Against the Machine

This book sounded ridiculous!  The group did a good job of detailing why the author thought that the internet was bad.  It is insulating us from other people and real interactions was the big complaint.  The other issue was that it allowed people who are not tolerated in normal social interactions to be popular.  

First off, what are real interactions anyway?  You say, "Hi, how are you?", they say "Fine" or "good".  Wow what an interaction.  What about the ol' "What have you been up to?".  Typical answer, " Oh you know, same ol' same old".  Usually people dont take the time to have such a superficial conversation like that on the net.  Conversations involve topics or beliefs or at least some heated name calling.

As for the second reason, I would guess that most peoples high school experience wouldnt dispose them to agreeing with it.  I would think the internet would allow the people with diverse interests that dont agree with the popular crowd to converse. This author seems to believe that people who arent cool should keep to them selves.  

The author didnt seem well received in our class.  I have a suspicion it was written as to get a rise out of people.

Smart Mobs

Wednesday we had a presentation of the book Smart Mobs.  I couldn't believe this book was written in 2001.  It incorporated many ideas that I have had myself that I thought were original.  The idea of a tracking system for buses that would tell you how far away they were or if you had just missed them.  That was my idea!  How hard would it be to put a GPS tracker on a bus and setup a simple system to estimate arrival times.

Also they talked about being able to take a picture of a plant and using the internet to instantly identify it.  I thought that was my idea.  

Anyway back to the book.  They talked about some weird stuff about gangs of texters.  I dont get it.  Anyway I might want to check this book out.

BURN RATE

The assignment: Read a book with and give a presentation with a group (of people you dont know) at the end of the quarter. We ended up forming a loose group of 3 boys on one side of the class and 3 girls who sit on the opposite side of the class. What book to read? The professor favorite of course! Uhh ohhh, the library only had 2 copies of the book. No Problem! We will al read a couple chapters and bring the summaries together! It might have worked if we all knew each other and had daily contact. We don't so we needed a leader. Someone who would take the initiative. We were an aimless group of drones flying around with our antenna cut off. And then a Queen...errr King Bee emergered! Scott pulled us all together and rallied our sinking spirits. "We are all doomed to a poor grade" we moaned. "Nonsense! I will read the whole book and then we will all be able to make sense of what we have read!" Brilliant, I thought. The presentation that will come forth from such a collaboration will be legendary!....or at least not nausea inducing to our professor Andrew Fry.

may the force be with us

Kevin Freitas

Last week Kevin Freitas came and spoke with our class.  He pointed out the Feed Tacoma blog site that he maintains for free.  The site brings to one site the latest posts from over 30 different blogs from around the Tacoma area.  This is an amazing way to build community both offline and virtual.  It really made me think that there is nothing like this down in Grays Harbor County where I live.  We could really use something like this to build a better community setting around here.

Managing Finances Online

Managing finances online.  

For some of us this means tracking investment portfolios and various banking accounts.  

For others it just means an easier way to pay the cable or power bill.  

Even the lowest citizens on the income ladder can track their government assistance and child support income. Hmm,  I suppose a (homeless?, transient?)  person who lives day to day on handouts and charity would not need this service.

All you need to utilize this service is the use of a internet connection, browser, username and password.  You can have your check direct deposited into your bank account and then use the debit card for that bank account to pay your various bills online.  You can also setup timely transfers of money from that account or your paycheck into your investment portfolios.  

I personally track my checking account online, I have a credit card that I manage online.  My car insurance is also online.  I don't pay my child support or IRS bill online because i dont really want them to have easy fund tranfer access to my money.  I also buy various things online via either my debit or credit card.

It would be very smart, to have one secure credit card for online bill paying and transactions.  This card would ideally have some sort of reward system (points, miles, cash back) for the frequent use it would receive.  This would put a layer of security between the people charging you money and your direct bank account.  

What Am I Not Comfortable Buying Online?

I feel that I am comfortable buying pretty much everything online.  I have bought all kinds of things online:

• car parts
• halloween costumes
• jewelry (as gifts, not for me)
• software
• books
• hot sauce
• viagra

Ok, not viagra.  No really, I have a few more years before that might spark my online purchasing interest.  I figure that if im relatively safe using my credit card, as it has a 500 dollar built in limit on fraudulent charges. 

I am more disinclined to shop online because it is soooo easy.  Talk about impulse buys.  I could very easily rack up some serious charges online.  I have done so in the past.  Talk about a spending hangover!  

Do I fear online fraud?  Not really.  I am more afraid of crushing consumer debt.

Vanity Search

I have performed a vanity search.  It was not done out of vanity but to complete an assignment. Still, I can’t deny that I was curious to see what was out there about me.  I had questions.  Would I find a list of my accomplishments or failures? Would it find something somebody had said about me?  Would it find anything at all?  What I found is that I have a lot of work to do to become the most famous me on Google.

             I fired up Google Chrome, and using the Omni bar, typed in my name.  I got over 5 millon hits.  Nice.  I'm assuming this is due to my last name.  Lets see how many hits doing my name in quotes will get me.  13,600. None of the first 100 are about me.  I am disenclined to go further.

Apperently the two most famous B.B.'s out there are an African American man living in my hometown in Kansas who has a computer science degree.  Whoa, weird.  Same name, same town, same education goals.  Ill have to email him and see if he thinks it is strange as well.  The other is the man I was named after.  He is an Associate Professor of Geography at Texas State University–San Marcos.  He was also award the Piper Professor award this year.  Quite a legacy to live up to.

I guess I still have yet to make my mark on the world enough that my name will register on Google for the top 100 results....

The future of newspaper and the web

The future of newspapers and the web will be the future of newspapers and the web.  What I mean by that statement is that their will be a future for both newspapers and the web.  These two are not mutually exclusive.  The success of one does not preclude the existence of the other. 

When I say newspaper, I am not talking about the bleached, pressed and printed sheet of wood pulp that is delivered to our door step.  That is merely a medium for getting the news to consumers.  To me, newspaper is an old-fashioned word that refers to companies and people that deliver news.  The act of assigning stories, chasing leads, and checking facts all leads to information that can be distributed via various mediums.  People pay for the information, not necessarily by what means the printed word gets to them.

Will paper news go away?  We all know it will.  The march of progress will do away with the use of trees for paper.  This is inevitable.  News will never go away.  As population grows and we become more of a global economy there will be greater demand for news.  It is just the way it gets to us that will change.

Email Versus Snail Mail

During class we were able to come up with quite a few examples of how email and snail mail were similar.  As you may recall they are similar in pretty much every area except one.  That one thing is when you physically need to send something.  Whether it is a Christmas present or Grandma's cookies, you simply cannot send that digitally.....yet.

My blog title is "living the digital life".  I must therefore find a way, any way, to prove that we can send items digitally.

Lets say you want to sent little Billy a model car for his birthday.  You could design one in a CAD program and email it to him in a file that wasnt accessible until his birthday.  Then when the big day came, he could open the file - import it into his special 3D printing software and print it out in a matter of hours.  Viola, a physical item sent digitally!

Here is an example of a 3D printer:

As technology improves, an edible substrate could be used and flavors added during the printing process.  Can anyone say instant Grandma's cookies?

Anyone who has seen Star Trek knows where all this technology is headed, "The Replicator".