Several studies indicate that most blogs are abandoned soon after creation (with 60% to 80% abandoned within one month, depending on whose figures you choose to believe) and that few are regularly updated.
The 'average blog' thus has the lifespan of a fruitfly. One cruel reader of this page commented that the average blog also has the intelligence of a fly.
I have assumed that by “opposite” in the above concept statement, it implies that synchronous communication is superior or preferable to asynchronous communication in some way and I agree with the remainder of the statement that it is not the opposite, merely different.
As Goldberg (Goldberg, 2000) explains synchronous communication is where both communicants are in the same place
There are obvious advantages to synchronous communication like the immediacy of reactions and understanding and less chance of misunderstanding due to auditory or visual cues. However the obvious disadvantages are the time and physical constraints that prevent people being in the same place
Looking at the immediacy firstly, this may not always be an advantage. Certainly in the sphere of online learning, the ability to take time to reflect before responding means that that response is more considered and valuable. It can also minimise the incidence of rash, ill-mannered responses. Gray (Gray, 1996) expresses it well in saying “Electronic communication can radically change the dynamics of a discussion in ways which, when they are appropriate, can be very helpful”.
We know the learning experience and quality of understanding is certainly enhanced by face to face communication. This can be achieved with synchronised communication tools like pod-casts and video conferencing but they are costly and limited. I feel however that if the face to face aspect isn’t there, the quality of learning is not significantly compromised. In the absence of visual and auditory cues it is just necessary to adopt new rules of communication. The use of emoticons in e-mail messages can convey emotional content.
In some ways the absence of face to face contact may allow people to become more uninhibited, to loosen up and express themselves more openly. Psychologists call this ‘the online disinhibition effect’.
“You don’t have to worry about how other look or sound when you say something. Seeing a frown, a shaking head, a sigh, a bored expression,.can slam the brakes on what people are willing to express.” (Suler, 2002)
Removing these physical reactions and body language, encourages more people to speak up. In other forums where people are anonymous, it can trigger rudeness and anger that would never be expressed face to face but in on-line learning this is unlikely. A greater contribution from diffident participants is an advantage here.
Addressing the time and physical constraints, the existence of asynchronous communication in web-based learning has significantly changed higher education. It is now available to people who live remotely and cannot travel to University or people whose other commitments prevent them attending at scheduled times
In my case this aspect is a distinct advantage and not some compromise I am being forced to endure. The control I am able to exercise over my own learning is quite liberating. Indeed, the sense of community on-line between students and teachers appears quite strong and communication between teacher and student is easily facilitated and indeed, occurs more frequently that in an on-campus situation.
E-mail distribution lists, another form of asynchronous communication brings people together who are scattered geographically and therefore in different time zones. Although the discussion through these lists is slower, it is in no way less valuable. The sheer number of these lists is testimony to this.
The examples above show that asynchronous communication is neither inferior nor the “opposite” of synchronous communication. It is merely different. It may be slower but it has distinct advantages which have opened lines of communication that never before existed.
Annotated Bibliography
Site 1: Goldberg, M.
As an educator Goldberg draws on personal experience and that of thousands of colleagues he has spoken with to debunk the idea that once high quality synchronous communication is widely available then asynchronous communication will be redundant.
He does this by pointing out the important advantages in teaching and learning of asynchronous communication like e-mail and bulletin boards. It has its own character, advantages and disadvantages. The article is relevant because this is exactly the point made in the concept and his points are pertinent to my reflection.
He expresses the opinion that electronic asynchronous tools have brought about a revolution which an improvement in synchronous communication tools cannot hope to replicate.
Site 2: Suler, J.
This is an article extracted from Suler’s book and explores the reasons why people say and do things in cyberspace that they wouldn’t do in the face-to-face world. This “disinhibition effect” is brought about by a range of factors all discussed at length. Some of these factors are very pertinent like the person’s invisibility, absence of status, gender, race or wealth which offers a level playing field as well as the asynchronicity that exists.
The relevance to my reflection is that it supports the argument that asynchronous communication has its own advantages one of which is that people are more likely to contribute and be heard.
The threat to privacy and security from the Internet comes from many different areas. The nature of the threat also varies from the seemingly innocuous (collection of statistical information) to the malicious and damaging (viruses and identity hijacking). Aside from the obvious precautions of discerning to whom personal information about yourself is given, there are more insidious methods used by organizations and cyber criminals of which we should be aware. I will discuss a few of these below. · Set your browser to delete the cookies file whenever you start the browser. · Profile your browser to be notified before cookies are written to your computer although this can become annoying because there are so many. · Install one of the many software products which reject or manage cookies for you. (Protecting Your Privacy on the Internet, 2008) With the proliferation of free software able to be downloaded from the Internet at breakneck speed, comes the associated risk of privacy-invasive software. It includes: · Spyware which secretly downloads onto your PC and operates to collect information, · Adware which uses the information collected to generate targeted advertisements, · Malware spreads disorder and corrupts systems and networks, · Key loggers record keystrokes to harvest passwords among other information and · Data harvesting programs to collect e-mail addresses to proliferate the whole process. The Storm infection prevalent in 2007 was achieved very simply by directing recipients to maliciously constructed websites containing reports of ravaging European storms. The visitor was completely unaware that this infection had happened. Fortunately the many free spyware detection programs that were run to detect and remove these infections have contained the spread. At one point it was feared that 10 million computers (McMillan, 2007) were infected worldwide, but in hindsight it was more like 500,000. (Microsoft, 2008) The Microsoft report emphasises that a significant risk of infection continues to emanate from spam e-mail which accounts for over 90% of all e-mail messages sent. “The flood of spam creates a potent vector for Malware attacks and phishing attempts.”(Microsoft, 2008) The Platform for Privacy Project is an initiative of the W3C.
Cookies
Cookies were originally intended to give website owners visitor tracking information and then, only data already possessed by the website. However, there are extra features that may be added by programmers which combine personal information that you may supply to the website with the cookie. These cookies can then be used to build up a profile of your Web usage and online spending patterns. The marketing implications of this are then exploited. Ways to deal with cookies is to:Spyware, Adware, Malware and Key loggers
Annotated Bibliography
Site 1: Protecting Your Privacy on the Internet
This site was very useful in this reflection as it is very current and written in simple English for the non-technical reader. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner’s role is to promote and protect privacy in
Site 2 Brown, A.
In this article on Internet Privacy (Brown, 2006) discusses how an AOL research site published a database containing 23 million searches made over a three month period for 650,000 of its customers. The database was only available for several hours before AOL realised the privacy of the individuals was not properly protected and removed it. The profiling information that was able to be extracted from this database
The incident gave us a glimpse of the type of information and details the big search engines are able to determine about us via cookies which are stored in their systems for up to 30 years.
If we look at the evolution of the computer in society over the past 50 years, it is apparent that the human-computer interface became an issue in the personal computer boom of the 1980’s and the World Wide Web revolution of the 90’s.(Hirschman, 1999) PC’s were smaller, cheaper and more available than ever before. No longer were just technocrats the users, but everyone from preschoolers to retirees. This drove the need to create more user-friendly interfaces and this drive continues today.
We see applications that are more intuitive and simplistic with drag and drop, cut and paste, point and click, and push button actions which mimic human behaviour. “A good application interface hides the complexity from the user and allows the user to work more naturally.” (Necat, 2007) We have all interacted with speech recognition software, whether calling for a taxi or getting information from a bank, they enable us, the customers, to interact with databases over the phone
Experiments have been conducted for quite some time into human interaction with computers which prove that humans can be tricked into believing and behaving as if they are communicating with another human being but it seems, not for long.
One in particular dating back to 1964 was ground breaking and involved a computer program called Eliza developed by a German professor named Joseph Weizenbaum. A person would type in English to a computer terminal and Eliza was programmed to respond to certain key words and phrases and interact in a way that resembled human conversation. Students were fooled into revealing personal details about themselves not understanding that they were talking to a computer. (Markoff, 2008)
Another well known experiment was the creation of a bot named Julia who existed in Multi-User Dungeons
These experiments tell me that when one unwittingly realises they have been communicating with a machine, one is likely to feel foolish. This is something that can prevent acceptance of this technology.
One practical use to which artificial intelligence
I do believe there are times where we communicate and act the same way whether we are communicating with a human or a machine but this is not yet an everyday occurrence. It is fair to say that this move to an “intelligent Internet” has not been as rapid as forecasted say, five years ago. We are however moving closer.
Annotated Bibliography
Site 1: Tse, C. W.
This research paper published in a University research journal evaluates the Sam project, an Embodied Conversation Agent and Story Listening System designed to improve children’s literacy by engaging them in storytelling and collaborative play.
The technology it utilises is pertinent to this concept statement as its aim is to make children think that they are interacting with another child. Its success is evaluated in the article and ways in which it might be improved by future development are suggested. It suggests that developments in the field of artificial intelligence could make it more convincing and realistic.
Site 2: Foner, L.
This web page is part of a larger document which discusses the sociological usefulness of Julia, a bot who pose as a user in Multi-User Dungeons
It is very interesting to read transcripts of the dialogue that went on as users were unaware that they were communicating with a computer programme and how eventually, her identity was revealed through the strange responses she sometimes gave. The reaction of some users to this discovery is also interesting. Words used were “shallow, void, hollow, superficial, and fake“.
The WWW differs from the traditional library where author and subject based catalogues are used to find information, in that information can be reached from an unlimited number of sources. The hypertext feature of the WWW has created an information base which is non-linear in nature. One page contains links to another, which contains links to another….and so on. When following links, it is very easy to become “lost”. Fortunately, browsers allow us to retreat to earlier pages with ease which makes them a very powerful and efficient research tool. However, with the volume of web pages being added every day and the Web’s exponential growth, finding information of a high quality becomes increasingly time-consuming. Information is no longer logically organized and there is no systematic way of retrieving it. (Nguyen, 2000) The cataloguing system of the past has been replaced with search engines like Google with full-text searching ability. When you have invested time and effort to find something useful, you want to be able to find it again with ease. The absence of reliable catalogues in the WWW makes it necessary to create one’s own cataloguing system and there are many choices available. Every browser has the ability to “bookmark” pages on our computer or network which makes them available for future reference. You can place these links into logically ordered folders by subject. There are sites like Del.icio.us or Ma.gnolia which are social bookmarking sites where you can share your favourite bookmarked sites with everyone else. When the WWW was in its infant stages, Tim Berners Lee started a virtual library which still exists today. It’s information page states “The WWW Virtual Library Interestingly, my probing revealed many broken links. But there are several other virtual libraries containing lists of websites that are trustworthy, so they do exist. (Ackermann, 2008) (Librarian's Internet Index, 2008) This leads to the issue of credibility and accuracy. When searching for information on the Web it is necessary to evaluate the quality of the information. Comparing it to a traditional library consisting of books, journals and articles which go through a filtering process before they are published and catalogued, the Web provides no such authentication. Anyone can publish a page to the Web. (Ackermann, 2008) (Nguyen, 2000) Naturally, librarians are frustrated when students use popular and easy to use web search engines which lead them to unedited, poor information instead of using library catalogues containing filtered and authoritative reference material. However library catalogues are considered to be too rigid and hard to use. For instance, in researching the asynchronicity topic, would I look under IT or Psychology or both? Some libraries have started using using Del.icio.us to bridge this gap by creating tags and bookmarks organised by subject and incorporating these into their own Web sites. Del.icio.us offers borrowers familiarity and ease of use and lowers the barrier to participation. (Rethlefsen, 2007) What results is bookmark collections organized by humans and not search engine software. In spite of it’s shortcomings in the WWW’s cataloguing and organization of information I think they are outweighed by the convenience, efficiency and ease of use of the Web. These flaws can be overcome with the savvy use of Web bookmarking tools. Annotated Bibliography Site 1: Rethlefsen, M. L. This article describes how social bookmarking tools like Del.icio.us are assisting libraries to overcome difficulties borrowers have using library catalogues and databases. Borrowers prefer the familiar interface and the persistent access that Del.icio.us offers. Its ease of use also allows less technically savvy librarians to contribute to collections instead of this resting with one or two librarians. Library catalogues and databases only address broad categories but in Del.icio.us librarians can “tag” worthy links for a specific audience like local school assignment topics. This information is relevant because it demonstrates how the libraries have indeed exploited the idea of the library system in a way that suits their personal needs. Site 2: Ackermann, E. Search engines may provide full text search capabilities narrowing the field but for research you must narrow it further to find reliable, credible and accurate sources of information. This site provides guidelines to evaluate information retrieved from the WWW. In it, Ackermann provides a list of virtual libraries containing reliable sources of information which have been filtered by information specialists. Also contained is a checklist of things to consider in evaluating the credibility of a particular source or the information it contains. Things like currency, purpose and objectivity are important as is the qualifications and experience of the author or organisation publishing the site. References: Ackermann, E. (2008). Evaluating Information Found on the World Wide Web. Retrieved 3 May. 2008, from http://www.webliminal.com/search/search-web12.html Allen, M. (n.d.). Internet Communications Concepts Document: Curtin University. Retrieved 24 March 2008, from http://webct.curtin.edu.au/SCRIPT/305033_a/scripts/serve_home Brown, A. (2006). They Know All About You. Guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 10th April 2008, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/aug/28/usa.searchengines Goldberg, M. (2000). Synchronous vs Asynchronous: Some Thoughts: Online Teaching and Learning Newsletter. Retrieved 26 March 2008, from http://www.webct.com/service/ViewContent?contentID=2339346 Gray, N. (1996). The Internet: New ways of Working and Learning: University of Glasgow. Retrieved 24 March 2008, from http://nxg.me.uk/note/1996/new-ways/ Hirschman, L. (1999). Intelligent Human-Computer Interfaces. In The Edge. Vol. 3, (MITRE Publications). History of the Virtual Library (1991-2008). The WWW Virtual Library. Retrieved 1 May. 2008, from http://vlib.org/admin/history J. M. Reagle Jr., & Wenning, R. (2000 - 2008). P3P and Privacy on the Web FAQ: W3C. Retrieved 3 April. 2008, from http://www.w3.org/P3P/P3FAQ.html#What%20is%20P3 Librarian's Internet Index (2008). Califa Library Group. Retrieved 3 May. 2008, from http://lii.org/ Markoff, J. (2008, March 13, 2008). Joseph Weizenbaum, Famed Programmer, Is Dead at 85. The New York Times. Retrieved 10 April 2008, from www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/world/europe/13weizenbaum.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss McMillan, R. (2007). Storm Worm Now Just a Squall. Retrieved 3 May. 2008, from http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,138721-c,virusesworms/article.html Microsoft (2008). Microsoft Security Intelligence Report July through December 2007 Key Findings Summary. Retrieved 3 May. 2008, from http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/f/d/ffd1f8b8-afcc-4ed1-a635-2caa8b96ac2f/KeyFindings_MS_Security_Report_Jul-Dec07.pdf Necat, D. B. (2007). The Changing Face of Human Computer Interfaces: BCS Communication. Retrieved 10 April. 2008, from www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.10049 Nguyen, T. T. (2000). OASIS:Student Evaluation Methods for World Wide Web Resources: University of Hawaii at Manoa. Retrieved 1 May. 2008, from http://www2.hawaii.edu/~nguyen/web/ Protecting Your Privacy on the Internet (2008). The Office of the Privacy Commissioner. Retrieved 3 April. 2008, from http://www.privacy.gov.au/internet/internet_privacy/ Rethlefsen, M. L. (2007). Tags Help Make Libraries Del.icio.us: Library Journal.com. Retrieved 1 May. 2008, from http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6476403.html Suler, J. (2002). The Psychology of Cyberspace. Retrieved 24 March. 2008, from http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/disinhibit.html Tse, C. W. (2005). Evaluating Sam: Iterative Design of a Story Listening System and Embodied Conversational Agent. NORTHWESTERN UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, 2(May 2005). Retrieved 10 April 2008, from http://www.topgrad.com/NURJ%202005%2001.pdf
"A library is, fundamentally, a system organised according to shared, accepted sets of classifications and organisations, and on that basis that it is impossible to access the information except through categories
