Digital Revolution

Thursday the 9th of December we're going to have our final presentation to show off some of the cool things that we have learned this semester. We've got a big room reserved on campus for anyone interested to come learn all about digital civilization and some of the fun things we have done with our learning.  

Our group has been working hard on getting our two websites up for evaluation. We decided we would get opinions during our presentation on which format would be best for our website. We've been looking at a blog format as well as a wiki and each seems to have its good and bad features. Hopefully we can get each one to look the way we've envisioned it so that it will truly reflect what we have in our minds. Most of our time so far has been put into organizing the digital labs that our fellow class members have done so that we can show them off on our sites. Our hope is to introduce you to the incredible tools of Web 2.0 and help you learn of new ways to consume, create and connect with others. We're really excited because we think the site will be a great tool for anyone interested in learning what they have at their disposal.

(Image credit: Andrew DeWitt)

Agricultural Revolution

photo by swisscan

A lot at history through the eyes of modern inventions can give us an interesting view on how things develop. For my class we've been assigned to research different technological advances and how they've affected us today. I decided to do my research on the agricultural revolution and see how that is continuing today.

This site gives an overview of the agricultural revolution in England and some of the advances that came from it. As technology continued to improve, men became consistently more efficient at farming. This allowed more people to develop industrial jobs and led to an influx of migrants to the big cities.

photo by Stéfan

Now a days the revolution continues to make our farming methods more efficient as people discover new ways to gather resources. The machine below is  new machine developed that takes cow manure and converts it into usable energy. Not only does this make farming more efficient, but now farmers can be completely self-sufficient. Check out this article to learn more about the machine.

Lost?

Have you ever felt like you should be able to do anything with your computer but you seem to just be using the same things over and over? Well our group's final project is just for you.

Photo by Stèfan

We're compiling a list of tools that we think will be perfect to help you with any project, any assignment, or even just to have fun with. Our plan is to put this list on a web site where you can find them anytime! We're also planning on making it possible for anyone to add a great tool they have found as well. We hope this will be helpful to anyone who wants to learn what is out there. This will be a great resource for students, teachers, professionals or anyone looking to increase their proficiency with the computer. If you have any suggestions for us or things you would like to see let us know!

The Creative Internet

Google has created this great presentation that shows off a lot of interesting things that have been done with the web. Professor Zappala introduced me to this and I thought I should share it. A lot of things in this are really cool. Check it out and feel free to play around with them!

Technology in Exile

In our digital civilization class we've been connected with blogs from all the different students. I've been assigned a short review of one of those blogs. Kristen has done a blog called Technology in Exile. She has done really well in her blog to connect with the different historical elements we have been talking about in our class. Her blog is well put together with different feeds and widgets and she's been connected many of our assignments to her work in Tibet. She's done a great job of displaying digital tools we've learned about and her blog feels very personal.I enjoy seeing the contact she has in Tibet and it has inspired me to try and reach out a little more. If you've never seen a Prezi she has a good one that she made about her ideas about digital literacy for Tibetan students. I've really been impressed with Kristen's blog and you can tell she puts a lot of thought into her posts. If you're looking for a good blog to follow, hers is definitely one to look at!

Reflection

The semester has moved forward and its time to take a moment to look at where we've come. I continue to enjoy this class a lot. Not only have I noticed myself becoming more proficient in research and computing tools, I also have really enjoyed studying the historical content by linking it to our our digital culture. I am still trying to get used to blogging my learning, though I've found that as I do, I've been able to find interesting things in our topics that I've wanted to share with those of you who read this blog. One resource that I have found very valuable in my research is our university's library. In my post about unsolvable problems I found two articles through BYU's scholar search that helped me understand Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem. In my post on the atomic age I discovered an article by actually finding it in the library (something I admittedly don't do enough due to the easiness of online articles) that was about the influence that government has on research in technology.


The computing concepts that we are learning are also very fascinating to me which is probably apparent in my blog posts. I didn't play around with as many of the digital labs like I had done earlier in the semester, but I did try something new when I created a video game level to share some of the feelings I had about the book A World Lit Only by Fire. I have also focused more on connecting with others outside of my blog. As I have found other blogs and articles during my research, I have been actively posting my own comments and starting conversations outside of the class. One thing I would really like to do is get connected with some people in the business world and some computer engineers. I'm looking to go into these fields and would like to see what are the topics talked about in these different circles. 


Overall I've really enjoyed this class though I do need to be a little more diligent in posting regularly. Till next time, and I hope you've enjoyed it all so far. If you have anything you as a reader would like to see in my blog more often, please let me know.

10 Immutable laws of security

 Ten laws of security I found on Microsoft Technet. Click the link to learn more

Law #1: If a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your computer, it's not your computer anymore

 

Law #2: If a bad guy can alter the operating system on your computer, it's not your computer anymore

 

Law #3: If a bad guy has unrestricted physical access to your computer, it's not your computer anymore

 

Law #4: If you allow a bad guy to upload programs to your website, it's not your website any more

 

Law #5: Weak passwords trump strong security

 

Law #6: A computer is only as secure as the administrator is trustworthy

 

Law #7: Encrypted data is only as secure as the decryption key

 

Law #8: An out of date virus scanner is only marginally better than no virus scanner at all

 

Law #9: Absolute anonymity isn't practical, in real life or on the Web

 

Law #10: Technology is not a panacea

What the atomic age means to technology

Generally the first thing that comes up when we study the atomic age is the advancement of military technology. The race for military superiority has been repeated throughout history and technological advances have helped numerous civilizations rise to power. In the spirit of our digital civilization course I decided that my personal study on the topic would be focused more on the implications of the atomic age on our digital culture.

photo by x-ray delta one

Like this boy with his big toy gun, military has always been about the most efficient way to hit the enemy. Many military advances have also brought to pass a myriad of other changes. A great blog I found called Blast Fax did this post about the history of technology.  In it they said "20th Century technology developed rapidly. Communication technology, transportation technology, broad teaching and implementation of scientific method, and increased research spending all contributed to the advancement of modern science and technology. Due to the scientific gains directly tied to military research and development, technologies including electronic computing might have developed as rapidly as they did in part due to war. Radio, radar, and early sound recording were key technologies which paved the way for the telephone, fax machine, and magnetic storage of data. Energy and engine technology improvements were also vast, including nuclear power, developed after the Manhattan project. Transport by rocketry: most work occurred in the U.S. (Goddard), Russia (Tsiolkovsky) and Germany (Oberth). Making use of computers and advanced research labs, modern scientists have recombinant DNA."

An article I found in the library called "The democratic control of science and technology" (Physics in Technology, March 1979, Vol.10(2), p.49-53) talked about how many advancements in technology are direct results of government spending in military research. This article talks about advantages as well as many disadvantages of this system. Many times the government has the resources that no other organization can muster to delve into the intense research of technology. The government may also work quicker in these areas because of immediate threats or possible ones. A disadvantage of this is that much of this technology is not publicly released until many years after it has been implemented. This hinders the rest of the economy as they are not allowed to build on this technology until they have access to it. Many things may advance much faster if it is put onto the open market sooner. Another disadvantage is the dependency on the government once it advances technology. This article expresses this very well and I wont go into it too much, but it helped me look at the way our technology advances in a new light. Is it really the best thing for the government to lead the way in technological advances? There are obviously many reasons that this is the case. Being above the competition on a global scale helps greatly in the defense of our country, but could it all be improved? Let me know what you think.

Currency wars

This will be a quick post but I wanted to bring up something I found while researching economics. Its an issue that has grown since the expansion of international trade. Especially with the rapid connections in communication. Its called currency wars. Basically it has to do with the change in value of a country's money in relation to that of other countries. What I didn't realize is that some countries could actually benefit from lowering the value of their currency. Check out this video to learn a little more. Also this article I found talks about currency purchases and why this might not be viable today. I'd also be interested  if anyone has any more good sources on this topic.

Unsolvable Problems

I have a friend that is a math genius. He always blew us away in any math class in high school and went on to become a chemical engineer in college. We used to get into a lot of philosophical conversations about the universe, 4th dimensions and other abstract ideas like the String Theory. He had a very scientific mind and liked to be able to understand things from a logical viewpoint. During college he would show me fascinating things that he could do with math, such as proving that 1+1=3. The deeper he got into math the more he was able to explain with it. While I cant claim to understand everything, it fascinates me how math really dictates so many things.

Photo by JasonWalton

I recently started reading about Kurt Gödel and his two incompleteness theorems. The idea is that no consistent system of axioms can fully prove every system. This means that although we can do countless things with math, there is actually proof that it cant do everything for us.

Photo by tkamenik

I started doing a little research because I wondered how it was that he could prove that. While it makes sense, his theorems proved this point mathematically. I used the BYU library to look up some articles on Gödel and found a couple that I thought would help me understand this idea. The first one is called On Gödel's Second Incompleteness Theorem by Thomas Jech. It comes from the peer reviewed journal Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society, May, 1994. It was a short explanation of the mathematical proof that Gödel used to show this theorem. It was interesting to see this put in mathematical terms, and it amazes me that he could come up with this. The second article I found was called An elementary exposition of godel's incompleteness theorem. This gave me more information on the principles and ideas behind the theorems.

I think math is fascinating. I think its even more fascinating to use math to prove that we cant use math for everything. What kinds of parallels does this have in our society? As we continue to develop computers, are we going to run into barriers that wont be possible to cross? My professor put up this chapter about what computers cant and will not ever be able to do. Its a fascinating point, but will someone figure out a way to make those things work? It'll be fun to see.