October Reflections

Overall, I feel like I’ve been improving with my blogging. A month remains and while I feel I’m improving, my realistic side tells me I need to learn much more by semester’s end in order to call this class a complete success.

I made the mistake of reading Brad’s evaluation of my blog so I feel I’ve poisoned the well of my self-evaluation. The Digiciv class is difficult in part because of its interdisciplinary studies and in part because the concepts are complex on their own. I have struggled with connecting historical content with computing concepts. Considering blogging content, lack of connecting posts to other posts and connecting historical and computing concepts in a post have been my chief failures. Right now, I’m averaging one blog per class period. I think that’s all right, but my goal is to double my blog posts in half the time that it took me to get where I am (a bit of Moore’s law, though it would be ridiculous to reproduce: writing 48 posts in two weeks and then 96 in one week). Hopefully, more frequent will lead to more connected and more varied.

I have made a maiming error in my approach to digital culture and computing concepts. Over the past month I’ve been spending my walks to campus reading Jeff Howe’s Crowdsourcing. While it was a great book and I did blog a little bit about it, I failed to post often on the ideas that it gave me by persuading myself that I would write a magnificent post once I finished. I finished sampling from each chapter tonight (look for that post in the coming week), and realized that I have been sidetracked by crowdsourcing and my self-directed learning narrowed.

I’ve also been trying to limit the time I spend blogging because I’ve felt the sprawl of internet learning. A fun youtube video then an interesting diigo bookmark. If I wasn’t swamped with homework and classes, I’d be swamped instead with diigo bookmarks and commenting on blogs. In the Consume, Create and Connect areas, I’m hit and miss.

Consume: I’ve been learning better focus techniques (timing my consumption, avoiding the internet, creating rewards for finishing in time) and it’s helped. However, I still spend too much time. I need more sampling practice.

Create: I’ve been getting more frequent with my blogs and I’ve tried to find videos and pictures to engage readers. I’ve found also that shorter is better (except this blog) for mine and other's time and for receiving comments. Make my point and let the uninterested move on. I still feel there’s something lacking.

Connect: Networked blogs opened my narrow mind. I connected my blog to facebook and over one day I got more pageviews then the entire month previously. So I decided a good way to connect is facebook. Anyone from the class that I knew by name and face, received a friend request. It’s nearly meaningless to some people, but to others it means a lot. I’ve also made an effort to comment on other blogs at least as much as I post. However, I’m still not feeling socially discovered. I need to read the Social Discovery blog that Prof. Burton wrote and revive my desire to attain social discovery.

***A note to those who aren't teachers of my digital civilizations class, I really appreciate feedback like brad's evaluation on his blog. If anything came to your mind while you read this post please make a comment. I appreciate your creative help.

Review: Uma Pitada de Tolices

For this blog, I’ve been assigned to review Sean R. Watson’s blog “Uma Pitada de Tolices”. The overall feel of the blog is well-refined. A sidebar quote foreshadows the appealing sound of Sean’s blog posts. Indeed, I think his thoughtful writing forces me to slow down and ingest his ideas (somewhat frustrating when I’m not in the educational mindset), so that I stretch my thinking.

In reading his posts, I have no doubt that he has done research and thought a lot about his posts. He gives great opinions and insights into historical content. His post “Sigmund Freud, a Lunatic” shows research, thought, and application. (Coming from a scientific background, I sometimes wish Sean would get straight to the point, but that may be an unfair desire.)

As for computing concepts, Sean gives examples of his personal discoveries on the topics. “Instructions to Everything” shares a personal argument that led to a desire to make all points empirically based. His ties to algorithms and noncomputational ideas shows he’s thinking about how the class computing concepts links to his life and experiences.

In my skimming of multiple posts, I didn’t find direct uses of digital culture, but I feel his blog shows that he’s got it. He seems to post frequently and not always about something regarding the class. His blog carries more than his name; it carries his personality.

And regarding his self-directed learning, again I feel that his frequenting blogging reflects his personal research beyond the readings from class. He has done several digital literacy labs recently (though it’s hard to tell when since his posts don’t have dates) and his connection with the onca scholarship seems to be a physical representation of the connecting that he is doing outside the class.

My only request for Sean is to dumb down some posts for me (although the monotonous mind of a future scientist caught up in his little lab world of experiments may not be the exact audience that he’s writing for). Keep it real Sean; your frequent and personal blogging is the idea that I will try to incorporate more in my blogging.

McCarthyism

Photo by Aradic-es

In our class discussion on the Atomic Age, we discussed the changes rendered by atomic weapons. The atom is powerful, and at the end of the Second World War that power was showcased at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Turbulent times followed during the Cold War; fear was read in every newspaper as the Red Scare commenced.

Senator Joseph McCarthy used this fear to catch the public’s attention by falsely accusing hundreds of government workers of communist ties. I found a two hour documentary called “McCarthyism” at the library after class and was amazed by what I saw.

I had heard of McCarthy and his scare tactics before, but seeing it helped me appreciate how the American audience must have felt. I was amazed by McCarthy’s use of a variation of the word “communism” in nearly every sentence. And to any who might oppose his unsubstantiated accusations: you must be a communist.

The documentary focused on Edward R. Murrow’s program “See It Now”. Murrow risked his career to enlighten the American people of McCarthy’s unruly behavior. Murrow had a calm, educated aura with a defiant edge that struck down McCarthy’s unsubstantiated claims.

The documentary concludes with McCarthy’s personal attack of Murrow’s patriotism and alleged communist ties and then a segment with Murrow’s comeback. Poignantly and methodically, Murrow addressed and negated every claim that McCarthy made. I loved seeing education overcome scare tactics. You can watch the 30-minute clip of McCarthy (part 1, 2 and 3) below and hopefully follow it to Murrow’s educated response on March 9, 1954.



Murrow won the public’s approval, and McCarthy’s popularity declined. America never turned to communism. I wish I could say that we’ve really turned to education. I think there’s so much to be scared about today that the public heeds politics very little. We talked about computer security in class with this. I would liken computer security to the knowledge that Murrow had. There are pop-ups all over the internet that introduce harmful agents into one's computer. There are so many scary things that can happen on the web, like identity theft. How do I know this pop-up isn't a malicious McCarthy virus that will steal my identity (and maybe turn me into a communist). We must become digitally educated so that we can avoid the scare tactics and the harmful effects of digital McCarthyism.

Good night, and good luck. (Now I'd like to hear from you. What are your thoughts on how McCarthyism is used in digital culture?)

$13,723,330,060,510.52 Have We "Bought" into Keynesian Economics?

According to TreasuryDirect.gov as of November 5, 2010 the U.S. National Debt is an astounding $13.7 Trillion. For anyone who may not comprehend that amount, if I was to make the average U.S. wage of $40,711.61 I could accumulate $13.7 Trillion in about 337 million years of honest work.

My wife is from England, not far from Cambridge University where Maynard Keynes attended, so I thought I'd compare national debts. The UK is sitting at 1 Trillion pounds.

Deficit spending isn't without it's successes, the Great Depression being the chief representative in my mind. We wouldn't have the many interstates and other public works if not for the government of pre-WWII spending money that it didn't have.

Now any economist would be quick to point out the many comparisons that I'm not making. For instance, the annual GDP of the U.S.A. is still higher than the national debt at nearly $15 Trillion whereas the U.K. creates substantially less GDP because it's a smaller country. There's lots of other considerations to be made in such a complex economy. However, just looking at the raw numbers can be somewhat disconcerting. Should we be concerned? When does Keynesian Economics fail to improve the macro-economy? I do suppose that since we've lived by Keynes we may very well die by Keynes.

A Full-ride, Digital Scholarship to the Invisible College: A Final Project to Improve Literacy

As members of this digital civilizations course we have been given a new lens with which to see the past, present, and future. We've learned and shared our knowledge. We've failed and we've grown.

One requirement for this class was to perform digital literacy labs. I have learned valuable skills from the labs that I have done and I've learned from the sharing that takes place after class on Thursdays. It would be a horrible waste if we didn't bring all these labs together so that future immigrants to the digital world could acclimate to the digital society more quickly.

I propose that we have everyone from the class donate their expertise from their labs and then a team of students could check the labs for understandability and post them all on a central site.

This project would include several different sub-projects so we can divide the labor and perhaps divide groups if there's enough interest:

• We need to compile all the digital literacy labs that have all ready been performed. This will take plenty of time to contact all our fellow students and make cooperation for busy individuals as easy as possible.
• We need an appropriate place to keep all this information and accessibility. We need a well-designed site with the ability to be added to in the future and cataloging so that everyone can find the stuff they want. (I was thinking that we could follow the consume, create, connect idea from the class)
• We need to improve the user-friendliness of the labs so that someone that happens on to the site by chance will be able to understand what it is and be able to begin use right away.
• We need more labs always. There is so much out there to learn about. We could make some really high quality tutorials and invite anyone and everyone to contribute their knowledge.

This is all coming from a guy who stayed up way too late last night, so I realize there's probably a lot more to it. I'd love to hear ideas of how to make it better or if someone has found something like it already.

Great Thinkers; Great Writers

While I was reading a long list of quoations and some terminology from the analytical psychologist Carl Jung, I remembered a chance encounter with an old friend in the English Department. Bentley was grading papers when I saw him in the JFSB. He's teaching a Freshman English class as a graduate student. I feel like I write like a freshman anyway so our conversation gets on that topic. Paraphrasing he said that writing takes a lot of thought. And then he said, "You can find a thinker that doesn't write well, but rarely will you find a writer that doesn't think well."

I've seen this simple idea repeated so frequently this semester. Carl Jung is a renown psychologist(obviously a great thinker) and he has also developed his writing so that reading quotations from him is thought provoking. I have been writing a lot more this semester and I have learned how easy the act of writing has become following thoughtful pre-writing (this idea never occurred to me until now).

There are also plenty of examples of good thinkers writing poorly. For my major, I am ever reading more and more primary research articles. It takes unparalleled mind power to understand it at all. I understand that they write to a different audience, but it's even difficult for specially educated people. Here's the point, and it's been re-iterated in class many times: improve your thinking by writing; improve your writing by thinking and writing. Great writers are great thinkers.

Modernism and other "ism"s

Modernism--positivism, realism, perspectivism, romanticism, capitalism, communism, humanism, nationalism, conservatism--this is only the beginning. This link leads to a list of lists of movements on wikipedia. We need catalogs to show the relations of different movements and what type of movement each movement fits into. With so many "ism"s I don't know what to think. How is modernism different from other "ism"s?

The suffix -ism denotes a principle, belief or movement. I suppose that includes Mormonism.

Beyond wanting a good grade, why should I learn about modernism anymore than to believe that a lot of people decided that there was no absolute truths and that things are all relative? I believe there are absolute truths. I believe there is a God in heaven that cares deeply about me among billions of others of His children. I believe He is the Father of my spirit. So where does that leave me in regards to modernism?

I do see value in thinking outside the box. Abstract thinking leads to unbelievable discoveries like Albert Einstein's theory of relatively and the entirety of Quantum physics (It's crazy to me that those ideas are proven empirically). In the same paragraph, we see the social decay that follows a world that is losing it's grounding in absolute truths. Is there a balancing-point? There's lots of questions. What's your answer?