Blog 5 - Making Meaning: Tubes

I didn't enjoy the book very much. Although it is better than the last book we read in this class it still didn't catch my interests. I think the main culprit of this was the style of writing that the book had. It was written from a first person point of view which was very interesting to see how the author, Andrew Blum, discovered how he was connected to the internet and how the internet worked. The problem with it though was that it was jammed packed with facts and statistics. A lot of the time I felt like they were interesting, but not fascinating. The facts seemed to be used more a filler information rather than thrown in as something that was really astonishing. Sure some things caught my attention and I found really interesting, but many of those were drowned out by all the other random assorted facts. Although I didn't enjoy the book it still helped me understand a little more how the internet actually works and what it is.

One chapter that I did explore further was chapter 6 "The Longest Tubes". This chapter is about the undersea cables that connect all of the computers on the planet between each continent. This is something that I have always wondered about, but never really explored deeper. I was very surprised to learn that undersea cables actually existed way before computers. The first successful undersea cable was laid in 1858 across the English Channel. This was laid by the SS Great Eastern, which at the time was the largest ship in the world. This undersea cable was 2,700 miles long.(Blum, 203) This was used for telegraphs. The first transatlantic cable was finally finished in 1870 after multiple failed attempts, but after then British companies dominated the market for worldwide telegraph communication until the late 1920's. By 1918, 180 million words were passing through Porthcurno anually, the global hub of the telegraph network.(Blum, 204) Later then in 1988, 8 years after fiber optic cables were invented, the first fiber optic cable was laid across the Atlantic ocean. This cable is the TAT-8 and was used for telephone communication. This was a big step to where we are now because all of our undersea cables are now fiber optic because of their small size and high bandwidth without loss of information. By 2006 only 1% of international traffic was done through satellite. This shows the importance of the undersea cables have on our world today, and how much they affect our world. Then by 2012 operators were able to demonstrate long term error-free transmission without any loss at 100 Gbps across the the Atlantic Ocean. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable)

Personally I wouldn't recommend the book to a friend. I would however recommend it to my Dad. Because it's written not as much in a way to inform, but more to tell the really cool stories about how the internet came to be. Sure it explains how the internet works, but I don't think it is the most efficient way to explain that. Personally I learned more by looking up the different topics on the internet and learning about the internet that way. My Dad however would love this kind of a book because he really likes cool little stories about how things were made. Whenever he reads a book he will tell me these small stories relevant to the book which although I don't enjoy always make him more interested in what he's reading.

I think this book was selected as a book we should read because it might appeal to those who enjoy those stories like my Dad. I gets them engaged with the subject and makes a more enjoyable read instead of boring research of facts like what I tend to like. Personally I enjoy the exploration of these facts jumping between wiki pages and articles. But this book was picked to appeal to people with a different mindset who enjoy connecting what they're learning back to the history of how that came to be, and the personal stories of who created the networks that keep the current world together.

Blog 4 - The Filter Bubble

I selected my roommate Kevin for this experiment. We share a lot in common but are different in many ways when it comes to what we do on the web. I searched around a bit, and noticed that many ads were different though I didn't see a big difference from ad to ad. I did however see many different things in the recommended videos on YouTube, and Netflix. In comparison to my own browser it really was very different. This shows that the filter bubble algorithm is always trying to make my experience on the web very personalized to my beliefs. I'm sure that if I did the same test on for example my mom's computer I would get greater varying results. This would be because she has very greater preferences and beliefs than I do, and uses the web for much different things than me.

One way that I can almost always without fail to notice the filter bubble is to search something on amazon.com and then click on the item that I searched. Then when I go to almost any other website with ads I see and advertisement for the item I just searched. This is easy evidence that we are always being tracked and watched by companies on the internet. Other ways you can see this happen is when you look for a ticket to somewhere like a plane ride or train ride. Many times you get ads from travel agencies shortly there after if you do not purchase the ticket the first time you visit the website. 

One big question that is frequently brought up is is the filter bubble a good or a bad thing? This is talked about a lot in the Wikipedia article linked to the assignment page and down below. I'm indifferent about this and here's why. In some ways I think that it is a very good tool that helps not only the user, but also companies. It allows my google search to be more accurate to what I might be looking for based on my previous interests. I think that any way to help me get what I need faster is always a good thing. It is more efficient and my experience is better because of it. Additionally with things like YouTube searches like I mentioned it creates the website around me. It gives me a more pleasurable experience because if I'm looking for videos to watch, but don't know what I want to watch I can see things related to things I have watched in the past. This is always changing also. If I saw my recommended videos from 3 years ago they would be very different to the ones I have right now.

One downside of the filter bubble is that you have a very personalized experience. This also something I listed as a positive, but the downside is that you may never see anyone else's views on different topics. Because your content is so personalized you will only find people who agree with you, and never actually find things that you disagree with, or other perspectives to different situations. This can be bad for our society because if everyone thinks that everyone else feels the same way about things then it could come as a shock when you meet someone who do not agree with you. In the moment you may think that they possess a rare belief when in reality there is a bunch of people out there that don't agree with you that your filter bubble is shielding you from. This phenomenon has been called cyberbalkanization which was talked about in the Wikipedia article. It is the idea that the internet is split into "subgroups" which all have their own views and ideas. Because they are split up among themselves they rarely interact with each other causing their ideas to become very specific. The name itself comes from the Balkan area of Europe which is a small area with a lot of different languages, cultures, and beliefs split up among each other.

I thought this activity opened my eyes a little more to how the internet works, and how it might not be as free as we might think it is. In reality I never see and probably never will see all of the beliefs and ideas on the internet, and because of the filter bubble I probably won't see most of those ideas because of how specific my experience is made.

Blog 3 - Making Meaning: Pattern on the Stone

I enjoyed some parts of the book, but found a lot of it kind of boring to read. I found some things that were very interesting like the algorithms chapter to be quite interesting to read. Me finding it boring might've had to do with the fact that I have some previous knowledge on programming. The one chapter I really enjoyed as I said was the algorithms and heuristics. This is something that I have little knowledge about, and I found that the book helped me a lot understand what they are and especially how they work.

When I was first learning how to code I tried to make a tic-tac-toe game that would always win. I read the algorithm online and was able to throw together a crude version of it in java. I was able to easily understand the simple step by step tree of situations. Although it is a lot of lines of code it still does what it is supposed to do. I was very proud of myself at the time and it was a big step in me learning how to code. But what I didn't learn was how to make my own algorithm, or how to solve much bigger and complex tasks. This is why when I got to this chapter I was very intrigued, especially about the traveling salesman problem. This problem is used as the example for what a heuristic is, and is used throughout the chapter. The problem is that everyday a salesman or and worker who has to go door to door has a different route everyday. The goal is to always drive the most efficient route. If you used an algorithm to solve this problem it takes an unimaginable amount of time to calculate every option through an algorithm to find the fastest route. Instead you use a heuristic. This makes the computer take the most efficient route from where it is to the next point it can choose. Although it may not be the fastest or best answer, it is better than most of the possibilities. I think this is a really cool part of computer science because I imagine it very similar to artificial intelligence. The fact that the computer can generate its own decisions is really cool, and I really enjoyed learning about that in the book.

The book was probably chosen for this class because it starts from the very beginning. I wish that I had access to a book like this when I was first starting to program. It is able to clearly explain what all the functions of programming are. I would definitely recommend this book to someone interested in learning how to code. It does get a little wordy at times, but I think that is necessary for learning the main building blocks of coding. One big reason of why this book can be so helpful to a person new to programming is all of the pictures explaining the logic of different operations. They clearly are able to show the reader what they are reading about, and aren't over complicated either. Instead of being overdrawn like some images I was taught with they are clear and precise about what is being said.

Overall I think that although the book wasn't very influential on me it was a good refresher, and could be extremely beneficial to anyone new to the concept of coding. I believe it leaves a lot of information open to explore further. I personally researched more on the traveling salesman problem and found the history behind it fascinating. I would rate the book 4 out of 5 stars, and consider it a much easier read than some of the other more complicated programming books out there.