One day in the future, nearly everything you need will come to you digitally - without boxes, cases or instruction manuals.
That's right - books, video games, music, nearly anything you can think of that doesn't rot - will be beamed directly into your home through that magic system of tubes: the Internet.
While it's true digital distribution may be the wave of the future, we're not there yet. The infrastructure that currently exists is not set up to deliver a full digital package and some of the hitches are surprisingly low tech.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, digital distribution is a method of product delivery that shoves aside the packaging of a product in favor of shipping it to the consumer via the Internet.
Most students at the University are already too familiar with the concept, however not in the legal way. I imagine most University students are familiar with it's free-spirited cousin - peer to peer networking.
Peer to peer (P2P) networking involves the sharing of media
between individual users - usually distributing pirated software, music and games.
While P2P networking does distribute things digitally, its not what I'm talking about here.
The type of digital distribution I'm referring to is next step in a process the general population is already familiar with - it's like shopping, except you don't go anywhere and never get to actually hold anything.
The legal version of digital distribution involves manufacturers selling it to consumers directly and then allowing them to download the product at their leisure.
It's already pretty popular.
iTunes and Rhapsody.com already make millions of dollars from digitally distributed content, and sites such as Netflix.com have recently opened up on-demand downloadable movies.
Even video games are transitioning to digital distribution with Nintendo's WiiWare and Microsoft's X-Box Live Arcade.
Digital distribution may be in its infancy now, but the road to complete digital distribution will lead University students to some big payoffs.
For the general population, digital distribution may actually be more expensive than traditional methods of shipping.
Blogger Nick Beaudrot, of the site Cogitamusblog.com, calculates that it's still cheaper to ship products the old fashioned way. Production of the items that are easily digitally distributed is still remarkably cheap. The CDs and DVDs that contain our music, movies and video games are pressed out rapidly, and the packaging is usually pretty meager outside of special editions.
The cost of production and light weight of transport make them relatively cheap to ship compared to the cost of bandwidth. As one anonymous comment on Beaudrot's post said, never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes.
In truth, Beaudrot's idea is sound, and the increasing cost of gas and increasing availability of broadband Internet will eventually make digital distribution paramount.
What Beaudrot doesn't take into account is the other forms of digital distribution - namely books, magazines and academic journals.
These are the media that most directly apply to University students.
University students already have access to many periodicals and e-journals through Middleton Library.
But that's not where the real gain for students is.
For University students, the real gain will be from e-books, podcasts and digitally distributed lecture videos that are already here in some cases and on the way for others.
Other universities are already on top of this. Universities such as Purdue, Washington State and U.C. Berkeley, among others, offer podcasts and in some cases videos of lectures that students can download.
The University has taken the first steps toward getting it all lined up, but the future holds tons of promise.
Unlike DVDs and movies, the benefit of digitally distributed books is easy to see. Books are costlier to produce than disc-based media and it would be much cheaper to distribute them electronically.
Podcasts and videos of lectures may get bogged down in image rights, but by far the biggest hurdle here is an administrative one.
If podcasts and videos of lectures are online, why would students take notes? Would attendance matter anymore? These are anything but trivial issues, and they cannot be resolved easily.
The age of digital distribution is coming, but it's not here yet.
In the case of popular media, it's close and coming fast. For the academic community, it's merely a tiny shadow on the horizon of an academic revolution.
It'll be here eventually, but in the meantime we should all invest in bigger hard drives.
Originally published in The Daily Reveille...
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Educators cannot ignore effects of technology
Technology will revolutionize the education system, but not in the way most people think.
Educational technology has advanced by leaps and bounds within the past 10 years. Nearly every classroom here at the University has a computer that can connect to the Internet, show videos and DVDs and play PowerPoint presentations. All of these are technological advancements that our parents and early educators would have never dreamed possible. But for all the advancement they represent, they are not the advancements that will truly alter the education of future generations.
On the contrary, it's not the technologies themselves that will change education, but the after effects of these technologies will shape the education of our children.
We live in a time of great technological advancement, but the true benefit of technology is not reaped by the first generation to experience it. It's the subsequent generations that truly explore, exploit and refine technology.
This isn't a knock on the intelligence of older generations. It isn't an issue of capacity, but one of exposure.
The easiest example of the diffusion of technology through generations is the Internet.
The early adopters of the Internet were a few tech-savvy members of Generation X. This generation, born between 1965 and 1982, helped nurture the Internet into its current state. In those days the Internet was more of a person-to-person method of communicating - similar to the message boards we have today. However, because of the advanced knowledge required to access the Internet, only a small set of Gen X have been exposed to it in significant amounts.
While Gen X is credited with furthering the Internet, it is not the generation most entrenched in it.
The Millennial Generation, unlike its predecessor, came of age when the Internet was just beginning to take off and is most heavily associated with its use.
This group, born between 1982 and 1997, were exposed to the Internet on a much larger scale than the general population of Gen X. The millennial generation has extensive experience with the Internet, but it was still introduced after its early socialization - the Internet merely augmented an existing world-view instead of being the focal point.
The Millennial Generation is the group that has popularized sites like Facebook.com and Myspace.com - they are social Internet users.
The generation after the Millennials, which some have taken to calling Generation Z, was born with the Internet. Many of those young people were at keyboards before they could ride bikes and are quite familiar with the Internet and its possibilities.
At the heart of the Internet is information, specifically instant information. There are few questions that cannot be answered, or at the very least enlightened, by a quick Internet search.
For those socialized and educated through the old way of learning, such as using a card catalogue in a library, this new method of information seeking exists in contrast to the old way, and makes it better.
For the new generation coming up, there is no old way. The technology that has brought amazing advancements to Gen X and the Millennials will be the status-quo for Gen Z- they won't know anything else.
Rapid access to information will become, or already is, the norm. I imagine there are hundreds of students at the University right now that have no idea what a library card catalogue actually looks like, much less how it works.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but that generation will need new skills to deal with this information.
This new generation shouldn't change for us - we should better ourselves and up the ante. Future educators will need to revolutionize the way they dole out and teach students to analyze information.
It's already happening in other parts of society.
In a 2008 study, The Context-Based Research Group found that young people responded better to information that was processed in quick, successive waves. Each wave increasing the level of detail, until a full picture was established. Using that information, several Associated Press branches tailored their style and found a great deal of success.
The writing is on the wall. While it may seem blasphemous to those that still remember the old ways, those ways may need to go the way of the Edsel and Windows ME.
Of course not all areas of education will change completely. Medical doctors will still need to know how to troubleshoot a patient's problems, and scholars will still have to be familiar with the body of work in their area. But the steps leading to those levels of education cannot remain as they are.
Without revolution or innovation we may find ourselves a shallow, under-educated society that has access to all the world's information, but without the capability to use it.
Originally published in The Daily Reveille...
Educational technology has advanced by leaps and bounds within the past 10 years. Nearly every classroom here at the University has a computer that can connect to the Internet, show videos and DVDs and play PowerPoint presentations. All of these are technological advancements that our parents and early educators would have never dreamed possible. But for all the advancement they represent, they are not the advancements that will truly alter the education of future generations.
On the contrary, it's not the technologies themselves that will change education, but the after effects of these technologies will shape the education of our children.
We live in a time of great technological advancement, but the true benefit of technology is not reaped by the first generation to experience it. It's the subsequent generations that truly explore, exploit and refine technology.
This isn't a knock on the intelligence of older generations. It isn't an issue of capacity, but one of exposure.
The easiest example of the diffusion of technology through generations is the Internet.
The early adopters of the Internet were a few tech-savvy members of Generation X. This generation, born between 1965 and 1982, helped nurture the Internet into its current state. In those days the Internet was more of a person-to-person method of communicating - similar to the message boards we have today. However, because of the advanced knowledge required to access the Internet, only a small set of Gen X have been exposed to it in significant amounts.
While Gen X is credited with furthering the Internet, it is not the generation most entrenched in it.
The Millennial Generation, unlike its predecessor, came of age when the Internet was just beginning to take off and is most heavily associated with its use.
This group, born between 1982 and 1997, were exposed to the Internet on a much larger scale than the general population of Gen X. The millennial generation has extensive experience with the Internet, but it was still introduced after its early socialization - the Internet merely augmented an existing world-view instead of being the focal point.
The Millennial Generation is the group that has popularized sites like Facebook.com and Myspace.com - they are social Internet users.
The generation after the Millennials, which some have taken to calling Generation Z, was born with the Internet. Many of those young people were at keyboards before they could ride bikes and are quite familiar with the Internet and its possibilities.
At the heart of the Internet is information, specifically instant information. There are few questions that cannot be answered, or at the very least enlightened, by a quick Internet search.
For those socialized and educated through the old way of learning, such as using a card catalogue in a library, this new method of information seeking exists in contrast to the old way, and makes it better.
For the new generation coming up, there is no old way. The technology that has brought amazing advancements to Gen X and the Millennials will be the status-quo for Gen Z- they won't know anything else.
Rapid access to information will become, or already is, the norm. I imagine there are hundreds of students at the University right now that have no idea what a library card catalogue actually looks like, much less how it works.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but that generation will need new skills to deal with this information.
This new generation shouldn't change for us - we should better ourselves and up the ante. Future educators will need to revolutionize the way they dole out and teach students to analyze information.
It's already happening in other parts of society.
In a 2008 study, The Context-Based Research Group found that young people responded better to information that was processed in quick, successive waves. Each wave increasing the level of detail, until a full picture was established. Using that information, several Associated Press branches tailored their style and found a great deal of success.
The writing is on the wall. While it may seem blasphemous to those that still remember the old ways, those ways may need to go the way of the Edsel and Windows ME.
Of course not all areas of education will change completely. Medical doctors will still need to know how to troubleshoot a patient's problems, and scholars will still have to be familiar with the body of work in their area. But the steps leading to those levels of education cannot remain as they are.
Without revolution or innovation we may find ourselves a shallow, under-educated society that has access to all the world's information, but without the capability to use it.
Originally published in The Daily Reveille...
Friday, March 28, 2008
Computer animated films near 'Uncanny Valley'
Sometimes the characters I see in computer animated movies creep me out.
I understand they are not real and there's nothing dangerous about them. Something about the way they look just makes me uncomfortable.
They're beginning to look too real.
I'm not alone in my way of thinking. For more than a century, psychologists and social theorists have pondered the point where artificial life will become too life-like for human society.
Today, theorists refer to this point as the "Uncanny Valley." But, that concept is couched in the psychological principles of what humans conceptualize as familiar and unfamiliar.
Many link the first psychological conceptualization of the uncanny to German psychologist Ernst Jentsch. In his 1906 essay "On the Psychology of the Uncanny," Jentsch explored the psychological boundaries that separate the familiar from the unfamiliar.
Jentsch felt the boundary was often violated when we are forced to question if an object is really alive or not. While Jentsch if often credited with coining the term "The Uncanny," it was actually brought to prominence by Sigmund Freud.
In his 1919 essay, "The Uncanny," Freud expanded the concept to examine the way things we encounter in daily life can be familiar yet strange at the same time. For Freud, these situations created conflicts of feelings and thoughts, described as cognitive dissonance.
Both Jentsch and Freud based their conceptualizations in the literature of E.T.A. Hoffman, a German fiction writer known for creating characters that exhibited uncanny characteristics.
While the term and concept of "The Uncanny" was discussed, science was not ready to bring the concept to the public, the implications of "The Uncanny" were not realized, and its discussion was regulated to literature.
Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori reintroduced the concept into popular culture in 1970.
In his article, "The Uncanny Valley," Mori asserted that as robotics become more advanced and their appearance more life-like, the small imperfections in appearance will cause them to appear eerie - thus causing cognitive dissonance as Freud asserted years earlier.
Mori's theory interest in robotics will proceed until we reach the point when they become too lifelike. When that saturation point is reached, interest in robotics will fall, and people will react adversely to them - thus we fall into the "Uncanny Valley."
Mori's solution to the problem of the Uncanny Valley was that we simply shouldn't make robots that look so much like people - for the most part, we haven't.
Despite recent advances in robotics and automation technology, robots are still slow and awkward-looking.
In recent years though, computer generated animation has become immensely popular and may hold the key to a modern concept of the "Uncanny Valley."
Companies, such as Disney-owned Pixar Animation Studios, have produced several high-quality computer films that have won several major awards and rake in millions of dollars.
But not all computer animated films have been as fortunate.
Other films, like Columbia Pictures' "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within," have been panned by both critics and the public, leading to poor sales.
While both movies were seen as technically impressive and visually appealing, the difference may lie in their approach to the human form.
Pixar's films, and other successful computer-generated films, have often taken a semi-realistic approach to animation. Less successful films, such as "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" and "The Polar Express" have attempted a more realistic view of computer animation.
Their failure to achieve substantial success in the market may the first sign of a tangible manifestation to the "Uncanny Valley."
There is one caveat to the idea of "The Uncanny," though. Some believe that exposure to the uncanny reduces the cognitive dissonance it causes and that we can get used to seeing the unfamiliar - thus the "uncanny valley" may never be realized.
That idea doesn't comfort me much though - I'll stick with cartoons for now.
Originally published in The Daily Reveille...
I understand they are not real and there's nothing dangerous about them. Something about the way they look just makes me uncomfortable.
They're beginning to look too real.
I'm not alone in my way of thinking. For more than a century, psychologists and social theorists have pondered the point where artificial life will become too life-like for human society.
Today, theorists refer to this point as the "Uncanny Valley." But, that concept is couched in the psychological principles of what humans conceptualize as familiar and unfamiliar.
Many link the first psychological conceptualization of the uncanny to German psychologist Ernst Jentsch. In his 1906 essay "On the Psychology of the Uncanny," Jentsch explored the psychological boundaries that separate the familiar from the unfamiliar.
Jentsch felt the boundary was often violated when we are forced to question if an object is really alive or not. While Jentsch if often credited with coining the term "The Uncanny," it was actually brought to prominence by Sigmund Freud.
In his 1919 essay, "The Uncanny," Freud expanded the concept to examine the way things we encounter in daily life can be familiar yet strange at the same time. For Freud, these situations created conflicts of feelings and thoughts, described as cognitive dissonance.
Both Jentsch and Freud based their conceptualizations in the literature of E.T.A. Hoffman, a German fiction writer known for creating characters that exhibited uncanny characteristics.
While the term and concept of "The Uncanny" was discussed, science was not ready to bring the concept to the public, the implications of "The Uncanny" were not realized, and its discussion was regulated to literature.
Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori reintroduced the concept into popular culture in 1970.
In his article, "The Uncanny Valley," Mori asserted that as robotics become more advanced and their appearance more life-like, the small imperfections in appearance will cause them to appear eerie - thus causing cognitive dissonance as Freud asserted years earlier.
Mori's theory interest in robotics will proceed until we reach the point when they become too lifelike. When that saturation point is reached, interest in robotics will fall, and people will react adversely to them - thus we fall into the "Uncanny Valley."
Mori's solution to the problem of the Uncanny Valley was that we simply shouldn't make robots that look so much like people - for the most part, we haven't.
Despite recent advances in robotics and automation technology, robots are still slow and awkward-looking.
In recent years though, computer generated animation has become immensely popular and may hold the key to a modern concept of the "Uncanny Valley."
Companies, such as Disney-owned Pixar Animation Studios, have produced several high-quality computer films that have won several major awards and rake in millions of dollars.
But not all computer animated films have been as fortunate.
Other films, like Columbia Pictures' "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within," have been panned by both critics and the public, leading to poor sales.
While both movies were seen as technically impressive and visually appealing, the difference may lie in their approach to the human form.
Pixar's films, and other successful computer-generated films, have often taken a semi-realistic approach to animation. Less successful films, such as "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" and "The Polar Express" have attempted a more realistic view of computer animation.
Their failure to achieve substantial success in the market may the first sign of a tangible manifestation to the "Uncanny Valley."
There is one caveat to the idea of "The Uncanny," though. Some believe that exposure to the uncanny reduces the cognitive dissonance it causes and that we can get used to seeing the unfamiliar - thus the "uncanny valley" may never be realized.
That idea doesn't comfort me much though - I'll stick with cartoons for now.
Originally published in The Daily Reveille...
Friday, March 7, 2008
Appleseed Project shows future of online networking
I'm starting to think social networking sites might go too far someday.
These Web sites make communication between people easier - in theory. Instead of picking up a phone to tell someone a nugget of information, users can simply write a message on their friends' walls.
Social networking sites are not the pristine social tools they are often portrayed to be, though.
While they do offer the opportunity to network with hundreds of people, many of them lack the ability to communicate with each other - users' online networks only extend as far as their sites will allow them to.
A new site called Appleseedproject.org looks to sidestep some of the hurdles present in the current generation of sites and offer a new and more open system of communication.
The Appleseed Project began three years ago when programmer Michael Chisari decided our current crop of sites just weren't cutting it. Internet sites like MySpace.com and Facebook.com offered social connections, but only through their proprietary systems.
Users were free to network all they want as long as they only wanted to network through site-specific systems. Chisari describes these Web sites as "walled gardens" - and he's got a point.
Without funding and forced to program completely on his own time, Chisari began the process of constructing an infrastructure that would allow different networking sites to communicate with each other openly.
While this sounds like a wonderful idea, there are some hurdles to its application - money being the biggest.
No, I'm not talking about the cost of programming the new site - I'm referring to the amount of money companies make from social networking sites.
Chisari's term "walled garden" is an excellent description, but I think "barbed wire-encased sandbox" is far more accurate.
The social networking sites we know and love today are businesses - and often lucrative ones. Sites make tons of money off the ads that stream by in rapid succession in the side and top bars of a user's Internet browser.
So it's in the best interest of these companies to keep their gardens walled - otherwise, the cash-flow might escape.
Within the constraints of these walled gardens, users become a captive audience for whatever messages the sites wish to broadcast or whichever sponsors have given them the most money this week.
Under the existing model, MySpace will never communicate with Facebook unless Rupert Murdoch buys Facebook and merges them together into some hideous mass of malfunctioning computer code and annoying applications.
Chisari's project looks to sidestep this nasty ownership issue and organize a standard for social networking, similar to the way the Internet operates today.
During its early days, the Internet also worked under this walled garden concept. Corporations like CompuServe, Prodigy and America Online acted as gatekeepers to the Internet and attempted to keep users walled within their own systems.
As time passed, the Internet's own walled gardens came down through a universal system of communication between users. Users still have to pay for access to the Internet, but once online, they are free to communicate with whomever they choose in whatever way they want to.
Chisari looks to implement a universal communication system for social networking sites - thus making MySpace and Facebook seem as obsolete and broken as CompuServe and Prodigy seem today.
The idea of universal social networking seems wonderful, but with new forms of freedom, there are also new forms of risk.
While the walled-garden model does keep users confined beneath the umbrella of each specific networking site, it also functions to protect them from many of the so-called dangers of the Internet.
Until recently, Facebook and MySpace were mostly free of pornographic spam, and users had built-in privacy options to keep them from being seen by random users. With a unified system, that could all change fairly dramatically.
Without the walls provided by existing networking sites, users will be forced to police their own information and protect their privacy themselves. Chisari himself suggests a trust-based system in which users and their friends would police the massive social network.
I think a trust system is possible for future social networking sites, but I cannot imagine the transition from the modern walled-garden setup would go very smoothly.
Users are accustomed to the current system of privacy controls and limitations. It stands to reason the transition to a self-policed, trust-based system would have a number of unfortunate privacy casualties, given the well-publicized cases of identity theft under the current, more restrictive model.
As it currently stands, Chisari's project is around 75 percent complete and has been released in beta. Interested programmers can download the source code for the project from appleseed.sourceforge.net and offer suggestions for streamlining the process.
Chisari is forging ahead with his project. If successful, Chisari will usher in a new era of limitless online social networking.
Here's hoping the world is ready for it.
Originally published in The Daily Reveille...
These Web sites make communication between people easier - in theory. Instead of picking up a phone to tell someone a nugget of information, users can simply write a message on their friends' walls.
Social networking sites are not the pristine social tools they are often portrayed to be, though.
While they do offer the opportunity to network with hundreds of people, many of them lack the ability to communicate with each other - users' online networks only extend as far as their sites will allow them to.
A new site called Appleseedproject.org looks to sidestep some of the hurdles present in the current generation of sites and offer a new and more open system of communication.
The Appleseed Project began three years ago when programmer Michael Chisari decided our current crop of sites just weren't cutting it. Internet sites like MySpace.com and Facebook.com offered social connections, but only through their proprietary systems.
Users were free to network all they want as long as they only wanted to network through site-specific systems. Chisari describes these Web sites as "walled gardens" - and he's got a point.
Without funding and forced to program completely on his own time, Chisari began the process of constructing an infrastructure that would allow different networking sites to communicate with each other openly.
While this sounds like a wonderful idea, there are some hurdles to its application - money being the biggest.
No, I'm not talking about the cost of programming the new site - I'm referring to the amount of money companies make from social networking sites.
Chisari's term "walled garden" is an excellent description, but I think "barbed wire-encased sandbox" is far more accurate.
The social networking sites we know and love today are businesses - and often lucrative ones. Sites make tons of money off the ads that stream by in rapid succession in the side and top bars of a user's Internet browser.
So it's in the best interest of these companies to keep their gardens walled - otherwise, the cash-flow might escape.
Within the constraints of these walled gardens, users become a captive audience for whatever messages the sites wish to broadcast or whichever sponsors have given them the most money this week.
Under the existing model, MySpace will never communicate with Facebook unless Rupert Murdoch buys Facebook and merges them together into some hideous mass of malfunctioning computer code and annoying applications.
Chisari's project looks to sidestep this nasty ownership issue and organize a standard for social networking, similar to the way the Internet operates today.
During its early days, the Internet also worked under this walled garden concept. Corporations like CompuServe, Prodigy and America Online acted as gatekeepers to the Internet and attempted to keep users walled within their own systems.
As time passed, the Internet's own walled gardens came down through a universal system of communication between users. Users still have to pay for access to the Internet, but once online, they are free to communicate with whomever they choose in whatever way they want to.
Chisari looks to implement a universal communication system for social networking sites - thus making MySpace and Facebook seem as obsolete and broken as CompuServe and Prodigy seem today.
The idea of universal social networking seems wonderful, but with new forms of freedom, there are also new forms of risk.
While the walled-garden model does keep users confined beneath the umbrella of each specific networking site, it also functions to protect them from many of the so-called dangers of the Internet.
Until recently, Facebook and MySpace were mostly free of pornographic spam, and users had built-in privacy options to keep them from being seen by random users. With a unified system, that could all change fairly dramatically.
Without the walls provided by existing networking sites, users will be forced to police their own information and protect their privacy themselves. Chisari himself suggests a trust-based system in which users and their friends would police the massive social network.
I think a trust system is possible for future social networking sites, but I cannot imagine the transition from the modern walled-garden setup would go very smoothly.
Users are accustomed to the current system of privacy controls and limitations. It stands to reason the transition to a self-policed, trust-based system would have a number of unfortunate privacy casualties, given the well-publicized cases of identity theft under the current, more restrictive model.
As it currently stands, Chisari's project is around 75 percent complete and has been released in beta. Interested programmers can download the source code for the project from appleseed.sourceforge.net and offer suggestions for streamlining the process.
Chisari is forging ahead with his project. If successful, Chisari will usher in a new era of limitless online social networking.
Here's hoping the world is ready for it.
Originally published in The Daily Reveille...
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