Gina Reflections

Final Post

2006-05-24T11:40:00.000-07:00

What is the most important thing you learned in this course? Why?

The most important thing I learned in this course was being more aware of people in third world countries and even rural people in my own country. I kinda knew that third world populations would have dramatically lower accessibility rates but I didn't know that it was so dramatic in rural America. This is important to critical thinking skills when analying information or studying communications. We all filter based on our own socioeconomic status, age, ethnicity, etc. but when we try to keep ourselves open to all options, we can then start to grasp solutions or help bigger problems.

What would you like to have had more time to study? Why?

I would have liked to have more time to study the effects of technology on society; specifically electronic communication. Having a slight interest in sociology, I would have liked to also covered some research on what sociologists think the impact means for our race in the future.

Also, being an avid gamer I would have liked to have covered online games just like text messaging since it's a new, growing trend.

What topic was the least interesting to you? Why?

The open source software movement was least interesting to me because I didn't see the practical benefit of using such programs like Linux now. Perhaps when it becomes more user friendly, but until then, it seems like a non issue for an UW student.

Reflection #8

2006-05-22T11:55:00.000-07:00

Article #1 "How VoIP Works" By Robert Valdes

After reading this article, I just love VoIP. :P I didn't know it was totally free... Next, I 'm gonna go to www.skype.com and download some free VoIP software. I wonder why everyone doesn't just switch. I know I have been frustrated with phone companies and their charges before so using VoIP to by pass them would be awesome. But, if I were a phone company, I would hate VoIP because it would take more business away which equals less money!

My prediction of VoIP on cable and telephone networks is that they will cease to exist perhaps by 2020. The easiest way to use VoIP is to call computer-to-computer. (You just need the software, microphone, speakers, a sound card, and internet connection.) Most VoIP offer features like caller ID, call waiting, etc. for free that phone companies charge for.

I think the pros outweigh the cons and the cons can even be worked on.

Reflection #7

2006-05-15T15:32:00.000-07:00

Article #1: "Wireless Revolution and Universal Access" from Trends in Telecommunications Reform 2003 by Michael L. Best, MIT (nd) [PDF]

This article touches on an issue I am becoming very interested in; accessibility of Wi-Fi for the developing world. Everyone likes to think of the world wide web as being just that-a world wide web but in reality, it's not yet. This article expresses the idea to grant universal access by using small entrepreneurs to provide internet by transmitting on unlicensed radio frequencies. But in order to make universal access profitable, three innovations have to occur.

1- New and low-cost technologies (especially terrestrial wireless infrastructure)
2- Micro and small enterprises that provide locally tailored value-added services
3- Supportive public policy

I think that this approach/concept is quite a ways off in the future. The reason why I think this is because most people are not concerned with helping rural/low income populations. The core group of people who have lots of power don't seem jumping for joy on this idea. It's not like we don't have the technology to create universal access already... :) Things like uneducation, discrimination, hegemony, and socioeconomic status hinder universal access in my opinion.

Discussion Questions:
* Why hasn't universal access happened yet?
* How do you think people can create policies for accessibility standards?
* Does hegemony prevent universal access from completely happening?

In-Class Cantwell vs. McGavick Exercise

2006-05-11T12:33:00.000-07:00

Maria Cantwell's website was pleasing to my eye with good colors and layout. The blue and green theme was more appealing than McGavric's red, white and blue theme. When I try to find Maria's position on issues there is no organized link to separate each issue. There is one large textual essay which mentions Maria's stance on some issues. The best facet of Maria's website is how inviting it is. The site makes it easy for citizens to get involved or provide their information. The photo gallery is almost like a myspace gallery. I could find Maria's position on the issue of the environment but I wish it went deeper into each issue separately somewhere in the site. McGavric's explaination was more thorough.

McGavric's website was very cheesy and almost looked like pop up ads were coming at me. But the link to issues was great. The issues were organized and the environment had it's on section. Even a link to a video of a speech pertaining to the environment. However, it was easier to get lost in his site. It didn't seem inviting to a citizen to become as involved as Cantwell's site. But it was the most "high tech" and even had its own blog.

In the end, I trust Maria Cantwell more than Mike McGavric. This opinion might be biased on the fact that I am a female and also because my boyfriend is pursuing biotech as his career but it is also based on how the websites communicated to me that I am important as a citizen.

In Class Lab Assignment Part #2

2006-05-08T23:33:00.000-07:00

I choose www.seattletimes.com and www.pbs.org because I am already a registered user of the Seattle Times and I like PBS on TV. The Seattle Times site does require registration to read archive articles but not front page articles. Clicking on their RSS link, they have adopted RSS a LOT. They have RSS feeds ranging from Business to Travel to Health to the Arts. The stories range from biotech (my boyfriends field) to the Huskies to Wine to Microsoft. A total of 17 RSS links are currently listed. They are no linked blogs on the Seattle Times website to access. The PBS site also has RSS feeds. It did not prompt me to register to view front page articles/reviews of shows. Their RSS feeds included "FRONTLINE-Public affairs documentaries that don't shy away from complex stories or controversial issues", "NerdTV-A weekly online series from PBS.org technology columnist Robert X. Cringely, interviewing guests from the world of technology" (my favorite), and "Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly-News coverage and analysis of religion and ethics" just to name a few. PBS currently has 22 RSS feeds. PBS is sponsering blogs from their site. 3 to be exact; www.typepad.com, www.squarespace.com, and www.apple.com/smallbusiness/store/. RSS readers collect feeds into one place that you can manage and this organization is impacting mainstream media more and more. As we learned in class, the blogosphere has direct impact on what inflitrates mainstream media. Didn't have time to post part 2.

I visited www.technorati.com and found 1,166 posts containing "Steven Colbert". Using the quotes searching for his name as a whole. When I sorted by truthiness, I found 0 blogs and when I sorted by funny stuff, I found 0 blogs. Until I changed the authority slider, then I found lots. :)

Then I searched for "online games" and found 15,959 blogs so then I changed my search to "MMORPG addiction" and found awesome 51 posts.
I am going to use the following blogs:
*Why do 6 million people play World Of Warcraft ? Posted by Ali on July 30th 2005
*"This world will be shutting down in 1 minute. Please log out." Posted by Les
*The gifts that keep on giving? Daily Life, 333 words Posted by: Roulette
*Substitute For Crack

After checking www.blogcritics.org I saw that I found more authoritative blogs than on www.technorati.com.

Reflection #6

2006-05-08T14:22:00.000-07:00

Article #1: "Organization Man: Joe Trippi Reinvents Campaigning" from The New Republican Online by Noem Scheiber (10 November 2003) http://tinyurl.com/3leu3

This article, which made me register to view it, opened with a funny story from 1983. I think it was so cool how they were in a panic and made their buses look like supporters of the opposite political group thus taking most of their tickets. LMAO! :P

Trippi's logic was undeniable. I mean, come on... Lemonade in 100 degree weather. :) Grin. But in the end, society has to act. Millions of people can access a website or blog but how many will show up on election day? It's hard enough to get American's to act on their own health concerns, imagine political concerns...

In the 90's, information technology has really helped narrow down the demographics of groups so that they can be targeted. This seems to be the most effective was to influence politics.

Article #2: “The Role of the Internet in National and Local News Media Use” from Journal of Online Behavior (2003) http://www.behavior.net/JOB/v1n3/riedel.html

This article/study showed how the internet news sources predict national political knowledge well but leaves out the local political knowledge because the audience is so wide. The solution of course it to have news sources consumed more locally but the flipside would be getting enough people to do this.

Since the statistics in the study show that over 90% of Americans regularly consume local newspapers in comparison to 13% who do so on the internet, getting that 90% to have internet access to their local newspapers is where I think politicians should turn to.

Discussion Questions:
*How soon will America vote online? Explain.
*Which news source is most regularly read and why is this important to politicians?
*As each generation becomes more computer/internet capable, will print media eventually take the back seat to political campaigns? How so?

In Class Lab Assignment

2006-05-04T12:54:00.000-07:00

Reflection Discussion Questions

2006-05-04T12:50:00.000-07:00

Forgot to post these with the blog...

Discussion Questions:

*Will the trend of radio squash out stations that don't podcast?

*Is podcasting the new open source software movement? And, if so, how will it contribute to democracy?

*Can a monopoly form to control most radio stations and their podcasts?

Reflection #5

2006-05-01T13:20:00.000-07:00

Week 6 Reflection:

Article “Will NPR's podcasts birth a new business model for public radio?” from Online Journalism Review (29 Nov 2005) http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/051129glaser/

This article showed how NPR became a leading podcaster in just two months. I like the idea that NPR listened to the "people" because they wanted it, they got it. Because the public demanded portable audio, NPR birthed a new busniess model for public radio.

Podcast listeners like shorter content and the original content. Personally, I have no experience with podcasting and I am pretty resistant to change so I am going to continue to have no podcasting experience for a while... :) Hehe

I think the same type of business model can be applied to blogging technology/print media as we see in the second article:

Chapter 1, "From Tom Paine to Blogs and Beyond" from We the Media by Dan Gillmor (2004)

As we learned in class last week, monopolies are illegal. "The economics of newspaper publishing favored bigness, and local monopolies came about because, in most communities,
readers would support only one daily newspaper of any size." Those monopolies no longer exist. I also think blogging is breaking down journalistic hegemony.

Acccording to the article, "Newsrooms are becoming more diverse. Major media companies have launched or bought popular ethnic publications and broadcasters. But independent ethnic media has continued to grow in size, quality, and credibility: grassroots journalism ascendant."

Open sourcing the news has and continues to transform the industry. Our blogs that we are doing in this class are contributing to the "blogosphere." :)

Extra Credit Post

2006-04-24T14:22:00.000-07:00

Article "Social Software and the Politics of Groups" Week 5

I personally liked this article because is applies to my final project nicely. Online games is like a large, undirected chat room with options to emote in 3D, or send snail mail. This article shows me that social software is unique to the internet. The concept that we don't have to be in the same space or time to communicate fluidly has introduced new social patterns. For example, if you hanging out with some friends at the mall and you aren't having fun, you can't just leave but if you are online with them it's really easy to quit communication.

The only good experience I can think of with cool social software is Wikipedia. It's like a big encyclopedia created by everyone. At first the idea of anyone and everyone able to say whatever they like seems like failure is enevitable but Wikipedia works. It's kinda like how scholarly work is read by other scholars in the field and accepted or rejected.

My question:
* Is the trend of social software like Wikipedia going to surpass the conventional knowledge?

Reflection #4

2006-04-24T13:26:00.000-07:00

Week 5: Article "The GNU Manifesto", "The Second Superpower Rears it's Beautiful Head", "The Cluetrain Manifesto"

The "GNU Manifesto" article is my favorite article because I have never heard of GNU's before and after reading this article, I think it might be a great idea. The open source software movement is of particular interest to us as communication scholars and also as members of society. As communication scholars, we can study the effects of the movement and as a society we can benefit from the legal obtaining of software since many now obtain it illegally. I am sure many businesses might not see this as an overall solution but if businesses want support with their software, they can pay for it seperatly as the article brings out. The only part of this equation that seems less feasible is getting a tax on software to help with funding. This seems quite optimistical to me because government can be difficult. :)

This social movement or a "second superpower" focuses on the will of the people as the "The Second Superpower Rears it's Beautiful Head" article mentions. It reminds me that community can act MUCH faster than government. The internet creates global dialogue were ideas arise and if caught, get passed on. Patterns are created and PRESTO- a new form of deliberation has just happened. I think it's really cool how the individual can play such an important role in such a deliberation whereas that same individual can be more easily overlooked in governmental systems. "The Cluetrain Manifesto" is like taking ideas of networked markets and stating their positives out. I didn't care for the list of ideas instead of combining them into a more article format.

Discussion Questions:

* Do you think the pro's outweigh the con's of implementing an open source software movement?
* Because the internet has allowed communities to deliberate quickly, will the traditional democracy evolve to resemble the internet process?
* Will trends of GNU's become popular enough to happen by 2020?

Week 3 Reflection

2006-04-17T13:11:00.000-07:00

Reflection Week 3

Article 1 "Being Analog" (formerly published as Chapter 7 of The Invisible Computer) by Donald Norman (1997)

This article only slightly changed my pre-existing view of the man-machine relationship. I tend to see the line between man and machine growing more and more invisible. I feel we are starting to treat machines with respect as if they have feelings and starting to treat humans as if they are machines with no feelings. :)

In the subheading "Humans versus Computers", an interesting point is made about becoming a truly well-educated citizen. Each generation grows upon the heritage left behind by previous generations and while this advances us, it also sets us back. Time increases the amount to be learned and while it takes us several decades now, how long will it take us in the future?

My favorite example in this article is when it askes us "How many animals of each type did Moses take on the Ark?" Yes, I totally fell for it, Moses wasn't on the Ark-Noah was. But our human brains saw the INTENDED question not the technical question the way a computer would.

Taylor invented the concept of scientific management which lent to humans being treated like machines and in my opinion has unfortunately lent a strong foundation to American work that is difficult to look past even now. But we know people are people-not machines.

Even though this article is almost a decade old, I think most of its content is still very applicable to us today especially because human logic has not changed. (In the greater issue of nature versus nuture, I usually tend to side with the nuture point of view.)

Article 2 "Introduction to Internet Architecture and Institutions" from Berkman Center for Internet and Society by Ethan Zuckerman and Andrew McLaughin (Aug 2003)

I didn't like this article as much as the first one but it brought out some ah-ha's for me concerning the "behind-the-scenes" internet cooperation. There were lots of acronyms but they did a great job at explaining them with the use of examples/analogies. Already knowing about TCP/IP, I found the information on routers pretty cool.

Using the example of two guys just sending an email to eachother around the globe and then disecting the process held the ideas of packets being sent back and forth cohesively for me. But overall, I found this article on the dry side in comparison to the first.

Discussion Questions:
* How long will it take us to be a "truly well-educated citizen" in 50 years? 100 years? Justify.
* Do you think Taylorism has helped mankind overall? Explain.
* What can we actively do to separate man and machine but still have effecient work accomplished?

Week 2

2006-04-11T13:24:00.000-07:00

COM 300 Week 2 Reflection

Article #1: "We Have the Information You Want, But Getting It Will Cost You: Being Held Hostage by Information Overload" by Mark Nelson It's interesting to me that even though technology has advanced this far, we still don't have the tools to support resource identification effectively. It's because the quantity of available information has increased SO rapidly that we haven't been able to keep up. I wonder if we ever will... When looking for information, if you don't use the right tools, you never see applicable information. When doing homework I used to use Google to search but came up with SO much information that it was overwhelming instead of helpful. I become more search savvy as my education at UW has increased. Using the libraries online tools has really made my life easier. Even learning simple search symbols like "" or using "and/or" has been helpful.

This article has really shocking statistics like every day 20,000,000 works of technical information is being recorded (probably way more today). It goes on to point out that VOLUME is the "big" (ha-pun) problem with information overload. Of course we can't forget about accuracy, literacy, usability, and trends. I was already pretty familiar with the above areas especially for trends as I mentioned the symbols used in searches earlier. This paper is pretty outdated with its earlist source being in the early 1990's.

Dicussion Questions:
-How can you avoid information overload especially when using the internet?
-Will be we ever have effective tools to support resource identification?

Article #2: "Information Overload, Retrieval Strategies and Internet User Empowerment" by Christopher Carlson This article focuses on the need to improve individual information retrieval skills... According to Carlson, instead of trying to improve search engine's technical capabilities, the user should empower themselves. I agree and disagree with this idea. I agree that everyone should try and increase their literacy and reduce their anxiety but I do not think that we should stop trying to improve search engine's technical capablities.

Understanding how search engines work in general and where their databases come from is first. Then, knowing how PARTICULAR search engines work will optimize retrieval results since differenent search engines employ different tools. For example, Yahoo's search engine varies in comparison to MSN's search engine. Carlson's statistics are more recent than Nelson's and my favorite was that over 150 hours per year is wasted on looking for lost information. I know I would rather spend that time doing other things: shopping, dancing, playing WOW... Hehe. :)

Discussion Questions:
-The obvious-What is information overload?
-Where should the line be drawn for excessive technology based solutions?
(moved on 11 april)

Week 1

2006-04-11T13:23:00.000-07:00

Reflection #1:

This week's readings were very interesting and my favorite would have to be Cannevar Bush's "As We May Think" partly because it was written decades ago and partly because it's so ironic that his "memex" is a great comparison to the idea of how information is connected on the internet and seen today. For an article of it's time, he used some really applicable analogies to how the human race has evolved over time and used knowledge/information to progress that we can glean from. For example, in Section 7 when he describes how "searching" for information in memex would work. Say you were interested in the origin/properties of the bow and arrow; specifically why the short Turkish bow was apaprently better in combat than the English long bow. Well, when the encyclopedia pops up an article, he can then open up another article and link them together. After this is done, he can return and see his linked information on this topic. Building this trail of interest reminds me of bookmarking site on the internet and compiling them in a folder.

In "Networks of Remediation" from Remediation: Understanding New Media by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, they discuss how society had different feelings/opinions about each of these. While some viewed the advancement of such technologies as positive leaps others viewed it as pitfalls for negativity. Taking some sociology classes in the past, this article seems like a sociological study of how different cultures emerged into such different groups. (BTW, this reading was difficult because the pages were slightly confusing to read on PDF since it was sideways sometimes.)

In "Technologies of the Third Mediamorphosis" from Mediamorphosis: Understanding New Media by Roger Fidler, he gives a historical timeline using electricity, computers, wireless communication, radio/tv media, etc. as landmarks. In the second half of the chapter, he describes how the internet shifted in the 80's because the military gave control to civilians. Now we have an uncensored, free internet that shapes relationships/networks. Probably, the most interesting/shocking idea Fidler talks about to me is how extremely long it takes to really move on from old technologies. For example, the telegraph lasted 150 years before the telephone and modern digital telecommunication networks finally appropriated the remaining niches. And yet, still to this day, telegraph key and Morse code are still used worldwide. I would just think to ditch it completely and move on! :P

The extra credit article, The Internet: A Short History of Getting Connected from the Federal Communications Commission was a pretty dry read. The FCC has published a few links that highlight aspects of the "more recent history of the Internet and recognizes some of the Internet's key inventions/inventors." Full of acronyms, I found the most useful bits on the home usage since 1993. Apparently, large institutions, governments, and businesses have found it economically worthwhile to pay for high-speed connections for most of the past forty years while American homes didn't. I remember growing up with 56 k modems operating over public phone lines and I would have to use the internet when my parents were off the phone. However, recently introduced broadband products offer households the possibility of getting access to a bit more of the bandwidth and connection speed actually available on the Internet. ("Access to broadband began in 1996, when Rogers Communications introduced the first cable modem service in Canada.")

(moved on 11 april)

No longer a "blog" virgin... :P

2006-03-28T12:46:00.000-08:00

I am pretty internet savvy with multiple email accounts, a myspace page, MSN/Yahoo/ICQ messengers, but I never seem attracted to blogging. I wonder if I'll like this or not...