Month: March 2018

Richard Stallman

If you are a Richard Stallman fan, you choose your own master

“To have the choice between proprietary software packages, is being able to choose your master. Freedom means not having a master. And in the area of computing, freedom means not using proprietary software.”

“If programmers deserve to be rewarded or creating innovating programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs.”

“The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was useful, and is the only way many authors’ works have survived even in part.”

“Not copy-right but copy-left.” – Copyleft is the idea that this cannot be sold, you are contributing.

-Richard Stallman, American software programmer

Digital Reinvention

1990s: Richard Stallman spent most of his time studying copyright laws

Stallman believes that the information and how it runs should be silo

However, anyone who has some sort of expertise, you can contribute it…this eventually becomes The Encyclopedia

This I find to be incredibly fascinating and gives everyone a chance to add, well almost everyone

Crowd Sourcing

The more eyeballs = the more criteria

The bigger the group of people working on a problem, the more solutions are developed and produced

The more people that like it, the more popular it becomes and the more useful it will be

It is operationalized every single day; i.e., Netflix, Amazon

Back to Stallman…the more people working on a software problem, the better the solution will be

Ideas are improved and get better when they are freely expressed

People take a wack at it…they see an efficiency, a mistake, they want to make a change, they want to make something better or more precise

Enclosure vs. Openness

Not exactly sure what we were talking about here or what it means, I was lost completely

If anything, I find myself to be very open, always giving, always sharing

1800s

Do you know where it all began? The transportation? The technology? The accessibility? The opportunities?

Lets begin…

1830s

Every city, every town, every village, and every farm in the United States ran on their own times

The source of time ran according to the suns direction and the shadows it would reflect on to the ground 

1840s

Telegraph definition

“An apparatus for communicating at a distance by coded signals”

Invention of the Electric Telegraph

This one of the first telecommunication technological pieces of the industrial and technology age

Visual Telegraphs

The earliest telegraph system made of smoke signals, drums, and mirrors used to reflect sunlight; to make these systems work and operate, both the sender and receiver need a method to interpret the signals

Electric Telegraphs

System made by an electrical current running through a wire and when the current is broken in specific patterns it signifies certain letters and/or phrases

This required the invention of generating and storing electricity as well as a way to record the breaks running through the current

This eventually lead to the invention of the Railroad

1860s

Single-Wire Electric Telegraph 

People’s lives were governed by the conditions of light reflected by the sun, therefore, time of work is strictly governed by the seasons

Until the invention of electricity 

Late 1870s

Telephone definition

“A system that converts acoustic vibrations to electrical signals in order to transmit sound, typically voices, over a distance using wire or radio”

Alexander Graham Bell

Most saw him as a threat, many seem to praise him now; how do you feel?

Bell’s Telephone

Better yet…you can even call to talk about it and look at that, you have Alexander Bell to thank

1915

Wire-Frame Model definition

“A visual presentation of a 3-dimensional (3D) or physical object used in 3D computer graphics. Created by specifying each edge of the physical object where two mathematically continuous smooth surfaces meet, or by connecting an object’s constituent vertices using straight lines or curves”

Frank Gilbreth Wire Model

“The precision of the techniques of motion study, and of the larger field of scientific management indicate both the depth of the intellectual investment in technological progress and the extreme non-autonomy of the scientifically managed worker, whose very hand movements are dictated by the managers”

1930s

After a dramatic rise of the telephone and decline of the telegraph, a dramatic number of messages sent was at an all time low  

Have you ever thought of life without a TV? Life without a smartphone at. your fingertips? Remember what it was like when we were young? Don’t you wish we could go back to certain simpler times?

Well I do…our world is operating off of technology and machinery; while this is absolutely incredible, we miss way too much of what is going on in the world around us

Have you realized, the only way we find out about the world around us is social media and/or the news? Rarely we hear about breaking news from word of mouth

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma05/dulis/id/motion.htm

History

HISTORY DOES NOT MAKE SENSE- lots of unclear items, it is not what should be expected of what a museum does (its here, right in front of you)

Civil war – large sums of white people are fighting for confederacy

What are they fighting for? Why would they fight in a war they do not have a stake in?

I wish I knew…history is not my specialty

The Minstrel Show

The American form of entertainment developed in the early 19th century

The shows consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances, which mocked people specifically of African descent

Black Face

“Blacking up” calls attention to the whiteness of your skin

If you are not black, you are white

If you are not white, you are black

So ask yourself…

Is the point of the Minstrel Show ambiguity?

“If I could have the nigger show back again in its pristine purity, I should have little use for opera”

– Mark Twain

“Blackface performers are, the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow citizens”

– Frederick Douglass

The Minstrel show is deeply entangled in American cultures

Many argue that Mikey Mouse is considered to be a Minstrel show character, do you?

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/jackson/minstrel/minstrel.html

http://black-face.com/minstrel-shows.htm