The Whuffie Factor

Unfortunately, as with screenr, we cannot embed our project on our blogs with prezi (strage that if you install wordpress on a server it works). So all that we can do is share the link for you to view it. Keep in mind that is takes a bit to load and also it is best viewed in fullscreen. So, finally, me, Anne Giese, Riley Kufta, Emilien Chetbou and David Donnerer present:

The Whuffie Factor Presentation.

Third week reflection

The third week went by really fast because I was very busy in the last few days. Having three courses at once is no joke.

For Communication and Technology, I feel like we slowed down a bit and took things to a more theoretical approach. My other colleagues have said that we had the same pieces of information repeated over and over again and I agree. It was still fairly interesting, especially when we were told about Aviary and editing videos with YouTube.

Otherwise, there is not much too say. One final note would be one of appreciation for the teacher’s efforts to help us get the books that we need and their openness. They have been very helpful and answered any questions that we had. I wish others would take their example.

Technological Autobiography

I had lots of bad luck with this. First, I borrowed a headset from the teachers and when I came home to test it I discovered that the recordings on it sound terrible, with an awful background noise. It was much worse than my laptop microphone, so I just used that instead. The result is still disappointing.

Then, I noticed that Screenr recorded my presentation quite badly compared to the original and, to top that, my Internet connection was interrupted. Now I am writing this in the kitchen, using the neighbors’ wifi.

Anyway, this is my TAB, much shorter then I would have made it if there wasn’t a time limit of 2 minutes. Enjoy!

So far so good

When a course is fun and relaxed, it’s a pleasure for me to attend it.

First, when I went at the introductory presentation, I was surprised in a pleasant way to see that we have six teachers and four guest speakers that are supposed to tell us about technology and communication. At a practical level, I was happy to see that we are made to create and write on blogs, to tweet and more. And for the past two weeks, the course was a good experience. Even though some of the information was repeated on and on, we got insight on many interesting and useful things and also found out a lot about the history of technology, especially computers.

I loved The Whuffie Effect and I hope I’ll have the time to write some more about it, but as for the other books, I am reticent. I haven’t read enough to get a clear opinion, but they don’t seem nearly as interesting as the one I finished already, which is the one by Tara Hunt.

The lecturers are young and informed, they have a fresh perspective and I like that. The examples for what they explain are pretty good, though they are a bit too much related to Sweden. The one thing I didn’t like was to see all my colleagues tweet every time they post a comment on a blog. Nobody does that in real life! Except for one or two special cases, I have never (since I’m on twitter – 2 years and a half) seen someone tweet about posting a comment.

Anyway, I hope the course goes on in the same laid-back fashion because it has proven to be really good so far.

Triumph of the Nerds

nerd
noun Slang.
1. a stupid, irritating, ineffectual, or unattractive person.
2. an intelligent but single-minded person obsessed with a nonsocial hobby or pursuit: a computer nerd.

Have you ever stopped to look around and think about how amazing and exciting everything around us is? Have you ever looked at a light bulb and said “How did this come to be? Who came up with this and how did he do it?”. We are surrounded by technology so amazing and bewildering and we take it all for granted. We look into screens and talk to people that are on the other side of the planet in real time, just as if we were there. We get news from different continents in a matter of seconds and at the touch of a button. We do so many things and we use so many machines and gadgets that make living so much easier and, even though people not many years ago couldn’t even conceptualize them, now we can’t imagine life without them.

And we watch an outdated documentary about Gates and Jobs and Paul Allen and we realize that we heard of these names before but we have no idea what these people have actually done, and what is the reason why they are (or were) so rich and famous after all, besides founding Apple and Microsoft. We’ve all been using computers for the better parts of our lives but never stopped to wonder how it all came to be, to try and find out. And when we do, we are surprised to see how human the process was. How human? Well, here’s some examples:

“When it was over, Bill and I looked at each other. It was one thing to talk about writing a language for a microprocessor and another to get the job done… If we’d been older or known better, Bill and I might have been put off by the task in front of us. But we were young and green enough to believe that we just might pull it off.”

– Paul Allen

“And then he looked up at me and just stared at me with the stare that only Steve Jobs has and he said do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and change the world and I just gulped because I knew I would wonder for the rest of my life what I would have missed.”

– John Sculley

So the story of computers is about more than just genius minds at work. It was not men in suits working in labs that developed the devices we use every day. The protagonists were in fact a bunch of lifeless oddballs that cared for nothing else but technology and engineering. Their efforts to bring us the computer as we know it today took years of hard work: writing code late at night, staying ahead of the competition, neglecting and even sacrificing their social lives and so on. And that long story is told in Triumph of the Nerds. In fact, that story is just the beginning. So next time you see a nerd, be nice to him.

I won’t get into details about the movie. It’s good, it’s not great, it’s very interesting but outdated. If you’d like to know more about each of the three parts of the documentary, what it left out, what it got wrong and more, read here.

My final conclusion after seeing the movie is this: beyond accidents, luck, stealing ideas, selling, being at the right place at the right time, it all comes down to passion and vision. You can see the word obsessed in the definition. And you can see people who forget to eat and wash up in the movie. But it also takes vision to invent and innovate.

Nerds have the power to do things no others have thought of before. Visionaries see opportunities and seize them. If you’re both, you will be triumphant.

Hello world!

Hello world, hello teachers and fellow students! Welcome to my blog project that I made for the Communication and Technology course that I am taking at Jönköping University.

Throughout November, I will post my views and experiences with this course. Stay tuned for my review of the movie Triumph of the Nerds and some of the information from my technology autobiography.

Hälsningar till er alla!