Randy's Blog

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2007-12-07T11:26:00.001-08:00

2007-12-07T11:26:00.000-08:00

2007-10-23T08:55:00.000-07:00

Writting assignment two

2007-09-25T09:33:00.000-07:00

How technology is viewed in our society today is still in a state of gaining acceptance. Nathaniel Hawthorne in Fire-Worship believed that technology was the end all of the old way of life and the comforts and beauty he had grown to love. In As We May Think, Vannevar Bush viewed technology as a way to better society by constantly improving of the technology and ones self. I will show in this space how I believe that both were correct, more so with Bush, as well as how blogging in particular fits in to their views.

Hawthorne took the very pessimistic view of what technology and change could become. He refers in the opening of his article about how he grew to love the flicker of the open fire, and how it could spark creativity and a sense of home. By adding in futuristic wood burning stoves you took away the open feeling of warmth a fire gave off, as well as the visual presentation. I take Hawthorne however to be a very bare necessities kind of man, so any luxuries that are unnecessary are just that, unnecessary.

If he were too see the blogs of today I feel he would frown upon them. Obviously if he were displeased by a mere wood burning stove, the thought of a device that complete removes the personal touches would displease him. A blog can have personal attributes and be very personal in what you share in it, and to my generation many use it as such. Older generations that grew up with the pen and paper style of journals can view it in a much less pleasant light. Part of the personal touch you place in a journal or blog is not only what you are writing, bout how you are writing it. If someone takes the time to meticulously write out each letter in clear penmanship verse writing it very sloppily you can tell what that meant to the person.

The second article I read was about Vannevar Bush and his views on how technology will be able to advance to better people. He foresaw many of the improvements of modern day technology but limited to the technological equipment of his day. The memex was his view of what will revolutionize the way we store and view our documents. No longer would they be sorted only by alphabetical order, but now can be tied together as the brain thinks, by category and association.

If Bush were to see the internet of today and how information is being shared I believe he would be amazed at how effective it is. He envisioned a personal desk with limited data of ones choice, not a literal endless source of information which is the internet today. You can search for a topic in a search engine, and it will bring up not only that topic, but closely related articles depending on how users have rated their usefulness. It is also getting to the point where the need to go to a library is not even necessary anymore, as all documents are being digitized to allow access through the web. Bush spoke of how he thought much time was wasted waiting on books to arrive or going to find information, but with the internet now all of this information is accessible almost instantly.

Bush would greatly enjoy the ability of blogs as a way to share information as well. While I believe he would use them as more of a technical space to write out his theories and read others ideas, I believe he would enjoy the technology. He enjoyed that during the war all of the science community came together to create weapons of war and stopped their side projects and in-fighting. The ability of the science community to be that connected would no doubt be to Bush’s liking.

At the end while I believe these men had different views on how technology would affect society, I believe both would embrace it as it stands today. Regardless if Hawthorne disagreed with the detachment and loss of the comforts he grew up with, the new technology adds a whole new comfort that he could not have dreamed of. Bush had a better on grasp on what technology could become, and while for the most part it has. There is a lot of trash on the internet, but there is also an equal amount of extremely useful information that would have been nearly inaccessible to a person in Bush’s time.

Early Computer Years

2007-08-29T20:54:00.000-07:00

One of the first early experiences I had of using an computer came when I was in 3rd grade. I went to a very small private school, so they did not get them until then. I remember they were apple computers that had just came out that had the colored plastic on the backs of their monitors. I remember always wanting to go to computer class so I could play the different games that we had, which were mostly educational but I didn't really think about it. They had lemmings, Where in the World is Carmen San Diego, Oregon Trail, and Math Munchers among others.

I remember playing Where in the World is Carmen San Diego during class a lot as well. It taught you geography while you solved different "cases." I also remember playing mavis beacon. It is a typing tutor program that had practice pages as well as typing games to test your progress. After you completed to a certain point for the day we would have free time to play what we wanted. Sometimes we would have races in the race car part of mavis beacon to see who could type the fastest.

My first experience on the internet came when I finally talked my dad into using one of the one thousand AOL free trial discs that we had. At the time it was for 14 days, and I was excited about the endless possibilities I could explore online. I ended up mainly just talking on instant messenger with people from school as the connection was so slow it took for ever to visit any page. Since it was dial-up and used our phone line I did not get to use it very much without getting yelled at for keeping the line busy. At the time I really thought of it as just a different means of entertainment, and never could have imagined how big of a role in plays in my daily activities.

The first time my computer crashed and made me lose major work is something that I will always remember. It was my junior year here at Appalachian State and I was working on lab for my geo-computation class, which is a kind of computer programming based in the software I use in my major. I had spent three hours working on a program to select particular entities in a database depending on what the user selected as the criteria. I had finished all the major coding and was working on making the interface and controls look smooth and just some visual modifications when my computer made a loud buzzing sound and shut off. I hadn't saved in about two hours so I lost all of my work and almost keyboard because I slammed my hands down on to it when I realized all the work I was going to have to re-do. Needless to say now I am very attentive to saving regularly.

About Me

2007-08-28T08:56:00.000-07:00

My name is Randy Cagle. I am a graduating in December with a degree in GIS(geographic information science). I am taking this class to learn a little more about how to use the internet and how I can make it work better for me. My favorite obscure website is http://www.zombo.com/. All it does is play a sound file and a small image for a minute or two, but it always makes me laugh.