Week 9- 10/18 and 10/20

This week we started our book presentations. The class split into groups to read and present on six different books dealing with the internet, technology, and our brain today. On tuesday, The Dumbest Generation was presented followed by The Overflowing Brain. On thursday, the two groups who presented were Distracted and Against the Machine. I was in the group that read and presented on The Dumbest Generation. This book had a very negative attitude toward the younger generation and technology, but didn't offer any solutions. This is part of the reason that it sparked much debate and discussion during class. All the groups had great presentations and were able to get the class to participate in discussions. Most of the books sounded like they were very interesting to read.

Week 8- 10/11

This week was special because we had a guest speaker come into our class and talk about different types of codes and ciphers. I also liked learning about codes when I was younger. My friends and I would write letters and notes to each other using codes. The two types of ciphers that we learned about were substitution ciphers  and transposition ciphers. Substitution ciphers are based on the shifting the alphabet a certain amount. Transposition ciphers are based on mixing up the letters in the message such as anagrams. Throughout the class, we wrote and decoded messages to our partners. It was a very fun class to have right before fall break.

Week 7- 10/4 and 10/6

Week 7 was a week full of debates and discussions. On tuesday (10/4), we compared 4chan which has complete anonymity to Facebook which leans more toward complete transparency. Mark Zuckerburg believes that there should be complete transparency on the web and that anonymity is bad.  On thursday (10/6), we had a debate about Facebook and whether is good or bad. Some people were assigned to a debate group and others were assigned to either look up the privacy policy or understand the differences between google plus and Facebook. I was in the later group so even though I wasn't taking part in the main part of the debate, we were the audience, got to ask both sides questions, and then vote at the end. The group that ended up winning the debate was the "Facebook is Bad" group. I can see both sides of the arguments because it is a huge distraction, but it is also a great way to be able to communicate with friends in different countries.

Week 6- 9/27 and 9/29

Last week, we discussed Privacy and Anonymity. In order to fully understand this concept, our assignment was to research one other person in the class and find out everything we could about them using different sources on the internet. I found so much information about my partner; part of that is because his name is very uncommon. Finding information about people on the web somewhat depends on how common their name is: the more common the name, the harder it is find information and vice versa. I was able to find out his immediate family, activities he was involved in in high school, what high school he went to, his dad's political, astrological sign, and religious views, and many other facts. There was even a few sites that included a picture of his house from a street view, gave his full address, and telephone number. It is a bit scary when you truly see how much of your information is out there for anyone to see.

Jessica