Tech114 Connie Lee's Blog

Imagine you were lost in a foriegn country and you don’t have navigation devices with you, would you be able to find your way home? In the society nowaday, it seems to be imposible to do something as simple as finding directions without the aid of superior technology. Yet, way back before the GPS was invented, people could still found their way around by observing the stars in the night sky and the shadows cast by the sun. However, these methods can easily be afftected by the gloomy weather.At the pre-industrial era, where there was a litmited production,a more reliable naviagation tools were invented by the ancient China.

A simple instrumeent, the “south pointing fish” was made out of an iron or steel sheet that was cut out in a shape of a fish. By heating up the fish and soaking it in water, one were able to produce a weak state of magnetization. As the fish was placed on a calm water, its tail is pointed directly toward the noth, and head toward the south. It was inveneted sometime before the 2nd centry and was used for navigation by the 11th century. One of the modified versions of this naviation tool was the south-indicating ladle or sinan, which was invented during the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220AD). It consisted of a square bronze plate and a spoon-shaped needle made of magnetic lodestone. The plate had the circular shape that was carved as the eight trigrams of the I Ching, 24 directions and 28 lunar mansions. The square symbolized the earth and the circle symbolized the heaven. Its uses were for navigation and geomancy to determine the best location and time for such things as burials. The spoon shaped needle was light which can return to its original completeness after it responds to the attraction by orientation and directions.

With the similar concepts of the Earth’s magnetic poles, compass is officially invented during the industrial era, where the external energy sources were commonly used to increase the rate and scale of production. The dry compass was invented in medieval Europe around 1300, and the liquid-filled magnetic compass in the early 20th century. The face of the both types of compasses have highlights on the points of north, south, east and west. Both are often  built as a stand alone sealed instrument with a magnetized bar or needle turning freely upon a pivot, or moving in a fluid, and pointing in a northerly and southerly direction. A dry compass has a flexible surface inside the capsule to allow for changes caused by temperature or altitude. A liquid-filled compass consisted a magnetized needle inside a capsule completely filled with fluid such as oil. The fluid dampens the movement of the needle and causes the it to stabilize more quickly. North on the needle and other key points are often marked by some self-luminous materials to allow clear reading at night or in poor light. With the spread of use of compasses, it greatly improved the safety and efficiency of travel, especially ocean travel. 

In the post-industrial era, when an economic transition has occurred from a manufacturing based economy to a service based economy, A gyrocompass can be used to find accurate directions without being affected by stray magnetic fields or nearby electrical power circuits. A recent development is the electronic compass and it frequently appears as an optional subsystem built into GPS device. A GPS, Global Positioning System, is a electronic compass that can calculate heading, used with a sextant to calculate latitude, and with a marine chronometer to calculate longitude. It provided a much greater navigational capability. It is unaffected by not only the magnetic field, but also the weather and time of the day. Its resources are provided by a U.S. space-based global navigation satellite system, which receives boardcst signals when the search of a specific location is called upon. Its purpose was originally for military uses, and later also for map-making, land surveying, commerce, scientific use, and tracking.

References

http://inventors.about.com/od/cstartinventions/a/Compass.htm. Retrieved March 23, 2010.                 From inventors.about.com

eurserveur.insa-lyon.fr/…/boussoleeng.html. Retrieved March 23, 2010.                             From euserveur.insal-lyon.fr.

http://www.smith.edu/…/compass2.html. Retrieved January 20, 2008. From http://www.smith.edu

PS.posted up at 1:15am on March 25.

TECH 114 – Lab 2

Connie Lee (301112513)

Jessica Cheng (301104451)

Yen Lin (301123901)

Lulu Huang (301120497)

Invisible Audiences in the Food Court

            An example that explains the physical space of the invisible audiences can be found in the food court. A food court is a large area where people can enjoy their meals after purchasing them in the nearby store. While people are busy doing things and minding their own businesses, they might not realize or be aware that they are being observed, and the people observing them become the invisible audience. Some people actually enjoy watching others in busy environments like train and bus stations, parks, etc. They find observing various types of people in a single setting interesting. These watchers become the invisible audience.

In a way, this physical setting can be similar to observing a  forum, or a chatroom, where you can hear or read other people’s conversations, as a food court is typically loud and informal. A person overhears two people talking at a nearby table while having lunch and eavesdrops on their conversation. The person listening can be the “invisible audience”; the pair conversing may not know that someone is listening to their discussion.

A mediated public as food court is similar to these inadvertent public blogs online, where bloggers don’t expect strangers to paying attention to. Usually for these blogs, there are no huge audience who read the blogs regularly. The readers are usually invited guests instead of strangers. However, since the blog is open in public, there might be some unexpected readers that read the posts regularly without leaving comments to the author. This can also be an invisible audience online.

Some network platforms, as Facebook, Twitter or BBS are similar to the food court. They are both places that people can not only chat on, but also can see others chatting. They are both mass media that are open to everyone. In Facebook, when two people are chatting on it, then other people who are just on that webpage would see their words. These people would be the “invisible audience”. If they don’t leave a message on that webpage, nobody knows they have come.

PS: I posted this up at 11:35pm March 18, 2010. But the blog upload time is off.

Today during the lecture, the class was discussing about the use of facebook. I personally don’t go on facebook very often; however, I do enjoy looking at other people’s (whom I know)facebook. I came to Canada a few years ago, and most of my friends and family are in Hong Kong; by looking at their pictures posted on facebook and leaving messages on their walls, helps me keep in touch with them and know how they are doing. Yet, as much as I wish to keep the relationship, as years pass, the friendship fades away slowly. I still go up to facebook to check on them form time to time, but it makes me sad each time because when I look at their pictures, I remember the lost friendship.

I do not think it was a very successful collective activity in terms of crowd sourcing unless we had a excellent group of editors. The benefits of crowd sourcing is that it is efficient and powerful due to the men power. Yet, if there isn’t a system that can keep everyone in check, it became a confusing and tiring process. During the lab activity, there are people who were willing to step up and take the leadership role. However, due to the fact that the leaders might have little experiences in leading a class-size group of students,  it got rather difficult when the situation demanded them to suddenly jump into such active role. Also, there were people who participated in this activity were not as committed as the others, it was easy for people to be discouraged and cause the quality of the project to decrease. Eventually, everyone was able to submit their own post, yet, because the posts were all edited by students, the quality might be not as good. Although, the synchronization of the context was hard to achieve, it was nice to have a mixed of all kinds of style and form, as well as a blend of content and opinions. With point forms, paragraphs, summaries, pictures, graphics, charts, tables made the pages rich and colourful, and with the different styles of writing also kept the reading light and lively. If I were to produce this research project all myself, I believe it would be quite boring. This is because I am one person, which means I cannot represent everybody. It is almost impossible to reach a point where a person can voice out opinions that held by more than ten different people. Therefore, the research project would be only supporting my point of views, which could possibly be biased sometimes. Same with the depth and content of the project, it would not be as well developed as producing with a group of people due to time limit and men power.