Problem Solving

I really liked the problem solving. Not only did it involve math, which makes it automatically fun, but it made me think outside the box. The last problem in particular required you to look at it a little differently than you ordinarily would. I think that process would have been made easier if the description of the problem was a little clearer (the existence of multiple movers with which to stack the blocks was only really mentioned in passing, so I spent about 10 minutes trying to figure it out before I noticed). Still, I like thinking, and I like thinking creatively about things even better. The way in which you had to look at it before doing the problem, however, just created another problem in explaining it to your group. Attempting to use visual aids and verbal explanations to help them work out the problem a couple times over was frustrating, but in the end it worked, so I can't really complain. I suppose that's just what happens when people with two very different learning styles try to teach each other. A whole lot of confusion and not much progress.

Larry Lessig

I liked Larry Lessig's talk best. For one, as Mr. Stephens said, he really was very good with the visuals. The words and funny pictures and videos would flash across the screen, keeping it dynamic and interesting rather than static. The other reason I really liked it is because he raised a similar point to one of the ones I liked from the first chapter of Blown to Bits, about laws related to new technology. I think one of the main problems that causes the disconnect between the law and the new technology is that laws are most often made by older people, who are as a whole much less tech savvy than younger ones. Your average kid, and now young adults, grew up around this tech, and are intimately familiar with how it works. For another good example besides music piracy, look at video games. The current politicians in the government have probably never played a video game in their lives, and so probably have no idea about how games work, and how they affect people. Young people, on the other hand, know how to play and know lots of people who know how, and so know how it affects their mind. As such, the people making laws regarding video games think it makes anyone under forty into a serial killer, and really annoy all the gamers in the world. I just think there are lots of good parallels, between all different innovative technologies, and how they confuse people, from the airplane to the Internet.

Web 2.0

I learned something new this week! I learned that Web 2.0 actually existed. I had never really considered that web pages could be divided into sub categories. The web was the web, both interactive and non-interactive. That there are subsections and facets of the Internet really surprised me, and I suspect that it would surprise a lot of other people, too. Still, this little piece of ignorance I do feel is slightly worrying. That I, someone who could be reasonably considered "computer savvy," didn't realize that the web could be divided in such a manner probably means that most of the people in this country are even less knowledge than I am. With the web influencing so much of our lives, it bothers me that such basic facts about this new technology could go completely unnoticed by the public large. As the web gets more and more important in everyone's day to day lives, little pieces of ignorance and misinformation like that could really add up, and cause big problems somewhere down the line. Of course, this little errors wouldn't take long to correct, what with Wikipedia and Google being so popular, but that may not help if the damage is already done. It seems like there should be some sort of required "technology information" class or at least assembly in high schools. I might also be worrying about nothing. I suppose only time will tell.

The Week

Well, the first real week of Computer Programming is over, and it went fairly well. We learned about and corrected some common misconceptions of how to use search engines like Google, which I mostly knew already. We also thought about really defines a computer. I must be honest, I hadn't thought about the subject before. If you had asked what a computer was, I likely would have said, "You know, a computer. It computes stuff". I now realize that the barriers of what constitutes a computer are much more vague and ill-defined than I had realized initially. I suppose computer could just be defined as anything that computes, but that includes a number of different things that clearly aren't computers, blurring the issue a fair bit. As interesting as that was, I did appreciate the shift from the philosophical to the practical as we began on the project about computer specifications. As someone who uses computers regularly, I was somewhat surprised at all the different parts included in a computer, and how they affect the experience of the user. The time that we did the project was also very fortuitous, as I was in the market for a new computer at the time, and the information that I gained from it was instrumental in my choice. For anyone who's curious, I went with this one: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=416900&CatId=4928.

Well, I guess that's all I have to say.