoid the pain and hardship that are so necessary for our growth and development.  I also talked about how excessive fear and paranoia can have very large negative impacts on our society, and motivate people to do unfortunate things. I cited the Salem witch trials and the communist scares as examples from history of why we need to be careful not to let our fear of terrorism or other things take us too far. I also liked to talk about economics and technology, and the positive or negative impacts that are occurring due to those things, though I'm certainly not an expert in either economics or technology.
  In short, I like to take basically whatever topic I find interesting, analyze it, and decide whether it's a good or a bad thing. I also like to muse about how it could be made into a good thing if it isn't already, and how it could be better if it is.
  I feel that this is an important viewpoint to take, because sometimes as a society we get so wrapped up in things or the possibilities of things that we fail to step back and think carefully about the real impact that something will have. Something that at first seems to be really exciting, amazing, and full of potential could wind up having a truly negative impact, if we aren't careful. I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to develop new things and progress as a society, or that we should always be afraid of new things. I'm all for progress. Rather, I'm saying that we should take the time to consider more carefully the things we do, and think about whether they really are good or bad. A quote comes to mind from the movie Jurassic Park, where John Hammond and his company successfully brought dinosaurs back to life. Despite it being a truly amazing and exciting feat of science, one of the characters, Ian Malcolm, thinks that dinosaurs are a very bad idea, and says to Hammond: "You were so concerned about whether or not you could, that you never stopped to think about whether or not you should!" As we all remember from the movie, the park was a failure and the dinosaurs wound up eating a lot of people. Definitely not a good thing. So, I guess that's the point of my thesis, that we need to think more about whether or not the things we do as a society will be good or bad. We don't want to create more proverbial people-eating dinosaurs. :P
 

The Digital World Outruns the Physical World?

I had a thought the other day about the progress of technology. It seems to me that although science and technology has made all kinds of progress in the last couple decades, a lot of that progress has been limited to just one area: the digital world. Our world has become incredibly digitized in the last decade or so. Communications technology in particular has improved remarkably in the last few years. Now, if I have a smart phone, I can talk to people around the world instantly anytime, anywhere, or I can access the internet anytime, anywhere, and access incredibly large amounts of information almost instantly, or communicate with people on the other side of the world in real time.
  This is awesome, but it's interesting that physical technology hasn't progressed near as far. By physical technology, I mostly mean things like modes of transportation, such as cars, planes, ships, etc. Way back in the day, it used to be that communications could only go as fast as physical transportation would allow, by word of mouth, or by courier, or whatever, but that changed once the telegram was invented. Since then, communications technology has always been more advanced than physical technology. Today it's only more so.  I can talk with someone on the other side of the world in real time via the internet, but if I want to physically go there, the fastest commercial passenger jet, which flies at about 700 miles an hour (which I admit is actually pretty fast) can only get me there in about 18-20 hours.

  Physical technology has made some significant advances. In 2004, the NASA X-43A broke the world's flight airspeed record, setting the new record at over 7,500 mph, and the space shuttle reaches speeds far greater than that, getting up to 17,500 mph during atmospheric reentry, though I'm not sure if that should count, since it's falling, rather than flying. That's pretty cool, but the X-43 was an unmanned vessel. A human-piloted vessel still has yet to reach those speeds. The fastest cars in the world can reach speeds of up to around 250 mph. The fastest helicopter in the world, the Sikorsky X2, set a record of just under 300 mph in 2010. I'll easily admit that these are actually pretty impressive, but nowhere near the speed of the internet.
 Another thing to keep in mind is that I, an average ordinary common person, can access the internet and talk with someone on the other side of the world practically for free. Going anywhere physically, though, requires money, and the faster and farther you want to go, the more money it costs. For most ordinary people, physically traveling to the other side of the world is a very expensive proposition in and of itself. Doing so at the rapid speeds we're talking about is something only really rich people could afford.
  So, basically, there's a huge gap between the speed of communications and the speed of physical transportation of people or objects. It makes sense when you think about it, considering that with communications you're only sending a few electrical signals instead of an entire physical object. Still, I wonder if we'll someday be able to narrow that gap, with flying cars, or anti-gravitic flight, or even teleportation. Who knows? It's possible. 100 years ago, who would've imagined all of the technological advances that we have now?

What do Witchcraft, Communism, and Terrorism have in common?

What do Witchcraft, Communism, and Terrorism have in common?
  At first glance, nothing, other than that they are all bad things (or at least considered to be). Yet, all three of these things have had an impact on our nation's history, and if we look closely (actually, we don't even have to look closely) at those impacts, we see some striking similarities. Each one of these things sparked mass fear and paranoia that led to the false accusation, imprisonment, and even execution of innocent people.  Let's think about it.
   First, witchcraft. I'm sure most of us have at least heard of the Salem Witch Trials, and a lot of us have probably read Arthur Miller's The Crucible, which is written about those events.  Just to review, though, in 1690's colonial America, most people were firm believers in God, and also in the Devil, and that belief entailed believing that devils and evil spirits were at work across the land. Whenever anything bad happened, it was blamed on devils. Because of this, people also believed in witches, or people who  wrought evil upon others by associating with and borrowing the powers of the devils and evil spirits. Witches were a common cause of fear, both in America and in Europe.
   During the early 1690s, most notably in the town of Salem, MA, but in other nearby towns as well, this fear of witches basically went way out of control. To be brief, some girls exploited this excessive fear by accusing some people they didn't like of being witches, even going so far as to pretend to have seizures and fits when these people were around them, and attributing it to their "witchcraft".  It seems outright silly to us today to think that people actually believed them, but the people were so afraid of witchcraft that they did. The town held trials against these "witches", eventually convicting dozens of people of having committed witchcraft, and about twenty of these "witches" were hanged. This mass hysteria and paranoia of witchcraft was responsible for a lapse in due process of law and the false accusations of many people.

Senator Joseph McCarthy

  We something very similar happening in the 20th century during the cold war, only this time, it was fear of communism that was responsible. During the cold war, there was an understandable paranoia of Russian spies and Communist sympathizers in the US. There was enough paranoia that one man, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, was able to exploit it and cause a remarkably large and long-lasting uproar. He accused many people, particularly government officials who were democrats (McCarthy was a republican) of being communist sympathizers. Fortunately, no one was hanged or executed like in the witch trials, but thousands of people were falsely accused, and despite the lack of any conclusive evidence that they were indeed communists, many of them lost their jobs/careers, their reputations, and many of them were even thrown in jail . There were people who attacked McCarthy for all of his finger-pointing and accusations, but interestingly enough, he simply turned and pointed the finger at them, often accusing his opponents of being "unamerican", and being communist sympathizers themselves. Eventually, though, McCarthy lost credibility and support when he accused members of the US Army of being communist sympathizers, and was censured by the US Senate, which put an end to the issue.
   It's fascinating, though, how McCarthy was able to create such a huge uproar. He had little or no evidence of anyone being a communist sympathizer, and yet, because people were so afraid of communists, he was able to destroy the reputations and careers of thousands of people, and imprison many of them as well.

  In our times, we have another new cause of mass fear and paranoia:  Terrorism. While it's true that the threat of terrorism is real, are we allowing that fear to get out of hand?  What has terrorism motivated us to do? We've already created a whole new branch of our government, Homeland Security, and spent billions of dollars to improve our security and defense. We've even invaded another country (Iraq) to counter the terrorist threat housed there. Also, how many changes to our laws have been caused by our fear of terrorism? And what kind of changes?
  Terrorism is a frightful thing. But what will we let that fear make us do? We have two experiences from the past to learn from. Hopefully we've learned our lesson. We have too many other problems to deal with in our times to waste more time, money, and worry than we have to on this issue. We'll see what happens, I guess.

 

Are Criminal Records Fair?

Brandon Robison posted an article a few days ago about some information about Steve Jobs, revealed from an FBI investigation of him in the early 1990's, and Lynsie Hammond commented on that by asking about Openness, asking how appropriate it was for Jobs' FBI file to be made public knowledge like that. Brandon remarked that there's a fine line about how much information about it's citizens a government should be able to make public. I was just thinking about that, and I agree that it is a fine line. A lot of damage can be done if the wrong information about us is given out.
   One example that comes to mind is criminal records. Once somebody is convicted of a crime, then it goes on his/her permanent record and follows them for life. I understand how important that can be, because if someone's done something bad before they might be likely to do it again, and people should be forewarned, but does that go too far sometimes? It's a lot harder for someone with a criminal record to get a job, even if the crime they committed happened a long time ago, and they did the time for it and everything. Is that fair?
   It's a commonly held belief that many people turn to crime because of lack of an honest means to get what they need. In other words, because they don't have enough honest options to make the money they need, they turn to crime. By putting a permanent mark on somebody's record that will make it very difficult to find an honest job, aren't we doing the same thing?
  I'm not arguing for or against putting marks on somebody's record for crimes that they have committed. I'm just saying that it's something that maybe we should think about. Let's say, for example, that some years ago I was arrested for possession and use of drugs, and a permanent mark was put on my record. Let's also say that I paid the price for my mistakes, and did some time in jail, and that I also realized the error of my ways, managed to completely kick my addiction to drugs, and have never touched them since. I try to lead a good life and make an honest living, but because of that mark on my record that says that I did drugs once, it's really difficult to find employers who are willing to hire me, and also to find creditors who will give me a loan, and other things as well. Because of my one past mistake, and that mark on my record, I'm considered untrustworthy, even though I haven't done anything wrong for a long time, and have been struggling hard and long to do things right.
  Because employers could be held liable if they hire an ex-offender who again breaks the law, most employers are understandably hesitant to do so. Why would they take the risk? Still, is that fair to those ex-offenders who are seriously trying to turn their lives around and do things right?
   I have to wonder how many ex-offenders return to their old law-breaking ways because they can't find an honest way to support themselves. By putting that mark on their record and telling the whole world that they broke the law, are we effectively encouraging them to go back and do it again?
  I found a website (here's the link) that talks some about how ex-offenders can try to rebuild their resumes and find a job, and it does contain some useful information, particularly about how in some cases and in some places, it's possible to take programs that will allow you to have the mark on your record erased. However, the website states again and again how difficult it is for an ex-offender to find a job. "The cards are stacked against you", it says.
   It's a difficult thing, and I don't pretend to have a solution for it. Since it's so difficult to determine if someone truly has realized the error of their ways, turned their life around, and decided to be an honest person, society can't afford to let ex-offenders keep their past misdeeds secret. It's too risky.
    When I try to think of a better way to confront this problem, I can't help but think of God's system of justice. When we've truly repented and tried to correct the misdeeds we've done, those misdeeds are essentially forgotten, and are not held against us in any way, shape, or form. Since we can't know people's thoughts like God can, we can't quite manage a system like that, but it would be cool if we could.

Sociologists and Openness

     So the other day in my Sociological Theory class, we began to talk about a man named Jurgen Habermas. Habermas was a proponent of Critical Theory, which I won't explain here because it would take too long, and you would all fall asleep. However, to give a brief background, Habermas thought that society could, should, and would develop and progress to some eventual stage of universal rationality, or universal truth or understanding. However, it was possible to hinder, delay, or even stop that process, if humanity fell too much under the sway of things like power or influence, basically anything that would unduly influence a person and prevent them from acting as they naturally would. In his opinion, today's world has fallen a bit too far under the influence of things like the power of the state or government, the power of the media and the "consumer society" that we sometimes hear about, and the power of the all-important economy which seems to have a will of it's own, and an obsession with making and having money. In his opinion, these things have taken far too much influence in our individual lives, affecting and controlling everything we do, and are preventing us from being who we naturally should.

 Jurgen Habermas (nice hair, dude)

    There are other theorists and theories which say different things,    but we can certainly see some truth in what Habermas says. It's also interesting to think about what he says because he's actually the first theorist that we've studied who's actually still alive. : p Since his ideas were written in and about and for our times, they're a bit more pertinent than most of the theories we've studied.

  Anyways, I did find one very interesting connection between his theories and what we've been talking about in our digital civilization class. Habermas talks about how in order for humanity to be able to freely and naturally progress towards the eventual goal of universal truth, certain conditions have to be met. One of these conditions was that humanity be given an "Ideal Speech Situation", a situation in which any and all  individuals who care to are able to come together to discuss a problem or question and collaboratively come up with a solution or answer. What makes it ideal is that the individuals would be free from outside influences, such as manipulation from outside parties, ulterior motives, etc. Basically, everyone who is participating is doing so solely out of a genuine interest to find a solution to the problem, and doesn't care if it's their particular idea or insight that solves the problem or if it's someone else's, so long as the problem is solved.  In an ideal speech situation, a solution is decided upon through what we call the force of the better argument, or that we pick a solution because it's the best, and not for any other reason, like who came up with it, etc.

  As I was thinking about this, I realized that while this is highly difficult to do in our modern world, there is a phenomenon in the world that matches this concept:  Open Source.  I imagine that open source isn't flawless, but it does seem to match up pretty well with this ideal speech situation. In an open source environment, anyone is permitted to participate and contribute to the project or software or whatever it is, and is more or less free from outside influences, like politics or money or power. People participate in the project just because they have a desire or interest in seeing it come together and work as well as possible. These things may or may not be true, but we'll say they are for the sake of argument. Also, since everyone's ideas and potential solutions are scrutinized and argued over by everyone else, only the best ones will rise to the top and win out. Thus, it's a system based on merit (or the force of the better argument) and nothing else (ideally, anyways).
   It was pretty cool to be able to draw this parallel between this class and my other class. I think that it's awesome when your classes overlap like this, because it helps you see how the stuff we're learning actually does apply to other things in the world.

Oh so little time...

You know, there is one big difficulty with some of the things we do in this class, like reading each others' blog posts, checking out links that people put up, thinking about and writing blog posts, and even this big final project is that due to the completely unstructured nature of these things they all require a lot of time, especially if we are trying to come up with good stuff. We are all busy college students with many demands on our time, like other classes, work, church, social life, and many other things, and what allows us to successfully manage all of these things is the fact that most of them are structured. Many classes have structured schedules, where we have a certain amount of homework due at certain times, and because we know how much is due when, we can plan it out efficiently. I understand that structured classes have a lot of downsides, and I agree with that, but it does have that big advantage.
   I'm a big fan of creativity. There are few times that I feel more satisfied than when I've come up with something that is good, and is all my own original thought. I also love that in this Digital Civilization class, we are being encouraged to be more creative in our learning and how we go about it, as well as in all of our assignments and presentations, etc. However, being creative requires time. Last year, I took a History of Creativity class (you can see that I like the subject), in which we reviewed civilization's development through the perspective of the progression of creative and innovative ideas in technology, politics, economics, etc. One of the first things that we learned in that class is that for creativity to effectively take place, people need leisure time. By leisure time, I don't mean lots of time spent sitting around doing nothing, but in order for creative ideas to take shape, people need time where they are not otherwise engaged in work or other activities. If we don't get that time, then we can't come up with creative stuff. Look at the dark ages. Peasants had to work hard all day every day, so not much creative stuff was invented during those times.
   I guess my point in this is that we are being asked to come up with original and creative thoughts (about specific topics, no less) and blog about them at the very least a couple of times a week, and that it's hard to do that if you don't have much time to do it in. I don't have very much free time, and though I don't know about other people, I'd imagine that it's the same for a lot of them. I'm not trying to complain (though I'm sure that's what it sounds like), because I actually do enjoy this class quite a bit. It's given me a lot to think about. However, it is difficult for me to come up with good, substantial, and original blog posts in the small amount of free time that I have in my busy schedule. Also the fact that I know in the back of mind that if I don't get a blog post out there on time then I get marked down for it doesn't help. I sometimes feel like that deadline forces me to rush and throw some half-baked and poorly written idea out there, and I don't like doing that, because I know that if I spent more time on that idea it might actually be something good instead of incoherent garbage. I have a number of unfinished blog posts saved as drafts (hopefully I'll be able to finish and publish them today), where that is exactly what's happened. I've held on to them because I haven't been able to think of how to clearly express my thoughts yet, or because I had an idea, I thought about it, I started writing it in a blog, and then because I'm still thinking as I'm writing, partway through I think of something about that idea that I hadn't thought of before, and I realize that what I'm writing is wrong, or needs a lot of adjustment. Though that can be enlightening, it's also a little frustrating sometimes, because it means I have to do my blog post over again. : p
    Anyways, those are the thoughts that are running through my head. For anyone who actually read all the way through this, thank you, and I apologize if any of it didn't make sense. If anyone has any suggestions or comments or anything, please feel free. I definitely try to be open-minded.
  Until later...

Openness is good for the Economy

This post is mostly for my part in my group's presentation on openness, but please feel free to look at it. I've included a couple of links that are interesting and informative.


Brief Outline:    Openness and Economy/Business

   -Economy and Openness:

•     Greater Choice for Consumers
•     Increased competition and Lower Prices
•     Expanded Markets and Customer Bases
•     Global Investment Opportunities
•     Gains from Trade

   -Openness within a Business Structure

• Openness within a business organization allows for more creative and innovative ideas, and collaboration between employees.
• Austin Baughan posted a link on Google+ to the Bettermeans open business structure

  -Open Source and Business

• Link to Opensource.org
• Open Source software and materials are cheaper to obtain(often free), and to produce (it's like outsourcing for free)

• Open Source is like a market economy;  ideas come from the bottom up, and the darwinist nature of the market assures that only the best stuff prevails
• Mature Open Source software is the most reliable there is. It's been scrutinized by everyone and their dog, so it's well-refined, and has already been tested by many of the people who would want to use it. It's "as bulletproof as software can get.".

More Detail:

-Economy and Openness

• Greater Choice for Consumers : In an open economy, the domestic markets are merged with international markets and so the consumers are not limited to consume domestically produced goods and services. They can choose the best from the world market.  

•  Increased competition and Lower Prices:  A related benefit of an open economy is that the consumers have an increasing number of producers or goods and services competing for their business.Competition among producers results in lower prices and improved services. An open economy allows consumers to benefit from the lower labor and operating costs.

•  Expanded markets and Customer bases:  The benefits of an open economy are not limited to consumers. Global interaction allows companies to gain access to customers in other nations. This motivates them to produce world class products, and to expand their business and customer base.

•  Global Investment Opportunities:  For investors, an open economy expands the opportunities for investing capital. Investors large and small can choose to invest in known domestic companies, or they can invest in established industrial giants of other nations.  Investors with an appetite for risk, meanwhile, can invest in the emerging markets of less developed areas of the world, such as Latin America, Africa and southern Asia.  

• Gains from Trade:  One of the key principles of economics is that trade benefits all parties involved. International trade involves interactions with other economies and is therefore possible only among open economies.  Trade allows nations to specialize in producing the goods in which they have comparative advantages and trade with other nations to obtain goods in which those other nations specialize. This in turn provides consumers with a greater array of goods from which to select. Also, free and honest trade also has benefits of increased cultural exchange, and increased creativity and innovation, inspired by the exchange of ideas that occurs during trade.