Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
September 20, 2017 at 2:45 pm #1099Tyler WaldriffParticipant
The issue that stuck out most to me in Well’s World Brain was his critique on the subject matter that is taught to children in elementary school, under the section, “The Informative Content of Education.” Here, Wells states that the problem stems from elementary schools, which “does not properly inform,” due to the fact that it focuses on topics that are too primary, such as mathematics, art, and language. Wells sees this type of education as inferior, because it does not “properly” present to students an apt depiction of the world that they live in, so that they may be better prepared to adapt to it.
Here, Wells raises interesting questions on how the very basis of primary education functions. Should they be sheltered from the realities of the world, or learn about the issues around them immediately? Will they be better prepared to face these issues after being older and more educated, or will the earlier exposure make them better suited? These are points that I find particularly relevant today, as media exposure has made the avoidance of these issues nearly impossible, even at a young age. In addition to this, education is a very concrete construct, in that it can be very difficult to institute change. This is why the fundamentals of mathematics, art, and language have remained as they have been, in the manner they’re taught, for so long. To change this into a curriculum that allows for politics at such a young age, as Wells suggests, would be an arduous process with unknown results, and because of this, impractical.
September 18, 2017 at 2:31 pm #1090Tyler WaldriffParticipant- The biggest challenge faced by researchers at the time would not only be finding an easy way to access the copious amounts of data that existed (and also those that would be created in the future), but also finding a way to share that data. For as necessary as finding the information is, it doesn’t mean a whole lot if the researcher is unable to share it with other members of the community. To remedy this, “memex,” would have to not only have to provide a tool for finding the information, but also a network that could be utilized for sharing it.
- The way in which researchers interact with their own research and other researchers could be radically altered by”memex” is through the use of key terms that narrow the number of resources to those that are most relevant to the research. A feature that also provides metadata on the research could drastically improve this, by not only providing the most optimized data, but by providing multiple ways in which the user can search for it. For instance, a researcher could search for all articles that are by a specific author, or those written in a certain time period. A network functionality could take this even further, by providing a platform in which the researchers could collaborate with one another, without having to be face to face.
September 15, 2017 at 11:00 am #1078Tyler WaldriffParticipant- Prior to reading the chapter, I always saw my computer as a machine of many different parts that function as a base for other program to interact with, creating a near infinite number of way in which the base computer can be modified, to provide a vast amount of content to the user, whether it be for information or entertainment. I now see computers as sort of a giant, complex calculator, that can read a nigh infinite number of symbols that were designed by Turing. This is because of the complex language that I’ve learned went into creating the modern computer interface. An input is entered to the computer, in a language the computer understands, then interpreted and translated back into a format that can be easily understood by its users. Pretty fascinating.
- This chapter changed my understanding of information, in that rather than seeing it as just the finished product, I recognize the entire process that goes into gathering and relaying that single piece of information. For example, a calculator gives you the information of “4” when you enter “2+2,” but the information is not just the “4” at the end, its the entire process that occurs in the inter workings of the device, which go through many codes and algorithms to produce that result.
September 13, 2017 at 1:05 am #1061Tyler WaldriffParticipant- I find it fascinating that the genesis of the dictionary came about from one man’s selfless mission to help others “understand and use hard words,” and how far it has come since then. The fact that Cawdrey believed the time he lived in was an age of “information explosion,” and that his word dictionary was a milestone of the era, really brings into perspective just how far society has advanced with information in such a relatively short time.
- In Metadata, Pomerantz discusses the Dublin Core Metadata scheme, which sought to achieve a goal similar to Cawdrey’s in being the definitive resource to reference for those seeking more knowledge regarding vocabulary, and metadata categorization, respectively.
- I would love to know how Cawdrey would react to the information and resources that we have available today. To see that the dictionary has grown from 2,500 to over 170,000, and that the entire lexicon of the English language can be browsed with ease through the internet (which on its own would most likely be enough to put him into catatonic shock) would no doubt be overwhelming, to say the least.
-
AuthorPosts