Social Network(week5)

People in the world are not only connected directly but also indirectly. For example, even though they don't know each other directly or even to whom they are associated, they can be connected by similar interests or kind of jobs they have and so on.
There were several tryings to define how closely people are associated. One of them is a kind of experiment done by Stanley Milgram titled "The small world problem". The experiment had been done in reality from people to people. I must be so complicated to check if everythings are going well everyday and get results from it. But thanks for his effort, we can know that people are connected in six degrees. It's interesting!
Social networks were used effieciently as technology. In this case, relations among people's tastes for each subjects were useful. For example, websites for shopping made use of social networks in people's interest very well. When one persom buy something from the website, the website automatically search for other objects which other people who already had bought the same thing used to buy and suggest the objects to the shopper.
To visualize something complicated things in simple form is good work. Also there are visualized form about social networks. Some people did it by hand and some people did it by using computer programs. Epecially because social networks are keep changing even moment by moment, it is good to show its changing situation.

It was interesting that just the social network itself could be thought from different backgrounds(?) such as science, technology, art and so on. It's getting closer that media and social cannot be seperated. May be I will try to visualize my relations with my hand someday.

The world-wide-web.(week 4)

We learned the web this week, the web as a technology.
I remember that there were quite a few unfamiliar words to me such as URL(URI actually), URN, ISO, IETF, SGML and so on. I know now that some of those are names of organizations and some of those are languages of each parts of computer. And they are being used to standardize the www.(I am not quite sure to be honest) Especially, I used to have difficulty recognizing differences between HTML and HTTP. But finally at the end of the class in this week, I can clearly define that HTML is a hypertext markup language & HTTP is an internet protocol designed for transferring information for hypertext documents.
It was impressing to see the web as an art form made by Jisa jevbratt, Mark napier and one of the students from Soongsil Univ. Seeing those art forms helped me to feel vastness of the www more effectively than the document itself did.
There must be much more things that I should know in media world, and I feel excitement about it.

About 'Augmenting Human Intellect' (week3)

An article for this week was written by Englebart.
Englebart is the one who first invented a shape of computer such as a mouse, a keyboard and a monitor which are similar to computer of these days. There were reasons in is remarkable works and he is suggesting and telling people those reasons through this article.
He emphasized augmenting human intellect over all. He said that augmented one's intellect will help one to solve quite a few complex problems that one will face in the future. In the end of the article, he said that power of the human intellect will be more important than nuclear power or neural power. I am sure that he could have made lots of his achievements because he gave it an action in reality just as he emphasized. But we have to keep in mind that as he mentioned, we should not expect to break down a big problem at once although it's after we've took in comprehension, innovation, or execution. We may keep step by step. I think it's nothing to be sad of. It's natural thing as every little muscles work to make a hand write a word.
Throughout the whole history, every people who could think specially with augmneted intellect changed and improved human culture. Thinking just as any other people can think is not a good thing. In this point, Englebart gave us a precious lesson.

About 'Preface' & 'As we may think' (week 2)

'Ends of millennia are angst-ridden occasions when reality shifts gears, and it appears that the synchromesh doesn't always work properly.'

This first sentence of the "Preface" shows how I think about present pefectly. I came to University, but I am not sure what I am here for yet. Something about scientific practices that Stone mentioned....... that's right! I had done lots of science experiments about the world that I could even hardly see, from elimentary to high school. Do those activities give me any help directly to live my life effectively? May be not. This means that even though I have been living for 20 years, I haven't had any chances to know something about present. In this confusing world, I think ability to understanding the present precisely like Stone did would be really important. Just as Stone said at the back part of the writting, EVERYTHING IS UP TO OURSELVES.

A writer of 'As we may think' "Bush' mostly talks about early methods which can help people to keep flooding informations. The subject of the article was so fresh to me because I haven't thought that storing files could be a problem. But I know that by now, that there has been many process of trial and error. According to the article, there were many difficulties in making progess on making effective machines. Evolution could not be made only by amazing inventive ideas of one smart person. The level technology at that time could not support the ideas to becom actual machine. 'Memex' which professor mentioned at last class is one of them.

I remember that professor said that there is no totally new thing/idea. Inventinon which can surprises the world only can be made with strong backgrounds. It seems that the world is so developed that any more remarkably new things cannot appear. But I do belive it can because we have much much more information and possess much higher technology than before. Why not? I wish.. I could be the one who makes the change.