David's CHS 202 Blog - Clemson University

Today in class, we discussed the first chapter of the new book we are reading by David Weinberger: Small Pieces Loosely Joined. The book, which is a social commentary discusses some of the more revolutionary features of the web in a non-typical, non-linear fashion. The first chapter of the book makes some observations on the phenomenon of people assuming identities on the web. Rather than act like they might in real life as they talk to others through Instant Messenging or in creating web pages, web users actually 'try out' new identities, or even ideas, on the web. I have to confess that I have been a person to try out new thoughts and identities in the faceless realm of the web. In chat rooms, as a kid, I sometimes admitted to being older than I really was, just so the older, 'cooler' people would even carry on a conversation with me. Sometimes, when talking to friends of mine from everyday life, I would find myself saying things that I probably never would say to their faces - some good, and some bad. After awhile of doing this, I realized it probably wasn't making me a very strong person in terms of real-world social skills and decided I needed to establish a policy of not saying things through AIM that I would not be willing to say to a person's face. It's much easier to hide behind your words in any mode of communication that does not allow for the communicants to observe the other's body language, facial features, etc. For some, that can create major social problems - perhaps I shall get more into that in a later blog...if I ever get around to it!

Before I began this class, my daily interaction with computers had already begun to raise some questions about the origin of the World Wide Web. Some of these questions have already been answered in this short period since school has started. For example, I used to wonder how the World Wide Web could have been created or even after it's creation, continue to function coherently with no governing body or single ruling organization. However, in reading this book by Tim Berners-Lee, I have since discovered that, in a sense, there is a body that deals with the development of the World Wide Web: the World Wide Web Consortium or W3C for short. I think the fact that I have not previously heard of the Consortium is testament to its goal of remaining at the forefront of web development without actually controlling the web or affecting those who use it socially and commercially. For me, it is comforting to know there is a body out there composed of (as far as I can tell) people who desire to create the World Wide Web to be a source of seamless, instantaneous collaboration between users. These people follow the beliefs of founder and visionary Tim Berners-Lee and do not desire to profit from their work. This is as evidenced by their "open-source" policy for any and all code that they write. Anyone who wishes to edit or manipulate their code can do so by visiting their website and copying the code for their own personal use. I recommend this book to anyone interested in playing a small part in the future development of the WWW, because in many of the later chapters, Berners-Lee presents his own ideas on where the web will go from here, probably in the hope that an aspiring programmer will make his idea into reality!

Today in class a grou presented some of the main ideas of anti-technology as well as one of the largest groups advocating it. A link to a site created by the project members is found here: http://people.clemson.edu/~cbaber/anticomputing.html. Following their presentation, members of the class joined in groups to discuss the pros and cons of technology, and then we shared our ideas as a whole. Since I spent most of my time trying to focus on hearing what others were saying, I didn't have much of a chance to express my own views, until one came spilling out towards the end of the period. I find it kind of hard to believe that some people (not our class) can say that all technology or even a little is bad for society. People focus mainly on the "damaging effects" of technology such as Xboxes or computers and give little thought to the other smaller pieces of technology, such as a hearing aid. As a hearing impaired member of society, my well-being is directly connected to an instrument of technology, my hearing aid. Should I have been born in the 1800s, I would have not been able to learn to speak or listen to other people, and would thus be trapped in the mind of a one year old while possessing an 18 year old body. Hearing aids are an important byproduct of technological advance, and they have made a world of difference to me by unlocking things that would otherwise be impossible to do with no hearing. As long as I find myself dependent on this critical piece of technology, I cannot rightfully say that technology is damaging. While I am wary of the overexcesses of technology making us incompetent or lazy, I do believe there is a fundamental need for enabling technologyies such as a hearing aid or prosthetic leg.

I was flipping through a recent copy of the New York Times and noticed these headlines: "Bob Evans, 77, Helped I.B.M. Transforms Data Processing." A quick scan of the article revealed that Evans was an important computer engineer who had just recently died. I figured that since I had just completed a book on the history of computers that I could probably recognize this guy's contributions, if not the actual person. Turns out, he was a computer scientist who led the development of the 360 class of I.B.M. mainframes that helped the company become a leader in data-processing machines. It was Evans who convinced the chairman of I.B.M. (Thomas Watson) to make the critical decision of refocusing all of I.B.M.'s resources towards the development of this class of mainframes. Despite the fact that I.B.M. was already successful by the day's standards in computing, Watson chose to follow the advice of his engineer, and the rest became history. As we read the book by Campbell-Kelly and Aspray, we learned that the early (and even present) age of computer entrepreneurship consisted largely of being in the right place at the right time and possessing a little luck as well. Evans provided this spark at I.B.M., and his contribution cannot be overlooked this year as we mark the 4oth anniversary of the 360 class of mainframes which he developed.

I would post a link to this article on the web, but it cannot be seen unless you are a registered member of nytimes.com. Should you wish to view it anyway, you can register at NY Times and search for the title of the article as it appears above on Sept. 8, 2004.

Last week those of us who've never had any computer programming experience were paired up with those who had some or a lot of experince. There wasn't any real agenda, just a chance for people to scratch the surface of the vast world of programming. While I was familiar with having to type lines and commands from my earlier days as a child with MS DOS, I was not prepared at all for the incredible difficulty of having to type every single command for the computer to follow.

One thing that Jerry (the guy I had to pair up with) showed us was called a program of his called a raytracer that created some pretty nice visuals with cool optical effects, etc, all created by some mathematical formulas. Also, he showed us the code for a basic game (I think it was pretty similar to asteroids where you have a triangular vehicle and you just try to shoot down asteroids, spaceships and whatever else you might run across in space) and showed how manipulating the code could affect the performance of the game. For example, he removed a part of the code that erased the pixels of the spaceship's previous location...this in turn caused the spaceship to leave a 'footprint' of its previous location that never went away. Eventually, the whole screen was covered in the white trail left behind by the spaceship's pixels not being cleared and we had to start over. I never even thought that a person would have to think of all of these little things to make a simple game to run...can't imagine how difficult it would be to get a game like Age of Empires, etc to work! Oh well, that's all for now, will post later!