Ancient calculator challenges notion of technology progression

"It's a popular notion that technological development is a simple progression. But history is full of surprises." - François Charette

Scientists just decoded the intricate working of a 2000-year old Greek calculator called "The Antikythera Mechanism" which can calculate astronomical cycles. See the article on Nature journal and BBC.

Do all those laptops help?

In the Chronicle of Higher Education today there's a report questioning whether using a laptop computer improves student performance:

To the hundreds of colleges that require students to buy or lease laptops, it may seem like a no-brainer: Supply a student with a portable computer, and surely he or she will reap some educational benefits.

But a laptop's value isn't so cut and dried, according to a study conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.

The study, which is described as one of the first systematic efforts to figure out how students use their laptop computers, came up with the uncontroversial finding that the machines give users more flexibility in choosing where and when to study. But the researchers found no evidence that the computers improved students' work.

In fact, a report on the study says, students with laptops tend to spend "significantly more time" working on assignments than other students do. But that extra time is not reflected in their finished products: Students with laptops get roughly the same grades as those who trek to computer labs. Instead of saving time, the report argues, laptop users are often killing it -- firing off e-mail messages, sending instant messages, and surfing the Web.

Laptop-users in J676, comments?

Readings for Group 2 Presentation Next Thursday, Nov. 30

The readings for Group 2's presentation next thursday on Net Neutrality are:

High stakes battle over net neutrality - Denver Post

Congress must keep broadband competition alive - Lawrence Lessig

VIDEO: Hands of the Internet Co-Chair Mike McCurry on Net Neutrality - Politics TV

Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving!

[Group6] FEED: things to think about

- About the novel

This science fiction novel paints a chilling picture what life would be like if our brain is online, i.e. if a transmitter is implanted directly into our brain, constantly sending "feed" from the network and transferring our thoughts and behaviors back to the network in all ways possible. It is heavily commercialized and obtrusive, but (almost) everybody is happy with it. 'Feed' is the story of Titus, a ordinary teen hooked up to the vast network of information who discovers that there is an alternative way of life, but is mostly unable to make sense of it until the very last page.

- The 'Information Age' characteristics in this story

This novel is a nice satirical summary of many theories and visions that we encountered during the semester. Of course there is the set of general discussion questions at the end of the book, but here are some others.

* On information use: Consider all the readings we have done concerning the Information Age. We know that there are ever-increasing avenues to conveniently and efficiently access information for those who have the necessary tools. These databases and caches of information can be utilized by academics and researchers to amass critically relevant research on a plethora of topics. However, concerning the general society, does or could this enhanced access to information lead to a decrease in actual knowledge like the protagonists in the book? Do you think many people find it futile in our society to really learn information they know they can look up in seconds and regurgitate?

* On literacy: One of the first things that is evident in this book is the deterioration of the characters' language and communication. It is true that the slang they use could hold loaded meaning we can't comprehend, like how people over a hundred years ago would be confused at much of the common discourse we use today. However, there are many instances that only slang and expletives are used in a stuttered fashion, as the characters seem to have difficulty expressing themselves verbally. Is there a correlation between enhanced technologies (which can diversify communication modes) and deficient ability of people to communicate in our world today? One might point to the use of acronyms and emoticons on instant message systems as an example...

* On connectedness: From the readings concerning political discourse to the ones that broadly speak of the information revolution, one example of a positive nature of the enhanced technology is a greater inter-connectedness. Taken to an exponential level in this novel, the characters are frequently interacting only with their own mind, and staring out into space while in the company of others. Do you see any of this today with our chronic use of ipods, cell phone capabilities and other gadgets?

* On existing social systems: Why doesn't all of society have the feed and what would that do to society? Does having the feed introduce a "feed divide" at all? Would be a kind of 'equal access' possible if everything and everyone is simply plugged in the vast network? How about the governmental problems addressed in the book? What causes Titus' change of heart towards Violet and does it relate to existing structures of the social system?

* On private and public: In the world of FEED, both the private and public spheres have given way to the commercial ones... bearing striking resemblances to 'our' world. But one could ask: If everybody is happy with it, would it be necessarily a dystopian thing? Could it be a democracy of some sorts, or should it still be regarded as the technocrat dictatorship?

* On the Future: Is there any good way to actually prevent our world becoming the world of 'Feed' in the near future?

Local public sphere? Marriage amendment listening session scheduled for tomorrow

From a UW-Madison press release today that showed up in my Bloglines RSS feeds:

A listening session will be held from 5-6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 15 in the Main Lounge of Memorial Union to give campus community members an opportunity to voice feelings related to the recently-passed marriage amendment and discuss the implications for domestic partner benefits.

Chancellor John Wiley and Provost Patrick Farrell are expected to attend the session, which is open to students, faculty and staff.

In the wake of last week’s election, UW-Madison intends to continue offering the services and benefits it currently offers to students, employees and their partners while awaiting legal clarifications regarding the implications of the amendment.

“I would like to reassure everyone that UW-Madison will continue to be a place that rejects discrimination and respects diversity of all kinds,” Wiley wrote in a Nov. 9 letter to the campus community. “There is a place for all people here, and the Nov. 7 approval of this amendment does not change that commitment.”

“But there are lingering questions about what this amendment might mean for current and future benefits for employees,” he added. “To that end, I am bringing together a group of staff from human resources, equity and diversity, and other relevant areas to review the amendment and its possible impacts.”

Using networked information technology to muster local stakeholders into a face-to-face, realtime public sphere discussion about the way state political issues affect the local citizenry, anyone?

Group 5 posting addendum: summary of Plant

Plant article: In “Weaving Women and Cybernetics,” Sadie Plant takes us on a journey from the mother of computer programming, Ada Lovelace, through the practice of weaving, then on to feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray and (masculinist?) psychiatrist Freud, and finally spins off into a mid-‘90s fantasia on cybernetics, feminism and strained metaphors regarding women, software and computers. She begins by tracing the lineage of software back to Ada Lovelace, a key figure in early thinking about programming for machines; she continues this trace (skipping over the many men involved in the process) to the one other quasi-famous female programmer, Grace Hopper, and suggests that software and programming is a feminine domain. Charles Babbage, with his inventions of the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine, was the father of hardware, which frames an easy dichotomy between man/woman and software/hardware. Plant pushes this dichotomy further as the essay progresses, finally splitting man into the seeming master of war machines, who is ultimately defeated by the software/woman/science he can’t control.

But before she reaches that conclusion, Plant uses weaving and the technology of the loom that served as a metaphor for the early computer and its punch cards as a way to connect her metaphors of woman and computers/software. She writes, “It seems that weaving is always already entangled with the question of female identity, and its mechanization an inevitable disruption of the scene in which woman appears as the weaver” (431). Perhaps is it in this mechanization that woman enters Plant’s computer metaphor, as a ghost in the machine?

After discussing some of the history of weaving and its metaphorical connections to women and early software, she notes, “Like woman, software systems are used as man’s tools, his media and his weapons; all are developed in the interests of man, but all are poised to betray him…” (432). How does this betrayal happen? Plant is unspecific about details here, but through a series of more and more abstract metaphors concerning veils, the womb, the matrix and the absence/presence of space behind the computer screen, Plant argues that it ultimately happens through woman’s capacity for mimicry. From Irigaray, Plant uses woman’s innate capacity for simulation (mostly as background, supporter, canvas for man), to liken her to the computer: “she is not [the] only performer: now that the digital comes on stream, the computer is cast in precisely the same light: it, too, is merely the imitation of nature, providing assistance and additional capacity for man…” (433).

Ultimately, woman and the machine “may aspire to be the same as man, but in every effort they become more complex than he has ever been” (436) and enter the matrix. This matrix, or cyberspace, “joins women on and as the interface between man and matter, identity and different, one and zero, the actual and the virtual…the veils are already cybernetic” (437).

Group 5 posting

Michaels article: Eric Michaels, in “For a Cultural Future”, observes the production of Australian Aboriginal film and examines on a larger scale its effects on Aboriginal culture. He illustrates an instance of the traditional “Fire Ceremony,” a ceremonial dance functioning to resolve disputes that is significantly dangerous – and likely “savage” in Western eyes – as those who are punished risk being badly burned. Michaels highlights how the advent of film and television technologies in these traditional societies allows for a greater cultural continuity, but also recognizes that the flow of mainstream media through new channels into traditional cultures threatens to supplant them. Ultimately, it seems, the pendulum could swing both ways; and Michaels shows how even in the reverse – with Aboriginal media flowing outwards – there is a risk that cultural values will be cheapened and reduced to “savage theatre.”

Poster article: Poster analyzes postmodernity through the lens of information organization and electronic communication. Electronic communication, he posits, is displacing the idea of a rational, autonomous, individual. The individual is rather being multiplied in various representations that are disseminated widedly in a decentralized environment. (think fax, mass emails, globally -accessible blogs) Identity becomes unstable as information/symbols/language that define it is multiplied, separated from the author, and used for marketing and monitoring. Like print, electronic communications allow speech at a distance to be more efficient. Though the way language is interpreted, confounds single definition of the individual.

He first talks about advertisements and theory surrounding it. The traditional theory is that ads are deceptive, and work to manipulate demand for a product (Marx). Though Poster goes on to credit ads with using language to construct alternate realities where one would never act the same as in real life. Linguistic properties connect the viewer and the product, associating meaning between the two. Pepsi=youth=sex=fun=popularity.

He next views computerized databases as masses of information about individuals that may be sold, monitored, reproduced, and distributed. Myspace comes to mind. Individuals are defined by certain traits, interests, histories, which can be sold to mircosoft for marketing purposes or looked up by future employers. Poster uses the term superpanopticon in that privacy is nulled so that constructs of the individual can be readily exchanged. The panopticon shapes and molds behavior by threat of surveillance. Databases multiply the power of surveillance, making an environment where the individual may not know that computers have their information, but the computer may know who he/she is.

Finally, Poster observes how electronic writing separates the individual from the message, much like print technology allowing a message to be sent long distances and viewed by multiple people. Thus, like Derridas acknowledged, the problem becomes (mis)interpretation of the author's original meaning. With blogs, instant messaging, email, the writing moreover is less fixed and more interpreted through signage.

Discussion questions: How does Plant connect the concept of the cyberspace to the feminine? What specific attributes does he bring up to compare the two? Do you agree or disagree with them?

Can you think of any contemporary examples of women in technology similar to Lovelace and Hopper? Any contemporary examples of technology that replace people in a similar fashion to the automated loom?

What would Poster have to say about the influx of Facebooks and Myspaces on the Internet? Is it generally empowering or subordinating, and for whom?

Is it due to technological advancements and modernization that cultural rituals like the Fire Ceremony disappear or are their other reasons?

From the UW-Madison Offices of the Dean of Students: Toward a Bias-Free Campus

As we reflect on the various institutional and technological conduits of political communication in our present-day "information society" this week, and as we think about the constitutional results of Tuesday's election in Wisconsin, I would like to remind students that it is official UW-Madison policy to work toward "a bias-free campus." The Offices of the Dean of Students encourages all UW-Madison students to "Explore & Appreciate Diversity" and suggests some good ways of doing so:

Take time to reflect on your own biases and stereotypes. Accept responsibility for your prejudices and behavior.

Broaden your horizons by regularly attending the many lectures, conferences and events that the campus has to offer. Stretch yourself beyond the familiar.

Ask a librarian for the histories and biographies of people different than yourself. Relate their histories and experiences to your own.

Listen to the evening news as if you had a different skin color, sexual orientation or gender. Notice what would be relevant to you.

Listen to music from another culture. Share it with others.

Participate in ongoing training and workshops that focus on eliminating racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of discrimination.

Attend an event where you are a minority. Take friends along to the many programs at the Multicultural Student Center.

Watch films and TV programs by and about people of different backgrounds and experience.

Report incidents of harassment to an on-call Assistant Dean in Student Advocacy & Judicial Affairs (263-5700 or dean@odos.wisc.edu).

Don't tolerate racist, sexist or homophobic remarks or "jokes." Speak up!

New field of "Web Science"

From an article today in the New York Times:

The Web has become such a force in commerce and culture that a group of leading university researchers now deems it worthy of its own field of study.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Southampton in Britain plan to announce today that they are starting a joint research program in Web science.

Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the Web’s basic software, is leading the program. An Oxford-educated Englishman, Mr. Berners-Lee is a senior researcher at M.I.T., a professor at the University of Southampton and the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, an Internet standards-setting organization.

Web science, the researchers say, has social and engineering dimensions. It extends well beyond traditional computer science, they say, to include the emerging research in social networks and the social sciences that is being used to study how people behave on the Web. And Web science, they add, shifts the center of gravity in engineering research from how a single computer works to how huge decentralized Web systems work.

“The Web isn’t about what you can do with computers,” Mr. Berners-Lee said. “It’s people and, yes, they are connected by computers. But computer science, as the study of what happens in a computer, doesn’t tell you about what happens on the Web.”

Group 6: Initial references

Theme: Wikipedia vs Academic Authority

Group#6 has started putting together the project webpage. To draw connect ions with our theme, we are doing the project itself in the 'Wiki' format. At our project page, the reference list is being constantly and collaboratively updated.
Click to go to the project main page with the initial reference list:

http://capcold.net/wiki/wiki.php/group6_main

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Note to class: Having started out, everyone in our group agrees that the Wiki method is very easy and efficient for a collaborative project like this. It's convenient to accumulate the material anytime anywhere, and build the 'final' webpage at the same time. If any group would like to try it out as well, feel free to visit my site (http://capcold.net/wiki) and build your own project page. If you would like to, but are not familiar with creating and editing Wiki-pages, let me know and I'll guide you through in 3 minutes (yes, it's that easy).

blog the vote response

A friend of mine came over for dinner last night and we got to talking about the upcoming elections. She reads Newsweek, jokes about being attached to “old media” and wonders who the bloggers really are. I admit, although I read some blogs, I don’t read political blogs much. And so when she asked, would I recommend to her some political blogs to read, so she could know what the H---was going on…well, I didn’t have much to give her. So I’ve sent her the link to the NOW program (close enough to old media to make her comfortable).

I think one reason I don’t read political blogs is that the ones I know about can all be classified as unabashedly “left” or “right.” I suppose if people are going to be passionate enough about politics to blog, they’ll probably fall on extreme ends of our political spectrum, but I am dissatisfied with the “preaching to the choir” aspects of political blogs. I see Kos’s point that it’s all preaching to the choir, and that getting “offline” is the way to get beyond that, but I think that facts and a critical stance are sacrificed to incendiary or empty rhetoric when one is writing to people who share beliefs. For instance, the “well, we all know Bush is an idiot” joke that passes for political commentary in my classes and on blogs is a travesty of critical, political engagement, but it’s the norm on left-leaning blogs. Anyone have any smart, critically engaged political blogs to recommend?

blog the vote response

I do not know much about American politics and election, but this video clip is really interesting and, as Chelsey pointed out, does show the power of blogging in providing information and motivating people to participate in elections (of course as well as other social and political activities). This is a perfect example of blogs as public spheres and the idea of Web 2.0. I think one of my questions is: in this video, 'left-leaning' political bloggers (the subjects of this news story) are only a group of people with similar political opinions – they are not the only group who do political blogs. Then how about other groups of bloggers? Are there any problems about 'fragmentation', 'flaming', or irrational discourses that Papacharissi talks about in Chapter 26? It will be more interesting if we can see other sides of the story.