Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Dr. Tom Keenan
Video-conferencing with Dr. Keenan began with anticipation. The audio was a bit low and what it reinforced with me again is the importance of quality audio in a video-conference or Skype audio conference. The quality of the video was excellent and there was some ‘WOW’ factor’ involved which likely contributed to our attention being held. Dr. Keenan mentioned Dr. Kurzweil and his contributions to technology development. He brought up the “Ultimate Thrill Ride Live Webcast” which he deemed extremely successful except for the firewall issues in the public school board network. I’m hoping that the ‘edge’ devices I’ve heard about will help in this vein. Big Ideas:
Pretty Good Information is ubiquitous – the average person can access some incredible technologies and information these days compared to long ago. This is an interesting development but it can result in negative consequences which were unintended. “Always think of the unintended consequences of technology” was a quote Dr. Keenan offered us as advice.
Online Information is not always “Good”
We Should Think Before We Put Information on the Internet (Facebook, MySpace)
Biometrics Will Raise the Stakes – Collecting our personal information, what this information will be used for, identity theft, used as the basis of hiring or not hiring people (medical insurance)
Location Awareness – GPS chips will appear everywhere and will have numerous consequences – some good, some bad
The Law Will Continue to Lag the Technology – not surprising
We Need to Make Some (societal) Choices – e.g. video surveillance technology, ip logging
Finally, Dr. Keenan urges us to develop a new set of ethics around collecting information about other people. What scares me the most about Dr. Keenan’s ideas is the realization that the information we post on the Internet, especially posted by children who may not know any better, may be used against them in their future.
Dr. Stan Ruecker - Document Collections
Ideas that resonated with me:
- When we create a collection of some type, we may not always know how people can or will use the collection
- The example of the Drugs Database was a fascinating example of how information can be sorted and searched visually, not just textually. I had no idea that so much thought went into creating such utilities
- The Delegate Browser Applet was another fascinating example of visually organizing data
- 'Design Families' reminds me in ways of activity structures
- The 'Tables' topic of having users re-organize the table to see new patterns reminds me of Turkle's article asking for simulations to be able to be manipulated by users. Viewing the 'Victorian Women Writers' table shows how even textual information can be viewed and organized visually
- The Mandala browser completely blew me away - the idea of 'seeing' ideas organized visually
