This weeks reading was all about DataBases and what the specifically mean . . . a whole 20 pages of it. . .

I will get to databases in a second but can I be the only one that stumbled at the “data and algorithm” section? Video games are an algorithm. *double take*
They’ve tricked us all, we doing math for fun, we even pay for it, whaaaat? Instead of looking at this as a negative lets try and turn it around into a positive, why not install video games into the curriculum as a math subject . . . This could be the beginnings of something great!

Anyway, back on topic: data
There are different forms of data and how it can be stored and everything, the internet being the main focus for us. The argument is that the internet doesn’t have a story thread or a narrative to it. They believe that new media does not have a story to it. Which I will spend the rest of this blog disagreeing about.
Firstly the internet has its own story – the history of the internet, how it came to be, what happened as it grew and although you could argue that it doesn’t have an ending it definitely has chapters in it, the term Web 2.0 should be enough justification for this notion, so at least each chapter has a beginning middle and end.
Secondly, I disagree that there is no story or narrative within the internet. In the argument about algorithms being in games brought me to certain conclusion: everyone has a goal when they’re doing something, whether it be working in order to get money or watching copies amounts of videos on youtube to cure boredom there is always a goal and as the reading said, the game ends once you reach your goal. So if you’re on the internet you must have a certain goal, you might be researching something for instance, you’ve reached your goal when you’ve found the information that you’re looking for, so although abstract, stories exist within the internet, it is created when the reader/audience begin it and is finished when they end it.

I think I got a tad off topic there but just some food for thought.

Bell Curve vs Power Law

And here I was thinking that i’d never have to use Math in such a way once I left school . . . well I suppose I’m still at school so my point is still valid.

The main point that I get out of this reading is that Bell Curves relate to networks that are concrete, the example used in the reading is the roads and highways connecting the major cities of the USA. I’m assuming you all know what a bell curve is . . .
On the contrary to this, any network that isn’t concrete shows the Power Law, the example being the aeroplanes’ flight paths between any the cities. Each city is a node in the network and the major cities obviously have more paths in the air going straight to other cities then roads do.

So because the internet is regarded as lucid and not concrete in terms of its networking capabilities then there is a relation to that and the Power Law. Is this helpful? Well it helpful for those wanting to target mass audiences because then they know which nodes in the network they need to be on, advertisement would obviously benefit in this way. Heres a thought though, the internet is expanding and expanding all the time, each time a new node comes in those previous to it have the potential to get into the peaking 20% of nodes in the structure, but human knowledge can only go so far surely, does the placings of the nodes change if the growths stops or are the nodes still fluid? Especially in a network that isn’t concrete . . . who knows? not me . . .

This weeks reading was all about networks, and not just that which you could find on the internet or in media.

‘How is it that assembling a large collection of components results in something altogether different from just a disassociated collection of components?’
This reading got me thinking about what is a network specifically. An assembly of a large collections of components, does this mean that we as human beings are a network? We have several components that make us up, organs, bones, muscles etc. We are also apart of a bigger network know as a society. We know our power grid is a network, is our world a network? Are the planets that orbit our son apart of a network? Is our Galaxy apart of a network of Galaxies !!!
Is a network apart of everything we do and simply just how we function ? . . . some food for thought.

Technological determinism.

This theory seems pretty self explanatory as the name states, technology determines the ways that humans exist within the world. It has some very good points and examples about how it is the case, for instance the creation of writing transformed the oral culture of humans into a literacy based one and that because of the creation of writing it has transformed the human consciousness. A fairly big statement but seeing as I wasn’t there when our race was predominantly oral based i can’t comment. Does technology determine everything though? I would be inclined to disagree, after all there must be someone who creates the technology. Thats why I would move to create another party in the theory. Technology is in the middle, below is the consumers of the technology who are very well determined by the technology, but then above the technology there are the creators of the technology who create it for one reason or the other. This is just another theory and i would be more then happy to agree that it is rather a big subject and the simplicity of all the theories in comparison don’t quite sum it up.