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Links to the chapters of the book. You are currently reading Chapter 8.

Title Page

Preface

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Inventing Your Future

Chapter 3: Expertise and Problem Solving

Chapter 4: Human and Artificial Intelligence

Chapter 5: Computer-Assisted and Distance Learning

Chapter 6: Learning and Learning Theory

Chapter 7: Increasing Your Expertise in ICT

Chapter 8: Brief Introductions to A number of Key Ideas

Chapter 9: On the Lighter Side

References

Links to Sections of Chapter 8

Beginning of Chapter 8: Brief Introductions to A number of Key Ideas

“Do not fear going forward slowly; fear only to stand still.” (Chinese proverb)

“The value of an idea lies in using it.” (Thomas A. Edison)

The earlier chapters of this book have provided general background information helpful in understanding a wide variety of aspects of ICT in your education. This chapter briefly introduces some powerful ideas that can change your life. Each of these topics is worthy of a whole chapter—or indeed, a whole book and more.

For this chapter, I considered organizing the ideas from what I consider most important to less important. The complexity of this task befuddled my mind, so what you see is somewhat of a hodgepodge order. However, as is often said about beauty, importance is in the eye of the beholder. Ultimately the importance of each idea needs to be judged by you, the reader.

As you read these ideas, I hope that one or more of them will catch your attention, and that you will build the idea into a useful personal island of expertise. Remember the words of Thomas Edison, “The value of an idea lies in using it.”

Idea 1: Auxiliary Brain

Since the early days of computers, it has been common to refer to such a machine as being an electronic brain. That is because a computer seems to have some brain-like characteristics. I like the idea of thinking about a computer as an auxiliary brain—as a type of prosthesis.

You are used to making use of aids to your physical body. Thus, you may make use of clothing, bicycle, car, airplane, telescope, microscope, and so on. Some of these tools are quite easy to learn to use, while others may requires years of education, training, and experience in order to gain a high level of expertise.

You are also used to making use of aids to your brain. Reading, writing, paper and pencil arithmetic, book, calculator, audio and video storage and playback devices, and computer all fall into this category.

The computer brings a new dimension to physical and mental tools. A computer can be used for the storage and retrieval of information, but it can also be used for the automated processing of information.

Here is an example. You are used to the idea of “telling” a calculator what you want done by a sequence of key strokes, and then the calculator automatically carrying our a computational procedure for you. Somewhat in the sense, merely “telling” a problem to a computer and telling it to solve the problem can solve many problems. Thus, for example you easily learn to tell a computer to graph data, solve equations, and retrieve information. You can easily ask a Global Positioning System (GPS) system you are holding in your hand where it is (where you are) located on the surface of the earth.

Through progress in artificial intelligence, the “telling” process is increasingly being done by voice input. Other forms of input include keyboard, touch screen, and graphics tablet.

But wait…there’s more. When you download a music file or a text document to a computer, you are telling your computer to “memorize” what you are downloading. The speed of this memorization process depends on the bandwidth of the connectivity and the computer hardware. With modern technology, a full-length book might be downloaded from a distant computer into your computer in a few seconds. After telling the computer to download a file, you can tell it to play (a music of video) file, display (a file containing text, graphics, and pictures), or read out loud a text file.

Each of you will develop your own insights into the capabilities, limitations, personal uses, and professional uses of computer as an auxiliary brain. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

Some aspects of this auxiliary mind are so easy to learn to use and so powerful in use that a great many of your fellow students and peers will become fluent users. Failure to develop fluency in such uses may well lead to a competitive disadvantage in school and on the job.
An auxiliary brain can do many things faster and more accurately than you. Moreover, auxiliary brains will get more powerful over time, as thousands of researchers and companies work to improve their capability.
Many of the uses of an auxiliary brain can be easily learned at an amplification level—at a personally useful level. However, many others require a substantial amount of learning time and effort to gain a level of expertise that will give you a competitive advantage in solving problems and accomplishing tasks.
Unless your professional goals are mainly in the area of ICT expertise (for example, to be a computer technician, computer programmer, etc.), then you are faced by the need to balance your education time and efforts in traditional components of a (non-computer) discipline and computer aspects of the discipline. There is a reasonable chance that some of your faculty members will not be as much help in this endeavor as you would like. Remember, it is your education. It is up to you to shape this education to fit your long term needs and your views of your future.

Protect and Nurture Your Auxiliary Brain

I hope that you wear a seatbelt when riding in a car, and that you wear a helmet when riding a bicycle, motorcycle, or motor scooter. It should be obvious to you that you want to protect your brain and other components of your body.

Now, how about protecting your auxiliary brain and its contents? Suppose that you are carrying your laptop computer in your arms, walking to class and talking to a fellow student. You trip over a bump in the sidewalk, fall, drop your computer, and skin your knee.

The chances are that you can immediately get up, continue walking, later apply some first aid to your knee, and eventually your knee injury will heal.

But, what about your laptop computer and its contents? If you damage some of its components, the computer will be out of service until you can get them repaired or replaced. Suppose that you damage a hard drive. It is possible that some of your files cannot be recover—and file recovery from a damaged hard drive can be very expensive.

Of course, we do not need to present this scenario of tripping and falling. Think of yourself as seated comfortably, enjoying the pleasure of using your computer to browse the Web and chat with friends. All of a sudden, you hear a shrill grinding noise, and your computer dies. Perhaps it was a hard drive crash! Instead of a hard drive crash, consider the possibility that you are merely writing a paper and some sort of software error occurs. Your machine crashes, and the document you are writing is lost.

Equally bad things can happen from computer viruses and other malware. Quoting from the Wikipedia:

Malware is software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's informed consent. It is a portmanteau of the words "malicious" and "software". The expression is a general term used by computer professionals to mean a variety of forms of hostile, intrusive, or annoying software or program code.

…

Software is considered malware based on the perceived intent of the creator rather than any particular features. It includes computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, spyware, dishonest adware, and other malicious and unwanted software.

Here are some suggestions to help protect your auxiliary brain:

Install anti-virus protection, and keep this software up to date. Learn enough about sources of viruses and other malware so that you have a chance of detecting and avoiding them when they arrive as attachments to your email.
Some pieces of software include a provision for automatic SAVE of a document at prescribed time intervals. Thus, for example, you might want to set your word processor so that it does a SAVE every five minutes. Keystroke capture and save software is available. It captures ever keystroke you keyboard, and can be used to recover lost material if your computer crashes.
Do an off-machine backup of important files every day. You might do this to a flash drive (thumb drive, pen drive), a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM, an external hard drive, or by making use of a variety of off site storage facilities available on the Web.
There are a variety of pieces of software (some may come free with your computer system) that can examine your computer files, detect a variety of errors and problems, and correct some linkage and storage errors. Learn how to use such software.

Your college or university probably has a technical support center. Keep a phone number and email address for this center in a convenient location, so that if something goes wrong with your computer you can quickly seek help. This center may have a Website containing suggestions about what to do if something goes wrong and what to do periodically to help maintain the health of your computer system.

For example, as I was editing this chapter a few minutes ago, my cat knocked over a glass of water standing near my keyboard. The water flooded my keyboard. Bad kitty! What should I do? What if it had been a glass of pop or a beer?

Fortunately for me, I had done a backup to a flash drive just before the accident occurred. While my keyboard dries, I am using my laptop computer to continue my editing work.

Idea 2: Procedural and Computational Thinking

Using a computer system involves telling the system what you want it to do. The type of thinking involved in telling a computer what you want it to do is called procedural thinking or computational thinking. The term computational thinking is now coming into vogue. It can be considered to be broadening of the idea of procedural thinking.

The term computational thinking is now being used to describe people and computers working together to solve problems and accomplish tasks. As Jeannette Wing (2006), a highly respected computer scientist, says:

Computational thinking builds on the power and limits of computing processes, whether they are executed by a human or by a machine. Computational methods and models give us the courage to solve problems and design systems that no one of us would be capable of tackling alone. Computational thinking confronts the riddle of machine intelligence: What can humans do better than computers, and what can computers do better than humans? Most fundamentally it addresses the question: What is computable? Today, we know only parts of the answer to such questions.

A computer program is a detailed step set of instructions that can be interpreted and carried out by a computer. A computer is a machine that can quickly and accurately follow (carry out, execute) the detailed step-by-step set of instructions in a computer program. Computer programmers design, write, and test computer programs—so they are deeply involved in doing computational thinking.

However, all computer users are involved in computational thinking at some level, as they interact with a computer and tell it what they want done. This is true whether you are playing a computer game, retrieving information from the Web, or using a word processor to write a paper.

Three “Levels” of Telling a Computer What to Do

You can tell a computer what you want done by using an applications program such as a word processor, by using problem-solving software such as a spreadsheet, or through use of a general purpose programming language.

The discipline of computer and information science (CIS) is large and growing rapidly. It is a complex field, with a number of important sub disciplines. Chapter 4 provides a brief introduction to Artificial Intelligence. This sub discipline of CIS is now more than 50 years old.

The history of computer programming (software engineering) is often traced back Ada Lovelace. Quoting from the Wikipedia:

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (December 10, 1815–November 27, 1852), born Augusta Ada Byron, is mainly known for having written a description of Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine.

In discussing computational thinking, Jeannette Wing asks the question, “What is computable?” That is, what types of problems can be solved by computational thinking processes carried out by humans and computers? Computatability is an important and challenging sub discipline of CIS.

I am composing this book while seated at my computer, using keyboard and mouse for input. When I turn my computer on, select a document (such as a draft of this book), and tell the computer to RUN or EXECUTE this document, I am doing computational thinking. Telling the computer system to RUN the document is actually telling the computer to select the word processing software that was used in creating and saving the document, run that piece of applications software, and then load my document into computer memory that can be used by that piece of software. The document itself contains detailed instructions to the computer program in terms of layout specifications, fonts, spacing, and so on.

The last sentence is important. When I am using a word processor, the software is not only storing the words I am writing. It is also storing detailed instructions to the word processing software on how to format the text I am writing. That is, as I write, I am creating text and I am also creating instructions to be followed by a computer program.

This level of computer programming is hidden so well from the computer user that a typical user is unaware that he or she is actually creating computer code that is later executed by a computer. A similar type of well-hidden computer programming occurs as I select a graphics package (perhaps one built into my word processor) and use the graphic tools to do a drawing. As I tell the computer how to draw various components of my drawing, the computer creates and stores detailed step-by-step directions on how to do the drawing.

A higher level of “telling” a computer what to do is illustrated by a spreadsheet. Suppose I want a spreadsheet to use in creating and following a household budget. I open a spreadsheet application program, specify a two dimensional table, enter some numbers into the table, and specify some computations that are to be carried out on various cells, rows, and columns. I might also specify that a graphical display, such as a pie chart or bar graph, be created using data from a specified part of my table.

In essence, creating a spreadsheet is a process of developing a certain type of computer model—a representation of a certain problem and steps to follow in using (manipulating) various aspects of the model. If my spreadsheet is a personal budget, I can uses it to pose “what if” types of questions as I explore various aspects of my budget.

To create my spreadsheet budget model, I had to understand the task to be accomplished, design a representation of this task, implement the representation on a computer, test the resulting spreadsheet for possible errors, and then use the spreadsheet to actually explore and possibly solve my budgeting problem.

In essence, I had to carry out all of the steps that a computer programmer carries out when writing computer programs. However, these steps were carried out in a somewhat limited context—in a context specifically designed for representing problems involving tables of numbers and computations to be carried out on tables of numbers.

Of course, spreadsheet software can also be used for other purposes. For example, many people use a spreadsheet o create, store, and manipulate a database of names and addresses.

There are many different general-purpose computer programming languages. Examples include BASIC, C, C++, COBOL, Logo, and so on. A programmer learns one or more of these languages. More important, however, a programmer learns to design, implement, and test programs that solve or help to solve problems. The underlying computational thinking is somewhat independent of the particular language being used in the programming.

It is quite easy to learn a little bit about computer programming. It used to be common for grade school students to learn a little bit of BASIC or Logo. There are free versions of such programming languages available on the Web. Some grade school students still receive instruction in these languages or in a variety of more recently developed languages that are quite suitable for their cognitive developmental levels.

If you are interested in dabbling in a modern programming language designed for use in education, do a Google search for Alice CMU . and for Scratch MIT. Alice (developed at Carnegie Mellon University) and Scratch (develop at Massachusetts Institute of Technology) are good examples of programming languages designed for students.

Idea 3: Build Your Personal Library

As you proceed through your higher education, you should be collecting material and resources that you feel will be important and useful to you over the long run. One way to do much of this is electronically. Think of this as an ongoing, lifelong project. This section contains a few examples of categories of information that you might want to collect.

Pithy Quotations

By now you should be used to the idea that each chapter of this book begins with one or more quotations. Each has been selected because it is relevant to the ideas of the chapter and because I, personally, find it interesting. Many writers make use of such quotations in their writing.

There are many sources of quotations on the Web. When I am searching for one that might fit well into a particular book or chapter, I often encounter others that I find appealing, but that are not of immediate use to me. I save these on one of my Websites.

You can see my collection at http://uoregon.edu/~moursund/dave/quotations.htm. At the end of my list, you will see that I have written comments about a few of the quotations. The combination of a quote and my comments provides a possible starting point for a future article or chapter that I might want to write.

As you make your own collection of quotes, you might want to add comments as to why each one appeals to you—what does it mean to you, personally. Be guided by:

"The strongest memory is not as strong as the weakest ink." (Confucius, 551-479 B.C.)

Resume

Sooner or later, you will likely have need of a well-designed resume that appropriately presents your preparation and areas of expertise. I suggest that you do three things:

Find or create a resume design that you feel is appropriate to your job and career aspirations. Use this design, refining it to fit your specific needs. And improve on it as your needs change.
Create a “current draft” of your one or two page short resume and update it periodically.
Create and steadily add to a much longer resume that contains items that you might someday want to refer to and that someday may be of use to you in a specific short resume. A very rough rule of thumb is that every three months you should think about what you have done during the past three months that is worthy of inclusion in your personal long resume. If three months go by in which you have done nothing worth of mention, you might want to think about what you are doing in your education, job or career, and life!

Portfolio and Electronic Portfolio

It is becoming common for grade school students to begin to develop portfolios of their schoolwork and other activities. The process includes selecting representative samples of one’s work and writing a critical analysis of the work. This is an important aspect of learning to self-assess and learning to take responsibility for one’s education.

Quoting from the Wikipedia:

An electronic portfolio, also known as an e-portfolio, or digital portfolio, is a collection of electronic evidence (artifacts, including inputted text, electronic files such as Word and PDF files, images, multimedia, blog entries and Web links etc.) assembled and managed by a user, usually online. E-portfolios are both demonstrations of the user’s abilities and platforms for self-expression, and, if they are online, they can be maintained dynamically over time. Some e-portfolio applications permit varying degrees of audience access, so the same portfolio might be used for multiple purposes.

Increasingly, college students are being encouraged or required to develop a portfolio of their academic work. In certain areas of study, this is a “must.” An artist, architect, or musician needs to have a means of showing his or her accomplishments and levels of expertise. Nowadays, this is often done as an electronic portfolio—an e-portfolio or efolio. An efolio can contain videos showing a teacher teaching, a musician performing, a dancer dancing, and so on.

Development of a good quality efolio is a significant task. In higher education institutions requiring such work, the task is often a three-credit course that includes significant instruction in both design and production.

References

The chances are that as a student you are being expected to write a number of papers each term. Even in a short paper, the “academic quality” is apt to be improved by including some references. In longer papers, this is typically a requirement.

There are a number of widely accepted styles for bibliographic references. Thus, you will want to select one or two that are accepted in the disciplines you are studying, and learn to use these styles. You can get help in this learning process from software (such as End Notes) and from a number of different Websites. My recent Google search of bibliographic references produced about 1.2 million hits.

Over the long run, you will likely find it highly advantageous to build and maintain an annotated list of references that you have used or that you feel might be useful to you in the future. The annotation for a reference need not be extensive. A sentence or two, or perhaps a copy of part of the abstract or summary of an article, will likely suffice. The goal is to provide enough information so that you can remember why you included the reference in your list.

Increasingly, you will be making use of references to material available on the Web. You will want to include a Web address for such materials. You are aware, of course, that some of these links will disappear (no longer work) sometime in the future. This is one reason for an annotation. The annotation will likely help you to find an alternate link or an alternate source of similar information.

Copies of All of Your Academic Writings,

An earlier part of this section discussed the idea of an efolio. This contains exemplars of you work and each entry is accompanied by an analysis and discussion of why you included this piece of work in your portfolio.

I find it highly advantageous to keep an electronic copy of each article, talk, chapter, book, and so on that I write. I often make use of such materials as I attack new projects.

Similarly, you may want to keep electronic copies of each paper you write and each project that you do while in college. This habit will serve you well if you then end up in a job/career that requires writing reports, giving presentations, and so on.

Another thing to think about are the notes that you take in classes. Some students now use a laptop computer or tablet to take these notes. Others take handwritten notes and then organize them on a computer. Think of such tasks from two points of view:

Organizing and studying the notes as part of the process of learning course material and passing tests.
Having a record of what you have studied and learned as an aid to relearning the material sometime in the future.

This second purpose is particularly important. Research indicates that most students forget a quite high percentage of what they learn in a course. However, the course provided a foundation for retrieving information and relearning information related to the course. Thus, as you take a course, think in terms of someday wanting to retrieve information about the course content and someday wanting to relearn part of the course. Good notes created when you were taking the course can be quite helpful.

Another aspect of this note creation process is to build a briefly annotate bibliography of Websites that contain material you are learning. Select Websites that are apt to have a long life. When possible, select some Websites that are frequently updated, so that they cover the material that interests you from a current, up to date point of view.

Idea 4: Open Source Books and Other Print Materials

When I was a child, I greatly enjoyed reading Edwin A Abbott’s book “Flatland.” It is now out of copyright and the illustrated 1884 version is available free on the Web. Perhaps you remember this delightful book from you childhood. Quoting from the beginning of the story (Abbott, 1884):

I CALL our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.

Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows - only hard and with luminous edges - and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen. Alas, a few years ago, I should have said "my universe": but now my mind has been opened to higher views of things.

This is but one example of hundreds of thousands of books that are now out of copyright. Many of these books are being made available free on the Web.

There are a number of organizations working to create large libraries of free online books. Books being added to their sites include out of copyright books, books contributed by their authors, books contributed by publishers, and so on. The legality of scanning books that are still under copyright, and making them available in an online searchable format, is being challenged.

Project Gutenberg project provides a good example of the open source movement. With the aid of a grant and lots of volunteer efforts, a large number of out of copyright books are being made available.

Quoting from Project Gutenberg (n.d.):

There are over 20,000 free books in the Project Gutenberg Online Book Catalog.

A grand total of over 100,000 titles is available at Project Gutenberg Partners, Affiliates and Resources.

Languages with more than 50 books: Chinese, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Tagalog.

Listen to a radio broadcast discussing Project Gutenberg and other related projects at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10136882.

Richard Baraniuk is a Professor at Rice University and Director of the Connexions project. He is a leader in the open-source learning movement. Baraniuk (2006) is a free 19 minute video: Goodbye, textbooks; hello, open-source learning.

The Connexions project is assembling a large collection of relatively current academic materials that the authors make available under a Creative Commons license. (The book you are currently reading is available free under a Creative Commons license.) These materials are available for viewing on the Web, organization into textbooks for students to use free on the Web or to print, and for printing hardcopy bound books at a relatively modest cost.

Quoting from Jade (2006):

Connexions is organized around the “Content Commons,” an online repository that contains thousands of scholarly modules — manuscripts roughly equivalent to two or three pages from a textbook. Connexions provides free software that allows anyone to reuse, revise and recombine the modules to suit their needs. This feature gives people the option of creating customized courses, custom textbooks, and personalized study guides.

“Let’s say a student is in an engineering course, and they’re a little weak in math, so they want to weave in more fundamental calculus. Connexions allows them to create their own customized version of the course,” Baraniuk said. “They can do that right now for free on the Web, and if they want that version in book form, then the [on-demand press] QOOP deal will allow them to have it delivered to their home within a matter of days.”

Other major projects include:

The Million Book project at Carnegie Mellon, initiated by Raj Reddy and discussed earlier in this book. See http://www.library.cmu.edu/Libraries/MBP_FAQ.html.

Internet Archive, San Francisco. It is developing its own collection and it also provides access to a large amount of online open source materials provided by others. See http://www.library.cmu.edu/Libraries/MBP_FAQ.html. Quoting from http://www.opencontentalliance.org/:

The Internet Archive announced on December 20, 2006 that it had achieved a milestone in having digitized and made available to date, a total of 100,000 books on its servers. The bulk of these books are from members of the Open Content Alliance. All are available without restriction to public access and enjoyment.

Google Books Library Project is working to digitize many millions of books. See http://books.google.com/googlebooks/library.html. Quoting from the Website:

When you click on a search result for a book from the Library Project, you'll see basic bibliographic information about the book, and in many cases, a few snippets—a few sentences showing your search term in context. If the book is out of copyright, you’ll be able to view and download the entire book. In all cases, you'll see links directing you to online bookstores where you can buy the book and libraries where you can borrow it.

Encyclopedia of Life. World Species Project: (EoL, 2007).

Many people have been working on pieces of this project for many years. The current idea is to join forces and fill in the gaps. Create an encyclopedia of all earth’s 1.8 million known species. The information will be available free on the Web and organized to serve the needs of both researchers and students.

National Science Digital Library. See http://nsdl.org.

The National Science Digital Library (NSDL) was created by the National Science Foundation to provide organized access to high quality resources and tools that support innovations in teaching and learning at all levels of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education.

United States Library of Congress. See http://www.loc.gov/index.html. The Library is committing significant resources to build its digital collections. See http://www.loc.gov/search/new/. Quoting from the library’s 2003 long range planning document:

The Congress of the United States has been the greatest patron of a library in the history of the world—mandating and funding the programs of this unique resource for knowledge on a nonpartisan basis for 203 years. The Library of Congress under its 2004-2008 strategic plan will continue to build on its historic mission, “...to make its resources available and useful to the Congress and the American people and to sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity for future generations.” We are faced with the greatest upheaval in the transmission of knowledge since the invention of the printing press: the electronic onslaught of digitized multimedia communication. This strategic plan will guide the Library as it superimposes a new, networked digital universe on top of its traditional artifactual (analog) collections.

Idea 5: Global Sustainability

You are part of a world that faces a large and growing problem of sustainability. The current population of humans has grown to about 6.6 billion, and it is still growing at a rapid pace. A billion people live in extreme poverty. On a daily basis, they lack adequate food, shelter, pure drinking water, educational opportunities, and other things that you probably consider the bare necessities of life. When their living conditions are expressed in terms of money, they live on less than a dollar a day per person.

The world is quite capable of providing a descent standard of living to its current population. For example, the past couple of decades of change in China and India have significantly decreased the percentage of the world’s population living in poverty. Technology is playing a major role in this progress.

Some of this technology is high tech, such as providing cell telephones and their supporting infrastructure to people living in rural villages and providing basic vaccinations against some truly horrid diseases. Other is less high tech, such as providing sewer systems, pure water, and improved roads. Often appropriate technology (cost effective and sustainable within the income levels of the people making use of the technology) is a key to significant improvements in quality of life.

Sustainability issues have been around a long time. About 150 years ago, as London grew to be the largest city in the world, it was not at all clear that it would survive. Steven Johnson is culture/technology visionary. His book, The ghost map: the story of London’s most terrifying epidemic—and how it changed science, cities, and the modern world (2006) follows a doctor and a clergyman who teamed up in 1854 to figure out why cholera had ravaged a neighborhood in London. The book has nothing to do with ICT, but it illustrates scientific thinking and methodology that made a huge change in our world. It also illustrates that we have come a long way in the last 150 years. For more information about Steven Johnson and his work, see:

A 10 minute video available at http://ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=s_johnson.

A short article about Johnson and his writings available at http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/10/30/johnson/index.html.

Sustainability, global warming, energy, and related topics are now regular topics in world, national, and local news. I enjoy reading and listening to Thomas Friedman ‘s insights into these issues. For a short video of Friedman discussing the energy crisis, see http://www.poptech.org/popcasts/popcasts.aspx?viewcastid=1.

If you have not yet seen Al Gore’s The Inconvenient Truth, I recommend that you do so. Also, see the related Website http://www.climatecrisis.net/.

As you pursue your higher education and chart a path through life, think both inwardly and outwardly. Work to live a life that is appropriately balanced in helping yourself, helping others, and helping the sustainability of the world.

Idea 6: Computer Ethics

I assume that you set high ethical and moral standards for yourself and expect them of others. Ethics is the study of moral standards, and morality is:

standards of conduct that are accepted as right or proper
the rightness or wrongness of something as judged by accepted moral standards (Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation)

ICT has brought a new challenge to all of us. It is now very easy to make and share electronic digital copies of intellectual property belonging to others. This book contains a number of pieces quoted from others. You will note the large number of references for these various quoted materials.

Computer ethics deals with how computer-using people make decisions about their uses of ICT. Gradually, governments are developing laws that help to define and legal systems are working to uphold ICT “standards of conduct that are accepted as right or proper.” Right now, many people ignore the laws and/or seek and find loopholes. Thus, for example, you undoubtedly receive quite a bit of email spam. Our laws and legal enforcement system have not succeeded in dealing with the spam.

Quoting from the Wikipedia:

In law, intellectual property (IP) is an umbrella term for various legal entitlements which attach to certain names, written and recorded media, and inventions. The holders of these legal entitlements are generally entitled to exercise various exclusive rights in relation to the subject matter of the IP. The term intellectual property reflects the idea that this subject matter is the product of the mind or the intellect, though the term is a matter of some controversy.

A number of people and organizations have developed computer ethical standards. Many of the materials currently in use are rooted in the “Ten Commandments of Computer Ethic that first appeared in an article written by Ramon C. Barquin (1992) and published by the Computer Ethics Group. Here is his list:

Thou shalt not use a computer to harm other people.
Thou shalt not interfere with other people’s computer work.
Thou shalt not snoop around in other people’s computer files.
Thou shalt not use a computer to steal.
Thou shalt not use a computer to bear false witness.
Thou shalt not copy or use proprietary software for which you have not paid.
Thou shalt not use other people’s computer resources without authorization or proper compensation
Thou shalt not appropriate other people’s intellectual output.
Thou shalt think about the social consequences of the program you are writing or the system you are designing.
Thou shalt always use a computer in ways that insure consideration and respect for your fellow humans.

Computer ethics is, of course, a worldwide issue. With the rapid improvement in telecommunications (including email and the Web), differences in commonly accepted practices between different groups of people are a major challenge. Every two years a worldwide Computer Ethics Philosophical Enquiry conference is held to help identify and discuss international computer ethics issues (CEPE, 2007).

Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies

The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies promotes the ethical use  of technology to expand  human capabilities. Quoting from IEET (n.d.):

The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies was founded in 2004 by philosopher Nick Bostrom and bioethicist James J. Hughes. The IEET is incorporated as a nonprofit organization in the United States. The IEET’s Board of Directors currently come from Spain, Canada, the UK and the United States. By promoting and publicizing the work of thinkers who examine the social implications of scientific and technological progress, we seek to contribute to the understanding of the impact of emerging technologies on individuals and societies. We also want to help shape public policies that distribute the benefits and reduce the risks of technological advancement.

Idea 7: Your Health and Life Expectancy

Most college students are interested in their short and long term physical and mental health. The Web provides access to a large number of aids that can help you address these interests.

Responsible health-oriented Websites will include some general sort of advice and warning, such as the following quote from Don R. Powell (2006):

This book is not meant to substitute for expert medical advice or treatment. The information is given to help you make informed choices about your health. Follow your health care provider’s advice if it differs from what is given in this book.

Life Expectancy

As you plan your education and your future, it might be helpful to have a good estimate of how long you are apt to live. Such estimates are statistical in nature. Thus, they cannot tell you if you will be involved in a fatal accident or contact a fatal disease next week, next month, or next year. Instead, such forecasts take into consideration the probability of such an occurrence.

Here are two sites that I have enjoyed using:

Life Expectancy: http://www.nmfn.com/tn/learnctr--lifeevents--longevity_game The Longevity Game. Very simple and short. Easy to try experiments of the “What if …?” variety.
Living to 100: http://www.livingto100.com/ Quite an extensive list of questions. Asks for some personal information (email address) that you may not want to provide. My suggestion is that you provide a factitious address if you do not want them to contact you. Provides good feedback and suggestions.

These sites asked for information about height and weight in order to calculate your basic mass index (BMI). There are many no hassle sites that are easy to use to calculator just your BMI. For example, see the National Institute of Health: http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/.

Exercise and the Aging Brain

A person’s brain reaches its full maturity at about 25 to 30 years of age. This is considerably later than full physical maturity is achieved. You know, of course, that it is important to take care of your physical body. Exercise, appropriate diet, enough sleep, and so on all contribute to this.

In recent years, research has provided us with considerable evidence of the effects of physical exercise on the brain. Quoting from an American Psychological Association document (APA, 2006):

Based on a review of studies on exercise and its effect on brain functioning in human and animal populations, researchers find that physical exercise may slow aging’s effects and help people maintain cognitive abilities well into older age. Animals seem to benefit from exercise too and perform spatial tasks better when they are active. Furthermore, fitness training—an increased level of exercise—may improve some mental processes even more than moderate activity, say the authors of the review.

Higher education appears to have long-term cognitive health benefits. Quoting from APA (2005):

A new study from the University of Toronto sheds light on why higher education seems to buffer people from cognitive declines as they age. Brain imaging showed that in older adults taking memory tests, more years of education were associated with more active frontal lobes—the opposite of what happened in young adults. It appears possible that education strengthens the ability to “call in the reserves” of mental prowess found in that part of the brain.

Researchers hope to further understand how mental exercise strengthens mental muscles, so to speak, in old age. Animal brains respond to more complex environments by growing more neural connections; perhaps, says Grady, “more education while the brain is still developing—up to age 30 it is still maturing—causes more connections between brain regions to form. When some of these are lost with age, there are still enough left, a type of redundancy in the system.” [For a more detailed discussion, see Springer et al. (2005).]

The past few years have brought us a number of companies and Websites based on the increasing evidence of the positive effects of various computer-based brain exercises for the aging brain.” “Use it or lose it” is now a generally accepted statement about cognitive capability.

General Medical References

Here are some additional resources that you will likely find helpful:

WebMD is an excellent source of information. See http://www.webmd.com/.

Powell, Don R. and the AIPM (2006). Students’ self-care guide. American Institute for Preventive Medicine. Retrieved 4/29/07: http://healthcenter.uoregon.edu/patientinfo/handbook/index.htm.
Mayo Clinic. http://www.mayoclinic.com/

Summary and Self-Assessment

This chapter contains short discussions of a number of important topics. For each, you can decide for yourself whether the topic is relevant to your current interests, and whether it might be important to your future.

If the topic seems important and relevant to your life, consider developing it into an island or a broader area of expertise. In doing this, you will need to learn enough about the topic so that you can tell if you are learning what you want to learn.

Such self-guidance is an important step forward in your education. Instead of having others tell you want to learn and then providing tests to assess what you have learned, you can decide for yourself what you want to learn. You can self-assess—determine for yourself whether you have gained a level of expertise that meets your personal and professional needs.

Once you get used to the idea of developing expertise in topics of personal and professional interest, you will never run out of physical and mental challenges. There will always be advances in your chosen areas that will challenge your current level of understanding and expertise. There will always be new areas that peak your interests.

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