What makes a community? Does tech provide?

Community:

1. a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.
2. a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.

Above is Google's definition of community, and that is easy enough to grasp when you think about it. So what makes a community is people living and working in the same place or have things in common. So when thinking about what makes a community we think about neighborhoods and cities due to people living in that commonplace and sometimes having characteristics in common. Now we should look at it in a way to figure out if technology provides that same sense of community. I will say that yes technology does provide that same sense, and here is a big example...Facebook. There are over a billion people that have a Facebook account these days and you all live online in the same place and there are many things that many different people have in common. That's why there are groups on facebook so that those who have an interest in hat wearing kittens can all talk about it. To me there is Reddit, in which you join subreddits, specific reddits, to talk about and enjoy things that you like and have in common with other people online. One day once VR starts getting more and more advance and common there will be literal communities that you can walk around and talk to people you see online. So to answer the overall question a community is a place where people live or work together and/or have common interests and have a feeling of belonging, and you can get that through technology online.

Convergence

Convergence is an interesting thing that I have learned about in my technology class. It is basically when two technologies sort of come together to perform similar tasks. These things have distinct attributes that are involved: data throughput, access, computational speed, and memory usage.

• Data throughput: it has to do with the rate at which things are processed and how fast data gets transferred to wherever.
• Access: How people are able to get a certain technology and whether or not they'll use it.
• Computational Speed: This one is interesting because you have to think about Moore's Law, in which it states that computational speed will double every two years or so. I feel that it may have slowed down on the every two years department but it still speeds up quickly.
• Memory usage: This one sometimes is hard to explain to some people. By that I mean explaining cloud storage is one that sometimes I'm not sure I understand but basically it combines wireless technologies with computer storage and that's really what convergence is about.

Dot.Com to Dot.Bomb

This is quite the interesting story, so much happened in such a short time. Well I'm not sure if 10 years is such a short amount of time but it didn't seem that long since I was a kid when all this happened. Regardless of the actual amount of time the Dot.Com to Dot.Bomb phenomenon was shocking to say the least. To me it was this way because out of nowhere there were all these companies that today some people including myself never heard of until they are told about it from somebody who was involved, and in my case my Professor.

There were companies such as Prodigy, which was owned by Sears and IBM. To me that's just a crazy combination to think about in today's age but they did exist, and craziest part was that they were worth more than Boeing. There were many cases of companies who were being overinflated due to all of this fake stock that was selling because nobody was really regulating the IPO's or paying attention to how much money these companies actually had. In theory all of these tech startups were worth millions and millions but in reality they didn't have hardly any of that. Although things were looking good in the online tech industry because everyone was getting overexcited about what was happening and their capabilities online the market became flooded with people trying to do the same thing. Then in about March 2000 the financial market in New York collapsed due to bad investments in all of these over hyped tech companies. Then nobody was wanting to buy into these companies and the market just was for the most part done with except for companies like Microsoft.

Bitcoin

• What is it?
• Basically it is a digital form of currency, that is created electronically and held electronically.
• It is not printed and it has no physical form. 
• It is an electronic payment system based off of mathematical proof.
• How is it made?
• They are created by people and it's becoming more common that it's made by businesses running computers.
• These computers are all over the world running software that solves mathematical problems, which is where the bitcoins come from.
• Who and Why?
• It was invented by Satoshi Nakamoto, a software developer in Japan.
• He wanted to create a currency free from any central authority, which makes for lower transaction fees. 
• Characteristics: 
• Limited number of bitcoins can exist. It is said that there can only be 21 million bitcoins created by miners. Although it can be divided into smaller parts, the smallest is a one hundred millionth of a bitcoin.
• Decentralized- as discussed above it is not controlled by any institution. 
• Easy to set up- You can set up a bitcoin account in seconds with no questions asked or fees.
• Anonymous- Its linked to a bitcoin account but those aren't linked to names or anything. 
• Non-repudiable- Once you send bitcoins to someone, there is no way to ever get them back. 

Sources:  http://www.coindesk.com/information/what-is-bitcoin/

Erik Hanberg

Our class was visited by a guest speaker, his name was Erik Hanberg. His occupations include being an author, an e-publisher, and running a marketing company with his wife. Throughout the class Erik described what it was like to get be your own publisher and how many people can do it thanks to the beauty of the internet. Mr. Hanberg is a science-fiction and mystery author, he churns out books seemingly about every year and a half or so and seems to have a committed following of readers. Mr. Hanberg is also on the Tacoma Parks Board, and has had a number of jobs in which he writes. From what I know he is the main authority on raising money for non-profit associations and has written a popular book in the non-profit community on how they can raise money. He spends his time writing his novels, running the marketing company with his wife, and traveling to non-profit events to speak about raising money for those said non-profits. Listening to Erik speak let me know that yes there is a way to make a living in the virtual world, but it's a slim chance and you have to be one of the pioneers of whatever it is that you do because the market will get flooded and the money just becomes less and less.

To Buy or Not to Buy...

E-Commerce is a pretty normal and useful thing that most people who are on the internet use. We have the ability to buy pretty much anything you can think of with the click of a button. Just 10 years ago it was not so common for people to buy so much of their stuff online, and some would say even today there are things that people just refuse to buy online. Here's three things I wouldn't buy online, or things I'd have problems buying online:

1. A House- It's not that I have a problem buying a house online, it's just I don't know how much I trust the source. They post pictures but how updated are those and how true are those pictures. Now I'd be inclined to buy it online if the seller was giving me a live feed tour of the house, and I felt that I could get a deal from buying it online rather than in person. 
2. A Car- The problem with buying a car online is that again just like the house, is that are the photos or videos true and honest about the condition of the car. I would like to be able to drive the car just to know how it feels to drive it, because I might not like how it feels to be in the car. So I'd prefer to buy it in person. 
3. A Tuxedo/Suit- This is a pretty specific thing and personally I've never bought a tuxedo or suit in my life before. But I do know that I rented one for my freshman year Homecoming in High School and for the perfect fit I had to get measured. I just wouldn't be able to buy it online due to the fact that it would be difficult for me to have it fit to my specifications and to know whether or not I like how it feels on me before hand. 

To sum all of this up I would say that the things that I prefer not to buy online all have to do with the comfort level or trust of the seller. I just want to make sure I get what I pay for and doing that online is a more difficult task with a few things and that's why as of now I'd prefer to buy these things online, but that doesn't mean that I will never ever buy these online. 

Creepy Internet Scavenger Hunt

Searching on the internet is a super useful thing that almost everyone uses in their everyday lives. But do we really think about how powerful this innovation really is? I can guarantee that almost anyone who has ever been on the internet can be found through thorough enough research. I got to experience the scariness that is the search function online. Let's discuss what I was able to find out:

• 3 of the Tacoma Chickadee's favorite bands, I've never even heard of the Tacoma Chickadee's and I was able to find their favorite bands...creepy. 
• It took me 45 seconds to find an entire trip to Disneyland in Hawaii for a 3 adults and 3 children, flight and hotel included. 45 seconds and it's no joke, that's how powerful the internet is and that's not even scratching the surface. 
• How about houses for sale? I was able to find two houses in University Place, Tacoma on two different sites in under 5 minutes and get directions to them from downtown Tacoma.
• There are also many, many sites for dating. Due to the internet and advertisements I was able to list three dating websites not named EHarmony off the top of my head, Farmeronly.com anyone?
• Another thing I was able to find was Financial Reports I've never heard of in about 30 seconds, thanks to Google. If you have a company, I can probably find you. 
• While I was not able to find it in a quick enough time but there were a couple students in the class that found the married name of the middle sister of the teacher without knowing anything about her.

So overall my experience was what I expected it to be, a reminder of how powerful the search feature is on the internet.