For your first blog, use this site to introduce yourself, what you’re studying, your interests in technology — and then make a short pitch for a topic, theme, trend or technology that you think we ought to focus part of the course on and that might make an interesting focus for the Augmented Reality group project.
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TS 400 Blog #1
My name is Reese Giroux; I am a 20-year-old student here taking an undergraduate degree in psychology. Even though I am a psychology major I am surprisingly not planning to go into the clinical practices but rather, prefer to explore psychologies uses in the business sector.
My interests that are non-school related is computer gaming, building of computers, exercising including biking and gym going as well as the usual, sleeping! I used to play competitive Esports on the computer for FPS games (CoD4 Promod pc and now Counter-Strike) but since university started I’ve unfortunately had to pull myself back a bit.
One topic I would like to cover (if it is applicable to this class because I’m unsure) is the quickly growing and success of E-sports and how that will / is affect(ing) the current venues of sporting entertainment such as football, baseball, basketball etc.
I believe that this could be interesting for the augmented reality group project because if we make it a tour we could provide virtual statistics around the sporting areas about that.
Thanks! Yes, as you know, I’m interested in this area — or certainly the crossover of gaming into other areas. I could see this working, especially if you formed a group that explore that crossover: esports, yes, but also how gamification adds competitive motivation & feedback loops to other areas of the campus/society so they, too become “game-like”. Definitely a major trend, with pros & cons.
Hello everyone, my name is Tetsu Ozawa. I’m the 5th (6th maybe) year student at Pacific and Asian department. The secondary reason I register this course was the back-up elective cause because I could not get my final grade from the other elective courses until January 7th. However, my primary reason to take this course is just my own interest (actually I never took classes according to my needs; I only care about my interests when I choose courses). Then some of you may be puzzled because of my major. How come future (possible) historian interested in technology?
It is because the technology is very important for inter-cultural and inter-national relationships. I was mainly focus on Japan-Korea relationships and Japan-China relationships; however, I found out that the Internet communities do a lot about this topic. That is mainly the nationalists’ propaganda, and many of them try to teach (or brainwash) people the history they like (if it’s true or not). Before the Internet appears, it is almost impossible to force people to be nationalistic for those ultra-right-wings. Only thing they could do is use camo-painted speaker-equipped crazy cars and shout “KILL F****** KOREANS! JAPAN IS THE ONLY-TRUE-AND-RIGHTCORRECTPROPER-RULER OF THE WORLD LOLOLOLOL”. However, these days, those nationalists often use their beautifully decorated blogs and homepages to teach people “the Truth”. And I found out that Korean nationalists also do the exactly same thing (even they had Japanese-translated homepages too).
Technology can be very useful but can be very harmful according to its operators, so I’m interested in what will the future technology leads us. Education systems are dramatically changing because of the advanced technologies. Is it means will our children get better and more efficient education in the future? Or just giving more opportunity for those extreme nationalists to brainwash people for them? In fact, many Japanese Junior high school students went extremely nationalistic because they are influenced by those Nationalist websites. Even they invented web-based videogames in order to reinforce nationalism to children. So I would like to know that what kind of technologies can be used in education, and what are the pros and cons.
Thanks for the intro and the great post! Yes, I think history is very important to understand technological change. You raise important questions about whether the Internet helps to promote historical understanding & fact-checking — or adds more confusion, as propagandists use it to spread misinformation.
My name is Jenny Aitken and I am a fourth-year creative writing and journalism student. This is my last term of university, which is both exciting and terrifying. I grew up in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, and my favourite TV shows are Arrested Development and The Office. My favourite food is watermelon, and last summer I came in fifth in a watermelon-eating contest. The majority of my competitors were children.
As for my motivation in this class, I am appallingly bad with technology. I am not saying that to be modest, I legitimately am terrible – I have trouble updating my I-pod and even PowerPoint can throw me for a loop. I am taking this class in hopes of grasping on to some basic skills so that it’s not completely impossible for me to get a job in the future. Although the fact that I’m a playwriting major may make that difficult regardless.
I do not have too many ideas yet for the campus of the future yet, but one thing I would incorporate is ergonomic chairs and desks so that people are more comfortable (which is better for productivity). Also, some campuses have more cover so that is easier to get from class to class in extreme weather, which would be nice in Victoria where it rains so much.
As for an area of discussion I would like to broach in class, I am very interested in the idea of how social media can affect self-esteem. Professor Sherry Turkle from MIT wrote a book called “Alone Together” that basically talks about how social media sites like Facebook can make people feel bad about themselves because it seems like other people are living much more exciting lives than they are.
I know from my own experience that if I am at home on a Wednesday night, wearing sweatpants and doing homework, and I start flipping through pictures from a friend’s on-going travels through Australia, well I am going to feel immense self-pity in about five seconds. Ten minutes later, when I find myself on picture 127 of their photos, I then start to truly question what I am doing with my life. In the book we are reading for class, “Delete”, he gives examples of how social media can change our perception of another person (like Stacy Snyder, the teacher who lost her job for posting drinking pictures online) and although I find that really interesting, I want to also dig into not only how social media can change how we view others, but also how we view ourselves.
Thanks! Actually we read *Alone Together* in TS400 last year — a great book that, alas, I replaced with Nora Young’s this year, as she will be visiting. But an excerpt or an essay by Sherry Turkle or her TED Talk (which we watch in TS200) would be an excellent for you to choose to present on. She is one of the most important researchers on the subject of technology & society.