Week 14 - HON 1515

This past week in Dissecting the Internet our class only met for one day thanks to Thanksgiving Break.  While I was most definitely anxious to head home and dreaming about delicious turkey and sweet potatoes when we met for class last Tuesday (this class was my final one of the day), I still managed to focus my attention on our guest speaker.  

Colonel Michael Barry visited our class to share with us an insider's view on the perspectives of Cyberspace by the different departments of government, especially the Department of Defense.  I was very captivated by the fact that these views came from someone who had a closer connection to the government than I could even imagine.  I had never thought about Cyberspace being an actual area that needed defending before, or why the new term "Cyberspace" was created for something that we already had a name for: the Internet.  

Ultimately, I was very intrigued by the presentation and thankful that I got to hear from a man with an inside connection to the Department of Defense.  I found Colonel Barry to be an intelligent and friendly man that I felt honored to have met.

Week 13 - HON 1515

This past week in Dissecting the Internet we continued with our discussions about various topics (dealing with the internet, of course).  It was very interesting to learn about all of these topics from the students in our class.  I really enjoyed the conversation this past week about Internet Dating.  In some cases, I think internet dating could be very dangerous and just down-right weird, such as meeting over online gaming sites, but in other cases, I think online dating websites can provide a great way (both simple and accurate) for people to meet their match.  I know my cousin met her husband over an online dating website, and they have been married now for a long time, have three adorable kids, and just built a new house.  Their life seems to be going great, and they owe much of it to the online dating site that paired them up.  I really liked discussing each of the areas of research in Dissecting the Internet, and I hope to do more of this sort of assignment.

This coming week, we only have one day of class and then Thanksgiving Break!  I cannot wait for some delicious turkey, but before that, we have a guest speaker coming on Tuesday.  I have liked all of the guest speakers we have had so far, and I am expecting the same opinion of this next one!

Week 12 - HON 1515

The image of a fluffy, pretty cloud that pops into my head whenever I hear "Cloud Computing" has forever been replaced by a scary, loud swarm of bees.  Thanks Dr. Wilkes.  Just kidding!  It really was very interesting to learn all about how new technology is leaning toward Cloud Computing.  I had no idea that many things that I use on the internet could be considered Cloud Computing, such as Gmail.  I did enjoy Dr. Wilkes's presentation about his bees and how he is using Cloud Computing to store information about all of his hives.  The video was pretty cool as well, but I am thankful that the bees were only on a computer screen.  I will not be visiting any of those hives anytime soon.  I am TERRIFIED of bees (and spiders, wasps, or almost any other type of insect).

We finished the lecture about Cloud Computing on Tuesday and began our discussion of the mini topics each student was assigned on Thursday.  Having a completely open discussion is my favorite type of class, as I have mentioned before, so I definitely had a good time in class that day.  I learned so much from the different things that people researched, and I feel like conversation flowed really well.  I was especially interested by the video of the interview with a member of Anonymous and the wife of the pastor of Westboro Baptist Church.  I think everyone got a laugh out of that one.  After we watched the video, I found an article talking about how the church was planning on protesting Steve Jobs funeral, just as they protest the funerals of many soldiers.  This image was included with the article:

Yeah, the pastor's daughter announced that they would be protesting the funeral of Steve Jobs, Apple Co-Founder, via Twitter for iPhone!  How ironic.

I am now ready to continue these discussions and also to see the results from our Surveys on SurveyMonkey!

Week 11 - HON 1514

Captchas and Crowdsourcing:  These two topics were the focus of discussion in Dissecting the Internet last week.

On Tuesday, I was introduced to captchas.  I always knew what they were.  I can not even count how many times I have had to type out the letters in a captcha before completing forms on the internet, but I never knew what they were called or their unique purposes.  By watching two videos of the man who created captchas and the company reCAPTCHA, I felt pretty knowledgeable on the subject.  Captchas are used to prove that the internet user filling out a form over the computer is indeed a human, rather than a computer program designed to fill out multiple forms or buy multiple tickets for an event online.  Computers are not yet advanced enough to actually read the words hidden in these Captchas.  Unfortunately, these Captchas waste internet users valuable time, so the inventor created a company that makes the time spent filling out Captchas productive.  The program reCAPTCHA decided to put two words on Captchas.  One word is a word that the website already knows the answer to; therefore, it can still prove that a human is filling out the form.  The other word is a word unrecognized by the computer when it was pulled from a book that someone attempted to scan.  By filling out this second word, internet users help computers fill in the blanks of books when computers cannot recognize a word.  When multiple people match the same text with a word the computer was unable to recognized, it is deemed as correct.

These videos led into the class's discussion on crowdsourcing, which is when people are asked to voice their opinion on a particular subject.  On Tuesday, we played crowdsourcing games on the computer, which were kind of addicting.  I definitely played on that website a few times back in my dorm.  We were then instructed to come up with ideas of crowdsourcing activities in groups for Thursday's class.  These activities turned out to be quite interesting.  We had examples of crowdsourcing ranging from the Human Knot to arranging ourselves silently based on the UNO Cards taped to our backs.  My favorite activity would have to have been Josh and Chris's game, simply because we got to eat food!  Yum!

This week it looks like we will be talking about Cloud Computing.  Even after reading the Wikipedia explanation, I still have no idea what this is, so I am interested in learning about tomorrow!