No surprise that what the you put on the internet, belongs to the internet. That could be a factor of why I have been slightly decreasing my social media footprint, that or paranoia. I don’t enjoy the fact that a stranger can know what I am doing and where I am doing it whenever I post on social media. I like to use the internet more for accessing content, listening to music, watching Youtube videos and occasionally Facebook browsing. I like to know I am taking from the internet without giving something back. Although I do occasionally post a message here and there, and the internet keeps track of where I go and what I buy while online. The less I post about myself online, the less knowledge others can own about me. I want to be known through engaging in relationships with people, not taking a Facebook quiz about what Game of Thrones character I am.

I am glad that I am not a very creative person, especially when it comes to the visual arts. It usually doesn’t bother me knowing that any image I put on Instagram belongs to Instagram, although . Instagram can use one of my pictures for an advertising campaign, make money off of it and never pay me a dime. Thankfully my photography skills are low, but there are some very talented people out there, people who make a living through their art, who don’t get rewarded for their original content. Can animals hold the rights to a selfie? http://news.discovery.com/animals/endangered-species/macaque-holds-rights-to-selfie-lawsuit-claims-150923.htm#mkcpgn=rssnws1.

Can humans?

On a positive note, you can now sing happy birthday without getting fined!  http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-happy-birthday-song-lawsuit-decision-20150922-story.html

It’s funny how when you start focusing on something you see it pop up everywhere.

After learning a whole lot more than the average person about the internet, I see how much of our daily lives have been affected (effected? I still have a hard time knowing which one to use) by what was once top secret technology built for the military.To type up this blog post I am using the internet which was once developed as a type of communication that wasn’t threatened by the destruction of a single point. It seems strange that one of the biggest, the biggest perhaps, leaps on technology really begun after the last world war. There were a lot of steps in between of course and it was probably set into motion before the war started but I can see World War II as being the catalyst for the invention of the internet.

Thinking about the internet also brings up thoughts of other large events, and inventions, that came about because of fear. Fear is a large motivator when you look back on history, I think fear really forces people to move, fight or flight. Like the installment of federal highways, which was needed at the time to be a way to get across the US and move troops throughout the country. Is it a bad thing that fear is such a great motivator? The things that come out of it can be great, I mean the internet opens up so many options for people and ideas, Is there a difference between an invention that was created to help others and an invention that was created in case of emergency? I don’t know, got to think about that.

Vannevar Bush is basically my new hero, the things that his brain was capable of thinking up back in the ’40’s is just astonishing. I don’t even really understand how cameras work, sad to admit, and Vannevar was already thinking how the future was going to change photography as he knew it. Vannevar’s attitude towards the internet, as a tool to assist in the storing of information and how someone could better access the growing amount of information that future would certainly bring, is definitely not based on fear. This is in opposition to Carr’s view of the internet, something potentially dangerous, that could alter our brains for the worse, and that almost controlled the user more than the user controlled it. Well this user isn’t afraid of the internet and its brain altering ways.

When I got to school this morning I decided to stop having a bad attitude when it comes to HIST 390. No more excuses about how my brain doesn’t line up with class discussions. I need to open my brain up to working in different ways and allow myself to ask questions unselfishly. No more “How does this apply to me?” or “That’s not important to me.”.

Today we discussed a lot of stuff. Most of it interesting. I tried not to sit through the whole class just thinking of ways I could pipe up in class, although I still did that, but I think I spent more thinking time on the why. I don’t usually like to ask myself why, it’s such an open ended almost unanswerable question.

Vannevar Bush’s “As We May Think” article was one of the main topics discussed in class. We also dabbled in Rationalization, sterilization and analog computers. O’Malley showed some videos about  analog computers from the 1940’s, military ones. The videos were training videos meant for the Navy. I had a really hard time following the videos, I don’t have an engineer brain, to me they complicated gear based pieces of equipment.  I am so glad there are people on this earth who have brains that understand not only how to operate highly complex systems but also how to create them. I find the complexities in these machines to be awe inspiring in much the same way that detailed and realistic paintings are, both are out of reach of my skill levels, which makes them that much more unattainable.

In “As We May Think”  Vannevar stressed the need for new ways to store data, mostly for the use of specialists. With Vannevar’s “Memex” and the internet specialists have ways of accessing vast amounts of data, they are able to see not only what pertains to there search but also what things are similar or things that have commonalities with there search. The use of hyperlinks is incredibly helpful when it comes to linking data, . In Carr’s “The Shallows” Carr talks about hyperlinks and how don’t just give us the option to seek other knowledge paths but they propel us off of our original path, into distraction.  I am not sure what effect the use of hyperlinks has on the attention span of us regular people, maybe they do lead to distraction. I wonder if Carr would think that the gains in research and for specialists in linking data through hyperlinks makes the sacrifice of the average persons attention span worth it? Does the ability to store data overflow our culture with knowledge? I find that with the internet I can know a little bit about a lot of subjects but it is much harder to restrict myself to one subject, one area.

Pros and cons.

How do I think? Something to think about.

We didn’t end up going over chapter 5 of Carr’s “The Shallows”, wrong chapter posted on the syllabus. We’ll never know if I could have contributed anything to the class discussion. I am not sure the way my brain works lines up well with this class. O’Malley throws out lots of deep, thought provoking questions, questions I can’t just spit out an answer too. The way I think about things is to process them, test them out in my own head.

I like to use metaphors a lot in my everyday speech. I like poetry, I like how the words sound, and I like the way those sounds make me feel. If someone spoke like Shakespeare in everyday conversations I would think they were crazy, and I would get annoyed real fast. There is a place for using words more than just to say what we mean though. I would rather speak closer to “courtly speech” than the opposite end of the spectrum, I guess something like Orwell’s “1984” Newspeak.  I am a feelings based person, how I feel is how I am. I can’t always explain how I feel using plain words. If I am not doing well, it’s not just because I am not doing well, it could be because I am frustrated or anxious, ungood just doesn’t do it for me. I like having a large vocabulary and being able to pick out words because of how closely they come to what I mean to say.

The question “Why is slavery bad?” was asked by O’Malley in class. Apparently it has to do with the fact that we have two selves, the self that will do what is necessary, like a job or homework, and the deep down self that has opinions and thoughts that no one can command. Most people now would agree that slavery is bad, even though there are still humans who subject other humans to slavery, but what lead those who opposed slavery to question how things had always been? A lot of early people who spoke out against slavery still owned slaves. There was a war about it and lots of arguments, did people just start being like, “you know, maybe this isn’t right? Did slave owners suddenly wake up with a conscience? It was probably like a lot of other events in history, it started with a small group or an individual and it spread. In order for it to spread it had to be a good idea, although bad ideas spread too. My brain is going in circles, I don’t know why it happened.

I hate speculating, and hypothetical questions. I like research and gaining knowledge in an area and then developing an opinion. I don’t like spending time on questions that don’t have answers. I also don’t like arguing for the sake of arguing.

I like words though.

This past weekend I had the unfortunate experience of reading a bit of Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows”. I only read the forward and chapter 5, which was our required reading in Hist 390. Even though I was annoyed through pretty much the entire portion I read, I am curious about the remainder of the book. Perhaps O’Malley could highlight other portions of the book that specifically lays out Carr’s arguments, I didn’t actually come across an argumentative statement in the parts I read. I won’t have time before class tomorrow to read more of Carr’s book, which I think to be mostly a good thing, since studying for chemistry occupies the majority of my time.

Why did I dislike “The Shallows” so much? For starters, as partially stated above, I couldn’t find one definitive statement of Carr’s beliefs and reasons for writing the book. I read lots of statistics about internet usage, and lots of quotes from other people, but not much about his actual views. The entire tone of “The Shallows” is negative. You can almost feel the disdain rolling off the pages, wafting towards you with an air of superiority.

Apparently the the internet as a whole is bad news. I disagree, I hold the opinion that the internet is neutral, such as most inanimate objects are, until you actually do something with it. To my disagreement Carr quoted another author saying that basically anyone who holds my view are technological idiots. Real mature Carr, resorting to name calling to back up your arguments. “The Shallows” reads like the dying ideals of  a past generation and a writers frustration with the ever forward march of technology versus that of the dying medium of print. Sorry there isn’t as much money in print Carr, get with the times!

I believe I wrote 3 to 4 pages of notes about my disagreements with Carr, I don’t have them with me or I would include that here.

Hopefully I can express my views in class tomorrow, sometimes other students pipe up with views that are similar to mine, and I don’t want to basically say “Yeah, that’s what I think too.”. Guess I have to be quicker on the draw.

This morning I had Queen’s “I want to Break Free” stuck in my head.  Maybe because I saw this article last night.  Instead of me trying to sing and butcher the song, I played it off of my phone. I turned the volume up all the way, the song started to play and I tried to turn the volume up even more, but it was already maxed out. This didn’t come as a surprise since, according to some of my History 390 readings, my dumbed down generation has to have simple and loud music because technology has ruined our brains and we are unable to focus on things unless they are loud and simple… I don’t agree with this hypotheses. I tend to prefer loud music only when I am by myself,  in my home or car, and listening to music is my sole activity for that moment. When I am with others or when I am just using music as background noise I prefer to have lower volume. Music tends to be better at background noise than my washing machine or the air conditioning. While listening to Queen I couldn’t help but wonder what types of sound engineering the song had gone through. Was I listening to an original version or a version that has been sent through a series of technical music production steps? Thereby rendering the current version almost completely different from that which the artist originally recorded. I don’t want to have to think of how dynamic range and turning up the volume can make a song “good” or “bad”, I just want to enjoy the song. Focusing on the negatives of dynamic range and the loudness war takes the power of the singer or band and gives that power to the producers and sound engineers. Even though the most common way most of us listens to music is through some type of technological medium and not live performances, what comes through should be the skill and technique of the performers we’re listening to. On the other side of the argument, maybe I wouldn’t enjoy a song if I heard it without all the steps of music production, or maybe I would like it more. I have heard bands that I like live and they sounded terrible, I try to keep to my personal rule that bands are only as good as their live performances.

Hopefully my professor is happy that I am thinking of these things, even if I haven’t landed on one side or the other of the argument. I have a hard time choosing sides, maybe it’s because of my high level of empathy, I tend to be able to see both sides of an argument.

I can appreciate professor O’Malley’s desire to question the world around us, to stop and think about the small interactions we have in our daily lives. To not take for granted why things are the way they are. I guess I would just rather spend my mental energy questioning if the clothing brands I purchase use child or slave labor, or if I could be doing more for my health than just lowering my sugar intake. Personally, questioning whether the music I listen to has had all of it’s dynamic range removed or if it has been compressed to make it louder is not important to me. I tend to listen to music because of how it makes me feel. Although, to play devil’s advocate, since this is for a credited class using my time to question the music I listen to and how it has changed through the decades will ultimately get me closer to my degree, which is important to me. It may also translate to an increased skill in being able to question other areas of my life that I don’t take time to think about.

It’s funny, when I know I have to write something, like a paper or this blog, I will come up with all these ideas in my head, and sentences form rather easily, but when I start writing I can’t seem to be able to write good and stuff. Not that I would win a Pulitzer prize for my brain sentences in the first place, but I digress.

Here are the facts: I am a 26 year old who is returning to college full time to finally get a bachelor’s degree. I am majoring in Art History and this is my first semester at George Mason University. My first day back at school after a 6 year break was filled with lessons, both in and outside of class;

Lesson 1: You apparently can’t cut through the engineering building on Fairfax campus. Perhaps if I was equipped with a map and more than 10 minutes to get to class I may have been successful. Alas, on my first day of classes, I was not successful.

Lesson 2: For the love of all that is good in this world never bring all of your textbooks to school on the first day of class. This is especially true if a.) you are taking chemistry and art history classes and your textbooks are very, very heavy, and  b.) on the first day of classes it happens to be over 90 degrees Fahrenheit outside. I arrived at half of my classes literally dripping with sweat. Not the kind of first impression I wanted to make.

Lesson 3: Sometimes your classes are not what you expect them to be. Which finally brings us, in a round-about way, to History 390 The Digital Past, which I think I am supposed to use as my main topic for this blog.

I understood Hist 390 to be a course that would teach history using modern technology. Translated in my nerd brain to mean things like, “Let’s use computer reconstruction to find out what this ancient building looked like when it was built.” or “Check out these new technologies museums use to preserve and archive its artifacts.” Total history nerd stuff. Hist 390, at least this current semester, is centered around music for the majority of the class, I have never taken a music class in my entire college career, and if I had known it was going to predominately music focused I probably wouldn’t have registered for this course. I adore listening to music, but I have no understanding of music in a scientific or technical way. I believe not having some sort of technical music knowledge will hinder my ability to do well in this class, despite Professor O’Malley saying otherwise. This class deals with American music from the past century for its history portion. I am selfishly biased when it comes to American history, really only interested in my personal family history from the past 2 centuries or so. Finding out about my relatives who served in the Civil War, and listening to my grandparents tell stories from the times they were apart during World War II, that I find fascinating. Start talking about American history in a broader sense and I start to feel less interested. After our last class on Wednesday I had decided to drop the class and look for another course to take instead. After perusing the other classes online I couldn’t find a class to replace Hist 390, looks like I am stuck with it to the end.

My next blog will be more about what we covered in class, and what I think about it.

Until next time.