Jeremy's Student Blog: November 2005

Sunday, November 27, 2005

Blog Essay: Final words

Technology is richly defined amongst my circle as a collection of systems or devices that has been designed for the advancement of society through innovation. All those who responded agree that implementing technology within society has some serious pitfalls but most issues can be mitigated if not avoided through education and responsible use.

Blog Essay: Highlighting what others thought about technology

The following links are the full text responses to the questions I posited in my email interviews.

Kelly
Jim
Krysta
Peter
Hannah

Q 1 Interesting points: The personal definitions of technology varied widely among each person. Some included such specifics as technological development is based on principles of science, technology is devised through systematic application of knowledge, technology is a system or device that embodies some improvements, and/or technology is an expression of mechanical innovations.

Q 2 : Kelly is optimistic about technology being the embodiment of a society's attempts to better itself. Everyone else expresses slightly skeptical view of technological innovations not functioning as purported by the innovators or highlights that new technologies can be dangerous as they may be abused.

Q 3 : Agreement exist in that everyone interviewed believes that almost every technology can be abused to the detriment of society but all are also optimistic that the possible loses are outweighed often by the improvements gained through the implementation of new technologies.

Q 4 : The theme from all responses gravitates towards the incorporation of recent advancements of knowledge and time/labor saving efficiency in high tech. Low tech. is considered older and sometimes considered more reliable.

Q 5 : Almost everyone felt occasionally frustrated with using some technologies and traced their frustrations to lack of familiarity and the expenditure of time to gain a working familiarity. Peter expresses that although any of his frustrations with technology have been insignificant he has been frustrated when he has had dealings with people who are frustrated with or fearful of technology.

Q 6 : Energy production (includes heating houses for cats), user friendly design, and those technologies which benefit all humanity in general were mentioned as needing improved.

Blog Essay: Answering my own questions.

1.) What is your working definition of technology?

I define technology as anything that was developed through a broad range of processes into a tool to be employed in further processes to solve a particular problem

2.) What are your feelings towards technology?

I am very ambivalent in my feelings concerning technology. The technological is a large source of frustration for me and also an outlet for my own creative entertainment.

3.) What technologies do you think are a benefit to society? Why? What technologies do you think are a detriment to society? Why? Are there any technologies that you think are both beneficial and detrimental to society? Why?
image of a stop sign

I think that stop signs are a technology that has a profound benefits for individual members of society that use them. My reasoning is that if people did not use them horrendous accidents would occur with far greater frequency. I personally think that advertisements are a detriment in that they sap productivity by distracting people from more important matters. It is my opinion that most technologies are both beneficial and detrimental to society based on whether not they are used responsibly by an educated populace. Condoms for instance are one such technology, they protect people from themselves when used properly, however their use may embolden people to follow a path of abuse such as infidelity, rape, and other misuses of sex. Responsible use of any technology is highly dependent on education of the issues that surround a particular technology which is why I feel that education in general is extremely important and needs to start as early as possible.

4.) What to you is the distinction between high technology and low technology? What are some examples of each that you have used and why were you using it? How do you think people valuate high technology and low technology? Is one better than the other for any reason? How do your feelings vary when you when you compare your feelings about high technology to your feelings about low technology?
image of an

image of cell phone as reflected in two mirrors

I think the distinction between high technology and low technology is directly related to the amount of knowledge one must possess to produce it and use it properly. I regularly use computers, cars, cellular phones, and other high tech. devices that require a fairly high amount of background knowledge to use to the fullest of their capability. I also use many simple low tech. tools such as wheeled carts, knives, forks, and the like regularly which most folks can figure out just be observing someone else using it for a moment. I use almost all these technologies in my pursuit to do my job as a computer support consultant as efficiently as possible. I think that people sometimes over valuate high technology as sometimes something low tech. could serve the same purpose more simply and more efficiently but they choose to use a high tech. solution because it is available. I don't think one is particularly better than the other but each individual technology whether high or low has it's own set of conditions for effective application. I feel that high tech. is more frustrating to deal with due to the need for continuing education in order to use it effectively.
image of a fork and knife

5.) What technologies have you felt uncomfortable/frustrated with using? How familiar with that particular technology were you? Do you think your familiarity, or lack of familiarity, impacts how comfortable you feel using the technology? Were there other factors involved besides familiarity that made you uncomfortable? Have you continued to use the technology? If so have you become more comfortable with using whatever caused your to be uncomfortable in the first place?
image of me standing puzzled in front of a copier

image of me standing puzzled in front of a copier

I've often felt uncomfortable using copier machines and I think it is because I am very unfamiliar with copiers. I'm certain that my lack of familiarity negatively impacts my confidence in using them properly. I also feel exposed and self-concious due to the fact that copiers are often in public rooms and are often in high demand. Also nothing to me is more embarrassing that having to ask for help concerning a copier as a computer support person. I feel that if I know so much about operating computers which are a particularly complex technology I should be able to make easy use of copiers since they are relatively less complex. I've continued to use copiers and I've come to be a little more confident and familiar with their nuances; but I'm still nervous that I'm going to accidently enter a command that tells it to make way to many copies or make my copies unreadable.

6.) What technologies do you think are most important to you for developers to improve? Why?

I personally feel that all energy production and transmission technologies need to improve drastically. I feel that the fate of our nation relies on finding better ways to power our industry and technology that supports our way of life. Our country is too dependent on foreign sources for energy producing products and I believe that the costs are far greater than any other problem our country currently faces. "Necessity never made a good bargain" ~ Ben Franklin

Friday, November 25, 2005

Blog Essay: Technology

Ever since I was very young technology has been intriguing to me. I've played with as many devices as I can find and get my hands on, torn them apart, put them back together. I know what technology means to me but I don't know what it means to the folks around me. In this essay I intend to explore other people's ideas concerning technology. I will interview individuals some in person and some via email concerning their experiences and feelings concerning technology.

~Below is a copy of the email I've sent to some of my friends and aquaintances. I'd love for you to answer the questions yourself if you have time. Just leave a comment with the question number before each answer. Thank you.

OSUJeremy Technology Interviews.

I’m interested in knowing what you think about technology. I am intending to post this interview of a sort in my class blog at osujeremy.blogspot.com . I will be posting your responses to my blog for a grade along with my own technology related musings in the form of an essay. The essay is due November 27th so if you please get back to me by the 26th. No worries if you can’t I realize it is short notice so I’ve sent this to a lot of people in the hopes that someone will get back to me by the deadline. If you can’t get back to me by then I’m still interested to know what you think. I just won’t include it in my essay. I expect that answering the following should take no more than an hour. No need to write your own essay. Some folks I’m not giving the luxury of self-directed writing. I’m interviewing them in person and expect to spend no more than an hour with each. But by all means go nuts if it is your persuasion. I’m glad to inspire reflective thinking wherever I can.

I know this ain’t like I’m asking for a cup of sugar. It is quite a lot to ask and I want to thank you very much in advance for your help. Thank you and Happy Holidays.

Jeremy

Please answer the following and email them to me at *EMAIL EDITED OUT FOR SAKE OF SPAM AVOIDANCE* or visit my blog http://osujeremy.blogspot.com/ and leave a comment filled with your answers:

1.) What is your working definition of technology?

2.) What are your feelings towards technology?

3.) What technologies do you think are a benefit to society? Why? What technologies do you think are a detriment to society? Why? Are there any technologies that you think are both beneficial and detrimental to society? Why?

4.) What to you is the distinction between high technology and low technology? What are some examples of each that you have used and why were you using it? How do you think people valuate high technology and low technology? Is one better than the other for any reason? How do your feelings vary when you when you compare your feelings about high technology to your feelings about low technology?

5.) What technologies have you felt uncomfortable/frustrated with using? How familiar with that particular technology were you? Do you think your familiarity, or lack of familiarity, impacts how comfortable you feel using the technology? Were there other factors involved besides familiarity that made you uncomfortable? Have you continued to use the technology? If so have you become more comfortable with using whatever caused your to be uncomfortable in the first place?

6.) What technologies do you think are most important to you for developers to improve? Why?

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Song of the moment.

My musical inspiration for the moment is "Where is the Love" by the Black Eyed Peas. It was brought to mind as I read This blog post. I left a not-so-nice comment and started a flame war. Go me. BEES! BEES! AHHHHH! BEEES! *cough* n/m. I'd do it again too... Perhaps the reason why I'm a little crazy is because I'm driven to it by people like this guy?

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

A smile.

I'm down. It sucks. My mind is a thousand places but where I am at the moment. It is amazing what one smile can do to a person though.... I was driving home and I stopped for someone to cross and they smiled and waved at me. A complete stranger just made my day just that little bit more bearable. Danke you sweet, smiling, anonymous pedestrian. You remind me of why I think it is important that I smile and perform such small kindnesses that can have a great impact on folks who are feeling a bit downtrodden.

It is times like these I observe daily interactions between people. Friends talking, random people walking, and all the small negotiations I take for granted or ignore usually. I guess it might be weird but it is comforting to me to just sit and observe folks meandering their way through a public space. Watching folks silently negotiating paths around each other and still other folks recognizing each other and pausing for a moment to share a few words. I just fade into the scene and become part of the background.

I need a good meal and a good night sleep. Peace. Out.

Saturday, November 12, 2005

Sony Ericsson w800

Last week I purchased a new phone and had been awaiting its arrival. I purchased the Sony Ericsson w800 walkman phone. It was mentioned a few weeks ago on Digital Life TV.

As soon as it got here I totally geeked out over it. It is a little phone with some very powerful features.

Features at a Glance

2 MegaPixel Camera + Light
Video recording + Playback
Mobile Internet
Mp3 Playback
FM Radio Tuner
External Memory Slot(proprietary Sony Memory Stick Duo)
Bluetooth wireless
Infrared port

I am extremely impressed with the amount of time and thought that was put into designing this phone.

The pictures are clear and have good color. The light cleanly illuminates and doesn't wash out colors. Night mode slows the exposure down for dark situations. Overall I think the camera is excellent and could work as a stand alone device. It has three special shoot modes panorama, frames and burst. Panorama you can line up three pictures into one long picture. Frames is kinda goofy, I think it is dumb, all it does it pull up a picture frame like you see at carnivals. Burst mode is extremely cool it takes four pictures in very rapid succession for action shots. The light is also useable as a flashlight and it also is programmed to blink out SOS. Crazy. I took the following picture with the camera feature. Please click on the picture to view the full size.

The Video recording is novel to me but not all that impressive. It is really low resolution.

I couldn't play with mobile internet decided not to spring for the ability that feature yet and even if I did it wouldn't work(more on why this wouldn't work later).

Mp3 playback is clear and doesn't slow down or get jittery while using camera or video. Which means the phone has the processing power to handle both operations simultaneously without loss of quality. Impressive. Another extremely nice quality is that I can use any headphones I want. The hands-free cord has a standard 1/8th audio plug. Or I can just have it play through the phones speakerphone which is still very clear it just sounds a little flat compared to a real radio speaker.

FM Radio Tuner. Freaking sweet addition. However I don't like that fact that it uses the hands free cord as an antenna. Means I have to have it plugged in in order to listen to the radio. But my disappointment is tempered by the fact that I'd usually be listening to it via the headphones through the hands free cord any way.

The Sony proprietary memory sticks are ok as far as proprietary crap goes. It is where I can save all my pictures, movies, and mp3s. I can also stick that memory into my computer and transfer things back and forth between the devices. Which is extremely cool because other phones you had to buy special cables or use their internet services to transfer things to yourself and it was painfully slow and costly. It came with 512mb of space and I think that is ok as a standard but it can handle a 2gb stick without problem.

Bluetooth is sickeningly awesome. I can transfer contacts, calendar info, pictures, movies, internet connections, and remote control my computer. Yes, thats right I can control my computers mouse pointer and activate a limited number of keys with my cell. phone through Bluetooth. Who needs a presenter mouse when you have a cell. phone. Sweet!

Infrared is kinda neat. I can do most things that bluetooth can do with the exception of remote control. That kinda disappointed me because I expected that I could program my phones infrared to work with my television's infrared remote. But alas Bluetooth left my expectations to high. Oh well.

With all that said this phone is something I might compare to a swiss army knife of portable technology. It is extremely cool, way geeky, and basically made me very geek-giddy.

Final Summation

PRO's
Swiss Army Knife of Portable Tech. and absolutely geeklicious.

Con's
EXPENSIVE
Only one US cell. phone provider supports it and that is T-mobile. THIS IS A BIG CON at the moment....

On a unrelated note. T-Mobile has completely dropped the ball. I put in for a phone number transfer and a new account on Friday and I still don't have service as of this moment. I've called support and went through 1, 2, 3, and am currently dealing with the 4th tier of Support HAA! AAH AAH AAH(In my best sesame st. Count impression) I'm told that usually the switch takes like 15-20 minutes. T-mobile's automated account management would instead for me lock my account from activation(absolutely nothing to do with the phone) and there is something wrong with it to a point that nobody in tiers 1-3 can fix it and that their system for creating new users is "experiencing technical difficulties". So now I'm waiting for an "Engineer" to contact me to tell me "It should be working now" via another line. Unfortunately, I do not have another phone line. My cell. phone is my only method for vocal communication at an extended range. For the moment my neighbor is graciously letting me borrow one of her 2.4ghz cordless house phones. Danke neighbor. No long distance calls... I promise. Scout's honor.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Facebook.com

Last week I looked at FaceBook.Com, I was unsure what I was looking at and how it worked. My first impression was that it was kind of interesting but I wasn't sure if it was worthwhile to maintain an account. I decided I would give it a shot. Now I think I'm hooked. I located a whole bunch of people I had been aquainted with in the past through highschool that I had lost contact with through college. Not only were they in FaceBook.Com's directory but they are all also still actively maintaining their accounts. I made a few contacts and folks started adding me into there social network. I was surprised that some of these folks who I only had passing familiarity with actually remembered me and thought enough of me to add me as a friend. It really is a bit of a boost to the my self-confidence. Albeit some probably think me a little odd because I'm so verbose. It is actually kind of odd for me.... I'm not usually very talkative but something has been switched on and I can't seem to keep my mouth shut as of late. I know it hasn't expressed itself in this medium. For this I have no excuse... I guess I knew my audience and didn't feel like sharing. Interesting that I feel I have to monitor and self-moderate my mental meanderings in this blog. Good Day.

Monday, November 07, 2005

Objects in motion.

My relationship status suffered a change this weekend. It is sad but it was not violent or radical.... it was a slow degrade of orbits of two objects as pulled apart by the gravities of various mundane pressures. Some choices could have been made to contain the situation and I accept my part of the blame for not having made them. I hope that we both settle well into our new orbits and they prove more stable.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Blog Review: Breaking the 4th wall

Interaction is key to longevity of any relationship. I think special things happen when a reader interacts with writers directly commenting on their works. Readers are encouraged to come back and share more when writers acknowledge comments. Writers are encouraged to keep writing and are given inspiration from time to time by readers comments. All parties feed off the excitement of sharing ideas and trying novel things.

By far Crashtestkitchen has the most comments of the lot for the time frame I have to compare, with kiplog/food in second, and Get Cooking trailing a little way behind the rest. Although the others I think have just as much relevant and helpful material I think that Crashtestkitchen is the only one of the three that is really building a community of interested readers who will comment inteligently and often. Although crashtestkitchen is too new to really compare to the others on an even playing field. In the coming months, should Crashtestkitchen not fold under the pressure of paying for bandwidth, they could become a real cornerstone of the genre of Food Blogs.

Blog Review: Visual Organization

Visual organization is second to content but only because you can't hide what isn't there in the first place. Happily the blogs I focus on for this review are full of delightfully interesting content. All of them appear well groomed and are mostly easy to read. However, I do like Crashtestkitchen.com's design the best, it is clean and simple. No complicated, nasty, overlapping, tiny, title graphic like Kiplog/food and no oversized graphics that take up half the screen like Get Cooking's title graphic.

Crashtestkitchen
KipLog
Get Cooking

Other than their ugly or annoyingly large title graphics, Kiplog/food and Get Cooking are decent looking blogs. Easy to read and content organized in such away as to be easy to find according to category.

Blog Review: Content is King

Consistently engaging content will keep the readers coming back again and again. I found that only one of three blogs I looked at was engaging. Waz and Lenny kept me in suspense durring Here's Steak in your Pie and Chicken Crashes and Burns. They share more than just rough recipes for disaster or success, they share a bit of humor and humility.

Joi from Buttermilk Press shares a few words of advice to go along with her recipes and news that has caught her attention. Not really all that interesting but still a great resource for some good eats and a couple of anecdotes in her posts Awesome Salt and Pepper Holders and Lovin' Myself some White Tea.

Kiplog/Food is at the far end of the spectrum as far as engaging content is concerned. Paul (the sole author of kiplog) only seems concerned with acruing links to other resources and giving a quick synopsis of what is available. While probably the most informative his posts are very impersonal and seem fact driven rather than experience driven.

Blog Review: Setting the Stage

What makes a blog stand out from the rest as a great blog? There are many qualities by which a blog can be judged but engaging content, visual organization, and audience interaction seem to be qualities that are the most important for a blog to become great. I chose to review three blogs that concern themselves almost entirely with food and food preparation. My reasoning behind my choice is this; everyone everywhere has dealt with food, it is a universal topic, and that being the case it should have the most diverse readership of all blogs.

The blogs I've chosen are as follows:

CrashTestKitchen.com which is a vlog by Lenny and Waz two self-described non-chef types with a passion for cooking and sharing the experience good or bad with the rest of us.

Buttermilk Press Blog by Joi the writer/editor of ButterMilkPress.Com

KipBlog.com/Food/

Jeremy's Student Blog