Marcelo & Soo

This is our blog for the final project!

http://marcelsooproject.wordpress.com/

– Soo

Drawing Documentation

     I have no aptitude for drawing. I think the only person who enjoys my drawing is my two-year-old niece. Even though I am not good at it, sometimes I have to draw a picture for explaining something, or conversely, I have to refer a drawing for understanding something.

     Typical example of it is origami (http://www.origami.com/index.html). As you may have experienced before, when we have to describe in words how to make certain origami, we feel it is a really challenging task and usually end up with recognizing that diagrams (or photographs) are the most effective way to explain it. It is easily noticeable that we just cannot ignore the importance of drawing documentation as much as that of general documentation.

     Configuration drawings of drum sets are also good examples of drawing documentation. This site contains biography as well as cymbals configuration of Peter Erskine who is one of my favorite drummers.  (http://www.zildjian.com/EN-US/artists/artistDetail.ad2?artistID=1120&genreID=2,4) At the upper right side, you can find the drawing of his drum set, and if you click the cymbals, you can even listen to the sound of them! Both nominally and virtually, this is one result of the modern integrated documentation, and I suppose it could be a prototype for the future documentation.

S.Soo

The Google Dilemma – Grimmelman

     Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. (Lord Acton, 1834-1902)   The Google Dilemma by Grimmelman reminded me of this famous epigram again, which was also cited before in the article of Martin, B. From my point of view, the power itself is not a something to be blamed because competition and its result may be one of the reasonable consequences in the nature. What I recognized from this epigram was, nonetheless, power could be problematic when men of power or people around them try to manipulate it for their own interests.

     Even though Google says, “Don’t blame us, the computers did it”(Grimmelman, 944), I do not think we need to be upset about it. That is not because Google has no responsibility at all, but because that is the way technology improves. To put it another way, we need constant efforts to make the internet credible and useful, which will not be done instantly. At the same time,  it will be essential to observe and supervise the internet so that no one can abuse the authority, as Grimmelman’s thesis works.

S.Soo

Be prepared for frustration – Badke Ch.5

     Even when I wander around the internet for searching of fun stuff, it sometimes makes me frustrated to reach where I wanted to go, to say nothing of scholarly articles, which I eager to find with certain purposes.  Especially, when I just get stuck with nowhere to go or I just get into infinite loops of hyperlinks, the level of frustration becomes higher. Therefore, it seems like important to steel myself for these kinds of frustration before starting to explore the databases.

     I found one web site( http://www1.wnec.edu/library/index.cfm?selection=doc.5190 ) that explains how to obtain free scholarly journals through Google Scholar, which is also introduced in the Badke’s book, chapter, 6. I think it is useful when we promptly want to search articles with familiar interfaces or when we come hard to access paid databases for one reason or another. As a result of my test of it, it is pretty much effective to get ‘free’ scholarly articles, even though some of the links still leaded me to paid databases. Google Scholar could be a good alternative for the professional databases, which are fastidious to use at some points.

S.Soo

Refining a topic – Badke, Appendix 1

Once again, I realize how tricky it is to write a paper. Even though I set a general idea of it a few weeks ago, I have been struggling with choosing one specific topic. One of the reasons for this difficulty is probably to narrow the space appropriately between what I do not know and what I want to know. That is because if I just concentrate on what I do not know, the topic seems to become far apart from my interests, inversely, if I only cling to what I want to know, it somehow tends to become ambiguous or abstract. Nevertheless, I almost decided what to choose, but it still needs to be polished up a little bit.

For this research paper, I have read the guide of Badke as well as Purdue Online Writing Lab(http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/658/01/ ), which has been great help for my writing so far.  All of them are definitely instructive and useful guidelines, but I have to admit again that the more important thing is not “a guide”, but my own decision after getting through it, although it is a natural consequence.

S.Soo

Metadata – Badke Ch. 4

     In former times, it was acceptable to assume that there was “no information” when we were not able to find anything in a library. In these days, however, we tend to think in the same way when nothing comes out from googling. To put it another way, failure of searching on the internet means almost the same as nonexistence of the data.

     Data of data. Sounds like a puzzle, but metadata stands really high in this internet era because were it not for proper means of navigation, the sea of information might become just meaningless open sea. As Laura Dawson pointed out in her article( http://digitalbookworld.com/2010/metadata-more-important-than-ever/), metadata of books are critical not only for the readers, but for the publishers. It is quite interesting to observe this situation that the readers are not the only ones anymore who eager for well-organized index, and this, needless to say, results from financial interest. We may be able to simply compare this condition with commercial advertisement. If a company would not promote a brand new product, consumers might not recognize it, and as a result, it will be impossible for sellers to make money. Similarly, we can say that same rule can be applicable to personal blogging because blogers might need to advertise themselves properly so that they can attract the readers. And all these situations seem to emphasize the importance of metadata more than ever before, like the title of her article.

S.Soo

Search Mechanics – Badke Ch.3

     I still remember the way I searched data through the primitive type of engine about 12-13 years ago. Although it slightly varied with search engines, to use Boolean operators was almost essential for finding appropriate data. For instance, I had to type in “+,  –“ signs, or sometimes “&, |” when I looked up on the internet; somewhat it sounds like an old story. In these days, most of the search engines basically do not require us to input this kind of operators under the name of artificial intelligence, which is convenient at some points.

     Recently, I found a new search engine, DuckDuckGo ( http://duckduckgo.com/ ) that has an adorable name and user interface and is one of the simplest and fastest engines. The first noticeable characteristic of it is what they call, “zero-click info”. If we type in some keywords for searching, DuckDuckGo instantly show brief contents of it at the top of the first result page by using Wikipedia, so we do not need to follow the links for more information. Of course, it may not enough for serious research, but it is worth for casual information, which takes big part of our internet surfing. They also show the official labels of sites in front of the every search result, and this enables us to recognize easily where the information came from. Moreover, DuckDuckGo provides hierarchical or categorized search results for users. As William B.Badke pointed out in the chapter 3, it might be problematic if we want to look up multivocal words, such as “rock”(Badke, 42). However, DuckDuckGo show the categorized results for these kinds of words, and consequently, we are able to choose appropriately for what we were looking.

     It is true that not many engines win success in this technological world, however, it is always enjoyable to look around new “products” and compare its merits and demerits with previous ones. With this comparison, sometime we can predict the future of search engines and database.

S.Soo

Open Access and Closed Access

     To share or not to share, that is the question. As every matter in our society does, the financial problem takes the foundation of copyright and information ethics. It is obvious that money is serious issue cannot be overlooked, but at the same time, it is certain that money cannot be absolute value because we, the human beings, have cherished and would treasure the physiological fruits, although we are mere physical existence who regard making a living as one of important goals in our lives.

     It is too difficult to determine which side is better or worse than another is. In the viewpoint of information providers, the information sharers who do not obtain any permission must be another form of thieves, no more, no less. On the contrary, in the perspective of sharers, the providers who are bent solely upon profit must be unreasonable men of power. Yes. It is tricky. However, considering this fact that these two sides are facing each other with competing claims, there might be solutions, which we would call reconciliation. I understand it might take a tremendous time and efforts to the points of being imprudent, but conflicts and harmonization; that was the way that the human history has progressed. If the providers get to have a little more flexibility about their copyrights and if the sharers get to have a little more respect to intangible properties, might we be able to live in the world filled with bountiful information?

S.Soo

Privacy in the Internet

     At this present living, we are literally floating on the sea of information. As the online world gets bigger and bigger, not only the information broadens, but also it becomes deeper. In case of scholarly or public knowledge, those kinds of changes are very desirable. When it comes to private lives, however, microscopic scale of personal information on the internet have some potential pitfalls.  

     As Patrick Marshall and Boyd D mentioned in their articles, the online privacy has been controversial for quite a long time, and there have been many discussion about countermeasure for them. From our email address to private photographs and even schedules, it is true that numerous information is just opened, which is vulnerable to be misused. Then, what do we need to settle down these side effects? Although institutional strategies need to become established, such as legislations for preventing abuses of online privacy or secured options on the web sites at the level of programming, the most crucial thing of all must be attention of individual. After all, we are the one who can protect ourselves the most effectively from privacy attacks. We just cannot blame SNSes for threatening our private lives; the matter we have to focus on is how we can treat them appropriately.

S.Soo

All we need is the preservation.

     The other day I saw a middle-aged gentleman in the F train who read a Kindle book. Holding the Kindle with one hand, he adjusted his glasses one time and then kept concentrating on his reading. There was no need of turning pages and putting a bookmark. If any, it was just scrolling and pushing buttons. It must be an unconventional or somewhat unfamiliar way of reading. Nonetheless, many people seem to welcome this new technology and enjoy it. Will this Kindle modify everybody’s way of reading in the near future? or will this Kindle make all paper books disappear?

     Throughout the article “The Importance of Preserving Paper-based Artifacts”, Robert Bee repeatedly emphasized the necessity of paper documents. He pointed out that digitalized media have many foreseeable flaws, which might seriously damage our cultural inheritance, so traditional paper artifacts should be protected. First of all, I totally agree with his thought. I have no doubt that “books” represent the intellectual legacy of humankind and must be preserved for the future as it have been so far, even if highly developed new technology will emerge. I deeply thought about substitutes of paper artifacts and asked myself those Kindle questions above. And I suddenly realized that the important thing is not the media, but the preservation. In other words, it is not the matter of which media is superior to others, but the matter of how we can preserve and maintain our intellectual properties as identical as possible. It is too obvious that numerous innovative technologies will be ceaselessly produced, and we will adopt them and adapt to them in our ordinary lives as usual. Therefore, we need to concentrate on the contents’ originalities, no matter what media will be used. I love the scents that old books give off, I love the sounds that pages turning make, and I love the sense of touch that books give me through my hands. However, why not try reading an E-book, if it has an exactly same content and will be able to move me exactly the same?

S.Soo Moon