Media Literacy Response--Representation

For this Assignment I have chosen to talk about the news reports of the North Korean Threat that has been the talk of the day for the last few weeks. Below are my sources
Video - Link
News Article - Link
Blog - Link

I would first like to talk about the Video where the news reader talks about the development of Nuclear Technology. The facts and details about the threat released to public was not that much, but it is interesting how the media and articles represent the situation.

The video has a more military view and a response to the situation. The news reporter conveys that the Defense Secretary announced a 50% increase on missiles positioned to defend the US against a North Korean attack. The Hegemony represented here is that every threat needs to have a military response even though United States currently has the most advance military in the Globe. In simple words, the majority of the community agrees preparing for a military response because its a Hegemonic ideology among the society. The news video has given a high priority to this threat by talking about the military response.
It also shows a missile that could reach USA if launched but has a good chance that it might not be a threat because its not tested. Still the image of that picture of the missile in a rally does make an impact of the reality of the situation, and provoke precaution and possibly fear.

The blog was published in February as a response to the Nuclear Blast in North Korea that happened at the same time period. The blog states all the statistics of the immediate situation including pictures, graphs related to the nuclear blast. Most of the pictures are representations of the danger that the country poses to US and its allies. The article uses some rhetoric's to outshine its purpose. It states that if North Korea can launch a third successful nuclear attack then it can also launch an attack on USA or its allies. Ironically there is a graph in the bottom that has a graphical status of the worlds Nuclear Status which shows North Korea at the very last with far less military power than USA.

The News article is a recent post of another glance at North Korea threats. The comparison of this article and the blog mentioned above shows a huge difference. It shows the difference of responses that represent an immediate event and a well evaluated description of the same event a few months later. This news article has a logical and a political description of the reality of the threat. It interestingly brings up the ideologies of the North Korean people that helps the dictator to stay in power. It also brings up the previous actions of the country to rationalize the current situation.

Every article and news video has a way of representating the same situation in different perspectives and sometimes making them ideal according to the timing.

Research Proposal #3

Implications of Breaking the Light Speed Barrier

Introduction

If Light speed is achieved by mankind, what are the social, political and economic implications it will have on the world? 

It has always been in the minds of the scientists that light speed is achievable in the near future. There are sci-fi movies and TV series that support this prediction. It will be ,without doubt, one of the greatest achievements of man kind if the barrier can be broken. Some believe its impossible, but 50 years ago mobile phones were believed to be mere sci-fi gadgets.

In this research I wish to look into the after effects of achieving light speed. For an example, after the telephone was invented the world of communication changed rapidly into what we have now. It also effected our day to day life and is now a part of it. In this research I will be looking in to possible results of breaking the light speed barrier and how it will change the world. The effects are mostly positive considering the benefits of fast transportation, but there is a possibility humans might find a way of destruction through this as we have managed to do it in our past. Nuclear Energy can be given as an example.

Background

I have always been interested in Sci-Fi movies such as StarTrek, Andromeda etc. These fictions always made me think of the reality that awaits us in the future. It will not be accurate as the fictions predict but it will be similar. One of the main interests for me has been space travel; it takes 8 mints for sunlight to reach earth and it takes around 6 hours to reach Pluto. Theoretically, if light speed is achieved, a spaceship can travel to planets such as Pluto within hours. This opens up a wide scope of possibilities to man.

We will be able to travel easily to other planets to do scientific research such as search for life. The missions would take only hours instead of months and years. We would be able to mine for minerals from asteroids,moons and planets. It would also be a possibility for us to terraform other planets to change the atmosphere to sustain life. 

All of these new events would change our economy, political boundaries and social life in unthinkable ways. Imagine talking to your uncle on skype who is in a mining camp in the asteroid belt.

My initial presearching on this topic was a failure because I could not find any articles or books that directly relate to this research. 

Significance

I believe that it is important that we understand all or most of the side effects of a technology before going large about it. The manhattan project was a huge step forward in science and was suppose to shed light to many possibilities towards the benefit of man kind. The first actual application of the technology killed almost 200,000 people instantly, vaporizing them to dust.

As far as scientist can see, achieving light speed does not have ramifications deadly as such of an atomic bomb, but it can effect the economy, politics and social life in many ways.

Mining an asteroid that has mineral such as platinum will enable us to import tons of plutonium to earth. This would change the value of mineral drastically in the market. This will be the same for most of the mining minerals and the effects this would have on the global market would be unpredictable.

Another theoretical application would be the side effects of travelling in light speed. According to the theory of relativity a person traveling at light speed would age slowly than a person living on earth. 

It is important that the society is aware of theories as such these before we openly accept the benefits of the speed of light.

Methodology

As I mentioned earlier my initial presearching was a failure because I could not find any scholarly or popular source that directly contributes to my research. Then I had to approach the topic from different perspectives. I thought of the possible steps we would take if the light speed technology was achieved, such as asteroid mining, terraforming etc. I did presearching on those theoretical concepts so that I can find information to support my research. It has been successful as I found a significant amount of information for the presearching process.

After I evaluate all the sources I will be producing my own outcome of the research.

Potential Setbacks

My research is based on a theoretical idea of a technology which some argue to be impossible. The situation I speak of is unrealistic at the moment. So the information available to me is limited. Even the information that is available to me sometimes take opposite stands that have created arguments in the scientific community. This has made the research very difficult, still just like every brainstorming mind in the scientific community I believe I can speak my own words with the facts that I collect.

References

Sharlanov, Gocho V. "The Speed Of Light And Uncertainty Principle Of The Macro-World." Applied Physics Research 4.4 (2012): 118-125. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 Apr. 2013.

Link

This articles describes the theory of relativity and the effect it has in time on the moving object. This will be used to describe the aging process of a human traveling at light speed.

BELFIORE, MICHAEL. "How To Mine An Asteroid." Popular Mechanics 189.8 (2012): 50-55. MasterFILE Elite. Web. 5 Apr. 2013. 

Link

This articles describes the process of mining an asteroid and effects of selling them on the open market. This shows the ramifications of Asteroid Mining.

Geggel, Laura, Katie Peek, and Miriam Kramer. "Space Metal." Popular Science 281.5 (2012): 60-61. Health Source - Consumer Edition. Web. 5 Apr. 2013.

Link

This article shows a graphical view of minerals in an asteroid that can be used in my argument above.

"Making Planets People-Friendly." Futurist 30.2 (1996): 45. Sociological Collection. Web. 6 Apr. 2013.

Link

This article describes the theoretical concept of terraforming which I have mentioned in the article.

Yahoo Answers
Link
The benefits of traveling at light speed

Representation

The Concept of Representation Before watching the Video
Representation in simple words would be being an icon to demonstrate something that you believe in that you want to show to the community. You can represent anything and you can represent it in many ways. Some of those ways are acceptable and some groups take it to an extreme to when it comes to representation. In general, a person has the rights of representation as long as it does not break the law.

The Concept of Representation After watching the Video
Stuart Hall talks more about the visual representation and the practice of representation. He conveys that representation is the idea of something that was already there but represented through tools of media.
Also he mentions the personalities that represent people or ideologies that 'stand in'. In the end he concludes saying Representation is the way of giving meaning to some image, words, a person or something that stands for a cause or a belief.
My concept does not express much about visual representation but it does say some about iconic representation. The meaning that I have explained covers a wide area and Stuart Hall talks about a narrow area of representation,

Media Literacy & Representation
Media is mainly about representing and presenting information to the public. The portrait they picture creates the representation and its what we are open to in Media. Its important we understand these representations as they are and not what they are re-presented with.
Most representations have an ideology behind it that supports the representation. They are driven by the ideologies and sometimes they can be subjected to hegemony as well. It is vital we learn to filter the information presented/represented to us.
Representation is all around us. It can be as big as a political party or as small as a newspaper headline. They all are re-presenting something that's already there which has been dressed up accordingly by Media.

Goooooogle!!!

Following questions are answered:


1. Google should not be used in scholarly research.
I consider this statement to be wrong. Google is a search engine with multiple features embedded into it that facilitates searching for scholarly articles.
http://scholar.google.com/
Above link is a search engine provided by google and its whole purpose is to give easy access for a scholarly research. This search engine is a useful tool for finding scholarly articles and related information.

2. Like databases and the library catalog, Google allows you to modify your search to get better results
Yes, google has advance filtering capabilities. A user can use boolean operators to filter a search. Also google supports filtering using date, location and many other factors.
http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=136861
This link describes other special features google provides when using google search. These tips can be extremely helpful when narrowing down search results.

3. Google contains no academic (AKA scholarly,  peer-reviewed) content
Google does contain scholarly articles.
http://scholar.google.com is a search engine that specifically searches for googles scholarly articles.


Next, Watch Eli Pariser's "Beware of Filter Bubbles" TED Talk and answer the following questions: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s

4. What is a filter bubble? 
Its a personal filter that determines the information that we get to see from a web search or a similar feed. It only shows us the results of what we have interests in and completely isolates us in that world. This is something, most of the time, the user does not have control over.
It also keeps us from information that we may need to know and only feeds us information the algorithms decide that are relevant to us.

5. How does the idea of a “filter bubble” relate to our class theme of media literacy? 
To be media literate we need to go through all the information and evaluate them but in the case of filter bubble, we only get to see a part of the information feed, not the whole. We don't see the big picture, instead we are fed with what the filter determines to be relevant to us.
I consider this to be a major drawback when it comes to having an open door for all information around you.

6. Why is it important to know about filter bubbles? How can they affect your research? 
Only a few understand and realize the existence of the filter bubbles. This means most of the information that are available to us come through a filter bubble and we don't see a standard information query. Every search we do returns results that are unique to our personality or personal computer.
In the case of a research we might end up looking at one side of the research question because the information we get might be filtered and our scope of the research might be limited to the bubble we live in.

7. Lastly, picture you are in an elevator making small talk with a stranger about this awesome class you are in called LIBR 1101. Stranger says “I don’t really know why you are bothering to take this class, everyone knows that all you need is Google these days.” What is your quick response to this stranger? A hint: although it is certainly your prerogative to do so, agreeing with this person will make kittens cry. 
I will say "Google is only one of many ways, in fact google is a small part of the big picture"

GALILEO vs Libguides

Finding information on a research question specific to a database.
Database name - Computer and Information Systems Abstracts

What was your research question? 
What is the impact of Artificial Intelligence in our day to day life in the future

What were your keywords (search terms)?
Artificial Intelligence, daily, future, life

What do you think of the results you got? Were they relevant? Were they scholarly? Did you get too few results? Too many?
I did the search and got 11 results. 9 of the results were scholarly journals and others were articles. The results were too little and only few of the results were relevant to my search.

What is the difference between searching in a subject specific database and in Discovery (the tool that searches a bunch of databases at once)?
It was clear after the search above, that a subject specific search narrows down the scope of a research to a tiny window compared to the same search in Discovery. Same search in Discovery gave me around 60,000 results. Also I had the option to narrow down my search which was a luxury I didn't have in a subject specific search when provided with too few results.

When do you think you’d want to use a subject specific database over Discovery (and the other way around?)
I would use Discovery to get a brief understanding of the research topic I have so that I can decide to go further or not. It will be very useful in presearching point of a research.
Using a subject specific database to get information would be only feasible when you are decided on the topic and want to go more deep into the subject.

Using Libguide


What research guide did you choose? (Paste the link to that guide in your blog post.)
http://libguides.westga.edu/computerscience

What do you think a research guide is?
A feature similar to a catalog on where to find relevant information related to the topic.

How does a research guide compare to the list of resources you found in GALILEO? Which one (research guide or GALILEO subject guide) do you think you’d be more apt to use if you were working on a research project?
A research guide gives more focused information on a subject and it seems very useful with all the links provided. Also at the same time the research guide puts a boundary to the extent we can do research on. Its more like a limited source of information compared to GALILEO. I would feel much efficient working with GALILEO rather than a subject specific research guide which has a limited scope.
I also think a research should be done with an innovative state of mind, using a guide might defeat the purpose.

GALILEO Explained

What is GALILEO?

GALILEO stands for GeorgiA LIbrary LEarning Online. Its an online Library by the University System of Georgia. It holds links to thousands of articles, scholarly journals, newspapers and magazines.

How does GALILEO organize information?
It organizes information according to the Subject of the article. Links to subjects that fall under the same category are stored in a single database and there might be multiple databases for a specific category. Their are multiple categories in GALILEO so the whole library is a collection of databases with links to information sources.

What is the relationship between GALILEO and a database?
GALILEO consists of several databases that contains links to resources such as scholarly journals, articles and magazines. These databases are categorized under the relevant subject. In a real live library scenario, the  databases act as bookshelves in a library.

What is a database and how does it organize information?
A database is a collection of one or more tables. The table will consist rows and columns. When a user stores information such as a link to an article in the database it takes up the storage as a row in the table. The columns of the table can be relevant fields for storage of an article, such as published date, Author, Title and HTML Link.

When would you use GALILEO in a research project?
GALILEO library has a large number of scholarly journals and articles. This is useful at the presearching stage, to find out how much information is available on specific subject or an incident related to the project. With this its east to determine if the research topic has sources that can support it.

When and how would you use a database in a research project?
I would use GALILEO at the point where I have to go deep into a subject with the use of scholarly information sources. This will be at the mid way of the research where I have to find valid and scholarly information related to the project to take the next step on evaluating information with available resources.

Research Proposal #2

Why Create A Virus?

Introduction

Cyber Space is a breeding ground for computer viruses. Almost every person who uses a computer have come across the term 'Computer Virus'. Most people consider them to be a form of cyber infection and focuses on curing the computer but very few think of the origin of a computer virus. Even the ones who do think about the origin are not aware of some interesting yet troubling facts related to it.

Most people think that a virus is created by some criminal master mind with evil intentions to destroy the cyber world, but the reality is something entirely disturbing. There are various reasons for a computer hacker to create a virus, one of the most common reason is experimenting learned program language skills by students. Another common reason is to show off, an act of self satisfaction which prompts us to think that the creator of a virus with such intentions must be psychologically disturbed.

Except for a very few who have been unmasked by the authorities, every virus creator hides behind a veil and their intentions are not vivid. I wish to uncover the reasons behind creating such destructive programs and the mentality of the creators. 

Background

I am a college student majoring in computer science. I have always had the interest in the field of cyber crimes but more focused in hackers. Recently I have had my interest changed into computer viruses. A computer virus is in more ways similar to a biological virus but different in only one way. A computer virus is not an effect of the nature, its a man made creation. I have always wondered why a person would give birth to something that's destructive and would be proud to claim the glory of its destruction. Sometimes this doesn't really surprise me when I consider other man made hazards such as Nuclear Bombs, which were created in the name of peace. Still it begs the question why someone would go to all that trouble to write a few lines of codes which creates a program that's hardly noticeable and anonymous. 

In presearching I have found out several interesting reasons that would provoke someone to create a virus.

Among those reasons were, showing off, proving a point and also revenge.

Significance

It is important that people understand how people who create viruses come into action. Even the most insignificant person could come up with a deadly virus that can do more damage than a nuclear bomb since everything is controlled by computers in this era. According to the articles I have gone through, most of these people are normal people with normal lives who happens to reap some kind of financial benefit or most of the time self satisfaction.

Methodology

I have done some presearching and found some useful articles that relates to the topic I have. Some discuss the reasons in a more psychological point of view rather than from a single perspective. I would also look into some scholarly articles and journals that have content on this topic and similar topics. After collecting data, I will be coming up with my own conclusion on why a virus creator would go through all that trouble against the law.

Potential Setbacks

During the presearching I found out that there are more articles describing the types and reasons for creating viruses rather than psychological reasons for these actions. Not much information is found to go deep to discover the state of mind of such a person. I would have to go through a psychological aspect of a cyber criminal to achieve this milestone.

References


Who creates malware and why? by Kaspersky Labs

http://www.securelist.com/en/threats/detect?chapter=72

Why People Create Computer Viruses? by NortonAnti-Virus
http://www.nortonantiviruscenter.com/security-resource-center/why-people-create-computer-viruses.html

Why do People Create Computer Viruses? by Bryce Whitty
http://www.technibble.com/why-do-people-create-computer-viruses/