Chris's Edgewood CS Blog

How did your specific experiences inform you in your practice of using technology for communication?

cbeccs — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 07:05:05 +0000

I would say most of my specific experiences that inform or change the way I use technology for communication come in two flavors: my own experiences for how *I* prefer to communicate, and learning what works for others in specific circumstances. Personally I use instant messaging quite a bit now as it fits well with my workflow. I can quickly answer quick questions or share technical information (such as IPs, URLs, snippets of configuration, etc) without it requiring my full attention for the purposes of being polite. Personally, I *hate* using the phone for technical conversations as I end up typing specific notes into the computer somewhere anyway. I also find the phone much more of an interruption in thought process than IM.

As for older personal experiences, I would say my love of communicating on a computer via text came from the my early BBS (Bulletin Board System) days. Before the web, and certainly before home internet access was even available commercially, there were shared systems that you could dial into with a modem and communicate with others. These tended to be small and local due to phone charges. I was on one in Gainesville, Florida called Dragon Keep. The users there were self-selected for geekiness (who else would have a modem and chat on text in 1990?) and I remember many good forum and real-time discussions.

On the other hand, I have learned that certain situations and especially certain users prefer more traditional means of communication that have to be catered to sometimes. The exception to this is helpdesk tickets, users must be trained that calling on the phone directly to a system administrator is NOT an acceptible way to get help in our organization as we have a whole helpdesk group that can handle 90% of all questions that come in and this is much more efficient for both parties once they realize it. The first few issues a person has, I tend to file the ticket for them, mention that, and make sure that ticket gets handled by either myself or one of the tier 1 helpdesk staff to help transition them to the idea.

In what ways have approaches to learning changed in the past 10 years? What are the ways it remains the same?

cbeccs — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 18:43:40 +0000

The core change is increasing ease of access to information. There are many types of learning (preschool, elementary/high school, college, individual, professional, internal training, etc) and the advent of easily usable tools to collate, search and share information has affected all of them.
Independent learning, technical training and internal training is almost entirely done on computers now in my own experience, this was not always the case and I remember my parents and older peers having much more “seminar” type training to disperse information within a company or to a technical group. Now lots of this happens through people finding the resources and communities they need on the web or mailing lists. In-person conferences are certainly essential and lead to quicker discussions in many cases, but for disseminating static information to a group electronic broadcast-style communication works great.
For pre-school and elementary students there are more software tools (such as reading software) that are available, I do not really know how wide spread their use is and it is certainly an added expense that some schools can afford and some can not. For elementary students learning to become familiar with using computers for writing and research is now widespread, this was certainly not always the case and is skewing younger and younger.
For high school students, the use of technology such as the internet and word processing programs for writing is natural. Independent research and discovery is more important. As with younger children, I think the independent use of the technology grows with time and continues on through college where finding resources has become easier thanks to the mature web with tools like google and wikipedia to guide searchers to other sources for more (and potentially more reliable) information.
The main way learning remains the same is and the great benefit a (natural or cultured) curiosity or excitement about the subject can have. I think great teachers, authors, and popularizers of science, art, history, etc have a great impact that can not be replaced. A general culture of enthusiastic learning (reading at home, being surrounded by people interested/involved in the world, etc) is, was, and always will be a great benefit to students of any kind.

What code of ethics do you use when making choices about using technology?

cbeccs — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:33:28 +0000

For me this is a fairly straightforward question and it will be interesting to see what other people have to say. For me professionally, this comes down to two core decision making guidelines: due diligence and suitability.
By due diligence I mean I make sure that I understand what the goals of the project are and do LOTS of research on various approaches or products. Suitability to me means that the use of the technology must meet the needs of the users with as little pain/change/training possible and at an appropriate cost given our options. I think cost sensitivity and lack of unsubstantiated bias is especially important in small business where great savings can be made by using open source replacements.
In my private/personal use of technology, I just treat people how I would like to be treated. I don’t publish pictures without consent, I don’t share private information. I guess my only exception would be harsh responses to those who I think deserve it (mostly loud fools)

If someone is posting in a public forum with some anti-gay/racist nonsense, moon landing hoax theories or some nonsense they need to be set right. That is of course if they are not obvious trolls

What are some of the generational influences and implications for embracing technology that is used for communication?

cbeccs — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:19:49 +0000

I think that although there are still differences in adoption rate of new technologies and communications differences between generations, the differences are reducing over time, especially with regards to basic internet/web access. I looked around for numbers and found a decent source here: http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/internet-usage-by-age-gender-race/
For generation X and Y (anyone under 42) the % of adults that use the internet is over 90%, but baby boomers (43-61) are only slightly behind with 79%. The other age divisions this report uses are 62-71 at 56% and 71+ at 29%. The numbers 5 and 10 years ago were showed a bigger gap. I think the key difference for some older people starting to use the internet who did not grow up with the internet is ubiquity vs utility. People who had the Internet in high school (I missed by a few years, the cutoff seems to be the late 90s) use technology (and the Internet in particular) a lot because it is all around them and many of their peers use it as well. This generation is sometimes termed the “digital natives”.
People from previous generations had to warm up to the Internet. Obviously at this point with such high penetration numbers at most ages, it seems like this has happened. I believe this is because there is more useful content/capabilities on the internet for people and this is what it took to get many baby boomers online. Nowadays when it comes to adoption of newer technologies like social networking, the younger generation and those already avid users of technologies are primarily the early adopters. The next wave of users comes in as the community grows and provides something for older people like staying in touch with far-flung friends and family.
The implication for the different rates of adoption are a youth-skewed user population for the beginning of most communication technologies, with the second wave coming based on connections between those who already use the new methods (family) or by realizing actual utility applicable to their own needs.

What are the implications of using technology for the purpose of communicating our ‘social selves’?

cbeccs — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:37:57 +0000

There are a few areas of discussion that this question brings to mind. The drawbacks of using technology for social communications, the benefits of using such technologies for social communication, the new types of communication made possible by these technologies, and the unique phenomenons that occur in online communities.
The drawbacks of using technology for social communication are fairly well understood and enumerated. The most obvious is miscommunication due to lack of nuance available in face to face communications, a common case of this is someone taking offense at something that was meant in jest. Online communities have come up with ways to deal with this to some extent, such as emoticons (or in more geeky circles, “”). Another misunderstanding I have seen on multiuser forums is who the latest reply is actually directed at, as sometimes this can be confusing on a busy thread. In face to face communications it would be more obvious who is talking to whom. Another drawback is a reduction in signal to noise ratio, especially on social networking sites like facebook that also have messages from games and quizzes mixed in. It is more of a pain to keep up on a collection of people if you have to sift through a bunch of “me too” messages or “Which A-Team character are you?” results.
The benefits to using technology for social communication are many, but the primary one to me is ease of communication for quick notification or organization purposes. For example, it is now much easier for me to figure out who among our social group can meet for dinner by using electronic means and sending out a mass message than calling everyone on the phone in turn. It is also easier to keep everyone updated on your day to day life and be updated on the events of theirs. Sharing pictures on a shared site easily is a relatively new development for many people. Now I get to see vacation pics from my out of state family fairly quickly, where as previously I may not have seen them until the next time I visited.
This leads into the new types of communication made possible by technologies, such as my friend sharing something funny he saw recently by taking a picture on his cell phone. I would not have been able to share that experience as well previously. In addition, geographically dispersed people can communicate MUCH more easily than before and with very little effort. This is especially true with people in different time zones or sleed schedules.
As far as unique phenomena in online communities, the biggest one that would not be seen without the advent of anonymous mass communications is that of the troll, griefer, or general nuissance poster. I can not imagine that many individuals spout hateful insults or spam-ish nonsense at groups of people continually to disrupt their conversations in real life. On this note I leave you with a good web comic on what happens when anonymity and an audience are mixed. Warning: may be offensive to some:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/

Edit: I also just found this: http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/11/dont-flame-me-bro.html

What are our responsibilities as merchants of change?

cbeccs — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:36:28 +0000

What are our responsibilities as merchants of change?
This question puts forth the idea of IT professionals as merchants of change. In some respects this is true, we get paid to bring new technologies online which change the way businesses operate and communicate. However I would say that viewing this as the main role of IT is dangerous; as others have pointed out in their blog entries, we don’t want to sell change for its own sake. I am sure many of my colleagues have been through sales pitches for new software or hardware that focuses on how it is new and different from competitors with very little said about how this change will benefit the business. I also think that people passionate about technology adapt to change quite easily, and need to recognize that this is not the case for everyone. Change can be very disruptive. As merchants of change (or “agents” of change), we must not only be sure to only bring about change that benefits people, but also help make that process of change as trouble free as possible. This includes being sure that new systems are tested and well understood, making sure common use cases/tasks are made as easy as possible, and providing good advanced notice and training. I think these last three are commonly overlooked and are a result of focusing more on the technology than the users that will use it.

Hello world!

cbeccs — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:11:55 +0000

Finally setting this up, the main purpose of this blog is to collect my thoughts on human issues in technology triggered by readings and discussions from my human issues CS class at Edgewood College.