Week 13- Comments

Comment on Stephanie Cunningham's Reading Response:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=5053881157949942224&postID=1401667253238448867&page=1

Comment on Susanna Woods' Reading Response:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=2759599872455292147&postID=7967432130580806965&page=1

Comment on Lauren Acquarole's Muddiest Point:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=4181925387762663697&postID=1777411810725835238&page=1

Week 13- Muddiest Point

I've seen lots of debates and arguments about whether privacy is actually included in the constitution. When it comes to the Constitution, I am definitely a "Translator" (so much better a term than 'loose interpretationist, which implied a lack of care or understanding). As Lawrence Lessig said, it is up to us to determine what the principle of the original wording was, what "root" right they were trying to protect, and how does that translate into the modern world?

What I want to know, then, is (1) what the official government policy is right now regarding computers and privacy, (2) where you find that in writing, (3) who is responsible for determining and disseminating the "party line," (4) does the supreme court and/or legal precedent have any influence on it.

Week 13 - Reading Response

No Place To Hide
The link didn't work so I googled it and read the last chapter of the book. Talk about horrifying. I was aware that the downside of lovely things like cell phones and the internet, etc. was that more of my information was being made available to anyone who might care to get into it, and I have tried to avoid an electronic footprint as much as possible. This class, to a certain extent, has utterly obliterated my efforts. That being said, I made mistakes in the past, too, like using my MAC card to pay for minutes on my anonymously registered prepaid cell phone, (there went ALL that effort). I think perhaps the scariest thing in this chapter is the "Smart Dust" and I can't get over the idea that something that small could monitor my activities and report them back, for years at a time, without battery replacement or any alternate power source. That's absolutely horrifying.

And as for the argument that "if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about." Yeah, sure. But even if you aren't doing anything wrong now, who's to say the laws won't change and all of a sudden all those years of doing whatever innocent thing you enjoyed is now being used to indict or persecute you. I know it's extreme to say what if they misidentify you, but my brother Emmett got caught for underage drinking in Montgomery County PA when he was 16. It was his second offense, and as a result they suspended his driver's license (since he didn't have one, it was to start whenever he got it). When the Montco court system entered the information, however, they suspended my COUSIN Emmett's license (also 16, but WITH a license). And that's a relatively innocent mistake, relatively easy to correct--translate that to a terrorist watch list and unless you happen to be a Senator or Congressman, good luck getting off the list. I learned about the "I'd rather 9 guilty men go free than one innocent man be imprisoned" quote at a very young age, and I really took it to heart. On this issue, I err on the side of Civil Liberty. If they do their job well enough, the guilty guys won't get away.

Total Information Awareness
More scary-ness...This is an excellent resource for information, however, as it seems to aggregate stories from a pretty wide variety of sources, both governmental and media. Lawrence Lessig talked a little about government information tracking programs in Code 2.0 , and I seemed to gather that it would merely involve coding the programs to retain anonymity unless a "hit" was made. I understood the main problem to be that no one in their right mind trusts the government, so we want to see the code to ensure that we are truly anonymous; the government, on the other hand, doesn't show anything they don't have to, and so refuses to show the code on the grounds of national security. Ridiculous, I know.

Video on You Tube
" This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Viacom International Inc." (YouTube)

Week 11 - Muddiest Point

I do not have a muddiest point related to technology or this class this week.

My muddiest point has to do with academics that have a degree or specialization in one field who think that it qualifies them as an expert in other fields. Why are they so common?

Also, why is it that half the books and articles we have had to read this semester are about things that seem to me to be mind-numbing, staggeringly common-sensical, but which are advertised(?) as new and exciting fields of inquiry and development?

Week 11 - Comments

Comment on Micquel's muddiest point about the age of our readings: https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=1128670142701200699&postID=3141634891159341487&page=1

Comment on Lauren Acquarole's fabulous and fun-fact-filled reading response: https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=4181925387762663697&postID=6937882616450900868&page=1

Comment/conversation with Nicole Plana about assignments and manga: https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=1491308052360981630&postID=9075308948992070883&page=1

Comment on Joyce Butler's website:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6411265268178233609&postID=5831609993885907855&page=1

Week 11 - Reading Response

First-This is late, but I totally blanked on posting it Friday. I wrote it, saved it, and promptly forgot about the most important part....

So...Digital Libraries: challenges and influential work:

I think that this article was a little too outdated. It might be useful in writing a history of internet searches and repository development, but I am not entirely sure of what I was supposed to gain from reading it. In computer/internet terms, three years is a really long time. Stuff that might have been new or unknown then is now common knowledge or even passe.

Dewey meets Turing: librarians, computer scientists and the digital libraries initiative
I hope you will pardon me if I express frustration at what I see as utter stupidity and stubborness on the part of both the librarians and the computer scientists. One of the things I have noticed among highly educated people is their tendency to believe that their knowledge in one particular field makes them knowledgeable in others. Librarians have it worse than others because they can gain a staggering amount of knowledge in a wide variety of fields, simply during the course of performing their job over the years. That being said, I am getting really tired of reading about how Computer Scientists think this, Librarians think this, Scientists think this, and Historians think this, etc. It is staggeringly clear to me that when I want to do something, I must seek out the best people for doing it--get the carpenter to fix the walls, the plumber to do the pipes, and the electrician to do the wiring. If the carpenter does the wiring, maybe he actually knows a little, but it will obviously not be done to its best, and may in fact be dangerous. I don't understand why a piece of paper makes so many people think that they can do everything and know better than everyone else, and why there are so many articles presenting the idea of collaboration and appropriate division of labor as new.

Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital Age
Okay, to completely contradict that part I wrote about how an article from 2005 might be outdated already....I think this article is outstanding and have zoteroed it for future reference. Perhaps what makes it still relevant is the lack of actual technical/technology requirements/pieces/descriptions and the fact that it is much more a general concept article...I don't know... I do believe that the guidelines listed for starting institutional repositories, as well as the three concerns the author has about institutions creating repositories, are not only important and relevant, but translatable to all things--databases, collections, webpages, web-initiatives, etc. I wonder how many inst. reps. actually failed and succeeded in the last 5 years and how many of those failures and successes can be attributed to the institution either taking said guidelines and concerns into account or ignoring them.
That being said, however, I would imagine that institutions following those guidelines may be a pipe dream more often than not: consider, "In a budget crunch, the institutional repository may be one of the last things that can be cut, given the way that digital preservation demands steady and consistent attention and hence funding. Faculty who choose to rely on institutional repositories to disseminate and preserve their work are placing a great deal of trust in their institution and in the integrity, wisdom, and competence of the people who manage it. We need to ensure that our institutional repositories are worthy of this trust." Given my experience with both institutions and budget crunches, there is no doubt in my mind that most institutions will try to do it with half the necessary people and a quarter of the necessary funding (which will be one of the first things slashed in a real budget crisis). In other words, for the majority of people, the institution does not even slightly deserve any amount of trust, unless you are trusting it to mess things up.

The librarian's dream...

DUDES! DID YOU SEE THE LIBRARY THEY'VE GOT HERE?
BY J. BYARD YODER
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2008/9/29yoder.html
- - - -
Man, when I came out to campus for the prospective students' weekend last spring, I knew it was going to be fucking off the hook. I mean, it's just a completely different level from high school. I have my own room with my best bud Kyle, and high-speed Internet and cable, a cafeteria open till 11 p.m. with, like, all the Honey Nut Cheerios I could ever eat and an omelet bar on weekends, and even a whole floor full of totally hot sophomore chicks just an elevator ride away.

But the library, man, the library is the bomb.

I mean, you know how we spent all of high school telling each other we were totally going to start staying after football practice to spend some quality time with the books? And we never did? Dude—now the library is, like, just across the quad from my dorm room. I can totally go study every morning, on the way to Psych 101. Or just before lunch. Or, like, right at the end of the day. Or maybe late at night, if they're open that late.
Yeah, Kyle, I think I heard, like, till 11, maybe 11:30 p.m. Man, my brain is going to be totally pumped by spring break.

Oh, I took the tour back during the prospective weekend. It got me totally psyched. Dude, they've got the latest computerized catalog system—just roll right up to a terminal, type in your search terms, and it gives you a list of titles and call numbers, plus a little map to show you where they all are. Fucking Dewey decimal, man. It's tight. Or maybe I'll just wander through the stacks—they've got those awesome shelves on wheels, so they're all space-efficient—and just pick something at random. It'll be totally intense. Six floors of books and periodicals, all ordered as neatly as soldiers on parade.

Like that use of simile, huh, Chris? Yeah, I've done a little studying over the summer, trying to get a base for hitting the big time this semester. My dad's got a couple of shelves of classics in the basement. Nothing real hard—a little Dickens, a little Frost. Some Emily Dickinson. Chick was fucking messed up, dudes. But she could scan like shit. "Because I could not stop for Death, / He kindly stopped for me." Yeah, I think I'm going to try and really hit the ground running. Start with some Shakespeare sonnets, maybe work my way up to memorizing "Howl" by fall break. I think I could totally do it, if I really just put in the time, went to the library every day and hit the books.

I'll come back from biology and change into my nylon-mesh shorts and this awesome Under Armour shirt I got over the summer. It's sleeveless, so you can totally see my new tattoo, with the Mark Twain quote. "The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." Words to live by, man. Because, yeah, it's about showing off a bit, too. I'll sit down at a table across from the big glass windows in the second-floor lounge, so I can get a bit of reflection, check myself out. Maybe catch some chicks checking me out, too. I'll be all cool and stuff—I'll have my headphones on, with Nickelback going, and I'll just keep turning pages. But I'll know they're watching. Getting totally hot for my mind.

I tell you what, though, dudes—you only get a chance like this while you're in college. After we graduate, we'll have to figure out how to fit studying into our work schedules, make time to get to the city library branch and its crappy little collection.

Yeah, while I'm here on campus, my life is totally going to revolve around that library.

Assignment 6 - Building Webpages

Links, links, links...everywhere, links... but I've got pix on my faves page...

http://www.pitt.edu/~mlm121/index.html

Week 10 - Muddiest Point

So now that I am passing familiar with HTML and XML, I question the possibility of ever achieving a Semantic Web. The time and effort that goes into breaking down a document into XML (for a couple paragraphs, let alone a serious research paper), seems positively prohibitive. And the fact that we even need a semantic web at all speaks to a computer's ability to automatically write the XML coding for us.... which brings me to my question: IS this a potential new career path for people, a new job market? Could people spend all day reading and coding what they read into parts of grammar and structured context?

Week 10 - Comments

Response to Joyce's Comment on my website:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6411265268178233609&postID=4830210347831968511&page=1

Comment on Corinne's Week 10 Readings:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=5477147704203276697&postID=6855452384905862491&page=1

Comment on some awesome links on Dustin's website:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=8599774071021712765&postID=8646271282093831111&page=1

Week 10 - Reading Response

David Hawking Two Part Web Search Engines:
Fantastic article which makes me feel a little as if I understand how search engines work now. I had an abstract idea, but I figured it was just something I'd leave to the programmers when I told them what I wanted them to develop. Now, however, I feel like I can competently ask for things that are possible, and even suggest things that might be new (assuming, one day, that someone cares what I want in a search engine, that is).


Study on the Deep Web
Absolutely fascinating. I was surprised to see that I am familiar with many of the Deep Web sites listed here, and I was amazed to see that 97.4% of the deep web sites were 100% free to the public. It seems like maybe the internet Lessig was hoping for does exist, you just have to be willing to spend the time diving to the right depth to see it. The science stuff was iffy, but because of LIS 2000, a lot of that was familiar as well, and on the whole I really enjoyed reading this article.


Current Trends in OAI...
I am sorry--I spent quite a while reading and re-reading , and this one was just over my head. Perhaps after I read other people's responses Iwill gain a better understanding of what all the technical information and jargon means in terms of real life searching for these specialized collections.