Recently in General Category
In other news for the night,
my hookah has arrived, and it is glorious! I put off finishing my parts of the
paper for a few hours to spend a significant amount of time figuring out why my
new investment wasn’t producing nearly enough smoke (for some reason, the
plug/stopper had a giant hole through it, which I eventually fixed with some
freshly chewed gum) and then to introduce about 20g of shisha into my body. I
think the massive amounts of nicotine were hugely beneficial to the completion
of our final project, and I look forward to indulging in plenty more hookah fun
throughout all of next week (no finals!). If anyone wants to play music during
this time of frivolity, do get in touch!
Coincidentally, shortly after changing my desktop to one of the backgrounds I discovered at PixelGirlPresents (my preferred desktop/icon distributor), I came across a link in Google Reader for 20 high-quality desktop sites. Just thought I'd throw that out there if anyone else is a freak and changes their desktop backgrounds to correspond with the seasons.
I saw this desktop decoration on Google Reader this afternoon, and it reminded me of The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello (a short film I had written about last night and have since discovered the full length version of here, if you're interested...also, you can save the video to your machine using ClipNabber). In addition to being an attractive clock, I found the content of the device sort of intriguing. More and more, it seems, we're incorporating past technologies into modern art (science fiction included, as mentioned in my previous post) and culture - sometimes for their nostalgic value, sometimes as symbols, representative of ideals or memorable aspects of the technologies' contexts (possibly applicable to the bonsai gear clock), and sometimes just because they look cool (definitely applicable to the clock). The original NES is a good example of an old technology that's frequently referenced today. I think it's so popular in part because it's such a rich and imaginative resource to pull from, but also because it's sentimental to so many individuals, and they can use it to identify themselves with a certain subgroup of the gaming community.
After watching the above video for the third or fourth time, another brilliant animated short film came to mind - Solar, also nominated for a multitude of prestigious awards.
After writing my last post (Maybe I Should Be More Skeptical About What I Read On Wikipedia), I thought, "Hey! Why not go see if I can find me some alternatives to Wikipedia!" just in case it ever comes up and also as it would be something else to write about here. So, I did.
When I Google'ed "alternatives to Wikipedia", the first page returned was "Top 7 Alternatives to Wikipedia". Wow, that was easy, right? I guess Wikipedia isn't so high and mighty - there are at least seven other choices out there! I decided to do a little research to see which of the substitutes was best. Below are my findings - first the name of the website, then the description provided by the Online Education Database, then my review/analysis/critique and finally a rating out of 10.
Scholarpedia
- Scholarpedia is a site made from the same MediaWiki software as Wikipedia. It almost appears like a mirror site, but there are some significant differences. Scholarpedia is written by, you guessed it, scholars. Experts must be either invited or elected before they are assigned certain topics and, although the site is still editable by anyone like a wiki, updates must first be approved before they are made final. This not only ensures that all information added to the site is accurate and attributed to an author, vandalism never becomes an issue.
- Sounds good in theory. I threw it some softballs for starters - "pneumonia", "cancer", "Egypt", "Hinduism", "baseball" - and didn't get a single result. I was starting to question whether the site was actually functional at all. Then, I saw the "Random Article" link. After a few clicks, I had been directed to pages with the following headings: "Stiff Delay Equations", "Burst Synchronization", "Evolving Fuzzy Systems", "Neuronal Synchrony Measures", "Stochastic Models of Ion Channel Gating". Ah, so that's why "baseball" wasn't returning anything! This seems like it might be worthwhile if you're in a pretty intense field and need detailed information on obscure topics. Aside from that, though, completely useless.
- 3 / 10
- Citizendium is a wiki that seems to be a compromise between the free-for-all that is Wikipedia and the strict supervision that accompanies Scholarpedia. One of Wikipedia's founders, Larry Sanger, created Citizendium in the hopes of improving on Wikipedia's model. With what the site refers to as "gentle oversight", all articles are subject to approval by the site's editorial team. Articles that haven't been approved will have an accompanying disclaimer, which helps to prevent people from taking potentially false information to heart. Also, you must register under your real name to become a contributor, unlike Wikipedia. Although the site is still in beta form, it is quickly becoming a popular alternative to Wikipedia, one that Sanger feels will "probably succeed".
- Alright, this one seems like a winner. The public contribution of Wikipedia with more controlled censorship. Perfect, right? Well, not yet. I ran the following queries: "Sigur Rós", "banjo", "Photoshop", "sodium", "pine", "napkin", "iPod". No results, at least none that were relevant. On the bright side, "apple", "pear" and "banana" has decent articles that seem to be half as good as Wikipedia. Although this one is practically useless now, it's still in Beta mode, and with a system of this nature, it needs visitors and contributors to be successful. I think that if this is marketed properly and people can be weened off of Wikipedia and onto this, it could be great.
- Current: 4 / 10 | Potential: 10/ 10
Encyclopedia Britannica Online
- When it comes to trusted and unbiased facts, this site is your best option. Here, every volume of the Encyclopedia Brittanica has been transferred to Web format, in addition to multimedia features and an easy search tool. Updates to the site's entries are made by professionals, as this isn't a wiki community. The only drawback to this site is that it isn't free. To have full access to Encyclopedia Britannica Online, one must pay a subscription fee of $69.95 a year. This is a sound investment for students, however, as the yearly fee is substantially cheaper than buying the encyclopedic set in book form. Also, major universities will accept the site as a reliable source when citing information in a research paper, something Wikipedia can't claim.
- The information will be quite accurate, but compared to Wikipedia, the articles are probably limited and slow to adjust to current events. More importantly, though, it's not free (unless you're looking up very basic terms, which usually isn't the case). This justifies an instant failure.
- 0 / 10
- MSN Encarta is another online encyclopedia that bypasses the problems that plague Wikipedia. All entries have been written and fact-checked by professionals and the site will never be vandalized. However, like Encyclopedia Britannica Online, this site requires a subscription fee. For $29.95 a year, you can access MSN Encarta in its entirety, including the site's accompanying thesaurus, world atlas and other research tools for students.
- See Encyclopedia Britannica.
- 0 / 10
- Infoplease is a free online encyclopedia that is a part of Pearson Education, the largest educational book distributor in the world. All of the information found on the site is gathered from trusted sources, such as the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia and the Random House Unabridged Dictionary. Although entries may be limited in size when compared to Wikipedia, you can be sure that all the information is accurate and incapable of being influenced by outside users. Also, Infoplease has many multimedia features that assist researchers, particularly students who are attending distance education courses.
- I searched the same terms as I did for Citizendium:
"Sigur Rós" - fail
"banjo" - pass, inferior to Wikipedia
"Photoshop" - fail
"sodium" - pass, inferior to Wikipedia
"pine" - pass, comparable to Wikipedia
"napkin" - fail
"iPod" - failAs you can see, not up to par as far as quantity or quality of articles. Moreover, the site is slow, requires more clicking than is necessary, and there are annoying advertisements from time to time. It does offer dictionary entries for most words, but if that's what you want, then use dictionary.com.
- 3 / 10
- Conservapedia is a conservative, Christian-influenced wiki encyclopedia that was created as a response to Wikipedia's alleged left-wing bias. The information found on this site is free of foul language, sexual topics and anything else deemed offensive by the site's editorial staff. If you feel that Wikipedia shows a strong bias toward liberal views, then this site may suit your needs. All Conservapedia users are asked to follow the site's seven Commandments.
- Of all the 7 entries, this one actually holds up the best compared to Wikipedia. Still, it's not as good. For any entry ("God", "Jesus" and "Catholocism" included), Wikipedia has more content, and while Conservapedia does have a significant number of articles, it doesn't have more modern terms (like band names or "iPod"). Regardless of how it might look quantitatively, I would never use this as a reference for anything related to politics, religion or anything of the like. The name alone implies how slanted the entries are, and the video below illustrates that pretty well (wait until about a minute into it).
- Functionally: 5 / 10, but out of principle: 1 / 10
- Uncyclopedia is an ambitious spoof of Wikipedia. It could be seen as an over-the-top response to Wikipedia users, also knows as "Wikipedians", who seem to take the site much too seriously. From the home page's logo to the formatting of each entry, the parallels between the two sites are uncanny and well-executed. Make no mistake, however. Nothing on Uncyclopedia should be taken as fact, which may be another dig at Wikipedia's occasional inaccuracy. If you are fed up with Wikipedia's many faults and want to have a good laugh, check out this satirical site.
- Funny, and a good resource for boredom, but not so much research.
- N/A
Wikipedia alternatives? I suppose not, at least not yet. If something ever happened to Wikipedia, I'm sure someone (most likely Citizendium) would step up and fill the role. As mentioned before, popularity is crucial to the success of sites like these, and since Wikipedia is practically a unanimous favorite, people typically don't use any alternatives at this point. If we ever need them, they'll be there. But for right now? Not worth the time to type the URL's.
But even if I knew that 10-20% of each article I read was inaccurate, I would still probably use it as a resource. Off the top of my head, I don't know any substitutes that compare to Wikipedia (although I'm sure I could find some mediocre alternatives if I tried), and it's become such a habit at this point that it's sort of strange imagining a world without it. At this point, I think that, similar to Napster and music filesharing, Wikipedia has become embedded in enough people's lives that if anything should ever happen to it (legally or otherwise), plenty of substitutes would pop up immediately.
Upon Googling "define: wikipedia", I came up with some interesting results:
- “A Web-based, free-content encyclopedia,” available in numerous languages. It "is one of the most popular reference sites on the Internet."
- Modern aluminium beer barrels - also called casks or kegs - outside the Castle Rock Barrels often have a convex shape, bulging at the middle.
- The term church originated from the pre-Christian Germanic kirika. St.Simon church in Aleppo,Syria is considered to be one of the oldest.
- A nonparasitic antigen capable of stimulating a type I hypersensitivity reaction in atopic individuals is called an allergens.
- The Buffalo Sabres are a professional ice hockey team based in Buffalo, New York. They began playing in the National Hockey League as an expansion team in...
- FAME can also be an abbreviation for:. Full-sky Astrometric Mapping Explorer, an astrometric satellite designed to measure the positions of stars very...
- Dean Blakesley was the author of the first English Life of Aristotle (1839), an edition of Herodotus (1852-1854) in the Bibliotheca Classica.
- The is a small breed of dog usually Such s can be seen in many of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.
- Among other problems, the real Billy the Kid spoke Spanish fluently and could read and write ... Jon Bon Jovi's album Blaze of Glory; Charlie Daniels 's song, Billy the Kid; Billy Dean 's song...
Maybe I should be more concerned with the information I encounter using Google's "define" method (which also comes up very frequently for me)...
I just read this article about some students at Fairview High School who have been coordinating and participating in an afterschool fight club. At least 12 students were actively involved (fighting), and it's estimated that there are about 60 individuals that attend the events altogether. The school board has already "ticketed" ten students who will need to make court appearances and may be suspended from school.
Morally, I don't have much problem with this little extracurricular activity the kids (aged 15-17) have started. As long as the ordeal is fairly friendly and things don't get out of hand, it's probably a healthier investment of time/energy than a lot of alternatives the participants/spectators could get involved with instead. But, these thoughts aren't particularly relevant at the moment.
As soon as I read the headline, "'Fight Club' Busted at Fairview High School", the first thing that popped into my head was Tyler Durden reading off the list of Fight Club rules to newcomers in Lou's Tavern. I considered the likelihood that the film (Fight Club, that is) wasn't an inspiration for the after-school group formed at Fairview High School, and I didn't guess the probability to be very high. A handful of the students most likely watched the movie, thought (rightfully so) that it was pretty cool, and then theorized how it would be even cooler if they started their own version.
I found the scenario to be somewhat relevant to my group's final project/presentation in IST 431, which might be (we have to work out this issue with another group that selected the same topic) about science fiction's role in predicting/determining future technologies. The juvenile fight club isn't any sort of technology, of course, but would it have come into existence if it wasn't first written about years before? Did the fiction cause the reality? Or, was the author just one of the first to come up with a concept that others would have inevitably arrived at, and publishing his idea for the masses did nothing more than speed up the process at which everyone else discovered it?
While I haven't come to a firm conclusion as to my stance on the topic in general (whether fiction causes things to happen, or if the things happen the same way even if the fiction had never existed), I think in this particular case, the idea was more predetermined. We've been fighting since the beginning of time, at first out of necessity and as a means to gain wealth (land, money, resources, etc.), and then later as a form of entertainment and sport. Fighting has been part of culture since, well...since we've had a culture. So, I don't find the fight club derivation to be particularly surprising, and it probably would have eventually happened even without the fiction.
However, if the object of concern was something more contradictory to human nature, or at least not innate to humans...let's say, mowing grass - the 60 students gathered in the old field behind the school after hours each week to cut and maintain the lawn - then I would say, "Yes! These children are behaving in such a way because they've all seen that new blockbuster, Grass Groupies!"
And I think this philosophy (hazy as it may be - apologies for the less-than-stellar examples) applies to technology as well...
Science fiction predictions involving technologies that were fairly predictable (like groups organized purely for the sake of fighting) probably didn't have much influence. Take the toaster. Sure, at one point, the thought of having a toaster that knew when bread was finished heating was probably far-fetched and futuristic. But, look at it from a toaster manufacturer's perspective. Maybe the competition is starting to pull ahead, and our company needs something new and revolutionary to get us back in the game. So, we sit and stare at a toaster. "How could this be improved?" we ask ourselves, "What is wrong with existing model? What would be a nice feature? What could we do better?" At some point, someone in the group would declare, "It should stop heating the toast when it's finished, so the user doesn't need to stand around watching it!" Even without any forward-thinking science fiction available, this should have eventually happened on its own.
On the other hand, technologies like using sound as a weapon (predicted by Brian Aldiss in the mid 1900's) are not as easily anticipated. Technologies that wouldn't be the result of a natural progression (see pop-up toasters), technologies that we would almost need to happen upon by accident to realize - these are the cases where science fiction is most valuable. If a scientist sees notices a strange behavior when certain chemicals are mixed or perhaps becomes aware of an unusual byproduct, then the individual may overlook great potential if he/she doesn't possess certain forward-thinking concepts to which connections can be made. These concepts might very well come from science fiction.
Well, this post came a long way from Fight Club. I think somewhere during the journey, though, I've cleared up my thoughts on the value of science fiction and its influence on future technologies. As a rule of thumb (subject to change, of course, as I consider the idea more), I would say that the more absurd and out-there the science fiction, the more impactful it could potentially be for the future. If it doesn't seem completely unrealistic, then it would have probably happened on its own.
"Imagine a tunnel more than ten storeys underground, a hundred years old, bricklined, wet, and completely inaccessible save by descending through a narrow slit in its ceiling thirty feet above the floor, and then returning up the same rope you came down. Now imagine that this tunnel flows into Niagara Falls, emerging behind the pummeling curtain of water that nearly everyone in North America journeys to see at some point in their lives." [taken from The Vanishing Point]
These magnificent underground structures were originally built to harness the kinetic energy of Niagara Falls, but they were abandoned more than 40 years ago. Now, we have miles and miles of wonderful, otherworldly passages beneath the earth's surface in Canada. What's strange is that, unlike many technological developments, these structures (built for purely functional purposes - generating power and moving water) have become beautiful and almost natural over time. Because of the integration of water and light from the surrounding environment, the tunnels have a sort of ancient ruinsy feel to them, even though they're not much more than a century old. I realize it's not possible, or even desirable, for most new products/buildings/structures, but I really like the idea of incorporating the natural environment into the designs of technologies. Most of them become obsolete within a few years, anyway, so if they're going to be left behind for junk, why not make them aesthetically pleasing and give them the potential for (the illusion of) antiquity?
I'm thinking I might venture up to Canada after finals week this semester to see if I can explore these tunnels. In addition to being amazing structures to witness, they would make for some great photos (as you can see above).
I'm not a big reader. In fact, over the course of my life, I've probably read less than fifteen books that haven't been assigned for a class, and most of those were technological teach-yourself sort of publications, like Flash CS3 for Dummies. It's not that I'm opposed to books. Given my interest in music, film and various other forms of art, I would actually peg myself as a fairly avid reader if I didn't know better, and I definitely would like to read more. The problem is finding the motivation to actually sit down and do it. I mean, watching a movie takes about two hours. But a book? More like two weeks (I'm a slow reader). That's a whole lot of time to devote to anything, and I'm usually just not willing (or able) to make the commitment.
So, last week, when I starting having this extended, highly abnormal urge to read, I didn't want to let it go to waste. I Amazon'ed House of Leaves (which is brilliant, and you should probably read it) to get some recommendations for my next literary undertaking. There were a few frontrunners - Survivor: A Novel (by the author of Fight Club), John Dies at the End, Clown Girl, and American Gods - and after discussing the matter with a few well-read friends that have excellent taste, I decided on Neil Gaiman's American Gods.
The next day (Wednesday, who is coincidentally one of the main characters in the novel), while waiting for some flyers to be copied, I wandered into the HUB's bookstore, and surprisingly, on the bottom shelf of the fiction wall, there was a single copy awaiting me. I was a little disappointed by the synopsis, and the first few pages that I skimmed in the store weren't very promising, but I decided to trust the judgment of my friends and purchased it anyway.
I'm currently 200-ish pages into it, and can certainly say I'm not disappointed. It's a witty, thoughtful, and delightfully hallucinogenic novel, complete with flame-spewing buffalo heads, a 7-foot tall, bar-fighting leprechaun, a man-eating vagina, and a high-stakes checkers match that could result in one of the characters having his skull crushed with a sledgehammer. Definitely a good call picking this one.
But this is a technology-driven blog, right? So, why does this book (wonderful as it may be) have a place here? Well, as the plot unfolds, and the pieces start falling into place, it's become apparent that Wednesday (Odin/Woden, the chief god in Norse mythology) is "recruiting American manifestations of the Old Gods of ancient mythology, whose powers have waned as their believers have decreased in number, to participate in an epic battle against the New American Gods, manifestations of modern life and technology (e.g. the Internet, media, & modern means of transport)." [taken from Wikipedia]
With the exception of my time reading E.M. Forster's short story, "The Machine Stops", I'd never given much consideration to the similarities between humanity's interaction with technology and that of the gods (both past and present), but there are certainly connections to be drawn between the relationships. We rely on technology. We look to it for explanations of our situations, solutions to our problems, and predictions of the future. We devote time and resources to it. We celebrate it, and even speak about it in a manner reminiscent of a religious sermon. In at least one instance, it's even been suggested to be responsible for the creation of the universe. The more I think of it, the only significant difference I can come up with between humans' relationship with technology versus gods/religion is that technology doesn't offer any kind of afterlife. But, I'm sure that, at some point, even that has been associated with technology.
After going through the above paragraph and realizing just how similar technology and gods/religion really are, I believe this would be a worthwhile topic to delve further into. For now, though, I think I'm going to sleep (it is 3:30, after all). Perhaps after getting further in the book and having some time to consider the idea more, I'll revisit this topic.
