Blog 18: Where is Self-Tracking Going

The final two chapters of Self-Tracking by Neff and Nafus provide a porthole into which we can view the possible future of self tracking and its future applications. It seems like one thing is for certain, there are more questions than answers when it comes to the usefulness of self tracking in the healthcare field because self tracking technologies are evolving faster than they are.

Healthcare fields aren't exactly taking self tracking applications and devices seriously, and they have a reason to be wary. Neff and Nafus gave a small example of this when they gave the story of app uChek being removed because it failed to meet the FDAs regulatory criteria. An ethical issue within the self tracking world is the collection of data from users and who it belongs to. Does it belong to the user who partook in the physical actions, or does it belong to the company that provided the means to collect the data? This ethical dilemma showed its ugly head when Hugo Campus had to legally fight for access to data collected by his own defibrillator.

If events such as the one that Hugo Campus endured continue to pop up, it could spell for a very grim future regarding self tracking.

Works Cited:
Neff, Gina, and Dawn Nafus. Self-Tracking. Cambridge: MIT, 2016.
Print.

Blog 17: Who Are Self Trackers

The third and fourth chapter of Self-Tracking dive past the crust of self-tracking technology into the mantle of the actual users of the technology. The question for these chapters is: what makes these people tick? What's the allure of joining the self-tracking community?

There is a definite psychological satisfaction when self-tracking, and the reasons behind the satisfaction may differ greatly from person to person. The reasons range from curiosity to education to motivation. Self-tracking can teach a person a lot about themselves, and knowing all of your physical activity statistics can be a real motivator towards continuing to strive for physical goals. Another ideology brought forth was "exosensing", or the use of sensors and equipment to enhance a persons sense of certain bodily functions. I'm curious as to how much truth is behind this idea, or if it may just be a placebo effect on people a little too convinced they've achieved another sense.

Works Cited:
Neff, Gina, and Dawn Nafus. Self-Tracking. Cambridge: MIT, 2016.
Print.

Blog 16: Self-Tracking

Gina Neff and Dawn Nafus explore the recently rising social phenomenon of self tracking and analyzing how it impacts peoples' daily lives.

It's important to note that the self tracking in this book refers to the self tracking done on technology. Self tracking in a looser sense has existed for a long time. People have always been able to track their daily actions on pen and paper, but it's the digital methods that Neff and Nafus are interested in. It's interesting because the correlation between self tracking and self discovery are noticeable, and self tracking may even help some people find self motivation.

Aside from self discovery, what could self tracking be good for? Well, it turns out that self tracking could potentially be helpful for use in the medical field. The only issue is the consistency and accuracy of information one tracks about themselves versus what the medical field can find out about you using their methods.

Works Cited:
Neff, Gina, and Dawn Nafus. Self-Tracking. Cambridge: MIT, 2016.
Print.

Blog 15: The IoT in Real Life

The last chapter of Greengards leaves us with more of a question than an answer. Where does the IoT go from here? The applications for the IoT are infinite, as long as more companies come into existence there will always be opportunity to optimize with technology. Also, the IoT's applications aren't at all limited to the industrial. As of late, the IoT has been steadily creeping into the everyday lives of people like you and I.

Greengard concludes his book with areas where he believes the IoT would really flourish. One of these areas was transportation, and the application really shows why. Every year there are nearly 1 million traffic fatalities. Incorporating the IoT into the transportation system could cut this number by a significant fraction. Self-driving cars that are able to communicate to each other over the Internet have a lot of potential to prevent crashes due to human error. The issue with self-driving cars, however, are the rare incidents when computers would have to make decisions on how to react. This means that there could possibly be scenario in which every outcome involves someone getting injured. In that case, how would the computer choose what action to take?

Works Cited
Greengard, Samuel. The Internet of Things. Chaparral:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015. Print.

Blog 14: The IoT in the Workplace

In chapter five of six of Greengard's book a question arises. How would the IoT be integrated into systems of the present and future? I touched upon that briefly in the last blog post but Greengard goes into more detail in chapters after.

Most of the book focuses on scenarios that the IoT would excel in, but these chapters switch focus to scenarios in which they would not. They highlight some potential issues in standardization and safety. Greengard states that one of the biggest challenges for IoT would be building a foundation that would be able to support such a large and intricate group of machines. Some companies may have the funds to incorporate the IoT into their workplace, but many companies simply don't have the means to make the big leap into the next era of machine-driven industrialization. So what does that mean for these companies? Will they just be left in the dust?

Most likely not. Greengard points out the steadily decreasing costs of systems such as the RFID tags. As these systems become more mainstream, availability at a more affordable cost becomes less rare.

Works Cited
Greengard, Samuel. The Internet of Things. Chaparral:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015. Print.

Blog 13: The Future of IoT

IoT, or the Internet of Things as explained by Samuel Greengard, have incredible projections in the future in terms of quality of life due to technology. Improvement in the quality of home life, and especially improvement in the industrial world using these new technologies. 

One example of improvement in the industrial world due to IoT that Greengard provides is the utilization of RFID sensors in truck fleets and pallets to improve distribution time management. This is just a single example of the incorporation of IoT in the industrial world, but the applications are plenty in the field. 

One drawback of the rise of IoT would be the time and cost of implementing such a system within a company. Creating the physical RFID tags introduce a new cost, and the installation of said tags into all trucks and pallets are a headache in of their own. Not to mention the software that is needed to manage all of the tags. 

Works Cited
Greengard, Samuel. The Internet of Things. Chaparral:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015. Print.

Blog 12: Internet of Things

The first couple of chapters of Samuel Greengard's The Internet of Things paints the network of interdependent technology that society itself has become dependent on. Technology that were once separate, let's say watches and computers, have now become able to communicate to one another using Internet connection as a medium

What kind of repercussions could this new interconnectedness bring upon the new age? Greengard says that it was the physical features of past technologies that would limit capabilities. In the new digital era, the ability to access the Internet on devices unlocks capabilities on technology that were previously very specific. Watches used to check time, now they can check email.

Along with bringing more capabilities to old but revamped technology, the issue of security becomes a hot topic. Like a door on a house, the ability to exit also grants the ability to enter, and malicious users have targeted devices as a way to gather information that doesn't belong to them.

Works Cited
Greengard, Samuel. The Internet of Things. Chaparral:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015. Print.

Blog 11: Improving Communcation Skills

The conclusion of Toye's book started with a bit on empowerment. Toye suggests that one can improve their communication skills through attention to simple rhetorical techniques that have proved effective for thousands of years.

This being said, you can't become an incredible orator just by following a checklist of known rhetorical techniques. It takes the right amount of technique given at the right time. Also, the effectiveness of rhetoric isn't limited to just the orator, societal factors also influence effectiveness. It's argued that rhetoric is a social phenomenon, and that its reception depends on the norms in operation in the culture that it's delivered in. Although, ultimately, it's inherently unpredictable.

Blog 10: How do you study rhetoric?

"A speech act in linguistics and the philosophy of language is an utterance that has performative function in language and communication." Speech act is an utterance considered as an action, particularly with regard to its intention, purpose, or effect. Some examples of speech acts are apologies, greetings, requests, and complaints. Chapter 3 in Toye's book touches upon speech acts as well as 'New Rhetoric' as a means to explain the problem of meaning and intention in speeches.

Toye concludes in this chapter that if a speaker's intention is often opaque and in a sense unknowable, their rhetoric can still provide a window to the values of the societies in which they originate.

Blog 9: History of Rhetoric

The first chapter of Richard Toye's "Rhetoric: A Very Short Introduction" provides a brief, educational overview of the history of rhetoric from classical times to the late nineteenth century. Rhetoric begins with the Sophists in Athens and moves on to the likes of Aristotle and then Cicero. Chapter 1 also documents the incredible survival and adaptation of rhetoric during the middle ages.

What I found especially interesting about this beginning section was the fact that rhetoric stays timeless throughout all the ages: Renaissance, Enlightenment and during times of revolution. I also learned that rhetoric is seen as a complete system of education and has ties to science, commerce, and literature as well as private conversation.

Blog 8: Pirates

1996 proved to be quite an infamous year for the Internet. It was in this year that the first pirated song, 'Until it sleeps' by Metallica, was illegally copied from CD and made available on the Internet as a compressed MP3 file. Another advancement brought to mainstream was the use of compression. A 50MB song could now be compressed into 3 or 4Mb, allowing the past problem of hard drive space to become obsolete.

These two discoveries gave way to the creation of programs like Limewire and Napster. I found this particular chapter to be quite compelling because it hit close to home. I was in 7th grade when a close friend showed me the wonders of pirated music via Limewire, but the joy was short lived because of the numerous viruses accumulated due to malicious documents people put on the program.

Blog 6: The Internet as a Community

Chapter 6 in Ryan's book does a good job explaining how the Internet is divided into different communities. He compares the divisions between Internet communities to the divisions between human communities during the beginning of human experience. The difference between the two are that human communities of the past were networked due to proximity, or geographical location. Internet communities are networked based on the users' interests. 

Even with the invention of the telephone lines, people could usually only afford to make local calls because long-distance phone calls were too expensive. Ryan goes on to explain how, in 1975, a man named Joe Engressia realized he could "kill geography" by whistling a specific pitch down the phone line. "Killing geography", in this sense, meant that paying for long-distance calls became obsolete when word of how to trick the phone system made its way around. In turn, this discovery paved way for the "phone phreaks", a group of kids that spent their time experimenting with controlling the phone system. 

Blog 2: Network of Networks

It's in this chapter that Blum realizes the potential vastness of the project he's decided to embark on. He continues with an explanation on why, in hindsight, he probably should have known that the task on hand was quite daunting, quoting Inventing the Internet when he says "the history of the Internet holds a number of surprises and confounds some common assumptions".

Trying to find the origins of the Internet is like trying to figure out if the egg or the chicken came first, no one can really know. Blum uses this analogy because if the Internet is a network of networks, then it takes two networks to make an Internet, how could one have been first? A truly eye-opening comparison, this analogy really sheds light on how mysterious the Internet really is.

Blog 7: Dial Tone

Chapter 5 of A History of the Internet and the Digital Future gives great background on the shaky origins of the modern day internet. The early origins of the internet were deeply rooted within phone companies because users at home had to be able to connect their machines to the phone lines. This specific fact struck a chord in my childhood memory bank, I can remember trying to call my cousins home phone and getting a dial tone because they were using the computer.

Another fascinating fact from chapter 5 was the 'Carterfone', a radio device that could be attached to a standard telephone set to extend the network beyond the fixed telephone lines. I believe that it's innovations like these have revolutionized the internet industry in an offhand manner. I'm interested to see what different kinds of innovations will surface during this golden digital age. Also, I wonder if the phone phreaks phenomenon from chapter 6 had any influence on modern day chat rooms and instant messaging.

Blog 4: Everywhere is home when you're connected

In today's digital era access to the internet is virtually a staple. Your home has internet, the coffee shop has internet, even when you're a mile high in the sky you can potentially have internet. With how important internet connection has become for everyday tasks among other scenarios, it seems as though internet connection has taken a tight grip on most of our lives.

I believe that the need for internet connection becoming so evident is one of the main points that Blum was making in his prologue. He quotes science fiction writer Bruce Sterling, "As long as I've got broadband,  I'm perfectly at ease with the face that my position on the plant's surface is arbitrary". How I interpret this quote is that because the internet is everywhere it doesn't matter where you are because you are everywhere through the internet. Blum goes so far as to say to say "we're not merely connected, we're rooted".

On the contrary, Blum also believes that although the internet is a global phenomenon, we all have our own little place within the grid. 

Blog 3: Who Does the Internet Belong To?

How much is too much? This is a question that quickly crossed my mind as Blum briefly explained how Google came to acquire an important piece of networking real estate in 2006. Google purchased a gigantic building spanning an entire block in Manhattan for $1.9 billion, one of the top three most important network meeting points in New York as stated by Blum. This caught the eye of Internet infrastructure as the established search-engine giant amassed the large network meeting point that had a far-reaching global presence. Which leads us back to the question, how much is too much?

As of January 2016, Comcast owns over 50 percent of the 25mbps subscriptions in the United States. In an article titled "Comcast and Charter may soon control 70% of 25 mbps subscriptions", it's explained that Comcast's plans to purchase TWC was thwarted by the FCC because they feared Comcast would abuse their market share to harm online video sources. If the FCC is stopping a company from acquiring another company based on the fear of monopolization, perhaps that is too much. Is google acquiring the 111 Eighth fiber highway in New York too much? 

Blog 1: The Internet is Alive

The way that Andrew Blum gives the internet a physical embodiment within the first couple of sentences of the prologue captured me. "Not the whole internet, only the section that resides in a dusty clump beside my living room couch (Blum 1). Blum starts his novel off by bringing an entire global computer network to the eye level of less tech savvy consumers like you and I. He goes on to put into words what most of us experience on a daily basis, connecting to the Internet without really knowing what we're connected to. You plug a cable into your computer that's connected to a box that's connected to the wall and voila, entertainment and resources to get work done are readily available using a computer as a medium. But have you ever thought of exactly what it is that you're connected to? Most consumers, myself included, see internet as a staple household commodity that's taken for granted until the connection is lost and a flurry of unplugging and restarting ensues. Another idea to think about is the vastness of the internet. How big is the internet really? Can it even be measured in a volume sense? I have a strong feeling that these questions will be touched upon as I continue to be introduced to what the internet is through Blum's work, and I hope that my limited knowledge on the subject will be broadened as well.