Identity and Technology
blog for UN1001
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- Assignment 1: Introduction to Self
- Assignment 2: Favorite Technology
- Assignment 3: Avatar Portfolio and Presentation
- Assignment 4: Perspective and Learning Analysis
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Recent Posts
- Today’s Class (Friday, Dec. 12th)
- Questions for Wright reading: How does user created content influence learning from games?
- Questions for Wright reading: What are some of the drawbacks from learning from video games or certain types of video games?
- Questions for Wright reading: Do games offer problem solving? Provide an example of how a specific game offers or does not offer problem solving.
- Questions for Wright reading: Do games offer self-esteem? Provide an example of how a specific game offers or does not offer self-esteem.
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![OMG ! [ Explore #1 ]](http://static.flickr.com/2631/4150305338_5dd4270c04_t.jpg "OMG ! [ Explore #1 ]")
XKCD Comic on cell phones
some of those were really funny.
Here’s a link to a sample MLA cover page
http://www.writinghelp-central.com/mla-sample1.html
On the topic of left-brained versus right-brained, go to:
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,22492511-5005375,00.html
just follow the instructions of the site, I would personally be curious as to the results of the class and whether it supports the “women are more left-brained” theory.
My personal hunch is that because we are in fact at an engineering college, that the statistic will be skewed towards right-brained. Nonetheless, I find that the results would be interesting.
I hope I didn’t come across as sexist today in class, that wasn’t my purpose at all. I was merely trying to suggest that the “sexist” ideas and assumptions are more justified. I don’t feel as though the reason women take on nurturing roles is because men are just ogres who want to opress women.
As I re-read the articles I was referring to in class, I discovered that I had the left and right brain thing flip-flopped. Right side is the predominantly creative portion, and the left side is the predominantly logical portion. And women are more right-brained typically.
Evidence of the dominance of men being left brained and women right brained is who in our clothes even. Men have their buttons on the right side of their shirts and women have theirs on the left side. Being left brained, men use their right hand to button their shirts, and vice versa.
http://www.virtual.co.nz/index.php/StrategicSnippets/WomenAreSignificantlyMoreRightBrainedThanMen
The above link is an article discussing why men largely dominate the business world. I will attempt to paraphrase it in case you don’t want to read it all.
The left side of the brain involves concepts such as: Efficiency, Technology, Performance, Measurements, Goals, Perfection, Risk Reduction, Control, and Policy. These are topics obviously very important in the business culture. Because men are typically more left-brained, it stands to reason that they would dominate the industry.
In addition, the right-brain is essentially trained out of us through our early education system. Kids start off going to school always asking questions. But by the time they leave school they only have the answers, they no longer seem to care about “why?”.
A great example the article presents is Albert Einstein. “Reflect on the early school report of Albert Einstein. ‘Albert is a very poor student. He is mentally slow, unsociable, and always day dreaming. He is spoiling it for the rest of the class. It would be in the best interest for all if he were to be removed from school at once.’”
I’m not saying that women cannot be in leadership positions in the business world, I’m just presenting the facts as to why it is so rare. The way our society works now makes men much more suited for the positions.
I personally don’t think gender should be much of a factor in designating a candidate for a position. I think that whoever is best suited for the position should get it. There is no reason why some women can’t be better suited than some men.
Now, addresing the idea of women having more nurturing roles such as nurses or teachers, in comparison to men. Women are just biologically more nurturing than men. Women give birth and nurture and feed the child. Women are just designed to be vastly superior to men in this task. 1) Women and ONLY women can actually give birth to a child and 2) Women and ONLY women can actually feed the child. Men have neither a uterus nor breasts to feed.
Women are just more naturally able to nurture than a man is. It is in their genes, in their hormones. When a man sees a baby, he doesn’t typically go, “awwwwww”. However, a majority of women will coo at tbe baby.
This is not to say that there aren’t exceptions to the rule of thumb. There are always exceptions to every rule unfortunately. But when talking about a trend like this, you can’t really consider a single outlier to disprove a theory.
Again, I am not sexist. I don’t feel as though men are superior to women. I only feel as though there are certain tasks that each sex is more suited to perform than the other. This is not to say that the opposite sex cannot perform the task, only that it will be more difficult for them to overcome the differences in order to become an equal candidate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkWZTHAYrXI
Found this video on technological dependence, thought it was kind of cool. Watch the interview after the credits.
You gotta try this… if you double click your mouse you don’t have to keep hitting it… and then press c to change the color…
if you want to know more directions… click on the box in the left hand corner of the screen.
http://thisissand.com
i dont know if this fits but i thought it was kinda interesting. my parents saw it in the news back home and told me about it so check it out:
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200881013011
its about all of the online spoof media about the presidential election this year.
heres a fun game Kitten Cannon my high score is 1,300
http://www.addictinggames.com/kittencannon.html
Here’s an article about robotic lathes:
http://www.motoman.co.uk/pr1064(gkn).htm
On that last link, you need to copy and paste the entire URL into the URL bar.
So I definitely just proved one of my points invalid.
Earlier, I argued that there is no “default” on the Internet, but I have just proven myself wrong in a specific case.
In my CS class, we have a practice where we email our finalized code to two other students in the class for review and testing; this aids the grading process and helps us catch “stupid” errors before the teacher receives the program.
I am working with a presumably Asian student this time around. I have never met this person in real life, I only have an Asian-sounding name that belongs to this student, and this student’s email address (name and email omitted for obvious reasons).
When I was composing my email to this person, I found that I had automatically made the assumption that this student was male, and accordingly had used androgynous pronouns throughout the body of the email, even though I have no indication whatsoever as to the sex of the student.
Now, I can see how most students in the CS1131 class are male, but still the assumption was not appropriate.
I just helped support the very arguments I was opposed to a week ago.
Interesting spoof on gaming by the Onion news.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/22431/onion-news-network-warcraft-sequel-lets-gamers-play-a-character-playing-warcraft#s-p1-st-i1
This is the coolest and creepiest thing ever.
Angry German Kid:
Here are some sweet free games:
http://www.wesnoth.org/
This one is a turn based medieval fantasy.
http://icculus.org/alienarena/rpa/
This is an futuristic alien FPS.
The last one is a best seller, released for free now that it’s been out for so long. It is a action horror game set in a prison.
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/54943
Squirrels dancing to Michael Jackson
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=0A2moFdM1Yo
Philippines prison doing Thriller
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=hMnk7lh9M3o&feature=related
If you look, they do other songs like Soulja Boy.
http://actiii.net/JJBIII/JOKES/crazy_world.html
Weird desires.
Okay, don’t mind the caption of that last post. I meant to say weird facts, but we were talking about that question in class about gamer’s desires, and I put weird desires by accident.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afj0UoAsWjc
everyone check this out it kinda fits the whole video game theme.
This is right along the same lines as the “OMG Girls don’t exist on the intarweb!” article we read a few weeks ago–on a blog I frequent, the response to a post featuring a female generates a huge response.
http://hackaday.com/2008/10/20/bjork-teaches-you-about-electronics/
if anyone still does not have the diamond age book, you can read it online (or download the pdf) here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4676843/eBookPDF-Fiction-Neal-Stephenson-The-Diamond-Age
http://abstrusegoose.com/85
This is really sweet.
Some thoughts on semiotic domains:
The classroom is most thrilling for me when the teacher successfully makes it a semiotic domain. If the work was genuine engineering work, rather than drills, I would probably complete it with enthusiasm.
I had a genuine moment of excitement when I saw the word “Engineer:” at the bottom of a CAD form I opened. For a moment, I saw myself as a required or helpful part of this whole scene. Then reality hit.
If there was a way to keep the illusion of being a crucial member of society, a vital cog in a mind-bogglingly complex, infinitely vast machine, scholars would get much more out of their education.
(seeing as I’m in the middle of another class, I will have to continue this post a bit later)
http://www.rockbox.org/mail/archive/rockbox-dev-archive-2008-12/0026.shtml
This is another example of “girls don’t exist on the Intarweb”. It is a hardware hacker’s mailing list/project, and seems predominantly male. And this is a prime example of the behavior there. You have to read past the original message, to the response at the bottom of the page.
http://hu2645.wordpress.com/
Found this just Googling “wkanders” out of curiosity.
Does anyone else here feel like we’re getting the short end of the stick, organization/design-wise on this blog?