We are analog beings – flexible, tolerant and compliant - living in a digital – rigid, fixed and intolerant - world that we created. This is the main argument from an excerpt from Don Norman’s book The Invisible Computer that can be found at http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/being_analog.html. Norman explains in depth how adaptable and flexible humans are, and how that does not work well in an inflexible computerized society that values efficiency and accuracy.
While Norman comes to some great conclusions and thought provoking points, I found the core of his reasoning flawed and it was very distracting from trying to glean the points he was making.
Norman goes into great depth to illustrate how humans are flexible, tolerant and intuitive and have evolved that way. Perhaps his greatest flaw is in trying to sum up human beings in a nutshell to serve his point of view. He either has forgotten or doesn’t realize that when you break down a human to its smallest parts all the way down to DNA you have something that is almost mathematical and so precise that the smallest error could cause a person to have a beak or a tail. This doesn’t happen very often. We are basically incredibly complex machines that have the ability to function beyond the mechanical and adapt and evolve. The ability to adapt and evolve is something that is necessary in our survival of the fittest world.
Norman’s main summary and points are still very interesting though. It was painstaking trying to still be open to that with his flawed reasoning, but in the end he does point out the intriguing dilemma our society faces in either adapting computers to think more like humans or trying to adapt people to behave more like computers. I don’t think we should push human beings toward behaving more like computers: We should use computers and tools to enhance ourselves and our greatest natural abilities.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
The Rudimentary Basics of Internet
It’s easy to sit in front of a computer and point and click, sending and receiving information in less time than a blink of an eye. Most of us take for granted all that happens to transfer that information. Ethan Zuckerman & Andrew McLaughlin have published any easy to read and understand explanation called Introduction to Internet Architecture and Institutions, which can be found here - http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/digitaldemocracy/internetarchitecture.html.
They use easy to understand examples while still providing just enough technical information without overwhelming the reader. This is a great site for someone just wanting to know the basics. I know from experience that there is a lot, in fact books and books, of technical information on this subject, and a person without a degree could easily get lost in it all.
The most important thing to know is that the Internet around the world is run using IP, which stands for Internet Protocol. IP was invented in 1974 by Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn and has not changed substantially since then. A simplified explanation of IP is that it breaks down information into packets and sends it across media to a predetermined destination. When it arrives there the information is rebuilt. IP has been adopted and used around the world and it can be used across any media, including fiber optic, cable, radio waves and as Zuckerman and McLaughlin related even on carrier pigeons. In order for the Internet to work all the networks need to be able to talk and communicate to each other. This is done using IP and because the Internet is a global network of voluntary and interconnected networks, no one can force a new standard to be used.
IP uses a number called an IP address to get the information to destinations. We would never be able to remember all those numbers for all the places we visit on the internet, and numbers make it hard for humans to understand, so the Internet uses an addressing system which consists of two types of identifiers: the IP addresses and DNS. DNS stands for the domain name
system. DNS takes the address number and converts and stores it as a recognizable name such a Google. Each of these identifiers is unique.
ICANN, which is short for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is the overall coordinator of the Internet's systems of unique identifiers, including domain names, IP address, and protocol port and parameter numbers, along with the DNS root name server system. ICANN is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers. There are also other organizations such as IETF and W3C that help define and to make the Internet open, easy and accessible to everyone.
The Internet is not so free and easy in all places around the world though. Developing countries have more challenges to face getting on the internet than countries such as the United States. Because they don’t have the numerous lines, connections and service providers they frequently have to re-route their traffic through satellites and other countries. This makes the service slow and very costly. Also because their current service providers may be businesses that could be hurt by competition, this can stand in the way of growth.
According to Zuckerman and McLaughlin “Achieving cooperation among competitors (in developing countries) is a profound challenge. In the United States, ISPs (Internet Service Providers) have their roots in the cooperative academic networks that came together to form the Internet; in other words, the cooperative technical operations and the techies that ran them were later joined by business managers who fought for advantage in the competitive
marketplace. In the US, then, it has proven relatively easy for rival ISPs to remain cooperative at the level of network operations. In countries that are new to the Internet,however, the business-side competitive imperatives have come first, giving little support to the necessary culture of technical cooperation among peers.”
They use easy to understand examples while still providing just enough technical information without overwhelming the reader. This is a great site for someone just wanting to know the basics. I know from experience that there is a lot, in fact books and books, of technical information on this subject, and a person without a degree could easily get lost in it all.
The most important thing to know is that the Internet around the world is run using IP, which stands for Internet Protocol. IP was invented in 1974 by Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn and has not changed substantially since then. A simplified explanation of IP is that it breaks down information into packets and sends it across media to a predetermined destination. When it arrives there the information is rebuilt. IP has been adopted and used around the world and it can be used across any media, including fiber optic, cable, radio waves and as Zuckerman and McLaughlin related even on carrier pigeons. In order for the Internet to work all the networks need to be able to talk and communicate to each other. This is done using IP and because the Internet is a global network of voluntary and interconnected networks, no one can force a new standard to be used.
IP uses a number called an IP address to get the information to destinations. We would never be able to remember all those numbers for all the places we visit on the internet, and numbers make it hard for humans to understand, so the Internet uses an addressing system which consists of two types of identifiers: the IP addresses and DNS. DNS stands for the domain name
system. DNS takes the address number and converts and stores it as a recognizable name such a Google. Each of these identifiers is unique.
ICANN, which is short for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is the overall coordinator of the Internet's systems of unique identifiers, including domain names, IP address, and protocol port and parameter numbers, along with the DNS root name server system. ICANN is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers. There are also other organizations such as IETF and W3C that help define and to make the Internet open, easy and accessible to everyone.
The Internet is not so free and easy in all places around the world though. Developing countries have more challenges to face getting on the internet than countries such as the United States. Because they don’t have the numerous lines, connections and service providers they frequently have to re-route their traffic through satellites and other countries. This makes the service slow and very costly. Also because their current service providers may be businesses that could be hurt by competition, this can stand in the way of growth.
According to Zuckerman and McLaughlin “Achieving cooperation among competitors (in developing countries) is a profound challenge. In the United States, ISPs (Internet Service Providers) have their roots in the cooperative academic networks that came together to form the Internet; in other words, the cooperative technical operations and the techies that ran them were later joined by business managers who fought for advantage in the competitive
marketplace. In the US, then, it has proven relatively easy for rival ISPs to remain cooperative at the level of network operations. In countries that are new to the Internet,however, the business-side competitive imperatives have come first, giving little support to the necessary culture of technical cooperation among peers.”
Friday, February 12, 2010
Smarter people, smarter markets, and the importance for businesses to speak in a human voice
Back in the early days of the Internet, when the dotcoms were booming, a book called the Cluetrain Manifesto was published. With people connecting on the Internet around the world, employees of companies were gaining a voice, sometimes more prominent and influential than the companies they worked for. Also people that shared common interests, often referred to as markets in the business world, were linking together and the markets were becoming smarter than the businesses that hoped to sell to them. In the Cluetrain Manifesto authors Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger and Rick Levine revealed some amazing revelations about how businesses were currently run and how they needed to adjust to keep up with our changing society as affected by the Internet.
One of the most important points, which can be found on their website http://www.cluetrain.com/, is that most corporations “only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal.” This can become insulting to the people of the new linked-together market groups because they are now smarter than that. “To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman” the Cluetrain states. It is necessary for corporations to speak in a human voice and sound “real.” The book goes on to explain this phenomenon in depth.
The Cluetrain website lists their 95 Thesis which alone - without reading the book – are very insightful. It also contains a link to read the complete manuscript online.
One of the more laughable insights from this website is that it’s a terrible example of a website and people wouldn’t stand for this format today. You have to read a good portion of the website just to figure out what it’s about. In this day and age most people wouldn’t take the time to do that when they first come to a new site.
The Cluetrain website isn’t really trying to sell the book though (which is still offered for sale, but is also offered free). This website is the original that came out ten years ago and at the time it probably was not their intention to create an atrocious site. Left the way it was when it originally came out, the site is proof of some of the points they are trying to make; today people have become smarter and would not stand for this disorganized and disorderly format in a website.
One of the most important points, which can be found on their website http://www.cluetrain.com/, is that most corporations “only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal.” This can become insulting to the people of the new linked-together market groups because they are now smarter than that. “To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman” the Cluetrain states. It is necessary for corporations to speak in a human voice and sound “real.” The book goes on to explain this phenomenon in depth.
The Cluetrain website lists their 95 Thesis which alone - without reading the book – are very insightful. It also contains a link to read the complete manuscript online.
One of the more laughable insights from this website is that it’s a terrible example of a website and people wouldn’t stand for this format today. You have to read a good portion of the website just to figure out what it’s about. In this day and age most people wouldn’t take the time to do that when they first come to a new site.
The Cluetrain website isn’t really trying to sell the book though (which is still offered for sale, but is also offered free). This website is the original that came out ten years ago and at the time it probably was not their intention to create an atrocious site. Left the way it was when it originally came out, the site is proof of some of the points they are trying to make; today people have become smarter and would not stand for this disorganized and disorderly format in a website.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Information Overload
As a society we are suffering from information overload. With the development of media and data storage we have been able to store an immense amount of information. Just one newspaper today carries more information than a person a few centuries ago would have been exposed to in their life time.
It is important to be able to search through all this information and get what we need. In order to do that we need tools which are easy to use and enable us to make productive searches.
The focus has been on generating information but we need to change that focus to receiving and how the information is controlled and filtered so it reaches the people who need it.
It is important to be able to search through all this information and get what we need. In order to do that we need tools which are easy to use and enable us to make productive searches.
The focus has been on generating information but we need to change that focus to receiving and how the information is controlled and filtered so it reaches the people who need it.
The Advent of New Media has Changed Our Horizons
"We are in the middle of a New Media revolution. All of our culture is being transferred to computer mediated forms of production, distribution and communication. " - (Manovich, pg 43)
What is New Media compared to "old" Media? The original intent of computers, invented by Babbage and Turing, was to perform mathematical calculations. About the time that computers were being invented, photography and cameras had also been founded. Cinematography and moving pictures soon followed. When Babbage was inventing his first computing machine, called an Analytical Engine, a man named J.M. Jacquard invented a loom which was controlled by punch Cards. The loomed weaved detailed figures and portraits. Images were already being synthesized by a programmable machine even before computers were put to work on mathematical calculations.
Ironically the first digital computer, created by Konrad Zuse was run by a program on a punched tape of a discarded movie film. Half of a century later all existing media such as images became transferable into numerical data making it possible to create digital images, movies, etc and New Media was born.
New Media is modular, meaning it is made up of many different pieces that can put put together to build something. The modularity combined with the numerical calculating can eliminate humans from the computing, making automation possible. Web sites are automatically generated "on the fly" using templates and scripts to assemble and format information from databases. High level automation, or artificial Intelligence has made it possible for users to interact with programs such as computer games.
In Lev Manovich's book The Language of New Media he said "The Internet, which can be thought of as one huge distributed media database, also crystallized the basic condition of the new information society: over-abundance of information of all kind." There was so much media created it became hard to sift through it all to find what you wanted. Organizing, categorizing and tagging is an important part of New Media for search-ability.
Other important parts of New Media are variability, the ability to reproduce media in different versions, and Hypermedia - linking media together. Transcoding is another part of New Media. Transcoding is translating something into another format.
New media has revolutionized our culture. Old media such as still photography and printing presses were run by humans. Now we can have computers do many tasks for us without even thinking about them. Our culture is changing and becoming computerized by all the New Media available to us.
What is New Media compared to "old" Media? The original intent of computers, invented by Babbage and Turing, was to perform mathematical calculations. About the time that computers were being invented, photography and cameras had also been founded. Cinematography and moving pictures soon followed. When Babbage was inventing his first computing machine, called an Analytical Engine, a man named J.M. Jacquard invented a loom which was controlled by punch Cards. The loomed weaved detailed figures and portraits. Images were already being synthesized by a programmable machine even before computers were put to work on mathematical calculations.
Ironically the first digital computer, created by Konrad Zuse was run by a program on a punched tape of a discarded movie film. Half of a century later all existing media such as images became transferable into numerical data making it possible to create digital images, movies, etc and New Media was born.
New Media is modular, meaning it is made up of many different pieces that can put put together to build something. The modularity combined with the numerical calculating can eliminate humans from the computing, making automation possible. Web sites are automatically generated "on the fly" using templates and scripts to assemble and format information from databases. High level automation, or artificial Intelligence has made it possible for users to interact with programs such as computer games.
In Lev Manovich's book The Language of New Media he said "The Internet, which can be thought of as one huge distributed media database, also crystallized the basic condition of the new information society: over-abundance of information of all kind." There was so much media created it became hard to sift through it all to find what you wanted. Organizing, categorizing and tagging is an important part of New Media for search-ability.
Other important parts of New Media are variability, the ability to reproduce media in different versions, and Hypermedia - linking media together. Transcoding is another part of New Media. Transcoding is translating something into another format.
New media has revolutionized our culture. Old media such as still photography and printing presses were run by humans. Now we can have computers do many tasks for us without even thinking about them. Our culture is changing and becoming computerized by all the New Media available to us.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Beginnings
Everything has a beginning and so for the beginning of this blog I am touching upon the history of the beginning of the electronic age and the World Wide Web.
The desperation of war has brought about many advances in our society. With hundreds of men literally dying before their eyes, doctors improvised and came up with new ways of saving men. With the constant pressure to trump the other side scientists have worked beyond their current knowledge to do the impossible. Weapons were created and not just guns and weapons of destruction. Communication and it's expediency and secrecy was advanced. By the end of World War II we had the first calculating machines, photography, typewriters and the computer age was on the verge of it's beginning.
At the end of World War II Dr. Vanner Bush published an article titled As We May Think. It can be found on W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium, which is an international community where member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop web standards and pursue their mission of leading the web to it's full potential. When the article was published Bush was a "Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, coordinating the activities of some six thousand leading American scientists in the application of science to warfare."
Bush touched on many of the amazing advancements of his time in his article, but his overall message to the scientists of his time, was to set aside the scientific work on war that they had been concentrating on, and come together to work towards the future filled with possiblitlies that their new advancements suggested.
He proposed a massive record that people could use to not only make their lives easier but could advance the abilities of professionals, doctors, scientists and more. He suggested 'dry' photography that could be stored and used, much like the digital photography we now have. He pictured a world where a person could sit down at their desk and access the great record, using several at a time (which is called muti-tasking in our time). He called it a "new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record." Bush was eerily accurate in many of his predictions.
It's ironic that the countless lives that have been saved through the advancements of the electronic age, got it's start in war. The progress hasn't found it's peak yet though. The World Wide Web is still digging for it's roots and being defined as we speak. Groups such as the W3C are determined to see it reach it's full potential. People now have the ability to network and come together across the world to work on common goals, or even just to chat and swap news.
It's just the beginning.
The desperation of war has brought about many advances in our society. With hundreds of men literally dying before their eyes, doctors improvised and came up with new ways of saving men. With the constant pressure to trump the other side scientists have worked beyond their current knowledge to do the impossible. Weapons were created and not just guns and weapons of destruction. Communication and it's expediency and secrecy was advanced. By the end of World War II we had the first calculating machines, photography, typewriters and the computer age was on the verge of it's beginning.
At the end of World War II Dr. Vanner Bush published an article titled As We May Think. It can be found on W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium, which is an international community where member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop web standards and pursue their mission of leading the web to it's full potential. When the article was published Bush was a "Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, coordinating the activities of some six thousand leading American scientists in the application of science to warfare."
Bush touched on many of the amazing advancements of his time in his article, but his overall message to the scientists of his time, was to set aside the scientific work on war that they had been concentrating on, and come together to work towards the future filled with possiblitlies that their new advancements suggested.
He proposed a massive record that people could use to not only make their lives easier but could advance the abilities of professionals, doctors, scientists and more. He suggested 'dry' photography that could be stored and used, much like the digital photography we now have. He pictured a world where a person could sit down at their desk and access the great record, using several at a time (which is called muti-tasking in our time). He called it a "new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record." Bush was eerily accurate in many of his predictions.
It's ironic that the countless lives that have been saved through the advancements of the electronic age, got it's start in war. The progress hasn't found it's peak yet though. The World Wide Web is still digging for it's roots and being defined as we speak. Groups such as the W3C are determined to see it reach it's full potential. People now have the ability to network and come together across the world to work on common goals, or even just to chat and swap news.
It's just the beginning.
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