My digital topic for this class is Participation. In conjunction with that, I am reading Wisdom of the Crowds, by James Surowiecki. As I have been reading and pondering participation and crowd sourcing in our day and age, I thought of one of my favorite web sites: iFixit.com. It's a phenomenal web site packed with repair manuals for fixing or replacing almost any part you can think of for things like Apple products, game consoles, and lots of other home electronics. The repair manuals are fantastic, with simple step-by-step instructions and a photograph of the instruction for every step. Once you drill down to the part you need to replace or repair, you can reverse the instructions to help you put it back together again.
The site uses a software called Dozuki, which is a program built for writing repair manuals. While iFixit is a private company in San Luis Obispo, CA, people can contribute and write repair manuals which are then posted on the site for others to use. The founder, Kyle Wiens, is helping people reduce their electronic waste and save money be repairing their own electronics. The site sells parts for popular electronics, and has an extensive forum where people ask questions and help each other out.
To me, this site exhibits the wisdom of the crowd at its best. Kyle Wiens doesn't know everything about repairing every single electronic gadget out there. Instead, the site is open and people contribute new repair manuals regularly. The wisdom of the crowd is in the abilities of the people submitting these repair manuals so that the rest of the crowd can benefit. I know I have saved thanks to iFixit. I love Apple products, but taking something to the Apple store to have it fixed can be pricy. Instead, I can use iFixit's repair manuals, knowing that thousands of other like me have used them and have verified their accuracy and usefulness. Thanks, iFixit!
I recently came across a story in the news about a woman who has been ordered by a judge to produce the unencrypted contents of her hard drive by February 21 or be charged with contempt of court. The woman, Ramona Fricosu from Colorado, claims that doing so is a violation of her Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate herself, but the judge has ruled otherwise. He says producing the unencrypted contents of the hard drive is not a violation of the Fifth Amendment.
Before reading this article, I had never given much thought to how digital evidence is handled in criminal cases. I always assumed the property of the defendant was seized, and then the officials turned it over to computer forensics experts who recover the necessary evidence. However, it is very easy today and getting more common to encrypt one's entire hard drive. If done properly, recovering the information on the hard drive is nearly impossible without the password.
It has been argued before the forcing the defendant to give up their password violates their constitutional rights, but this judge is circumventing that issue by simply requiring the defendant to provide the unencrypted contents of the hard drive. That means Ramona would be the one entering her password, and she would still be able to keep her password a secret.
The defendant's lawyer, Phil Dubois, had a great response. He said that his client may be unable to decrypt the drive's contents for any number of reasons (like conveniently forgetting her password). If so, Phil states "we'll report that fact to the court, and the law is fairly clear that people cannot be punished for failure to do things they are unable to do." Oh, lawyers. Still, he's got a point. It is very critical that our law system remains that way. If the court punished Ramona for not producing her hard drive unencrypted, and it really was because she had forgotten her password, that would be terrible indeed.
But what about the judge's order to Ramona? Do you think he's right? Is it a violation of the Fifth Amendment right to order you to produce your hard drive unencrypted? There's no easy answer to this question. If it is a violation of the Fifth Amendment and no one can be forced to do so, every digital criminal out there has to simply keep their hard drive encrypted and prosecution becomes much more difficult. If it isn't, that gives the government a scary amount of authority. The idea of the government being able to seize your digital information at will is something people all over the Internet have been fighting for decades. But it's not so different from the court issuing a search warrant of your property and entering your home uninvited.
In the end, I side with Ramona. I have no idea if she's guilty or not. But I do feel asking the defendant to produce evidence for the prosecution to use against them is sort of asking for self-incrimination, and that violates the Fifth Amendment. Yes, that would make prosecuting other digital criminals much harder, but not impossible. Digital encryption is not always implemented correctly, and there are ways to capture the data as it flows in and out of the suspect's machine (assuming the court has authorized some sort of wire tap). Sometimes our justice system lets the guilty go free, but I would rather two guilty men go free than an innocent person spend their life behind bars.
I just finished Walter Isaacson's biography on Steve Jobs. True to Steve Job's request, no skeletons were left in the closet. I believe it to be very honest, even if it's hard at times.
I've never personally met Steve Jobs. I very nearly had an opportunity last summer when I was an intern at Apple. Apple puts on an executive speaker series for the interns, where each one of the executive team takes an hour to speak to the all of the interns. One morning, we learned Steve Jobs wanted to speak to us, so we all rushed to the Town Hall. Chatting excitedly about what he would tell us, and what questions we asked, the hype in the room reached a peak 5 minutes before he was supposed to take a stage. It was then that someone came on stage to announce Steve had cancelled at the last minute. Disappointed, we all left. It was less than three months later that he passed away.
During my time at Apple, I did have a chance to hear from several different long-time employees who related personal stories involving Steve Jobs. My eyebrows were always raised at these stories, incredulous at how callous and harsh he could be. Though Apple stood as the world's most valuable company just before he passed away, many agree he wasn't the best manager. He was brutally honest, thought very differently from the average person, and was the driving force behind some of the best products we've ever seen. Walter Isaacson states that Jobs revolutionized seven different industries:
Personal computers
Animated movies
Music
Telephones
Tablets
Digital publishing
Retail stores
Ever heard of Pixar? Steve Jobs bought the company from George Lucas, kept it afloat with his own money, was the CEO who negotiated Pixar's first contract with Disney, and saved Toy Story and Pixar from being butchered by Disney.
Walter Isaacson's biography talks about the amazing accomplishments of Steve's lifetime, but brings to light many of his eccentricities. He would go on strict all-carrot or all-apple diets, or other vegan regiments, and believed such diets meant he did have to bathe as often or wear deodorant. Many of his colleagues begged to differ. He was adopted, and always felt a little abandoned, yet ended up doing the same thing when he got his college girlfriend pregnant and then later her left her. He was known to have a reality distortion field, causing those around him to believe the impossible and commit to unrealistic deals or deadlines. From the very beginning he somehow sensed he would die early, and so felt compelled to change the world and accomplish what he could before his time was up. He was very into Zen Buddhism, and was never into philanthropy like his rival of old, Bill Gates (who was born the same year as Jobs in 1955).
One of the great themes of the book is Open vs. Closed. Steve Jobs was always an advocate of a closed system. His desire for complete control was reflected in all of his products. Rivals Microsoft, and later, Google, bet on open systems instead. Just before Steve Jobs passed away, Bill Gates visited him in his home in Palo Alto. There, each of them conceded that the other's model worked. However, separately, each added a caveat. Bill Gates said Steve's integrated approach only worked when Steve was at the helm, and Steve said Bill's approach worked, but "it didn't really make great products. It produced crappy products." I, for one, agree. As a result of Apple's end-to-end control, they can impose simplicity, and as the astronomer Johannes Kepler (and Steve Jobs) declared, "nature loves simplicity and unity." Walter Isaacson summed up the result nicely:
"Using an Apple product could be as sublime as walking in one of the Zen gardens of Kyoto that Jobs loved, and neither experience was created by worshipping at the alter of openness or by letting a thousand flowers bloom. Sometimes it's nice to be in the hands of a control freak." (Isaacson 564)
If you're looking for a good summary of what the biography covers, check out the interview 60 Minutes did with Walter Isaacson: http://www.macrumors.com/2011/10/23/the-full-walter-isaacsonsteve-jobs-interview-from-60-minutes/. Of course, it's just a teaser. Really, you should read the book. Whether or not you admire or respect Steve Jobs, it is indisputable that he was one of the most (if not the most) influential men of our time. He built two of the most valuable and trusted brands of our age: Apple and Pixar. He revolutionized multiple industries. He taught people to think different, and certainly did so himself. No matter what you think of Steve Jobs or Apple, Walter Isaacson's biography is the must-read book of our age.
Websites all over are planning to do an Internet-wide strike of SOPA on January 18. This is the most wide-spread unified action I can remember on the Internet. Even though my sites don't necessarily attract a lot of traffic, I'm going to join the protest. After all, one of my New Year's resolutions is to go from passive consumption to active participation on the Internet. SOPA is such a critical issue, and people are making sure their voice is heard.
And they have. SOPA has been effectively killed as "Representative Eric Cantor(R-VA) announced that he will stop all action on SOPA." President Obama even announced his public opposition to the bill. The voice of the Internet is being heard, and Congress is starting to figure out how the Internet really works. It's about time. Though it wasn't explicitly said, I think Congress was scared of the Internet blackouts and strikes scheduled for the 18th, which prompted the House's backpedaling on the bill. The Internet populace won, Congress zero.
Now that SOPA is dead, it's time to turn the focus to PIPA. Maybe the focus of the 18th's protests should change to PIPA.
This guy makes me laugh every time, and I just had to find some way to connect him to our class discussion on openness. What is this sweet guy doing all locked up? Why is he being treated so? Is he really that bad? Is there public knowledge of his crimes, and was he given a fair trial? Judging by the basis for the rest of the movie, I'm going to venture a no. He probably accidentally bumped into the evil guy that wants to kill Esmerelda so bad, and was locked up faster than a blink of an eye.
As we've grown to be a more open civilization, one thing I'm grateful for is laws and rights regarding fair trial and due process. It's much harder now for people to get thrown in jail for no relevant reason. Yes, the system's not perfect, but we've come a long way. Proof must be provided, and the process is recorded and prosecution made accountable. Thanks to the Founding Fathers and all those who fought for the rights given to us in the Bill of Rights: due Process, trial by peers, speedy trial, and more. Oh, and don't forget double jeopardy!
One of my favorite things to do as we study each century is look up a list of the major inventions and discoveries of the century. I was consulting this list for the 16th century, and at the very top is Copernicus publishing his theory that the Earth was not the center of the universe. Instead, the Earth and other planets revolved around the sun. This was such a revolutionary idea that there grew to be quite an opposition to the theory. Even Martin Luther questioned Copernicus's theory on the basis of the Biblical story of Joshua commanding the sun be still. The Roman Catholic Church went so far as to issue a decree suspending Copernicus's publication. Galileo followed Copernicus's position, and was convicted of grave suspicion of heresy and sentenced to house arrest for the rest his life by the Catholic Church.
Today we know Copernicus was absolutely right. In fact, his theory makes so much sense that the amount of hostility and flat out denial by so many for so long towards heliocentrism is surprising. But Copernicus wasn't the first one to know it! The ancient prophets of the Book of Mormon knew it over a thousand years before the minds of Europe began to accept it. In Heleman 12:15, Mormon stated "for surely it is the earth that moveth and not the sun." Nobody's taking Copernicus's claim to fame away yet, but it just goes to show the light the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ brings to all aspects of life, including astronomy :)
My name is Stephen Lottermoser. I'm a Computer Science major at BYU, a Software Engineer at Instructure, a husband, and a digital citizen. I write iPhone/iPad apps for work, and I love it. When I graduate, my wife and I will be moving to the Silicon Valley so I can work for Apple. I love technology and the many ways it can enhance our lives, and I want to make software that is used by tens of thousands every day. For my Digital Civilization class at BYU, I'm in the 19th century group and will also be working on the digital concept of participation.
It's a struggle at first to think of how the 19th century relates to our digital civilization. To me, digital refers to the 1's and 0's that make up everything computerized. The way information is digitally stored, the logic that drives the programs we use or the web sites we browse, the communications between all of our digital devices: all are at the lowest level a series of 1's and 0's, or rather high or low voltage. This transformation from the non-digital really only took place during the latter half of the 20th century, and more so during the last twenty years. But so much took place to lead up to the transformations that have turned our society digital, and the 19th century saw a lot of those critical changes.
The 19th century makes up the years from 1800-1899. This is the century where steam engines were used to power trains, redefining transportation and turning trips of months or weeks to days or hours. The typewriter was invented, and the QWERTY layout of keys is still used to today on computer keyboards across the world. It was the invention that brought the ability to create typed documents to the masses, and and today people communicate almost exclusively via typed communication over handwritten communication. The telegraph was invented in the 19th century, and was the first real near instantaneous communication over really long distances. Today we get frustrated with a little bit of delay in our video chat with friends or family overseas. Morse code was in a sense an initial binary code, translating long and short taps on the telegraph line into letters. Binary code, the language of computers, is used to do the same thing, translating low and high voltages into the letters and graphics we see on screen. The list of amazing inventions from the 19th centuries is huge.
In fact, the explosion of technological advances in the 19th century is remarkable compared to previous centuries. For centuries the technologies for transportation, communications, and most other areas of life didn't change dramatically. All of sudden things were getting invented almost faster than society could adopt them. It is my belief that this sudden explosion of knowledge is deeply tied to event that infused humanity with the mot important knowledge: the Restoration of the Gospel of Christ.
So the 19th century paved the way for us to become a digital civilization by the end of the 20th century, and many of us are still learning our place in this new society. Knowledge and opportunity is freely given to everyone who can access the Internet. This is the idea of digital consumption. But more important is the idea of digital participation. More than ever, anyone can make their voice heard. It is no longer only the newspapers who can spread their opinions. Revolutions in the Middle East have been happening because the government can no longer control what people say; Facebook, Twitter, and smartphones have been utilized by the people to unite and topple the regimes in their country. Less violent but equally revolutionary participation happens every day as people post new ideas, products, and services, or participate in conversations on the Internet. Here Comes Everybody is a great commentary on the power and availability of digital participation to the masses. People across the world have always had something to say, but now they can finally say it and people will listen. All we need to do is let our voice be heard.
I'm not even sure what that means. The word "civilized" has always had a negative connotation to me. It's the barrier early settlers in America used to divide themselves from the savage natives. Perhaps the Native AMericans weren't as technologically advanced as the settlers, but they weren't less civilized. Settlers came in and practically committed genocide, killing or driving Native Americans off the land. They disrupted the harmony with Nature the Native Americans worked so hard to preserve. Look at the social dynamics of the two groups: the Native Americans had a sense of unity and worked to preserve their society and culture, while American settlers fought wars on enormous scales and used everyone and everything to accomplish their goals with complete disregard. In a lot of ways, the settlers were the savages, not the Native Americans.
Today, the word "civilized" is no easier to define. Think of the two camps of closed source and open source software. Companies like Microsoft, Apple, and hundreds of others have helped shape modern society with their products and services. But so have the thousands of open source projects contributed by everyone from programmers at home to the same large corporations. These projects are no less important. Both camps have pretty different philosophies, but both are equally influential on digital society. How can one define who is less "civilized" than the other?
A better word to use here would be "aware." How digitally "aware" am I? Using "aware" instead of "civilized," or even using "civilized" in the sense of digital cultural awareness is much more comfortable. As our culture becomes more and more tied to the digital medium, it is important to be aware of what is going on, and participate as an active member of that society. As a software engineer, I love learning about the hundreds of different ways people use the Internet and their digital devices. For Christmas this year, most of my presents involved thinking about the ways various family members use technology and finding ways to improve them. For my sister-in-law, that meant installing a new hard drive in her MacBook so she doesn't have to spread her music library across three different drives. For my Mom and my parents-in-law, that meant setting up new wireless routers that can handle the bandwidth of the myriad of digital devices connecting to the Internet at home. It was a busy but satisfying Christmas.
I like to do this year around. Every day I read many, many articles online about new technology, and I always reflect on how I can use what I learned to help someone I know. I would say my awareness of what's going on in digital society is quite good. However, another side to true digital culture awareness is not simply knowing what's out there and consuming, but participating and creating. In this area I could improve. I create software that is used by college professors and students across the nation, but I don't always take the time to respond to people's questions on forums even if I know the answer, or actively blog or tweet. I often feel guilty that I am such an avid digital consumer, but not always the best digital participant. It's one of my New Year's resolutions, and this post is a great start.
