Thursday, February 10, 2011

Blog #5

*****I couldn't upload my image*******
“It is inevitable that we tend to focus on what is said and not on the unsaid that enables it, since as soon as we pay attention to the implicit, it becomes explicit…..We call the implicit the context or the background.
So the term implicit is used to describe what is not being said or what we don’t see taking affect to
making something explicit. Implicit is something we understand from words.  Weinberger gives an example when he talks about the traffic signs.  “In order to help the sign’s meaning become implicit. R reading a sign takes longer than “getting” the symbol.  When a symbol has become a part of our vocabulary, we don’t stumble and fumble as we try to understand it.  It’s simply a part of the meaning of the word.  It enters our context our backgrounds” (pg 151).   
Explicit meaning is when the words tell you exactly what is going on around or to point out to something that is real, concepts that are very specific and not open to interpretation. Weinberger explains when he gives his example of one person finding out a away to get from A to B.  “Before you know it, it’s 1914, cars are running on roads that used to be paths, and the Automobile Club of Southern California decides it needs to mark the way from Kansas City to Los Angeles with four thousand signs.  The implicit is made very explicit” (pg 150)
Folksonomy is just simply how people tag things onlune.  “…Thomas Vander Wal coined the term folksonomy in 2005 to mean an ordered se of categories (or “taxonomy”) that emerges from how people tag items” (pg 165). 
Weinberger explains the importance of all three terms relating to the third order of order in his context.  “In the third order, the content and the metadata are all digital” (pg 171).
“That implicit we of relationships gives the things of our world their meaning” (pg 170)
"The meaning of a particular thing is enabled by the web of implicit meanings we call the world" (170).
“The value of the potential, implicit ways of ordering the digital miscellany
dwarfs the value of any particular actualization” (pg 171).
Folksonomy in relation to rest of the terms and the importance is the fact that people tag things giving it some kind of digital order which follows under the third order of orders and the organization of the miscellaneous.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Blog #4

There are many connections among Weinberger’s ideas and the “what is Web 2.0” and “web Squared.”  Weinberger’s ideas focus on organization and the impact of the three orders or order and the four new characteristic principles.  “What is Web 2.0” sets the stage of the internet being used as a platform to reach out to different people.  “Web Squared” talks about how the internet is a collective mind and its constantly learning from all the users.  Here are some similarities that I found in all of the three reading.  
 
Weinberger- “On line, on the other hand, we just naturally expect to organize information our
way, through tags, bookmarks, playlist, and weblogs.  And then we add to the information that a site provides us by disagreeing with it in our own review” (pg 106).
 

Web 2.0- “There’s an implicit “architecture of participation,” a built in ethic of cooperation, in which the service acts primarily as an intelligent broker, connectiong the edges to each other and harnessing the power of the users themselves.”

“On torrents and P2P sharing networks “the service automatically gets better the more people use it”
Web Squared- “Chief among our insights was that “the network as platform” means far more than just offering old applications via the network (“software as a service”); it means building applications that literally get better the more people use them, harnessing network effects not only to acquire users, but also to learn from them and build on their contributions.”
All three of the authors of their respected article talked about the importance and the impact of collective information that was created from the internet as a “platform.”  
The next few quotes I believed that they tied up by talking about real time and how it’s the big thing that is happening right now. 
Web 2.0- “The race is on to own certain classes of core data: location,
identity, calendaring of public events, product identifiers and namespaces.  


“Real time monitoring of user behavior to see just which new features are used, and how they are used, thus becomes another required core competency.”

Web Squared- “Collective intelligence applications depend on managing, understanding, and responding to massive amounts of user-generated data in real time.” 
 
“Think of sensor-based applications as giving you superpowers. Darkslide gives you super eyesight, showing you photos near you. iPhone Twitter apps can “find recent tweets near you” so you can get super hearing and pick up the conversations going on around you.
“Our cameras, our microphones, are becoming the eyes and ears of the Web, our motion sensors, proximity sensors its proprioception, GPS its sense of location."

Weinberger- “In the digital age, computers have become demonically good at sorting through gigantic, complex piles of information” (pg 85)."We have taken technology and the power of the masses into a whole different level “crowdsourcing”.  We are able to use information and manipulate it anyway we want, whenever we want and most importantly now! Weinberger describes in his four characteristics of knowledge and how we decide to organize information and share it with the world.
First: traditional knowledge is that just as there is one reality, there is one knowledge, the same for all.
Second:  We’ve assumed that just as reality is not ambiguous, neither is knowledge.  If something
isn’t clear to us, then we haven’t understood it.
Third: Because knowledge is as big as reality, no one person can comprehend it. So we need people who will act as filters, using their education,
experience, and clear thinking. 
Fourth: Experts achieve their position by working their way up through social institutions (pg 101)
“The way we’ve organized knowledge has been largely determined by these four properties of knowledge.” 

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

My MUZIK Folder

As I sit here looking at how un-organized my organized music folder is I can think of many ways someone else can actually do a better job at organizing my “Muzk” folder.  I looked at one of my folders labeled “Newest Muzik” I have random music genre and artist in that folder in different languages.  Some subfolders within the “My Muzik” folder are labeled by artist but the rest are categorized by rhythm I guess.  If I can’t dance to it I have it in either “Juzz Muzik,” “Chillaxin Muzik,” of “Cruizing” folder.  I have a folder that contains Spanish music that is not well organized. The only one I have organized is my favorite music genre which is Bachata.  My music library is organized in a way that labels the music that I listen to the most in a more appealing unique way that will automatic catch my eye and let me access it quickly. I guess if someone saw my music folder can say I’m a little bit unorganized but to me is organized in a way that the music that I listen to the most is accessible to me.
I guess another person is patient and meticulous and organized he/she can put everything in alphabetical order, either by title, composer or performer and then by the actual genre not just Spanish and English.  Another idea could be by rating if I listen to specific music more than other I can give them a rate and just organize the music that way.  Someone can also organize by the style of music.  Regardless of the way that the person organizes my music library it has to be in a way that my music that I like the most is easy accessible to enjoy.   I like almost all kinds of music but I think that the best way that I can or anyone can organize my music library would be by genre. 


Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Blog 2 Weinberger Ch.1-2

Weinberger on chapter 1 elaborates on how the world is and started out being miscellaneous and we have worked hard to getting it organized.  We can see how this plays out on the music industry as the world and iTunes music store being us constantly organizing it to fit our needs.  He believes that everything has a place as long as we put it in the right place and take the time to do so.  He states that we invest so much time in making sure our world isn’t miscellaneous in part because disorder is inefficient, but also because it feels bad.  It helps to be organized if we can keep everything organized our lives can move smoothly and proficient in our fast pace technology society.

He also focuses on the Three Orders of Order:  He states that in the first order of order, we recognize themselves in his example being the images and negatives of the Bettmann’s Archives.  So we know that they are objects and they are organized in some kind of order that makes sense.  The second order of order states that they use a catalog that points to the physical place where the first-order-of-order is stored in the back room.  The third and final order consists of content being digitized and how it removes the limitations we’ve assumed were inevitable in how we organize information.

On chapter 2 Weinberger starts off on how difficult it has been to come up with a universal alphabet that we can all use and understand making communication easier across cultures so to simply summarize that section alphabetization is very difficult.  He focuses on how we organize our world in a natural order that reflects on our needs and our “world.  Our technology and the three orders of orders help us categorize and organize the physical order to help us be more efficient though in a different way on his comparison with Amazon and Dewey's ideas.  He gives a few examples like Dewey’s idea to simply to have a single, universal way of cataloging book, one that all libraries would use.
One thing that I find myself constantly organizing is my music folder.  I have simply named it “My Muzik” folder I have about 14 different categories of genre.  It funny if you saw it you would be like what the “F*&#” because I have weird labels like “Juzz Muzik,” Chillaxin Muzik” and “Juzz Muzik” among other subfolders.  It works for me because if a song doesn’t follow on any of my genres like “Old Skoo” or Reggeaton  I “juzz” hrow it on any of those folders but it depends what language it is because I also have a folder that says “Muzica Espanol” which just random Spanish music go to and vice versa with the English music. It works for me though sometimes I don’t know where to put some music though and just throw it in the “Juzz Muzik” folder.  The system works every time I get a new song it has to have the artist name, the name of the song, genre and length of the song and once I have verified that I can put it in a folder.  I find myself organizing my music folder a lot because I’m constantly getting new music and getting new ideas of labeling the music folders.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Real Time

To me the most important idea of the article is “The
Rise of Real Time: A Collective Mind” section. We already know that our society wants everything “now” we are a fast
pace society that if we don’t know something within seconds we in a sense fall
back and need to update what we thought we knew.  The internet gives us a “gateway” or a “window”
that opens the world at a click of a button and when we click this button we
want to know whats “actually happening” (real time) not what happen. 
I find this interesting…. “Businesses
must learn to harness real-time data as key signals that inform a far more
efficient feedback loop for product development, customer service, and resource
allocation.”
This is what’s happening right now, real time information that can be seen anywhere in the world.  Recently I have been purchasing some car parts for my car and I noticed that in  everywebsite I went there was a logo or a link to a live chat person.  So if I have any questions on the item I wished to purchase I could talk to someone live at that moment versus trying to call them. 


Real time is become huge phenomenons that if we don’t get on board, we as the new
generation will fall back and feel like in the “technological stone age.”

My current favorite web application that I discovered last year is a website (veetle.com) which allows users to stream “channels.”  I’m not sure if it will have legal issues later because users stream movies that may be in theaters or haven’t come out on DVD yet.  I’m usually not at home neither are my
roommates so we don’t have cable or anything like that.  So I discovered the website and it has been
very entertaining.  It has a variety of channels from sports to bar channels (very boring by the way). 

On this website you can either be a provider or a user.  You can broadcast files, DVDs, Webcams, TV or anything that can be streamed online.   I’m already paying for internet so there areno fees to pay I just had to download their media player and then pick a channel and start watching.  Is a very cheap way to enjoin a movie or a TV show.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Knight's Life

Hello,
I'm Alexander, a 26 year old Veteran, senior with an AA from Columbia Basin College, majoring in Digital Technology and Culture and minoring in Management Infomation Systems.  I've been in and out of the school system ever since I graduated from high school due to my commintment to the military.  I have been in the Army National Guard for 7 years as a tanker and I have two deployments to Iraq.  During my last deployment I was a scout, first in line looking for IEDs and any kind of threat that will impact our mission, I had a team of 4 including myself.  During Spring Break I will be training at Fort Lewis and during the summer break I will hopefully travel to Japan to train soldiers


I'm from El Salvador, Central America and I've lived in the states since I was 10 years old.  I had a hard time adapting to the new environment and the new language.  I'm fluent in Spanish, can read and write it and I figure that as the Spanish speaking community grows technology grows so we need someone or educated people that know both languages enough to translate and keep the community going forward at the same rate. 

While in Iraq I made a list of the things that I would do when and if I had the chance to get back home.  One of those things was snowboarding, I used to hate it because it was during the coldest months of the year and I can't stand being cold but now I love snowboarding last season I went about 12 times but unfortunately this season I'm really busy and only have gone twice so far.I'm looking forward to what school has to offer this is one of my last two semester I have left at WSU and looking forward to what life has stored for me.