Reflection

I still feel uncertain about my Digital Civilizations class. I do not feel like I have figured out for myself how to do well in the class. I think that it comes mostly from the fact that the class is very different from any that I have taken before. It focuses more on learning a set of skills versus learning a set of information. I enjoy the fact that we are expected to use the skills we are learning to proccess information. I feel that I learn more effectively when I use skills in a real situation rather than learn about them in theory.      

I enjoy making connections to information in this class with other things that I have learned outside of class. As I learn about historical movements and events I really enjoy the parallels that can be drawn between everything. I found it very interesting how many of Eric Raymond's and Dale Carnegie's ideas matched up. I also found it very interesting how the debate over capitalism continues today and how different capitalism is in each country. Overall I really enjoy how the class encourages me to bring in information that I have acquired outside of class and apply it to the things that we are learning in class. I feel like I am making the connections that the class hopes to inspire me to make.

Now to address the part of the class that deals with digital literacy. I do not feel like I am doing as well in this area as in making connections between historical content. I am learning lots about digital tools and how to use them but I think that this area is where most of my uneasiness comes from, because I feel that I am not learning enough of the digital skills and that I am not learning enough about the digital skills. I have made progress though. Using Diigo and Evernote have really helped me organize the way I search for information and then keep track of that information. I was able to use Facebook to connect with other cycling enthusiasts and attend Critical Mass. I have tried to search more blogs for information on topics and I actually found an interesting blog on newspapers and what is happening to them because of the internet. I think that the area that I lack most in is creating my own content that is meaningful to other people. I think that I am still much more of a consumer in the digital realm. I have improved greatly in connecting with people but I don't feel like I am contributing to the conversation in any significant way. 

So, to sum everything up, I feel like I am making the connections I should within historical content, but I still feel that I have more to learn to become digitally literate.

Economics

I will be the first to admit that I do not know that much about economics. But one of the things that I have realized recently is that there are many economic systems outside of capitalism. I personally have grown up within the capitalist system and I really have not experienced anything else besides reading about it. I also think that it is one thing to learn about something in theory versus learn about something by putting it into practice. Unfortunately it is not always practical to put everything into practice just to see how it works. I imagine that it would be hard for me to write President Obama and ask him for the power to install a socialist system in the US just so that I could learn a little more about the principles of common property.

So, really the way that I have learned most about economics is from books and studying the history of other nations. I do have experience in the capitalist system. Growing up I could figure out how many lawns I had to mow before I could get enough money to buy myself a new bike. I also figured out quickly that selling lemonade on the corner was the quickest way to earn money. There just seemed to be too much supply and too little demand. I did find though that my little brother and I could make good money at the beach while he played the guitar and I played my violin. It seemed that we had a somewhat unique skill and having an audience of half drunk tourists helped out.

So I really am not sure how another system would work out. I think that most of us are uneasy with the ideas of other systems just because we have not experienced them. I am not trying to group in experts in economics in this category. I am sure they have great evidence why the system they support is the most correct. But I will say that for myself and people in a similar situation as myself that most uneasiness related to different economic systems comes from never having experienced that system themselves. It is kinda like cliff jumping. The first jump into the water below is always pretty nerve racking. But you'll never know how it is until you jump.

PS I have never been the first one to jump. Have you?

Critical Mass

So I would like to make a plug here for one of the coolest things ever. Most of you I am sure are familiar with what a flash mob is. Critical Mass is a cousin to flash mobs. It is slightly more organized and has something of a purpsoe behind it whereas flash mobs do not fall into that catigorie. I guess it is kinda like the concept of a square being a rectangle but a rectangle is not always a square. Anyways I will explain how it works and connects people for a great cause.

So basically what Critical Mass is when a ton of people on bicycles get together and ride the streets to improve awareness of bike riders ans their use of city streets. It really is a great cause and on top of that it is tons of fun. I love bike riding and riding with a couple hundred people and mobbing the streets make it even better.

Heres a quick video of Critical Mass in San Fransisco.



So really quick to make one more plug. None of this would be possible if it were not for the internet that connects all of us. It would be next to impossible to organize an impromptu event like Critical Mass if it were not for the internet and its ability to connect people.

I found out about Critical Mass because one of my friends invited me to the Facebook event for the Provo area. So I brought some friends and loved it. I would never have found out if it weren't for Facebook. I am not trying to say that Facebook is the end all but it is a great tool along with other social networks that connect people in ways that were not possible before.

Philosophy to Empirical Science

This will be really quick. I wanted to say that we as a society owe a huge debt to philosophy. Today I think that we really focus on scientist making the major break through and we really have laid aside philosophy. I am not trying to argue whether that is bad or good, I just want to say that most of the scientific fields today have their roots in discoveries of ancient philosophers. They made huge break through in medicine, politics, physics, and more areas than I have the time to enumerate on. Francis Bacon himself was a philosopher. Rene Descartes, who played a huge role in the transition to modern science, was a philosopher.

One of the greatest scientists that ever lived, Isaac Newton, sums up my thoughts very well when he said, "If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." That is what philosophy has done for us now. Modern science was built on the giants of philosophy. 

Bazaar Software and the Business World

So after listening to a speech given by Eric Raymond about how to capitalize on open source software I couldn't help but notice some similarities between his speech and a book written by Dale Carnegie called How to Win Friends and Influence People. So I know the name does not sound very intriguing at first but the book does a great job at highlighting and explaining characteristics and qualities in a person that make the well-liked and successful, especially in the business world. It is interesting for me to see how this Bazaar practice really is taking some of the suggestions of Carnegie and employing them on a scale that makes software like Linux extremely successful.

So just a quick background on Dale Carnegie. He lived in the first half of the 20th century and witnessed the industrial revolution and the emergence of big business and corporations in the United States. His book is meant as a self-help guide to improve a persons relationships with those around them. A majority of the book is focused around business relationship and how certain actions foster or inhibit success in business.

So the thing that I found interesting about Raymond's speech and Carnegie's book is that they revolve around one central point. They both say that success is not dependent on whether a person is a genius in their field but rather it is dependent on the way they treat the people around them. They both say that a team working together under the direction of a person with extraordinary people skills will find the greatest success and do the greatest things.

There is a quote in Carnegie's book when he refers to Charles Schwab, the first person to be paid over a million dollars as a yearly salary, that gives his secret for success. Schwab said himself the he "consider[ed] [his] ability to arouse enthusiasm among [his] people the greatest asset [he] possess[ed], and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement."  And Andrew Carnegie, the man who hired Schwab for over a million dollars, wrote an epitaph for himself that said this, "Here lies one who knew how to get around him men who were cleverer than himself."

I really think that this is what Raymond was getting at in his speech. The greatest successes are organized by people who understand how to bring the smartest people onto a project and then reward those people for the amazing things that they do. In the Bazaar scheme it is done by actually using the suggestions given by the users of the software. That is praise in one of its highest forms. I am always thrilled when working with people and they use one of my ideas in our project. It appeals to my need to feel important, which is another concept covered in Carnegie's book.

This principle is illustrated and applied extremely well by business authors Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick in his book The Carrot Principle. Take sometime to at least find a synopsis of it. He does a great job of showing how appreciation builds teams that can do incredible feats.

It is amazing to see how certain principles overlap time, people and all walks of life. I think open source software has the greatest potential for using this principle to its fullest. I am looking forward to see what happens in the future. And maybe in the future the currency that will be passed around is praise. That would make for an interesting society, and who knows it might be better.

Evernote - Gathering and Organizing Info on the Web

Recently I have been trying to figure out a better way to organize my thoughts, time, and especially the information that I encounter on a daily basis. I have been spending a considerable about of time on the internet lately learning how to better learn on my own. I really have not been good about using the internet as a source of new material to learn from and I think that the main reason fro that is that I do not know how to organize the information I stumble across on the internet. I always seem to find 'cool' bits of stories or different perspectives on a subject but I am not good at linking new information I find to stuff I have read earlier.

So that is where my recent discovery of Evernote comes into play. It is a service used to collect and organize information. For me it has been most helpful in putting new information that I find into a single location that I then can search and go back to that information later. It is really simple to use and easy to get started.

The first step is to sign up at their main website. You can chose whether to just have an internet account or download the program for free. Both the internet account and the program on your personal can be synced by pressing a button. All information is stored as a 'note.' You can create notebooks which are basically like folders in which different notes are stored. You then have the options of sharing these folders with other users who can then edit and add information to them. This is great for people working on a mutual project. Each can access the same notebook and add or edit notes within that notebook.

Web Conferencing

So with the help of Erin Hamson I learned a little more about Web Conferencing and some of the benefits that that has in a business setting. I used to always see video chat as just a means of communicating with friends or family but she showed me how using a program called Yugma, it also has many applications in the business world. It creates virtual meetings and brings people together without having to actually bring them all physically into one room. The person hosting the meeting can mediate a discussion and help forward progress on any project they are working on. I also found it interesting that file sharing is incorporated into Yugma so that process can be easily accessed while still using Yugma.

Innovation to Revolution

So one of the things that I have noticed is that new innovations or inventions usually lead to some type of revolution in their own particular sphere. Take modern warfare for example. All tactics in war are dictated by the weapons being used in battle. Battle tactics in the 17th and 18th century usually consisted of two armies lining up and firing muskets at each other and then charging with bayonets. This tactic was drastically changed around the turn of the 20th century because of the development of much more accurate firearms and many other weapons. In the first World War trench warfare came about as a direct effect of these changes in technology.

Now to transition to modern times. The internet has created a revolution just as have all other great inventions in the past. The Gutenberg Press revolutionized Europe and the world. The invention of the cathoeray tube by Philo Farnsworth transformed the way Americans used their time. Were these revolutions, along with many others, right? I don't think that is really matters. The same goes with the internet. Is the internet and what it has caused to happen to other media, especially newspaper, good? I guess that is a matter of opinion. The point is that the internet is here and there is no going back. Once the nuke was invented their was no going back. We just have to learn to live with what we have. And if you don't like it, invent something better.

Humanism

Okay, so the min purpose of this post is to ask a questions. As I have been reading about humanism lately I have really been impressed on the focus on the individual and empowering the individual to do great things. I have one questions though. How was the individual treated before the Humanist period? I think I would be able to understand better the significance of humanism if I knew more about the conditions that existed before. I will be trying to find more information on it, but please add your input.

Digital Literacy

So, I have been thinking about a discussion in my last class about digital literacy. I really enjoyed the entire thing. It was interesting to me to really see how each person had a different view on what it means to be literate in a digital world. For me personally I always thought of people as computer literate if they could fix a computer if it had problems. So I would not consider myself very literate, but as we discussed this topic in class I started to feel a little more comfortable with myself in that I am probably more digitally literate than I give myself credit for. I can use a computer and I am feeling more confidant about adding my voice to the 'conversation' on the web. So if I were to compare this to my writing skills; sure I may not be a world famous author and I may not be able to teach English at a college, but I think I could write a decent essay every so often.

So now I wanted to add one more thought to this. I was studying in the library a couple of days ago and something really cool happened. I was sitting there reading and I saw a group of people studying together. I overheard there conversation a little bit and it seemed that they were working together on some homework involving the internet. I am not exactly sure but I think that they were working together to master a skill involving a uploading a picture to the internet. It was more complicated than that but that was the main topic I caught. So now the thing that was really cool about this was the age of the people working together. It was two young women probably around there 20's and another woman probably around her mid-40's. The reason that this caught my attention was because we had talked about in class how in many cases the younger generation is more computer savvy than the older. It was amazing to see these people working together because I thought to myself how this is the way the world should work. The older generation has taught us many things as we have grown up that are indispensable to each of us. Maybe we need to do a better job at helping the older generation learn some of the digital literacy that we have picked up as we live in this world. I think that is really what it is about. It might be a flip flop in roles but I am sure that by the time I have grown a little older that the future 'young' generation will know some news things that I will have to learn. I just hope that I can be like that lady and have the courage to ask for some help

And maybe even now we as the younger generation could do a better job at being more literate in the areas that our parents are literate in; like knowing how to buy and advertisement in the classifieds of a newspaper. How knows? Maybe there is some skill from the past that would help us solve the problems of the future.

Civic Media

Okay, so I dont really feel like this enrty to the blog is very complete but I would just like to get this up to see if I could help anyone else get started in the right direction. I am going to try and continue looking into the subject and hopefully with more help I will be able to figure out a more comprehensive answer to what civil media is, and what it hopes to accomplish.

From some of the things that I read, civil media is the use of media and information to help society function in the the way that it should. It helps foster democratic ideals and leads to greater awareness as citizens of one another.  It was interesting to note as I went through some of the information how there seemed to be a trend away from large corporations in charge of information. There seemed to be a large push to putting publishing and circulating information into the actual hands of people. Anarchy in an informational sense. Now there is a large range of stances on how media should be regulated, just like on any topic, but the main feel that I got from the entire thing was that civic media is the use of media to connect people so that society can be improved, not so that a huge corporation can have unfettered access to all information and have the opportunity to censor what it wishes.

MIT has a site on some of the applications of civic media and they do a good job of explaining it. Be patient though, it takes some of them some time to get to their points on their videos.
http://civic.mit.edu/what-is-civic-media

Just a quick example of bypassing the media conglomerates.
https://www.civicmediacenter.org/

Please reply and correct me if you think I have erred. I would also appreciate any other info on where to find a more concise layout of information on what civic media is.