"Would you like to share this with your friends and 150,000,000 other people?"

It’s no secret that people lie. This is especially true on the Internet, and Facebook seems to be a large community of liars, if reports are to be believed. 25% of users, as measured by a 2000-household survey, use false information in their Facebook profiles to ward off identity theft. But is that really all there is to it?

Facebook changes their display a lot; they also change what information is shared between users. New functions allow applications to share information between users even if the user has set Facebook’s privacy settings to “friends only.” Facebook also has a new function that shows a location along with posts made from mobile phones, as well as sharing what music a user might be listening to at any given time. This information is crucial to companies that streamline their products to consumers; they want to know want people want.

Some users, aside from privacy, falsify their profile information for fun. A big example is setting up a funny nickname. I have a friend who lists his Facebook nickname as “Jafar,” the antagonist from the Disney movie, Aladdin. Adding to that, some users create accounts to emulate popular characters from books, television series, movies, etc. These accounts are typically made for fun, but they can also be dangerous if personal information is leaked while signed into the wrong account.

Studies about Facebook’s privacy settings reveal shocking information about users. According to a Consumer Reports questionnaire, only 37% of those polled had actually used Facebook privacy settings or knew anything about them. Just think: if 63% of people on Facebook are leaving their personal information out in the open for thieves and companies to steal and use for their own gain, how is it that our nation has not already crumbled in economic duress?

Murphy's Law

Moore’s Law states that computing power doubles about once every eighteen months. This increase in power may not be directly noticeable by consumers, but Intel has continued to provide new technology for many years that improves upon previous abilities. However, City College of New York theoretical physics professor Michio Kaku believes Moore’s Law may be coming to an end. Kaku, who has predicted the collapse of Moore’s Law since at least 2003, says the critical point will be reached within a decade. Constant shrinking of transistors in unsustainable.

Intel has a new chip called Ivy Bridge, ten nanometers smaller from the previous generation, but reports indicate that the chip runs hotter than its predecessors under overclocking, which could suggest that transistor density and size are becoming a concern for microprocessors.

Three-dimensional chips and parallel processing may potentially delay the collapse of Moore’s Law, but Kaku claims these workarounds will reach their limits in time. He proposes that new forms of computing, such as molecular transistors, may provide relief, but mass production is currently impossible. Quantum computing could also eventually become more powerful, but it is not very well understood.

My opinion on the matter goes about like this: if the transistor has more power than the previous generation, it doesn’t really need to be smaller. As long as it has more computing power, it could be the same size or even slightly larger than the previous version. This would prevent overheating by spreading out mass over a larger volume, thus lowering the density. Not everything needs to be microscopically tiny. Personally, I’ve never understood the popular fascination with paper-thin laptops and ultra-thin plasma televisions.

Everything in technology seems determined to find the smallest possible medium for their product. The only technology increasing in size seems to be cell phones. Some new cell phones are almost large enough to pass for tablet computers.

In an age where nothing stays the same for long, let’s try to keep something stable while we can.

The Sea of Doppenheimer

Recently the White House reported that their main homepage was taken down after being accessed by a large number of South Koreans. This was the result of South Koreans joining a Virginia-based petition on the White House website to ban school textbooks which refer to the sea to the west of Japan, known as “the Sea of Japan,” instead of “the East Sea.” Koreans have long desired this change since the sea did not originally bear the name of Japan; it gained that name after Japan expanded their military into other Asian countries in 1928. Korea was liberated in 1945, but Japan refuses to return the sea to its previous name.

Americans have begun to side with Korea in this debate, citing that American soldiers helped Korea gain its independence in World War II. Some Americans are claiming that it is wrong to accept a “false history that was manipulated by the invader who attacked ‘Pearl Harbor.’”

I have two problems with these arguments. The first involves the U.S. government directly. Anyone who knows anything about the U.S. government and the American school system probably knows that the federal government has no say in the textbooks that schools use; the books are chosen directly by the schools from a list approved by the local state. So petitioning the federal government will likely yield little result in the Koreans’ favor.

My other problem is that it doesn’t really matter. South Korea, along with supporters in the U.S., seems to be the only voice desiring a change to the name. Practically every other nation of global influence cares very little about the change. And the change itself would only affect Korea and Japan as a whole; the only adverse effect to other nations would come from war that may start between the two nations if the debate continues.

In all honestly, it doesn’t really matter what a large body of water is called. It will still be the same large body of water if we called it “the Sea of Doppenheimer.” Nothing would change unless the name somehow gives a nation more control over the sea.

Counter-petitions have been made, claiming that the Sea of Japan has always held that name, but no evidence was provided by either side. The issue has been widely reported in the Korean media, leading to large numbers flooding the White House’s petition site to gain signatures on both sides. The White House reported that on the 20th of April the server was downed by heavy traffic and analysis suggested the vast majority of the IPs involved were from South Korea. The White House’s response was to temporarily block Korean access to the site until the flood of traffic abated.

It seems unlikely, however, that the federal government would act on the desires of the petitioners even if it were able to. Most of the petitions seem be ignored in favor of overly popular ones, which usually lead to official statements about how the federal government’s policy already reflects the desires of the petition.

Manga Streaming

In the wake of Internet censorship bills SOPA and PIPA, it is beginning to seem like the bills were never needed.  Popular file- and video-hosting website, MegaUpload, was taken down and the owner and CEOs of the website/company were arrested by American forces despite the fact that the owner did not live in the United States.  This came about without the assistance of either SOPA or PIPA, throwing into question the necessity of these bills.  However, other media besides movies and music are feeling the pressure of censorship.  While not nearly as popular in America as it is in Japan, the industry of manga and anime has a very large cult following.  Controversy abounds due to websites that illegally host copies of Japanese manga translated by fans.

VIZ Media, the Japanese company responsible from bringing many popular Japanese manga and anime series to the United States, demanded four days ago that popular fan website Mangastream.com cease illegal translation of manga.  The problem with what MangaStream has been doing is that they are involved with many series that have been licensed and officially distributed within the U.S.  However, MangaStream takes the manga and translates it into English as soon as it is released in Japan.  Normally, VIZ Media would translate these series and redistribute them in America within several months, but MangaStream and similar sites allow for rapid releases of the same series for free.

While many cite the loss of profits as the reason for halting MangaStream, that argument loses some merit when one thinks about those who would not spend money on official manga releases, series that are not even available in English, and fans living in other countries that cannot read manga in their own language.  Evidence has also been coming in for many years that a great percentage of profits in the manga and anime industry come solely from merchandise like toys, “plushies,” and video games.  Some margin of profit is still lost, but many who claim to read illegal translations online still buy official releases and merchandise.  For others, online translations serve as a preview of the series, an opportunity to see what a series is like before decided to spend money on it.

A cry of anguish sounded from fans of popular series after they were taken down.  For some that live in foreign countries, online translators are the only way to read their favorite series since VIZ Media rarely distributes series in countries like Indonesia or the Philippines.  MangaStream is still active, but only for a portion of the series which they used to translate.  In the wake of what many fans are calling a catastrophe, other sites continue to obtain and translate manga directly from Japan.  Some wonder if it is only a matter of time before these sites are taken down as well, but many remain optimistic that other websites will appear and the illegal manga distribution will continue.

Safety First

Having just received my first car, the wonders of software in vehicles excites me. One of the main software components in cars today is the ability for the car to park without assistance from the driver. This software must obviously be rigorously tested before being used in commercial cars. The question comes, however, of how safety authorities handle this software. Could an officer site the driver of a car for hitting another car while it was being controlled solely by the parking software? If so, would the driver be able to sue the company that designed the software for inadvertently causing the accident?

According to an article on PCWorld by Leo King, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is charged with investigating such incidents. After Toyota discovered acceleration problems in its cars in 2009, an investigation was opened to discover the cause. No conclusive proof was found that cited computer systems as a plausible cause for the malfunctions, but questions remained about the dependability of the increasing amount of software control in motor vehicles. In the same article, King quotes Louis Lanzerotti, a distinguished research professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Lanzerotti claims that it will “be difficult for NHTSA to keep pace with the technology.” He calls for the NHTSA to “develop much better knowledge by engaging with the industry.”

In another article written by Evan Ackerman on IEEE Spectrum, research is presented by a group at Carnegie Mellon that proves mathematically that autonomous cars (cars controlled entirely by software) cannot cause an accident. The tests began with two cars traveling in opposite lanes of a road and then expanded, including more cars and more difficult maneuvers such as lane changes or exiting a highway. The software is still limited in what it can do; the article provides the humorous example of a moose jumping off of an overpass onto the hood of the car, which would an unexpected event for either a human or computer driver.

The “car of the future” used to be a joke that would appear in some cartoons and television shows around the 1970s. As technology moves forward, however, it seems like society is moving ever closer to a real car of the future. After all, if graduate students can design a program to accurately control cars with one hundred percent accuracy, how far away can we be from flying around with the Jetsons?

A Fan of Writing

Having taken a sophomore-level English class before, I had low expectations for how interested I would be with this class.  I was surprised to find that the class was engaging and fun to be in during group discussions.  The quick-writes and the blog post discussion helped me understand what everyone else in the class was thinking about while they were writing.  It helped me understand how they write, and it helped me understand how I write as well.

I’ve had a lot of experience writing narratives.  Fan fiction is a good source of entertainment for me, both in reading and writing.  I use it as an outlet when my head gets too full of ideas.  I took a break from writing any during the summer since this writing class was making me write and helping me clear my mind.  That’s what I think writing does for me: it clears my mind.  I never really thought about this before entering this class, but writing helps me.  I enjoy it whereas most students see writing as just another assignment to be done.

Because of my work with fan fiction, I already have a little experience with web-based writing.  When the first pieces of fan fiction were first written, the Internet hadn’t been invented yet so they were shared locally and at conventions.  Star Trek is usually recognized as the first well-known series to have fan fiction written about it.  Today, almost all fan fiction writing is done on computers and shared electronically.  Fanfiction.net is probably the most well-known online source for sharing and reading fan fiction.  It houses literally millions of stories from hundreds of different series written by authors from all over the world.

Despite my experience with fan fiction, I have never extensively used a blog for any kind of writing.  My previous sophomore English class dabbled in some Twitter posts, but blog websites like WordPress and BlogSpot were left alone.  I have learned to appreciate what the Internet is doing for us now.  Using literally hundreds of different websites, we can share our opinions, thoughts, and daily lives with millions, even billions, of people.  What amazes me is that all of this is done without a second thought, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

This class has helped me greatly to realize the importance of my writing voice.  When it comes to narratives, it’s easy to overlook the author’s voice because it gets masked by the characters of the story.  Analysis and research papers allow the author’s voice to reach directly to the audience, giving it a much more important place in those writing styles.  I’ve never really paid attention to my writing voice outside of my narrative work.  For high school- and college-level essays, teachers and professors tend to want a stoic, nearly emotionless writing style that meets the criteria and doesn’t exceed it.  In retrospect, that kind of expectation is harmful since it gives the impression that the real world won’t want you to exceed expectations.

My writing voice is certainly a weak point for me.  My mindset defaults to the simple, guided essay that everyone was taught in middle and high school.  We were all told that using first person point-of-view is the worst thing for any kind of paper, but that keeps the author from really connecting themselves with what they’re writing, especially in an argumentative essay.  Being unable to use the first person handicaps the author and prevents them from really expressing their own true feelings.  No matter how much research you have to back up a claim, it doesn’t help if you can’t get the words out.

Research papers have always been my weak point.  Especially for papers that require a set amount of sources to use, I have problems finding sources.  I tend to choose topics that either don’t have any kind of written sources or the sources deal with a very similar issue that kind of skirts around my topic without mentioning it.  Narratives, on the other hand, have always been my strongest writing style.  I can’t write a narrative from scratch like a professional author, but if I can have some kind of premise to start with or character to borrow, I can crank out narratives like there’s no tomorrow.

For example, in my high school English class, we were required to write a narrative that resembled a Native American folk tale dealing with the creation of the earth.  While everyone groaned and whined about the assignment, I had already begun forming the premise of exactly what I wanted in my head.  I borrowed the idea of the creator being a wolf from a video game I had been playing at the time, and I set up a monologue for the creator-wolf character to speak without anyone to answer.  This solitude would give the wolf reason to create the earth so that he would have companionship.  The ideas flowed easily for me, whereas my classmates had trouble wondering where to even begin.

For me, writing is an escape.  It helps me release pent up feelings in a way that doesn’t harm anyone.  And web writing, like fan fiction, can even help other by providing entertainment.  Despite my irritation for research papers, I still find that I enjoyed the process once I look back over them, particularly is I chose an interesting topic that will get the readers’ attention.  Because I enjoy writing, it’s easy for me to enjoy reading as well.  I can understand my own work that much better because of that.

Creativity in Schools: Preventing Kids from Building a Better Mouse Trap

           Creative and critical thinking are two different processes that use many similar and divergent techniques to accomplish great outcomes.  Creative thinking is what pioneers the human race forward through innovation.  Critical thinking applies analytical skill in discovering why something is the way it is.  Both creative and critical thinking are highly important for a growing mind (and for those already grown). Despite this, schools today often give way to a curriculum focused more on critical thinking, which hampers the growth of creative tendencies in children.

            To clarify, I’m certainly not trying to say that learning critical thinking skills is bad.  Obviously, understanding why events took place in history, why rhetorical appeals work, and why a certain compound is made when combining two elements are all important as a general education.  Being able to apply that critical thinking to other areas of learning and teaching is wonderful as well, but there comes a time when someone has to say “I understand how and why it works, but how can we make it better?”  This is the main idea behind creative thinking.

            One can analyze something all day long and never find anything truly new; someone will likely have analyzed it before and found the same thing.  Creativity works differently, though.  It requires one to think of something that no one else has thought of before.  Robots are a good example: robotic craft sent to other planets in our solar system analyze materials and objects found there, but it requires the ingenuity of a live person to understand it and do something with it.  As Soichiro Honda, founder of Honda Motor Company, said, “It is when man starts thinking of ideas that the difference between man and machine emerges.”

 

            Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, famous for both his work in the study of creativity and his incredibly difficult-to-pronounce name, separates creativity into two separate categories.  “Big C” creativity is described as “paradigm-shifting” and encompasses events that are generally out of a person’s control.  “Little c” creativity is commonly experienced, usually in everyday life (Mihalyi 30).  Tina Sue Fletcher, who referenced Mihayli as a reference in her Creative Thinking in Schools article, further explains, “A person may not be able to change his world in a big way, but in the spirit of building a better mousetrap, he can come up with new ideas, explorations, and solutions that are both stimulating and satisfying.” (Fletcher)  It can certainly be difficult for a single human being to change the world, even with a creative mind, but it is this mindset that allows technology and culture to advance.

            The best place to start cultivating creative thinking skills is with early education.  Obviously, some parts of the education system are fixed for certain schools; financial resources and learning environments generally remain the same over a particular child’s school career.  However, the teaching techniques and curricula can be altered to nurture the creative thinking skills that will help children become highly active and intelligent members of society (Fletcher).

Positive motivations have been known to encourage greater productivity that negative motivations, such as times constraints.  Giving children opportunities to foster their own creativity by themselves is a great way to avoid these problems, Fletcher suggests.  Short creativity exercises, less busy work and more free time, encourage risk-taking and preserve integrity even when the children’s efforts may fail are excellent methods to nurture creativity for young children.  The same methods can be applied to more mature groups in middle or even high schools; some changes would have to be made for conflicting interests, but the main ideas of encouragement and integrity would remain.

            According to Sir Ken Robinson, a well-known author, public speaker, and advisor on education, the current environment for teaching children makes them frightened of being “wrong.”  Robinson says “[…] if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”  The stigma that we as human beings place on making mistakes frightens children and even grown adults into remaining commonplace.  Children are known for their innate curiosity and their ability to say and do anything that comes immediately to mind (TED.com).  School systems tend to look down upon this behavior, particularly in talented children who may seem non-conformist and hard to deal with (Fletcher).  By the time the children are adults, Robinson says, the innate curiosity and creativity has been mostly washed away.

            Phineas and Ferb, a popular cartoon show on Disney Channel, provides a good humorous and satirical example of what Sir Robinson is saying.  Phineas and Ferb are two young boys with enormous amounts of imagination and creativity; they spend every day of their summer vacation (which seems to never end despite the series broadcasting a special Christmas episode) building huge constructs like roller coasters, proving accepted ideas of history and science wrong, and even crafting a working airplane out of paper-mache.  In one episode the boys get caught by their parents, who were previously unaware of the boy’s creations and adventures.  They are sent to a reform school because of their dangerous “overly-creative” behavior.  Through a series of punishments and warnings, Phineas and Ferb eventually become brainwashed drones that speak in dull tones and refuse to even touch a screwdriver.

            Even though the cartoon is based on humor and this particular episode involves a lot of humor and satire, it provides a good example of what schools and parents may resort to in order to squash creative tendencies.  Obviously schools, parents and even reform schools never take their actions to this extreme, but it does serve as a sort of warning for what can happen if society were to ever place such an extreme stigma on creative thinking.

            In order to build the original mousetrap, someone had to first analyze the initial problem and come up with a creative solution.  After that, someone else designed a new model that worked better.  This process of build and redesign happens all over the world, combining thoughts from great creative minds from over thousands of years.  If school systems stifle those creative juices in children today, it is unlikely that they will be able to build upon the ideas of the current generation much like we have in recent years.  Even if no one person can dream big enough to change the entire world, it only takes one idea to make a difference.

Works Cited

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihalyi.  Creativity: flow and the psychology of discovery           and invention.  New York: HarperCollins, 1996.  Print.
Fletcher, Tina Sue. “Creative Thinking in Schools: Finding the “Just Right”           Challenge for Students.” Gifted Child Today Vol. 34 Issue 2 (2011):           37-42. Web. 25 July 2011.
"Ken Robinson Says Schools Kill Creativity | Video on TED.com." TED: Ideas           worth Spreading. June 2006. Web. 28 July 2011.
          <http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng
          /ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html>.

(Images used from http://beamazinglearning.wordpress.com/tag/creativity/, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx2mGZ52WSM, and http://www.flickr.com/photos/23486066@N04/2242941795/)