Web Workshop

I attended Dreamweaver 1 on Tuesday, December 5th. It turned out to be a full class and I was glad to see several other classmates there as well. It was also nice to see a variety of different majors that were interested in learning more about Dreamweaver. Before we began the workshop, the instructor was very helpful and provided some useful background information on Dreamweaver. Once we started creating web pages a lot of the stuff we did was review, but I also learned some new skills that may be very helpful in the future. We learned how to incorporate tables and bullets into Dreamweaver, which are helpful in organizing your sites. We also learned how to incorporate music into Dreamweaver to make pages more interesting. Although some of the information was repetitive, it was nice to have a good review of Dreamweaver before creating our final web projects.

Emergence

We are finally done reading the giant pink booklet and have moved onto another set of readings in the book Emergence, by Steven Johnson. Although some points in the beginning of the book were a bit repetitive and explained in great depth, I found the book was able to keep my attention better than some of the previous readings we’ve had this semester.

Before reading the introduction I really didn’t quite understand what emergence was. It became much clearer to me when it was described in the book as being “movement from low-level rules to higher level sophistication.” The book introduces us to this bottom up world view by discussing slime mold cells and how they come together to form something greater than the sum of their separate parts. Another example of a bottom up system that was discussed was an ant colony. The individual ants are meaningless by themselves, but when they work together their sum creates a lifelong functional colony.

We discussed how it is hard for us as humans to envision emergent systems because our brains are wired to think like pacemakers. It seems this way to us because if we examine a bird flock there is always a bird in front that makes it appear as if that bird is leading the rest of them. This is not really the case. Each bird just follows its own set of rules and they end up in that pattern.

Cities were also discussed as being emergent systems because they can replicate themselves and draw in populations and grow. They possess emergent intelligence which is the “ability to store and retrieve information and to recognize and respond to patterns in human behavior.” We are moving into a world of these kinds of bottom up systems. Web sites, artists, and even video games use them and we are finally starting to recognize it.

I can't wait for Thanksgiving!

I woke up this morning in a bad mood because I was thinking about all of the stuff I have to get done before Thanksgiving. It’s Friday and I’m not even excited for the weekend because it will mostly be spent in the library. I have managed to procrastinate again and am now overwhelmed with homework. For this class alone I have to prepare to present the reading for Monday and finish writing our ten page paper. I got even more overwhelmed when I realized I still had to blog for this week. This weekend is not going to be a fun one. Along with everyone else I could really use a four day break.

I felt a little better after my cousin called and told me she got our tickets to go to Germany. Some of my relatives just moved out there, so we are going out to visit them. Because we will have a place to stay, all I had to pay for was the plane ticket so I figured why not go? I jumped at the chance because I’ll probably never get another good opportunity to go. That got me super excited and that’s helped me take my mind off of school. With that in mind hopefully I’ll be able to get all my stuff done before break. I’m sure Thanksgiving will be here before I know it.

Lost in Translation

During class this week we watched the movie Lost In Translation starring Bill Murray as Bob and Scarlett Johansson as Charlotte. When I first saw this movie I didn’t really like it mostly because I didn’t fully understand the meaning behind it. After watching it in class I got a much better understanding of it and enjoyed it much more. I found it really helped me understand the idea of places vs. non-places. The movie provided great examples, which also helped me understand Auge’s readings.

Lost In Translation looks at the lives of two Americans placed in a totally foreign place where it is difficult to communicate with others because of the language barrier. They experience loneliness because of the lack of communication and question their identity and what their place in the world is. I think Ague explains a lot of the experiences in the movie being non-places “where the habitué of supermarkets, slot machines and credit cards communicates wordlessly, through gestures, with and abstract, unmediated commerce; a world thus surrendered to solitary individuality.”

The hospital scene where Bob is in the waiting room with others around him is a good example of this because he cannot communicate with language, so he then tries an alternative form of communication to try to understand the person sitting next to him. The hospital starts off as a non-place and Bob tries to change this into a place by using hand gestures to communicate in another way. This passage is also a good example of how even though the characters were surrounded by people in many of their experiences they still felt a great deal of solitude. Bob and Charlotte are often walking down the street or are in the elevator full of people, but their experiences would be exactly the same if there was no one in sight. It is only when the two of them are together they turn these non-places into places because they are able to communicate to each other.

I Could Do Without Being Asked For Money

I usually walk down State Street at least once a day after class and there hasn’t been a single day where I haven’t been asked for money by someone. I feel bad about the situation they are in, but it’s really starting to get annoying. I just couldn’t afford to give people money all the time, and I really don’t have a lot of sympathy for people constantly asking me.

It seems that the homeless always target college students who are walking alone. For some reason they think we have money and are too nice to turn them down. I am not one of these people. I usually don’t carry my wallet to class and if I do I most likely don’t have any money anyway. Even if I do happen to have cash on me, I don’t like giving it away because I don’t know what they are actually buying with it. I mean, if I knew someone was just using my money to go buy themselves some alcohol I’d be pissed because I could have used that money to buy myself some!

I’m starting to avoid walking down that way because it seems no matter how I turn them down I get a comment. If I tell someone I’m sorry I don’t have any on me, I’ve been accused of lying. On the other hand if I just walk by without saying anything I get some comment about how I’m ignoring them. I can’t win no matter what I do.

Although it’s sometimes difficult to avoid the homeless downtown, I’ve discovered a few things that do work if you’re walking alone. If you see someone with a cup down the street, get out your phone and call someone. Even if no one answers you can still pretend you’re in the middle of a conversation and they will leave you alone. Another thing that usually works is to find a big group of people and pretend you are with them. You can sometimes get lost in the crowd and blend in without being asked for spare change. I’m at the point where I get so annoyed that I often do all of these things. I swear some of them have to recognize me now and they still ask everyday. I love Madison, but that is one thing I could do without.

Modernism/Places Vs. Postmodernism/Non-places

This week’s reading was probably one of the most challenging readings we’ve had in class so far. It was difficult to get through and I really didn’t understand them at all until after the class discussions. The first reading by Fredric Jameson compared modernism vs. postmodernism. I saw how postmodernism is so greatly linked to architecture and other forms of art. The shoe paintings by Van Gough and Warhol demonstrated some of the differences between modernism and postmodernism. Van Gough’s shoes have more of a sense of history behind them. The content is what is really important and can really teach us something, which has a lot to do with what modernism is. Warhol’s shoes, on the other hand, represent the idea of postmodernism. They are more abstract and the focus is on the form/style of the piece. That picture makes us look at art differently in the same way that postmodernism makes us look at the world differently and is a new way of thinking.

The next reading that we looked at by Marc Auge compared places vs. non-places. The postmodernism handout helped me relate the articles by seeing how a place would fall under the modernism category whereas a non-place is like the postmodernism. Places are more of and in-depth experience and are more memorable. Jordan also talked about how places are more interactive and non-places are less interactive and how the people and things around them have little effect on their experience.

We got into a very interesting discussion in class about what makes something a place and how places and non-places can co-exist. The supermarket example we talked about in class was very helpful in seeing how something can be a place for one person and a non-place for another. For the customer who may have no interaction with the people around them it may be a non-place whereas it may be a place for a cashier because they must interact with everyone who checks out with them. We also discussed how things like class size can affect whether or not something may be a place vs. a non-place. It’s interesting to realize how new technology is pushing us into a world of more non-places because we can now do many things without interaction with others. It’s kind of a scary thought that we may be becoming less and less personal with each other.

Parents Who Spoil Their Kids Are Nuts!

I was watching Oprah the other day and she had an interesting show on parents who spoil their kids. These kids had been handed everything including brand new cars, expensive clothes and thousand dollar allowances every month. Even when some of the parents were having financial problems the kids still got everything they wanted. They even had grown adults with kids on the show whose parents were still giving them gas money.

I think it’s ridiculous how spoiled so many kids are these days. When I look at what some of my brothers high school friends drive to school every morning it makes me sick. I don’t know what kind of parents would do this to their kids. They will never learn to appreciate anything or learn to be independent. Your parents can’t provide for you forever. I can understand that kids may need some help from Mom and Dad to pay the bills from time to time when you’re in college, but I think that should be cut off for the most part as soon as you graduate.

I feel like I had a lot of stuff growing up, but I definitely wasn’t spoiled. I was lucky to have all the stuff I had because I wasn’t one of those kids who got everything they wanted. I appreciated the things I had that I didn’t need because I worked to get most of it on my own. Because of this I feel like I’m pretty independent and can easily live on my own.

I had a very spoiled roommate my sophomore year and she didn’t even know how to use a toaster. I had to teach her how to do laundry and even use the dish washer because she always had everything done for her. Living on her own was a huge shock because she wasn’t use to doing anything by herself. I guess parents can raise their kids however they want, but I know my kids definitely won’t be spoiled brats.