10th summary

Public and privacy was the subject of this week’s lecture. We are in danger of disturbance of our liberty because of security. For example, in America children less than 13 years old cannot be left alone because of their security which is to prevent kidnaps. It is a little different but I think the meaning of diary has changed. These days, I write my diary in cyworld and anyone who come to my cyworld sees my diary and they get to know what I have done and they also make comments about my life. I thought the diary was a private thing. About surveillance that is happening around world today, there is an example about prison. In jail, not every prisoner is always committing crime, but they are always being watched. Also, we have CCTVs everywhere. We also have one in every floor of IT building to prevent burglars. There were so many cameras in Manhattan and there were some people finding the way that meets least camera as they go to the destination. As the technology has developed, the technology of surveillance has developed too. We see them in the movies frequently, like scanning eye, finger prints and also from blood veins. Dr. Yoon gave us an example of company Samsung, that workers have to move to Suwon and work until 4 am. We saw a video clip about Lawrence Lessig on the merits of inefficiency. He said that an inefficiency that makes it harder for these technologies to be misused and he talked about two different cultures: RO and RW. RO is read only and it is mostly commercial market as to RW is kind of things like UCC contents which is not commercial economy. Lessig on architecture of privacy, he thinks monitor is opposite of privacy. For instance, the monitor film that protects others from seeing what you are doing in the computer and there was an advertisement that blows a balloon beside their body to see fun things only for themselves.
We also talked about cookies which is storing the web pages. It remembers what you have opened but it can be seen by others as well. Also, in internet web browser, people put a person’s profile on the web and anyone who search the person, they can see their profiles. In these ways we get to lose our privacy.

9th summary

Until this week, we only talked about computers, information without talking about the most important thing: HUMAN. So, this week’s subject is about human.
About media extension, we had helps from the machines and that improved our abilities. For example, Dr. Yoon using remote control and disabled people using deaf-aid or cane. We watched a video clip of some kind of a commercial, Kenneth Cole Shoe Company that shows people has different shoes for each person and showed artificial leg. Media is extension of physical but also psychic. From new media, we both earn and lose things. For instance, these days people use keyboard(Word processor) instead of hand writing, as it is faster and it is neat(because some people has terrible handwriting). But we also lost our memorizing capacity as we use cell phone address book and we don’t know the whole structure of the city because we use navigation that just needs to follow the route as it tells you to go.

8th summary

This week’s lecture was about Computer Games. First, we saw an example of game ‘Pain Station’, which has received a prize from media art festival. It is similar to PingPong and looked so realistic as it has something attached beside players hand and hit’s the hand whenever ball is hitting the wall. We all somehow, I believe has done games anything, video games or computer games. Some people believe games are only for children but I don’t think it’s true. I play more games now than when I was young. Likewise, these days, young children but also adults play games a lot as I see many adults in PC rooms or in the subways with computers, Nintendo, Xbox, or PSP etc… It became familiar to everybody. Then what is in the game that people are all love doing it? There are graphics that shows the movements of the characters or scenes, physics that does the calculation like where the characters would stand, AI that would be running the rules and being the opponents or the enemy and there are more devices like sounds and interfaces too.
These days, there are lots of games that have connection with the movies as well. I’ve seen ‘Tomb Raider’, ‘Lord of the Rings’, ‘Harry Potter’ etc... In ‘Lord of the Rings‘they tried to make it more realistic and recorded the actors voices. There were parodies as well. ‘LaLa’ from the ‘Tomb Raider’, she became naked in the parody game and another parody called ‘Tum Raider’ looking for foods and the sounds were so funny.
We also saw other games similar to PingPong but one player is the computer. It looks easy to play but it is actually hard to win the computer. But now days, games are in flash so it’s faster and the screen is clearer. But we don’t know, if it’s a good game or bad game. We consider it as a good game when it is sold much. The good thing about the game is that we can discard stress from doing it.
There were two issues to consider from film theory. First was identification which is about the character that is related to the player. Second was about the space that is out of reality like in Tom & Jerry, and Matrix when Neo jumps from a building to another building and flying around.

The topic was so exciting as I like playing computer games like Sudden Attack whenever I get stressed. I am still interested in computer games so it was very fun lecture. It helps me a lot to enjoy but also learn about the game.

7th summary

This week we learned about Computer aid. First, we watched a famous video clip “Modern Times” which is made by Charlie Chaplin. It showed people going to work which looked like pigs are moving into their pigpen and all the machinery (technology) making people move like computer: people do as they were told which is repeating the same process whole time. Also another video clip that was about CAD (Computer Aided Design) and CAM (Computer Aided Manufacture) software eliminates people and discards old factory and replaces by computers. The clip was funny but the subject was actually pessimistic to the computer machines.
This week’s key point is that every digital media technology has an architecture using diagrams to compare physical architectures with digital architectures.
Constructing design as conversation was that conversations are sequences of actions caused by saying things that people understand and doing things. It means that saying equals to doing. For example when people get married or when they testify in the court, they say “I do” which are not just words, but words that perform actions. In our classroom, our network of repeating conversations is organization and We use computers and networks to conduct this network of conversation by creating tools and new media technologies might be designed to create new conversations and connections by email, messenger, blog system. We saw a clip that used ipod? (some kind of PDA) dragging the item to the screen and that gave the information and it could also interact with the screen from distance.
On Friday, we talked about cyber space which is a space that we cannot grab or stay in it. The architecture is like designing web pages and the important thing is that the structure should be efficient. For example, the school office should be in the first floor as it is easy to access. It was built in logical way. Also, we learned about social logic that is some kind of communication between people. For another instance, as center is easy to access the center of the city is City Hall. Same to the protocols in cyber space too. But it can be all different to all the people. It is physical but also logical structure.
In Agre’s surveillance model, it is about us (people) supervising as we are worried. We have webcams that we can see. Also we can’t use email, messenger when we are working or sometimes we cannot bring USB to the company as we are afraid of industrial spies. But how would it be if our entire world was all transparent? We would have no criminals but we would have no privacy or liberty.

6th summary

Last week we had midterm exam so we didn’t have class. This week’s lecture was about human-computer interaction (HCI). The definition of HCI is about how people can interact with computer and themselves. In related ideas, there was Freud who talked about unconsciousness and Sherry Tukle who is a beautiful scientist who thought computers as “second selves” and as “evocative objects.
We saw Alan Kay's presentation which was held in 1969. It was about making really amazing things with figures. Professor said that it was similar to MS Visio but it is far more difficult. As HCI is related to design, it is not just decoration.
The universities, company like Xerox PARC, Apple and also military is very keen on HCI. They are interested in very complicated things that can be used in Navy or Air force but also simple things for example, using webcam that is already common in the society.
HCI can meet with AI, for instance, again in Amazon, whenever a person log in to the site, it says “Welcome Mr./Mrs. momomo” and tells the customer what they have read and introduce similar books that they have read. The one who shows this to the customer is not a person who waits for the customer to log in all day long and greeting him.
Johnstone invents a story easily, but she doesn’t feel obliged to be creative or sensitive or whatever, because she believes the story is my invention. In Johnstone’s “algorithm”, you think you are getting the right answer but actually, you are making the story by yourself. It has nearly nothing to do with your question and it may not give the right answer too.
About ethnomethodology which means how people are making sense of their social world.
In society, friendly like SMS which we are always using in our society, was first invented for the deaf. Also in a movie, we think there is a moving picture but it is actually still images that are passing fast.
The video clip of Alan Kay’s presentation was wonderful like magic when he moved his mouse, there was a reptile (?) following behind. Also there were things that are related to HCI, the movie that I didn’t even thought about when I saw them, hand printing and breath identification and breath identification and pills as physical UI were again new to me as I knew after it was connected to HCI. I think I might look for those things next time whenever I watch something.