i believe that digital literacy is is understanding and mastering computer concepts and skills. i think that there are many aspects that make it up and so far i have only come to understand a few of them. i consider myself to be digitally literate. i think that to be completely digitally literate one needs to understand how to work with all of these programs. after this class i have learned how to work with more programs but i do not know how to. but at the same time, i believe that i am not completely digitally literate because there are so many things changing that it is hard to keep up with all of the new computer programs that are being updated and new ones being created that are being created daily. i think that this makes one’s life better because the new programs that come out are able to do more things and expand upon their knowledge of digital literacy. i think by using the new and available programs they can help to expand on one’s artistic abilities. i think that it will allow them to become more open and trying new things in their own art. i believe that everyone is digitally literate to an extent today. not one person is going to know how to work every program on the computer to their advantage.

When thinking about the infinite loop that computers create for us, we should and need to keep in mind the important question of “Are we using the computers, or are the computers using us?” When using computers it is easy enough to believe that we are using the computers as a way for us, the user, to attain information. but some computers can run may programs by themselves, all they need is a user to click an option and the computer can do the rest. but how long will it be until we have advanced enough so that they the computer doesn’t need us to run them anymore. now as i see it, the computer is simply using us. there is an infinite loop in this relationship of giving and receiving information. if we are not careful in our future planning the computers could one day surpass us and have no need for us anymore. this idea is not that far off from what might actually happen. for example, we have created systems to do work for us because it was very time consuming and hard.

while i was in seattle this past summer, i visited the science fiction museum & hall of fame. it is home to a number of science fiction memorabilia as a way to encourage an awareness, appreciation and understanding of the art of science fiction through film, literature, television, and the media. while i visited, there was a special exhibitions on robots. it was titled “Robots: A Designer’s Collection of Miniature Mechanical Marvels”. the exhibit is running from May 16, 2008 to May 3, 2009. the exhibit was inspired by antique tin and wooden toys, samurai warriors and mid-20th century Japanese film characters. i was not allowed to take pictures inside, but i did take a picture of the poster outside.

I like these videos because they take something that we see on the Internet everyday and they have managed to make art out of it. I recognized all of the YouTube aspects that the author was commenting on. Out of the three example posted, I liked the second one the best because the spirals from YouTube blended in perfectly with the spirals made as net art. It took me a minute but I did finally get what the last video was, an up close and personal view of the YouTube scroll bar. I never thought that someone making art out of an Internet component could end up being so visually appealing. Below is another example of net art that comments on the visual presence.

a positive aspect to this fragmentation of attention it that it allows us to do a number of things at once, in the provided example, it is not usually common to find someone who is reading 10 books at once, but it is very common to find a person with many tabs open on their browser. even though we aren’t reading books to get information, we are learning something from the sites that we are visiting, whatever they may be. but along these lines we find a negative aspect. this would be that maybe we are not expanding our minds and taking an educational experience with us while we are online. we could be doing a number of things to prevent us from our intended task. for example, if i am working on a paper i usually cannot help myself from checking my e-mail & online social accounts at least two or three times while i should be doing my homework. in theory, having access to the internet while writing a paper should be beneficial, but i find it a distraction. but i cannot put all of the blame on the internet, if i had more self control then i would not find myself checking my online accounts until after i was done with my homework. while working on papers i find that i have many tabs open on my browser. for example, one or two as references for my paper, one for my e-mail, & one open for a social network site. i think that technology’s fragmentation of attention has more negative affects on us than positive, especially when we are dealing with time management.

andy warhol stated that we can get 13 minutes minutes of fame, the expression today has changed today and it is now 15 minutes of fame. this expression and other like give an expression to describe normal people who get fame for a short amount of time. some examples of people who have achieved this type of fame include reality t.v. show stars. they really have done nothing to catch our attention, but when they are able to get an a t.v. show they live up their minutes of glory until the show is over. i think the expression has changed to 15 minutes versus 13 minutes because there are more ways of getting information out to the public than there were in andy warhol’s time. for example, the internet and a t.v. shows with much more variety to them. the public can get more information through these as well as an unique opportunity to join in. no, i have not been famous; maybe one day, but not yet.

today, many people don’t like to wait for anything. they want their questions answered quickly and they do no enjoying standing in line for anything. in a sense, they think that spending time on even simple tasks is pointless. this thought makes us believe that this “real” time is the same as “efficient” time. by mistake, we believe that that this idea of accelerated time is our primary goal when in reality it is the task that we are trying to accomplish. i do agree with the essay’s point that back when radios were popular that it was important to sit around and listen to the voices of politicians with your family and friends. this connection of society and technology was integrated carefully into people’s lives as a standard. these people soon became more familiar with their government and current events at the time. if these people had been more concerned with time compression, then they would not have been as connected with their society. today, many people are not concerned with how their get their information, but how fast they can get it.

a website that i found to be efficient was cnn.com. there are a number of different articles and links which you can get to just from the home page. for example, breaking news stories and other popular stories are featured at the top of the page. there are also popular political and social videos along with a list of the stock market numbers. farther down the page, there are links to two featured stories in a designated category, such as entertainment, living, and science. farther down the page you can also find local news and the weather. the most helpful part of the site is the search bar because you can type anything in there and it will send you to anther page with the results of your search in it.
another site that i thought was time efficient was images.google.com. when you search for a specific subject in the search engine the next page brings you all of your results very quickly. all of your results come in image form and you can set the number of images that shows up on each page. you can look through pages of images that are related to your search. if you find an image that you like and/or find helpful you can go to the site where it is originally from or just go to another page where you just see the image.

my favorite tool is my blackberry. i have only had it for about 7 months but i can’t imagine not having it. it has a hight quality speaker phone. compared to my past phones, it has a high quality camera and internet access. i have also been able to program it to send me my e-mails, which come in very handy when i do not have access to a computer. in addition, i also love the fact that it can get internet access anywhere that i have reception. i have used this application many times especially when i need to look up an address to a specific location or the hours of operation for a store. another application that i use all the time is telenav. it allows me to type in a destination and it will speak to me and provide turn-by-turn directions to get there. i also have mapquest which will provide written directions from one specific location to another. some other applications that it has includes are voice activation and the at&t music. it took me awhile to get used to using my blackberry at first, but now i find that it is very easy to use.

Project 6: Flash Bestiary

Part 1: Flash Monster

My monster’s name is Bubbles. He gets really happy when it dances. Bubbles is a very social creature and loves to dance with everyone. He is very fun and colorful and always has a smile on it’s face.

View my flash monster Bubbles!

Part 2: Generative Art

The Original Box Fitting
After looking at many open source flash animations using Levitated.net, I decided to download Box Fitting. Box Fitting fills a space with boxes using random sampling. There are only 5 boxes that do not move; they are located in the middle of the flash animation. Everytime the animation is reset, the boxes show up in a different order as before. All of the boxes vary in size and color. The boxes that appear above the non moving boxes are shades of blues or brown. The bottom boxes that appear below vary in shades of green and brown.

My Version of Box Fitting
After downloading the Box Fitting flash animation source, I thought that the boxes were boring, so I changed most of their sizes and shapes. I started to play around with their shapes and created new ones all together. For example, I created stars, rectangles, and a number of oval shapes. I tilted some of the boxes and new shapes in addition to creating playful patterns with a square and oval. I also changed the shapes and sizes of the 5 objects that do not move in the center of the flash animation. The 1st, 3rd, and 5th objects are now circles and the 2nd and 4th objects are smaller squares. I did not like the colors in the original Box Fitting, therefore I changed all of the original colors. The non moving objects in the center are yellow and orange. The boxes that appear above the non moving objects in the middle are shades of blue and green. The bottom shapes that appear below are now shades of pink and purple. The last change that I made in my version of Box Fitting is the speed at which the shapes generate and fill the space by random sampling. I sped up the rate at which they appear because I thought that the bright colors of the new objects were exciting and they deserved to show up on the screen at a faster rate then before.

View the Original & Revised Versions of Box Fitting Together!

“post-racial” means that we are past the point of racism. i do not think that this is true in today’s world. there is still a lot of racism in our country and world that will not go away. even though we know that racism in wrong, we cannot make other believe a certain thing. they have their rights to think whatever they want.

it is always possible that we could be “post” something new in the next few years or even tomorrow. the next step that i believe we need to achieve is to get over discrimination over gay marriage. many people are very against this idea because they think that a marriage should only be between a man and a woman. i think that there will always be some sort of discrimination we are going to have to deal with.