First thing I have to say: Good Lord man, how the heck did he write all that without falling asleep? On another note: I liked what Engelbart had to say. It was often hard to understand but he was still able to convey his over arching concept: Processes that often take up a lot of time and energy in the human brain to think about and compute could be done by computers in order to allow humans to conceptualize other, often more difficult, constructs of creative thought. I like how he attacks this idea by breaking up the different means by which we as humans structure ideas and processes and shows where these processes can be encapsulated by what he terms as “artifacts”. These artifacts would help perform a series of complex tasks and free up the cognitive powers of the human brain. This is what most machines and tools allow for, the ability to perform a task that, while hard to perform on ones own, become very easy with the use of said machine or tool. This idea goes along with the programming and technical idea of the black box, a system that has been made in such a way that the operator does not have to have intricate knowledge of how the inside of the black box works or the science behind its invention. All the operator must know is what must go into the system or “black box” and what he should expect to come out. This knowledge of the inputs and outputs of a system would also allow many of these “black box” systems to be connected and used together to further refine a task or allow many different tasks to all contribute to solution of one larger task. Englebart takes this whole concept and abstracts it from just the realm of computer science and attempts to apply it at a meta-physical level to all problem solving laborers in all fields of human thought and invention. He proposes that research be pursued in this area in order to determine just how this same process could continually and effectively be applied. This is hard to imagine as the shear size of this abstraction makes it an almost insurmountable task. However, I feel that through the use of computers to analyze and draw conclusions about this abstraction and its applications i.e. using Englebart’s concept of augmenting the human thought capacity in order to investigate this same concept, one might be able to make a beneficial advancement in the real world application of the aforementioned meta-physical thoughts. All in all, Englebart is one smart cookie who puts a majority of us (the human race) to shame.
Archive for January, 2010
Installing and Using FireFTP for Firefox
Fire FTP is a file transfer program that allows you to transfer files from your computer to you web host through a tab in Firefox web browser. It is a pretty nifty program and is very easy to install and use. To install the program, click on Add-Ons under the Tools menu. This will bring up a window for installing Themes, add-ons and many other extensions to Firefox.
Add-on Window
You can search for FireFTP by typing into the Search All Add-ons bar.
FireFTP Installation Button
Click on the Add to Firefox button to prompt a installation download. After allowing the download to proceed, you will be prompted to restart Firefox.
FireFTPRestart Firefox Install Button
After restarting you can run FireFTP by clicking on FireFTP under the Tools Menu. this will open a tab in you browser.
FireFTP Window
You must configure the program to connect to you web host. You can click on Create Connection option in the drop down menu in the upper left corner of the tab. This will bring up a window that allows you to put in many different connection details.
Account Manager
You account name is just an name that you want for the connection. It is best to make this something that reminds you what your connecting to. The host field is your website a.k.a yourdomain.net or yourdomain.com etc. The login field is asking for your username. This can be found in cPanel in the statistics section that you see on the right side right after you login along with a bunch of other technical information that you probably haven’t looked at since setting up you account. Your password is the same password that you use to login to cPanel. the category option is used if you wish to categorize the connection along with other connections that you might have (probably not the case if you are reading this tutorial). You can leave this field blank. After clicking ok, you should be able to click on the Connect button that was previously greyed-out just to the right of the Create Connection drop down menu. This should connect you to your domain and display a file structure(a bunch of folders) in the right side of the window. If it does not then double check the fields in the create connection dialog by clicking the Edit button next to the Connect button and check that you have a stable Internet connection.
Connected FTP Client
In order to transfer a file from you computer to the domain and vice versa, just select the file and press the arrow in the appropriate direction. One point of not is that the folder that the receiving side is currently in will be where the file will be placed. Another point of note that is rather important is with regards to security. With the current connection configuration, all data that is sent from back in forth is unencrypted and thus is “in the clear”. It is quite possible that this data could be intercepted by other parties while in transit and in its current state, would be open for hem to read at their leisure. One method of preventing this is through use of a technology called SFTP, or Secure File Transfer Protocol. As this is a little more complicated to configure, it will warrant a post all its own. In the meantime, see if you can figure it out from tutorials from the web and don’t send anything that you wouldn’t want anyone else to see a.k.a. documents that contain the passwords to anything 
Themes and Tweaks for WordPress
I have been messing with WordPress for a a few days now and think that I know a bit more about it than I did at the beginning. I have been prodded(nudged 
) to share what I have done.
WordPress has a very intuitive theme system and a HUGE community theme collection. There are themes with different layouts and colors.
The search options are very helpful for specifying exactly which things you want in a theme. You can specify color, number of columns, and even if it can have a custom header. This feature allowed me to find many themes that were orange in nature (it is my favorite color after all).
Once you have found a theme that you want to have for blog, you can click on the install link below the theme. This will present you with an install window which will allow you to install the theme to you WordPress installation.
After the theme has been installed you will be presented with a installation progress window which shows the different steps to the installation and is the installation was successful. It will then give you options to preview the theme, activate the theme or return to the Theme Installer.
If you want to view all of the themes that you have installed you can click on the Themes link under the Appearance menu along the left side of the Admin Page.
For those of you who like a theme and want to change just a few of the colors or a background image on a theme, you can using the Editor link under the Appearances menu along the left side of the Admin page. This editor also gives you access to many of the other files involved with a theme and allows you to further customize your blog.
This sort of tinkering is a little more difficult to make than the installation of the theme because it require a little knowledge about CSS(Cascading Style Sheets) and HTML(Hyper Text Markup Language). This knowledge is not very hard to come by and with a little willingness to learn and a few good web searches, one can easily tweak any theme to their liking.
WordPress makes theming your blog simple to do and gives you the tools to further the professional look and feel of you site. Enjoy theming you all!
The Dynabook
The Dynabook is an interesting device that was what many would call the precursor to the laptop. I enjoyed learning about it through the article that I read called “Personal Dynamic Media” by Alan Kay. I enjoyed this article because it touches on how a computing device would allow for and enrich the creative faculties of humans. The article focused on how the creators of the Dynabook gave their creation to a group of children to see how they interacted with the device and what they would manage to create. The results were astounding with most of the children becoming very apt at programming the Dynabook to perform many tasks that we unavailable but desired by kids. One specific example of this is how a middle school aged girl decided to build an etch-a-sketch like tool for the Dynabook having not seen a similar tool created by the Dynabook designers. This ingenuity was birthed out of the creative initiative of the user and not supplied in whole by a company or manufacturer. I like how the article proved that the innovative power of technology is not in the technology itself but in the mind of the user. The power of the device is fully utilized and realized when the user creates with it. Great article.
The Personal Cyber-Infrastructure
The idea of a personal web space was something that I had thought of but had never really considered to the depth that it was presented by Gardner Campbell and Jim Groom. For me the web had always been a resource and a technical innovation that is helpful for the research and for learning. However, I have never seen it as a means of presenting myself and my thoughts to others. In the talk that Campbell gave to our class on last Thursday, he emphasized that technology is not just stuff. This struck me as very profound. Being a “geek” and using technology on a very frequent basis, I had always been interested in technology for what it was: the bits, the bytes, hard drives, cases, Windows, Linux, etc. Everything had a value and a use that was defined by what the objects function was. It never really occurred to me that the “stuff” also had a use in what it was used to do. This function of the technology did not take into account what the “stuff” does but rather what it creates by that innate use. This is where Campbell feels that universities, professors and by extension university technology departments miss how technology should be used in an academic setting.
Universities are often strange entities. They are comprised with many different people in leadership roles, with many different values and priorities. Despite this wide range of diversity, the administrative end of a university is to attract students to the school and rise in prestige among other universities around the country and the globe. To this end, universities will often promote themselves through programs, class offerings, student living accommodations and technology availability. We will focus on the latter of these promotable items. When a university tries to promote itself through technological advancements, it often involves a run-down of the computer labs on campus and/or the availability of technological services that are offered to the student. These services are totted for their robustness and ease of use. However, rarely is the technology described in terms of what a student has done with the technology or to what degree students avail themselves of those services offered. The universities fail to recognize the value of the work enabled or created by the technology and only care about if people view the presence of these technologies as a positive or negative.
This view by the university as a whole hampers the adoption of these technologies by professors and students because they are unfamiliar with what it does. They had no say in what technology was used and have to somehow make the technology supplied fit in with what is already present outside of the digital realm. this leaves many professors unwilling to adopt new technologies into their programs because they don’t see how it is relevant. All they see is a bunch of technological “stuff” thrown at them. This also has the effect of leaving the students at a loss as to what technology is available for them to us. As the professors try to ( or not try to ) introduce these technologies into their classes, the student is left with trying to cope with how a professor did ( or did not ) implement said technologies. In the end all parties are left stranded and confused by those tools that were supposed to be used to their benefit. The only party not affected directly by these decisions are the decision makers, the administrators of the university, who do not have to use the technology they prescribe.
Gardner Campbell feels that by allowing students to become the technology decision maker, by allowing students to control the lay out of their digital lives, the studnet will be more apt to use and create. They will have an inclination to innovate because they were encouraged to from the start. They would control both the means of creativity, the “stuff” of technology so that they can concentrate upon he more important end of technology, the creation.
In the beginning…
In the beginning the web was with Tim Berners-Lee and the web was Tim Berners-Lee…:-P So I am officially in control of my own means of creativity. I am excited about being able to use the knowledge that I have acquired in computer science and other computer tinkering to be able to construct my own digital identity. Along with my other class mates, I hope to take my freedom and run with it. More to come.