Tripped Up

2006-11-28T12:55:00.000-08:00

Reading Notes

Ch. 7

I had never heard of the traveling salesman thing, but it makes sense. I like the idea of ants as traveling salesmen and how they instictively know, or figure out, the shortest route between not only a place but many places.
If ants are leaving trails of pheromones along their paths, what are internet users leaving from site to site that allows us to use the same concept as the ants?

people in a city are like single slime mold cells (I'd rather not be slime mold but oh well..) and all those people together create a larger, recognizable aggregation of people (a crowd) or slime mold.

what is bottom-up versus top-down... I understand the idea of each but examples would help.

Coming from the bottom encourages growth.

Cities are like internet domains.
How does a traditional organic city go about being created? self organizing

traffic jams- idea of emergent behavior?

2006-11-21T19:27:00.000-08:00

Emergence. Steven Johnson.

Reading Notes

pg. 164- what is a bottom-up system?
pg. 166- learning through interacting, both StarLogo and Kindergarden. Enables the building of phenomenon to help understand everyday world (ie. traffic jams and flocked birds)
pg. 167- computers/ software only meant to obey orders
pg. 171- computer programs as people- decendants, genes. Was the program programmed to actually adapt or just create new mini programs- or is there no difference?
pg. 174- interactive-> shift in control-> the user... without a user, it can't be interactive. Is this the same as the chess playing computer? Did it adapt or was it just programmed that way?
pg. 179- in a world that is becoming more and more standardized (at least the US), video games have created a more creative artistic generation. At the same time, many argue that video games are making children mindless or teaching bad behavior. What makes the difference between creativity and mind wondering?
pg. 184- FREE WILL
pg. 195- expression through body language, mind reading. Reading someone's body language is like learning any other language
pg. 196- young children were tested to distinguish the way they precieved the world in comparison to how others did and found that they could make that distinction.

2006-11-19T21:27:00.000-08:00

Competition

Have you ever wondered what it is about winning and losing that really changes a person? Maybe it is not just winning and losing but the concept of success. In sports, people usually do not get as heated over a scrimmage as they would a regular game and then once a championship is in grasp, competition starts to boil over. What makes one person more competitive than another? Does an uncompetitve person not care about the outcome, or just does not let the win or lose effect them?

My dorm played its second dodgeball tournament tonight and after one game we had sent a guy to the hospital (do not worry, he just dislocated his finger and is just fine). After getting kicked out of the raquet ball courts and moving up to the volleyball courts, we dismantled the teams and created 2 large teams to play one big game that I would have though would have been less competitive, but I think it was just as bad. I started to see nuances in peoples personalities, even my own.

We stopped playing during our fifth big team game after a guy had jumped up for a ball and cut his head on the metal covering the clock. Overall, not a terribly successful tournament, but it was fun. Hopefully no one gets hurt next time.

2006-11-12T21:44:00.000-08:00

Postmodernism, Places and Non-Places and America...

While going over Auge's Non-Places, I thought of a concept I've used in my art and design classes this semester. Negative Space. Negative space is the idea of seeing the space around things, instead of the thing itself. I thought that non-places could be thought of using negative space. Instead of seeing the people you would be interacting with in a place, in a non-place, you see the space around the people. In a grocery store, you don't see the people shopping, you see what you need and how to get to it. But neither place or non-place can exist by themselves. Even though you're looking around the people, you will still recognize someone you know.

Reviewing Jameson's Postmodernism, I often found myself analyzing in terms of art/history. Each artistic period groups artwork by some common factor. Postmodernism is that concept of going above and beyond, a certain shock value that is not longer obtained by modern art. To me it can be applied to the idea of redoing an old movie. The first may be classic, but doesn't offer that same oomph. I was watching the old Texas Chainsaw massacre and remember wondering when the movie was going to end. The Westin Bonaventure Hotel wasn't necessarily built to shock people, but I think John Portman, the developer and architect was trying to do something different. Something that people would take notice of, which they did.

Baudrillard uses America as a way of explaining space and the way it has developed and adapted in certain regions of the United States. Can we find the same kind of space in the desert and the Northeast? Probably not. But conceptually, they may feel the same depending on what you're used to. The movement through space, how do we relate?

2006-11-12T21:02:00.000-08:00

Dreamweaver 2

This past Thursday (November 9th) I attended a Dreamweaver 2 workshop. I walked in expecting it to be a very long 2 hours but in actuality, it wasn't too bad. It started off with a little review, mostly stuff I already knew, then went into some newer stuff. For the most part, I think the concepts that were talked about were things that we had already applied during class, but went a step further. We talked about the actual hypertext and how to recognize how our changes effected the hypertext. We were taught about CSS styles and how to apply them.

With this particular session, I don't feel as though I learned a lot of new things, but rather, how to do old things more easily or in a different way. I would be interested to see what Dreamweaver 3 would be like, but I'm not sure I'll have time this semester.

2006-11-09T17:04:00.000-08:00

Relaxation

Today I am going to talk to you about something that I've lost touch with over the past 2 weeks or so. Relaxation.

re‧lax‧a‧tion [ree-lak-sey-shuhn]

-	abatement or relief from bodily or mental work, effort, application, etc.

The tests and assignments I have had over the past couple weeks, along with other personal stresses has driven me to a place I haven't been yet this semester. Home.

home [hohm]
- a house, apartment, or other shelter that is the usual residence of a person, family, or household

I would love to say that I am going home to see friends and hang out and have a great time but in actuality, I'll be hanging out with my parents and my sister who will also be coming home with me. I have learned that going home, or having people visit here results in no work getting done for that time and I finally feel as though I can make that sacrifice. Wednesday was my last midterm before finals and although I have other projects to work on, I am relieved to be done with tests.
Home is in Shawano, Wisconsin. About 30 miles northwest of Green Bay, Shawano is a very unexciting place. This past summer, my family moved out of the house I've lived in since I was five, and home just doesn't feel quite like home anymore. (News article about my old house being picked up and moved)

2006-10-29T18:59:00.000-08:00

Well, I give myself credit for keeping up with all the readings and blogs because I realize that not everyone does, but I still have to finish my webpage. For whatever reason I have tried many times to get everything to work out well and each time I have to start over and I get a little further and something doesn't work. I am extremely stressed out about it, but because of my lack of class on Tuesdays, I am going to go to the library Monday night and if I still don't get it done, I'll go back on Tuesday. Part of the problem might have something to do with moving things from computer to computer but assuming I followed all the directions, that shouldn't be a problem. As long as Scot understands that I feel awful about not having it done and that I have actually spent a great deal of time on this project with very little to show for it. Hopefully it'll be good. I hope everyone's weekend went well, I'm sure we'll talk about it in class on Monday.

2006-10-29T18:50:00.000-08:00

Writing in a Culture of Simulation
Carolyn Miller

It is a lot harder to take notes on something that already has underlining, circling, and comments in it, but I will try anyway.

Having an instant messenger program, I always knew there were screen names that were computer programs that automatically responded to what you said. In my experience, kids would always say obscene things to see what the computer would say. I never realized how much really goes into programs like that. It always makes me wonder about the people that create these programs. This thought crossed my mind when Miller mentioned Deep Blue, the chess-playing computer program. I wonder if the computer can beat a certain person, could the person who created the program beat that certain person too.

One interesting point that was brought up in class that I hadn't thought much about is the idea that people may start to substitute these program "people" for real life interaction. The question then is whether it is wrong for people to feel toward them. What are the problems with a human developing feelings or any sort of attachment to something that isn't real? I don't think it is bad that people may use these programs as a way of expressing themselves to someone without any consequence. Does it ever become a problem that the computer is not emitting any real feelings or any real sentiment? Isn't the whole point of "I understand" to express that you can relate to someone, and because a computer program such as this cannot relate and comprehend, should they really be able to say "I understand"? This concept ties in with anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism is the idea that we give things/ visualize things to have human qualities. Anthropomorphism is to inanimate objects/images as personification is to writing.

Another interesting aspect of the text was the Turing Test. The Turing Test is a test that computer programs "take" to answer the question, "can machines think?" It is argued that the smartest computers could easily or purposely fail the Turing Test because they are capable of deciding not to do something and that the computers that pass the Turing Test could be very unintelligent because the test does not test high enough levels of comprehension. If computer programmers feel as though this test isn"t working, why don"t they develop a new way of testing these programs? The Turing Test has, I think, caused many to wonder whether the computer is smart, or whether it is just fooling the user.

2006-10-24T22:16:00.000-07:00

Sherry Turkle. Life on the Screen.
Writing Notes

I think the author made a good example using the immune system and its changing adaptability. It is said that kids are more likely to get sick if they are constantly washing their hands to stay clean, especially using antibacterial soap. The little bacteria that we get on our hands every day is what keeps us safe from bigger things.
The adaptability people have developed in general, has created many personalities or personas. I don't think that many of these instances are multiple personality syndrome but is a way people express themselves. I know that I speak and act differently between different friends and family as well as in class, at work or at home. All of those things, and more, affect HOW I am but not necessarily WHO I am.
(pg. 152 what are MUDs??)
I think it is important for people to have a way to express everything they are feeling and believe that is the reason most people create "alter egos" especially on the internet. They'll either express a more repressed part of themselves that they are scared to show to other people or they delve deeper into who they are in order to make others understand. They are both a way for people to understand themselves and their feelings better.
An example made on page 156, right side, made a reference to Pynchon. Last semester, my lit class read a Pynchon novel and the quote was funny when I understood the content.

I found this text interesting. Turkle makes good points connecting flexibility/adaptation, personality, and the computer/internet to make this reading very intricate.

2006-10-18T10:06:00.000-07:00

I apologize for the less than timely manner in which I have written this entry. This is the writing notes entry for Monday October 16th.

Chapter 4, Writing About Cool

Rice wrote this chapter as a way to associate cool and consumerism. Because teenagers are such a large part of the economy, companies spend a great deal of time and money advertising and designing for this particular group. Rice also discusses the idea of "coolhunters" and refers to Gladwell's article that we read earlier.

I liked the way Rice tied coolhunting into advertising and youth culture. Companies recognize the importance of "cool" and it's tie to youth. They know trends, they start trends, they even end trends. The comment that Rice made about youth taking a given product and using it in a completely different way than it was intended.

Rice's example of corporate advertisements are a big reason that I choose not to watch commercials, or much TV in general. I realize that I'll never completely get away from being told what to buy and what's best for me, but I like to think that I'm making my own decisions.

2006-10-13T13:30:00.000-07:00

At the moment, I have no idea what to write. I could talk about the weather... it's really quite cold for mid-October, or I could talk about midterms... I have my first one this coming Monday, or I could talk about Wisconsin Sports... We're going to kick Minnesota's ass and I'm glad I'll be there to see it and I hope we win against North Dakota in hockey, I wish I could go.

That just about covers it.

2006-10-08T18:08:00.000-07:00

Six Degrees of Separation Story

On Saturday night I went to a party at my friend, Grant's place. I had been there for about 20 minutes and suddenly see Bryan, a friend I made in Calculus my first semester here and who I haven't seen since last semester. I introduced them and made a joke about how they were both from Minnesota. From there in took less than 5 minutes for them to figure out that Bryan is dating a girl that was friends with Grant in high school. Small world...

2006-10-05T06:41:00.000-07:00

I was the discussion leader for this text and although it didn't go as well as I had hoped, I do have a lot of reading comments, so here goes.

Duncan Watts, Six Degrees.
The Connected Age.

The whole text was essentially about networks and the interconnectedness of all aspects of our lives.

I thought it was interesting that he chose to start off this chapter with the power lines stories. I understood the connection he was making to networks and how it would be relevant but at the same time he managed to tie in the idea of collective behavior and the individual vs. the whole.

I liked his idea that often times the whole can be easier to understand than the individual. My immediate idea was a piece of artwork. The design elements (line, color, texture, value, etc.) are the individual pieces and by themselves, you can't understand what is happening but as soon as they're all put together, you see a completed picture that you can understand and see what's going on. The discussion of Halloween and the city's choice to focus more on the individual (ie, tickets) was good and very relatable. I think it prompted a lot of discussion and everyone liked the analogy. Magic eyes were also a great example.

pg 103- I like Watt's story of how he came to work with Steve Strogatz. It was an interesting story and it lent itself to all the concepts he was trying to explain throughout the chapter. He explained that he worked on the connection of networks and synchrony and I though it sounded like a very interesting concept.

pg 106-107- I don't know anyone that doesn't find the six degrees of separation concept incredibly intriguing. Everyone has or everyone knows someone that has had the experience of randomly meeting someone and realizing that they are a mere 2 or 3 degrees away.

I hope is next chapter is as interesting as this one.

2006-09-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

I definately was not going to post for this class period but now it is 7:54 am and I'm awake for no apparent reason. After procrastonating with my website, I finally had everything done last night around 10:30 except for putting my files into mywebspace. I was so excited by the idea of being done before 11 and the possibility of going to bed early for once. That just was not possible. As I used the url format in the packet, I couldn't get any of my files to show up! Shit! So I email Scot in a desparate plea to help me but of course, as I should have been, he was probably considering sleep as a very viable option at that moment.

I finally got to bed at 4am after doing my art history (icky) and reading through a friend's paper due today. I almost considered staying up knowing that I wouldn't get much sleep. I set my alarm a little earlier hoping to get an email from Scot but no go. Normal people were still sleeping. I sat down at my computer, very frusterated, and poked around with my files. All of a sudden, I realized what I had to do. I needed to add an extra word to my url that was not in the packet from class. I tested it and YES! it worked. Sooooooo relieved. Now it is just after 8am and I am very much awake (quite disturbing) and had nothing to do, so I thought I would actually do that optional assignment and blog.

I hope this means that this is going to be a good day. My website is linked if you going into my profile next to my blog and I'll link it here as well.

My Website

2006-09-25T07:21:00.000-07:00

Reading Notes:

Writing About Cool
pg 122-
Vague statements such as "technological writing has a rhetoric" doesn't tell me anything. It makes me think that I should know what the author means but as I, and most, do not fully understand rhetoric, this statement does not help me to interpret the meaning of the text. Jeff Rice would have done better by explain in what ways technological writing has a rhetoric and how it is used in our everyday lives.

in general-
Instead of being about cool, the book seems to just to apply cool to the topics Rice chooses to talk about. "Cool" is more often used as an "example" to further explain a concept than being discussed as a separate topic. I like the constant connection but I feel as though the book isn't actually "writing about cool".

pg 122-123-
The idea that we cant move forward with a new advancement as a society unless it is familiar enough to a great majority is understandable. I wish I had the ability to question things like this and make sense at the end. It gives a new twist to "conformity" because of the mass numbers needed to make something new (ie. web writing) work.

pg 127-129-
Jeff Rice always uses interesting examples to further indulge is in what is he explaining and skratching is just one. It isn't that I disagree with Jeff Rice but it would have been nice to have him make more of an obvious connection such as skratching to music to literacy as opposed to just skratching to literacy. I think this would have helped because there are many people who wouldn't necessarily connect skratching to music or music to literacy.

2006-09-22T23:24:00.000-07:00

This post was due earlier today but seeing as I stayed up until 2am writing an art history paper, I didn't really take the time to work on my blog.

As I worked on my paper late into the night, my friend Kristin and I started to talk. We were talking about guys and the way they (in general) have begun to act. They don't. A girl likes a guy and shows obvious interest and the guy just waits for her to make a move. When did that start? I understand that rejection sucks but do guys think that girls really want to put themselves out there? Maybe we could come to a nice balance. Girls show that they like a guy, and when the guy actually realizes it, if they like the girl too, do something to show it! If they don't like the girl, do something to show that they have no interest. I realize that this is far from intelligeble writing, however, I feel as though it is a valuable lesson in relationships.

When discussing this with a guy friend of mine, he said, "girls are the new guys and guys are the new girls." but quite frankly, I don't like that. I'm not a very traditional girl. I don't need the door held open or anything like that, but would it be too much to have a guy ask you on a legitimate date? Apparently.

2006-09-17T22:29:00.000-07:00

The idea that someone could analyze something, a word, that everyone uses in a multitude of ways is extremely interesting to me. Although I was a bit confused by "Writing About Cool" it was intriguing as well. In the introduction, Jeff Rice asks us to "learn how meanings are constructed" and "construct your own meanings". This made me ask myself how I use the word "cool" and how other people use it. On page 10 Rice continues to explain the "popular perception" of cool which is a combination of independence and rebelliousness. By the end of the second chapter, I was very confused as to what the book would really focus on: the popular, common idea of cool, or the updated web-based idea of cool, how do these two differ?

The clip of the Colbert Report was extremely entertaining. I had heard of Wikipedia before class but didn't really know the basis of the site. As Ryan explain in class, and Scot expanded on, Wikipedia is a sort of online encyclopedia in which people update the site with their own information. Although I'm sure the wonderful people at Wikipedia have a system of checking the facts submitted to their site, I still had a mixed feeling toward Colbert's report. I think it is a great idea to give the power of information over to the people, however, what is to say that something is or isn't true? What if you get enough people to agree on something, does that, in any sense, make it true? Maybe not true, but definitely believable and those two things are rarely distinguishable from one another.

Who's place is it to say what is and isn't cool or true? Are both "cool" and "truth" just ideas that people agree on to make them a certain way? Jeff Rice made a point when included the results of a USA Today survey entitled "Pop Culture: What's Cool?" and explained that the answers varied from Sex and the City to 80s toys. While some people might think these things are cool, it is not fact that these things are true. I believe that my attempt to correlate coolness and truth may be failing slightly, however, the general idea is there and I will do my best to evaluate these things further after the classroom discussion.

2006-09-15T06:39:00.000-07:00

When a teacher says, "write about anything you want" your first instinct is to be happy. "Yes! This is going to be so much easier... and fun!" but then you start to wonder about appropriateness and what other people are going to write about and how you're going to take the million and two ideas in your head and create something that someone is going to want to read. So here is my attempt at an appropriate, concise and interesting blog.

I love Madison. It's plain and simple. I was born and bred a Badger. Following in the footsteps of both my parents and my two siblings, I have decided that UW Madison is the place to be, so to speak. While Madison and the university are both terrific, I can't help but feel a bit of animosity towards both.

Construction. Why does it seem as though there's always five major construction projects around the city and then all the minor things you run into every day. How long have they been working on East Washington? Probably a good year at least. Then there's Henry Mall, the street in front of Ag Hall, that was out of commission for an entire year unless you were the ambitious students who climbed over the concrete barricades instead of walking around. And State Street. I realize that they are trying to make campus and the city look and function better, but can we please just have one constructionless month that doesn't have us trudging through snow?

Paper. We are currently paying nearly $3500 (in-state) for the fall semester. That's doesn't sound too scary but then you get to your first class of the semester and your professor tells you that you will be obligated over the course of the semester to print off nearly 100 pages of information. I realize this may be a more selective problem and that not everyone has to deal with that but does the university really think that I want to spend my money because they're to cheap to allocate a certain amount of paper per student? Anyone registered in an engineering class is allocated 300 pages per semester, and that's just for being in an engineering class, so maybe the rest of the schools/majors can try to come up with a way to save us time and money and provide the course information for us.

Mass Emails. In the span of 20 minutes, I received three copies of the same exact email. The sad thing is that it wasn't even something I would have read had I gotten only one. For the most part, I'll will agree in saying that mass emails are helpful by getting information to a lot of people at once. My annoyance comes when one person sends an email to the original sender about not understanding something and then EVERYONE receives another mass email. I check my email at least three times and I feel as though that's a little obsessive but I have new email every time, half of which are completely pointless!

Next time, I think I'll try to seem a little less aggressive about random things.

2006-09-10T18:16:00.000-07:00

This is Blog #1 for English 201.
"Prior to reading Herrick's introduction, how would you have defined rhetoric? How does today's readings change your perception of rhetoric? Do you have a new definition of rhetoric? What is it?"
Before reading Herrick's Overview of Rhetoric, I don't think I would have been capable of presenting a decent definition. The only time in which I was conscious of any form of the word was when asking a "rhetorical question". I would explain a rhetorical question as a question that is asked mainly to make a point or a question in which the answer is already known to the questioner. That being said, I would define rhetoric as "without significance" or "obviously unnecessary". The readings for today helped in understanding what different circumstances in which rhetoric is present, but does very little in actually explaining what it is. If people who study rhetoric don't understand it, then I do not feel as though I need to fully understand it either. I was surprised to read about so much rhetoric and not realize that it had always been there and always will be there but that nobody really knows. When Herrick first mentioned "rhetors" it made it sound as though those were the people who used rhetoric in everyday language and life and thought to myself "Wouldn't it be interesting to know how rhetorical a person is?" as though rhetoric is something measurable or comparable as if it is its own personality trait or physical feature. What makes someone more or less rhetorical than somebody else? Can a person learn the art of rhetoric? Do certain professions have more rhetorical people than others? I think I am still incapable of defining rhetoric but I understand more fully the idea that our thoughts, actions, language, interactions, and the rest of everyday life is full of this very mysterious thing called rhetoric. It seem as though rhetoric is the ability to understand and gain knowledge about the environment in which we interact and to give a person the ability to adapt and interact with more awareness.

2006-09-08T10:47:00.000-07:00

This is my first blog and it is brought to you in part by English 201. Not to say that I don't find this incredibly interesting but it is something different. I am going to make a decent attempt to add a bit of humor to my rambling so that none of you get too bored reading it.
Now, about myself... My name is Suzy and I am a 20 year old attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison and am a little hesitant to admit that I call rural Wisconsin home. For now, I'll leave it at that, but I'm sure I'll indulge you all further at a later date.