Age of Singularity, Convergence and Moore's Law

Humans first began making tools out of stone. After we began mining native copper and tin, we smelted them together to create the first tools and weapons made of bronze. Our knowledge of metallurgy grew, as a result we could smelt more advanced materials, so in some parts of the word before others - we forged tools made of iron. It wasn't until the mid-19th century when the industrial revolution started in one corner of the world.

Right now, we exist in the age of information. The idea of convergence: data throughput, access to the internet, computational speed, and memory storage is advancing exponentially. We are achieving milestones in artificial intelligence and robotics. According to Moore's Law, processing power and transistors per square inch will double every two years. This will happen with the slow integration of technology in our environment, bodies, and brains.

A Visit from Erik Hanberg

Erik Hanberg spoke at our class last week mainly about publishing and his experiences with the publishing boom.

Hanberg was an author, his wife designed the cover of his first several books and he seeked third party agencies to publish his books. As a result, he saved quite a bit of money on publishing, and made decent profit from selling his books. Hanberg began selling, initially, his mystery novels on the onset of the publishing boom. On his timeline, I could recall that he churned out novels almost yearly. This to me is fascinating, writing and keeping track of the progress of his books and visualizing the work being done on a step-graph was also quite neat. He was able to think of entire story lines in months, not to mention the needless research that may have been required his later novels particularly in the sci-fi realm.

Overall, his talk was very interesting, Erik is a bright guy. I had never had known how authors did work during the cusp of online publishing, and his analogies on the gold mines of California really gave perspective on the timing of these booms and how certain people, if lucky, can truly capitalize on the opportunity.

What You Should Never Buy Online

1. Sloths

Nine times out of ten it was just painted raccoons. 

2. Virtual Memory

Because sites like www.downloadmoreram.com exist - Yes, you should never buy it because you can always download it for free!

3. Anthrax

I'm never buying this again. It never delivered plus I got interviewed by the FBI, would not recommend. 

A Trial by Search Engines

In the span of an hour, groups had to complete a virtual scavenger hunt using search engines to find very specific websites and locations and later prove them with a screenshot or URL address. With clues so niche and detailed, within minutes our group was already struggling with some of the tasks.

We decided to split the hunt, each of us taking a few questions at a time and sending those answers to the designated recorder. Let us begin by going through some of the bizarre tasks I was assigned to scour the web for:

1. Twitterfall on global warming.

I was not familiar with Twitterfall. Neither was the rest of my group - and when asked if any of them have twitter accounts, all of them said no. Thankfully, I had a twitter account that I don't even use (I only signed up to retweet tweets for a chance to win a beta key) so I ended up using that to finish this task.

2. Comment on a message board, bonus points if you get someone to reply to your comment.

What better place to try this than on Reddit? I logged in, sorted by 'rising' (this means Reddit sorts through posts that are 'rising' in popularity) in hopes to get a quick reply. I saw a post about a user who did very interesting makeup for a Halloween costume. I chose this post for a couple reasons: The original poster is showing off his/her work to thousands of people, this makes it more likely for him/her to respond if you have any questions about his/her said work. It also implies the original poster did the makeup him/herself, and that this wasn't a repost from last year's Halloween. This way, I can ensure a reply. I entered the thread, and posted:

 "Spooky. How long did this take you?" 

All my predictions were correct, and within minutes she replies, "Thank you! It took close to an hour because I had to start over a few times, finding the right placement for the eye and nose was really tricky and having her real eye staring at me while I was doing it didn't help!"

3. What is the name of [Andrew Fry's] married sister?

We weren't sure if we got this one right. This question alone contributes to the idea of the vast power in today's search engines. How a user can do background checks on certain individuals, gather related information about family and/or locations live, and narrowing it down further by age and surnames is truly eerie. 

Concerning fictional viewpoints on the web

EPIC 2015

The plot of EPIC 2015 consists of a series of events, fact and fiction. The series of real events begins at the start of the video, from 1989 with the invention of the world wide web. The real events end in 2004, from this point on the video passes into the realm of fiction. Starting in 2005, where Microsoft buys Friendster, and the inception of Googlezon.

The hypothetical Googlezon is very intriguing premise. The term may have caught on by its own, as the combination of google-like technology and amazon-like technology becomes more and more apparent in today’s tech industry.

THE MACHINE IS US/ING US

An interesting video that’s very well produced. The “internet scare” has been a hot topic in the last decade, especially with the rise of SOPA, CISPA, and now, CISA. Encroaching evidence of NSA violating privacy of civilians is also contributing to the idea of the “machine” using us. The feeling of this video is quite a negative one, looking at technology and the rise of the web as a threat to humanity. 

There are some who disagree with the negative connotation of the web, including myself. I believe the benefits the world wide web has given us far outweigh the consequences of a more streamlined, connected web.

The Simplicity of HTML

Learning how to use HTML is paramount in building and designing the layout of your own websites. Thankfully, only having rudimentary knowledge of HTML is enough to get started on the task to build sharp, snappy websites. 

The task was to build a HTML webpage.  As with any basic webpage, it would include a title, body, and image each represented by tags. Already having experience using HTML myself, this was pretty straightforward.

The goal at this point was to create a clean, professional webpage using very basic HTML commands. To better adhere to this goal, I selected a minimalistic background color that’s easy on the viewer’s eyes. Following this, I displayed text that is centered on the webpage. The font, likewise, was chosen to help better represent our professional layout. After the caption has been displayed in our desired format, an image is linked using HTML image tags. Much in the same way, the image is linked to align with the caption. To make things a bit more sharp, an empty space was put in between the caption and the image to give the website a more tapered look. Finally, we now have a basic, clean and crisp looking web page that suits our goal.

Our completed masterpiece: _____________________________________________________________________________



"My winter bulk is going really well, put on a lot of mass."

Postal Mail and E-Mail, What Are The Differences?

It is often said that the advent of web technology in the last decade has made many archaic forms of communications obsolete. Notably, the onset of electronic mail, or E-mail, in the contrast of traditional postal mail. To delve into this further, let us discuss the similarities and differences of the two methods of communication.

Both e-mail and postal mail are essentially a form of relaying information to from one point to another. In other words, both involve sending a message to a recipient. They can contain text, photos, documents, payment bills, or advertisements. They both have a mailbox of some sort, and both have stops on the way to their destination. Both methods have a way of sorting, so postal mail do not contain dangerous substances, and E-mail does not contain any adware. Email and postal mail have many similarities, which should come to no surprise as both methods exist to fulfill similar goals.

Although e-mail was invented to mimic most aspects of postal mail, we should discuss the ways in which the two forms of communication are different. The most obvious difference is that one is digital, while the other is physical. As a result of this, e-mail is far superior to postal mail in terms of speed. Postal mail would require higher costs from the sender to attempt matching the speeds of email, which illustrates another clear difference: money. Postal mail requires the purchasing of postal stamps. Depending on the weight of the envelope and the contents of the message, shipping costs may also apply. Expedited shipping to shorten mailing time may also have applicable costs. E-mail is free, and messages can take between seconds to minutes for the recipient to receive the message depending on the size of the email. Other factors to discuss are e-mails limit the user’s creativity. Arts and crafts can be accompanied with postal mail, but besides a typical HTML e-mail the sender can throw in color and photography which may or may not look as great. We should also consider the geographical limitations to e-mail. Some countries may not have access to a reliable internet connection, so they must rely on postal mail alone.

It is clear that there are similarities between direct mail and electronic mail. Although direct mail has been in a decline partly due to economy, both have their advantages and disadvantages. As the e-mail market continues to be whittled down by spammers, direct postal mail may still be very relevant in the modern world.