Blog 3

I see the future as being more like what Bush's views of technology are. The technologies that people are using are wonderful things, but they will eventually be replaced by something that can do the job better. Yet somethings are even created to hinder the user instead due to the machine or tool not being able to respond fast enough to what we want it to do. An example is the keyboard and the type writer. Originally the type writer made it much faster and less tiring to write things more efficiently and in a timely manner. Yet the type writer itself could not keep up with the user because they would jam, eat the paper and even gears would wear out. This was due to the people typing being able to type to fast in comparison to the reaction time of the typewriters. The solution that was originally created was rather than speeding up the type writer try to slow down the user as to give the typewriter time to react. This lead to the creation fo the QWERTY keyboard which allowed people to type and not have the typewriter break. At least for a certain amount of time, till the people typing got used to the new keyboard and the problem resurfaced. Now that we no longer really use the typewriter we still use the QWERTY keyboard even though we know there is a better layout for it.

Bush talks about how information we store is done so alphabetically or numerically. He then mentions about how the mind works with association rather the the system we use to store our information. Yet we use outdated techniques to help people learn the information we as humans have stored. The system of having a person who knows what they are talking about to talk to people who do not know much about the topic, if anything about the topic is still used. This way of teaching a class is not as effective as other methods that have been studied or deal with association  That method is how I was taught in Middle School and truthfully I felt that I did not learn much in those two years. Once I entered High School the teachers did not only spout knowledge at me they had me engage with others, with either group work or even one on one with the teacher themselves. By association these experiences with the knowledge that I was meant to learn. My grades improved dramatically from Middle School and I felt that I learned much easier and retained it more. I hope that the older method of someone simply talking to a student will eventually get replaced, but due to issues with our culture and how we treat those who educate the future generations. I sadly think that it will not happen in my life time.

second post

In chapter 5 Gleick discussed ciphers the uses and slight history of ciphers. There are a few different things that come to my mind when I first think of the word cipher. The first being encrypted code that one would need the key to figure out. Next is how people today either talk over text, Facebook or any other networking sight. I remember in the past when I first got my phone I hated typing everything out fully because it took some time for me to do it. Then I finally realized that everyone is just shortening words to make them faster and easier to type or text. I still do that, even though the phone I am using has advanced enough to where it would take the same amount of time to text a full word as it does to type it. Some of my friends seem to dislike that I do that and say since I do I must be lazy. Imo (in my opinion) I think that it is not that I am lazy it has come to the fact that texting like that is now a habit.
I found that the text shortening to be just like the ciphers that were used. Even if the reasoning for them to have been used was different. Gleick talks about how the ciphers where used to allow people to still communicate but to save money because each letter cost money. While a reason people shortened the words for texting or typing on network sites was due to either limitations of characters they can write, or to simply save time and still be able to get your point across.
Truthfully until reading about this in the book I never thought of ciphers as being just simple things people used to communicate. It may be cause of all the movies and such that I seen, but anything that involved a cipher I always thought to be a very very complicated type of thing. I never even imagined the correlation between how I text and ciphers and still probably not would have. It is quite amazing when one learns that he or she has been doing something without realizing it. Though after thinking about it more and more I do feel fairly stupid for not making the connection sooner.

Post 1

In the book Gleick talks about how there is a connection between information and context. A example he used was the fall of troy and how it was communicated using fires. The relation between the context and information in this story is about the telling of fall of troy. The way they did this was to light giant fires on top of mountains to signal the next fire in the chain till it reached it’s destination. Therefore the information the fires provided was about the fall.

However if a person who had no idea what the fires meant would only see a giant fire on top of a mountain. If i lived back then and saw it i would simply look and say “well thats strange.” While a person who is next to me could suddenly fall to his or her knees and scream “No!” The difference would be that to me the fire had no significance. While the person that was next to me knew the context of the fires and the information that they provide if they were to be lit.
A way that this usage of codes can be seen thru the ages is by the usage of flags and sounds during battles or wars. A particular beat meant something to one side while to the other was just distracting or the arrangement of flag colors in the beginning could mean what battalion was going first. In modern day a well known version of using these types of method of communication is morse code or binary as we discussed in class. Morse code has been used in wars for a long time and can be encrypted to help others lose the context of what each beep meant. This way without a key for the code other people listening in on transmissions would first have to attempt to decipher it which by the time they do could render the information gained from it useless.