ATLAS SPEAKER Leah Buechley

Early this month I attended the Atlas series speaker Leah Buechley’s High-Low Tech presentation. In the presentation Leah discussed the organization High-Low Tech’s goals and the strategies they use to encourage kids to become interested in technology and believe that they have the ability to not only use but also create the technologies of the future. They believe that in today’s world that people take for granted the technologies we have because they come easy to us and that we don’t actually understand and know how they actually function. The organization puts on programs where they encourage people to design artifacts and experiences. The four aspects that High-Low Tech focuses on in these workshops are artifacts, audience, and intent and make it your own. By artifacts they mean that they are trying to explore traditions of human making. From this they try to mix these traditions with contemporary techniques. Through creating objects that represent good craftsmanship, objects made from smart materials all while preserving the beauty of the object at hand. They stress that the beauty of the object is just as important as the utility of the object. Meaning that the object should look as good as it functions as it makes the technology that more successful. The target audience they are trying to reach is another goal of High-Low Tech. They try to reach out to people who don’t have experience building technology and they believe that by educating these people that they will help drive the evolution of technologies we use throughout our lives. This point makes a lot of sense to me, as I believe that the more people that understand how technologies function, will help us progress as a society. For one thing for certain is that it could not hurt having more technologically educated people in the world. The intent of trying to educate people who don’t know how technology works is to get them excited about technology in general. By getting them excited in technology from an early age they believe that more people than not will pursue careers in technology in the future. Meaning that by exciting these people about technology that they will form interests in the development technology. High-Low Tech tries to create excitement in these people by use, control and create. They do this through the system, which they call Make it Your Own. Specifically targeted towards kids, they host public funded programs where they use open source hardware, paper sculpture, and drawing to create electrical circuits that work right in front of their eyes. Looking back on my education I wish I were introduced more to things like the kids in these programs have received. I feel as if I would be better off and more prepared for the future if I was exposed to a technological education throughout my entire education. I believe that what High-Low Tech is doing is great and I have taken interest in wondering the fallout from what they are doing. Being an organization that has formed not too long ago it will be a while until we know if they influenced kids interests in becoming interested in technology. However I believe that by introducing more kids to technology and how it is created, that it will produce more people who can innovate our lives in the future and I only see positives from what they are doing.

12.2

Some things that captured my attention in todays discussions was what makes things creative or not and whether those ideas can be considered copyrighted if they are not completely original. In my opinion no idea is completely original. We are so influenced by our society today that the ideas that we do come up with are ideas that are built off our daily interactions. Unconsciously we come up with these "original" ideas without knowing that these ideas are already out there. These thoughts are actually remixes of what is stored within our creative sectors. As much of our society is built off of this notion without getting much attention or thought I don't believe simular ideas should be considered copyright at all.

Blog 12.1

Todays discussion dove into the idea of the changes of sound recording. Prior to this class I ned of a couple of recording and playing formats. After this class I feel like i have gained better insight to what is actually out there and has reminded me or a few things that I had forgot about. Things that I thought were interesting were the different Era of sound and the immense changes in sound from what it was until today. Sound raises some serious questions in the socio-cultural world such as file sharing, quality over quantity, and ownership questions. I find it interesting as most if not all the different technology developments we have studied this semester has raised these simular socio-cultural changes. I find this unique to technology and interesting how they are all different but raise simular questions and problems at the same time. I thought today's lecture was a good balance of both the history and discussion on technology.

Blog 10.2

From our discussions today we have delved into a new realm about the use of the cloud. Specifically the new frontiers that we are heading into as a society. These frontiers include conquests into personal space and virtual space. From here we can see that a large majority of our file sharing and consuming are coming together. Whether these new frontiers are for the greater good of our society is up for debate. Are these new frontiers becoming too involved in our lives and personel information? Should we have the right to protect these systems from accessing this personel information? What can we do to prevent this from happening and does it even matter if this information can be accessed to large scale companies such as google? All of which I don't really know the answer for but is up for a huge debate today. As we move further in the future we will probably continue to battle about rights to information and I dont think that there will ever be a right or wrong answer or a solution created.

Blog 10.1

Cloud Computing to me is this network of computers that all feed into each other to make a powerful computing system that allows for easier access and searching of data on the internet. To my understanding cloud computing uses a large amount of computers that are specific to their own set of data. That in turn works with all the other computers in a network and allow for fast, easy access to data which is all stored together. It allows for changes in storage data to occur because of the ability to lessen the usage in certain areas and the ability to increase the usage in others. Tensions/ issues that may arise is who gets to use the data storage, how it gets distributed and when they get it. We can see from the amazon.com example from the reading they use a lot of data the week after thanksgiving. If a situation occurs where systems within the cloud becomes overloaded at data could be lost and or computers could crash i think...

Blog 9.2

Exploring the various crowdsources on that long list provided to us I chose to explore different systems that would seem fun and interesting at the same time. By doing so my attention span towards the crowdsource wouldn't shift and I would find myself submerged in the source that surrounded me. First I started off in artigo a system that i though would interest me because of my art background, however I became bored of the project of tagging various artworks after the first go around. Possibly a result of me feeling like I wasn't doing it right. However I scored a 120 points... which who knows might have been good... I moved on from there though and dove into the world of eyewire.org. A system which is researching neuron mappings. Here I worked through various 3D interactive neuron puzzles that challenged my brain to figure out. It was fun and I also actually felt like I was contributing to something bigger than completing this assignment. I find that the interactiveness of the project interested me as well as the scientific backing of it made it feel like I was actually doing something. While participating I wasn't really thinking about how it felt to do it because I was fully concentrated in putting my best effort into the study. Afterwards I felt a bet accomplished and wondering if I would go back to this site ever again. What I have decided is that perhaps if I had some down time I would return. However I'd like to explore my options out there in the crowdsourcing world. It seems like there is something out there for everyone and that I may find something that would help me pursue some of my other deeper passions.

Blog 8.2

Before class today I used a couple of different technologies. First and foremost right this second I am using a desktop computer to write this blog. But I have also used my personel laptop as well as my smart phone which is an iphone. Within these technologies I have mostly used the internet, but have as well sent out a text message or two, chatted on instant messenger and checked my various social medias such as facebook, twitter and instagram. I have also used adobe flash to produce data which I then shared through google drive to a teacher of mine. Since the beginning of this semester the newest tool that I have started using is google drive and blogger. I have never really blogged before but recently this semester I have had to blog in a majority of classes. Prior to this class I have never used google drive before and now I have found that multiple of my classes use google drive to share files. It's made sharing data a lot faster and easier to do. Other technologies that I have used this semester include visitorsstudio.org, an online studio where artists can long onto and collaborate simultaneously in compiling digital works of art. Some of my passions include... -photography -video -visual arts -social media -web design -graphic design -applications I find that I am most passionate about trying to find a way to combined all of these various interests into a career of some sort.