User:Dianewyh

Hello, I am Diane Wong and am working on this WikiEducator page as part of my coursework (CIS2).

Best Topic Resources (Group 3)
Grading Criteria:

For each topic below, the best author was selected based on the following criteria. Best author 's name is listed in parentheses. And I don't include myself to be part of the nomination as I feel like my opinion could be biased. Result:
 * Resource relevance to the topics
 * Quality of quoted resources
 * Merits of Comment
 * Whether author's comment supports quoted article's theme
 * Whether author's comment provoke further discussion/thinking

Section 1: Introductions

(Jonathan Martinez, good discussion on the Fake Accounts under "Computers and Society Websites")

Section 2: Privacy and Freedom of Speech

(Sidney Atchazo, his article on privacy act is closely related to this section, and he has provide good discussion)

Section 3: Intellectual Property

(Zachrie Duldulao, his article on Copyright is fairly detailed in providing introduction to the topic, and his summary is brief)

Section 4: Crime

(Jasmine Alvarez, her article on hate crimes brought unique discussion to this topic, I am amazed with her association with Crimes on the internet & Hate Crime. Hate Crime on the internet, indeed, is a topic that is worthy further research)

Section 5: Employment, Education, and Entertainment

(Jasmine Alvarez, She provided not long resources/articles related to the topic. She also gave a good introduction and asked questions that support further discussion)

Section 6: Midterm – Grand Challenges

(Zachrie Duldulao, his discussion of converting CO2 into other valuable resources are very thorough and detailed)

Section 7: Evaluating and Controlling Technology

(Zachrie Duldulao, his selected articles are closely related to the topic. His discussion gave a good summary of the article content)

Section 8: Risks, Failures and Responsibilities

(Jonathan Martinez, his article about our technology dependency, from a psychology point of view, is fairly unique. The article compare different kind of addiction is thought-provoking).

Section 9: Anytime, Anywhere

(Jonathan Martinez, his article on Technology and Election is unique as it predicts how technology will impact the 2020 election).

Section 10: Technology Advances, Social Trends

(Zachrie Duldulao, his article of Future of Computers is closely related to the topic. The article covers 7 ways that we will interact with computer in the future. His comments and choice of article are thought-provoking)

Selected media - Society (Diane Wong)
The article talks about useful advice/tips on internet safety. it describes what parents can do to protect their children.

http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/internet.htm

This article is particular useful to young parent as it gives comprehensive advice/comments on both active and passive levels. My view on this topic is we need to keep up with the latest threats, adapt and stay proactive. That means we have to learn continuously and use technology to our advantage. I also think it is important to keep up with our children to be able to support/help them more quickly.

Computer and Society Websites (Diane Wong)
These two articles are related to the fake user account on the social media. The first article was the estimated number of fake/duplicated account in 2012. The second article is about a popular Instagram "influencer" that has over 1.5 million followers. The model was generated by computer graphic, fashion and marketing team.

https://www.cnn.com/2012/08/02/tech/social-media/facebook-fake-accounts/index.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/what-s-human-instagram-s-faux-influencers-gain-real-followers-n893341

I first heard about the news about the Instagram "influencer" about a two weeks ago. Since then, I keep on thinking whether how much of the contents that were posted on the social media are indeed genuine.

Social media has huge impact on our daily lives, from connecting with friends, meeting new people/people similar to our interest group. It even can influence our opinion & view on different topics.

For example, if I decide to buy a vacuum cleaner, I will go on to websites like YouTube to look at reviews before I make my decision.

My view towards this topic is that we should stay vigilant/critical on the information and analyze them prior to forming our opinion.

2-Factor authentication: (Diane Wong)
https://www.cnet.com/news/two-factor-authentication-what-you-need-to-know-faq/

2-factor authentication uses 2 forms of authentication to verify user’s identification, rather than based solely on username/password traditionally. This is a significant step in protecting internet user data privacy.

Phishing: (Diane Wong)
https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/22/18193107/google-phishing-emails-quiz-jigsaw-cyberattack

This website describes Google’s effort to test whether user can identify phishing emails. Phishing is a form of cybercrime of which the victims are targeted by email, telephone or text message by sources that pretend to be legit. Phishing can result in privacy data loss and/or identify thief. This is closely related to this class because we encounter with these mediums almost on daily basis.

Fair Use: (Diane Wong)
https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-use/

Fair Use allows use of copyrighted materials for limited and “transformative” purpose. Some examples include parody, commentary, and criticism.

It’s related to this class because Fair Use, in certain sense, helps to maintain freedom of speech, preventing criticism, commentary & parody be labeled as infringement of copyright.

Open Source: (Diane Wong)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License

GPL: general public license is popular among open source software distribution. It is a copyleft license, meaning the derivative work can be distributed using the same license terms. This license set the foundation, allowing different users to run, share, study, and make changes to the software.

It’s related to this class because it’s a different type of licensing (i.e. proprietary licensing) from others such as IP protection/copyright/DMCA. Open source licensing is important, as it encourages collaboration among developers, and educational initiatives.

Hacked - now what?:
https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch001539.htm (Diane Wong)

The article I picked focus on the recovery of the personal identity “damage control” after the event. It covers advice from checking the computer, changing all passwords, to letting others in the contact know about the event (so to prevent your contacts from receiving fraudulent email from you). I think this article will be helpful to all users.

Computers and Crime:
https://www.wired.com/story/atlanta-spent-26m-recover-from-ransomware-scare/ (Diane Wong)

This article reported a ransomware incident with the Atlanta police department. Hacker initially demanded ransom for $52,000 worth of bitcoin, but later withdrew the offer. This incident costed Atlanta police department a total of around $2.6million dollars. These expenses were related to the recovery work, related digital forensic investigation of the incident, and infrastructure upgrade.

I thought to myself, if I was the person in charge from the Atlanta PD, would I have agreed to pay the ransom. I probably will not agree on paying the ransom as this may encourage future hackers. What is your take on this? What strategy would you have picked?☁

What is Edutainment and Why Kids Learn Better this way? (Diane Wong)
https://dinnertablemba.com/edutainment/

This article starts with a brief introduction of what is Edutainment, with a focus on children edutainment. The writer then explains the five reasons why edutainment is beneficial in helping children staying motivated & engaged in learning. I rate this article 4/5 as it explains in details explaining why Edutainment is good for children, with lots of examples & quotes. It also includes questions to the reader, which give reader space to reflect/think more on the subject. It even includes a summary figure to reiterate the benefits. The only improvement I can think of is I wish there were more reader feedback/comments.

Does Edutainment Work? (Diane Wong)
https://innotechtoday.com/edutainment/

This article starts off with the introduction of what is the definition of Edutainment, with a focus of Edutainment for children. It provides an overview to the current landscape of the children edutainment on the market and zoom in on the success story of Sesame Street. I rate this article 2/5, as it has a good introduction plus good discussion on the success story of Sesame Street. However, the discussion is rather short.

Assistive Technology
Assistive Technology in Higher Education – Accommodations for students with hidden disabilities (Diane Wong)

http://web.utk.edu/~jenscag/SPED590/SPEDpresentation.pdf

This article talks about the assistive technology available to the students at University of Tennessee with physical or mental impairments such as learning disabilities, Dyslexia, depression, epilepsy, AD/HD, and autism. The available assistive technologies include screen reader, OCR, speech recognition, computer flow chart.

For example, screen reader is helpful to slow reader, while computer flow chart helps student turning their ideas into picture/flowchart. This is often referred as cognitive mapping.

These assistive technologies are certainly of great importance to motivate/help students with disabilities to be self-sufficient in the learning process.

Games in Education
http://www.gamesforchange.org/game/3rd-world-farmer/ (Diane Wong)

The game simulates the challenges that farmers face in the 3rd world countries. The game highlights the lack of basic necessities, with a list of difficulties such as wars, diseases and droughts. This surely was not an easy game to play. My kids are not old enough to play this game yet, but I can imagine recommending this game to them because it help them to gain deeper learning about the topics, as well as allowing them a chance to improvise in difficult situation.

Global Learning - Empowering children to take control of their own learning
How digital technology can help reinvent basic education in Africa

http://theconversation.com/how-digital-technology-can-help-reinvent-basic-education-in-africa-85937/

Description: this article describes how digital technologies have transformed education in Africa. One of the most successful projects is the One Laptop per Child project. This project was launched in 2005, aiming to provide schools with laptop with low cost. The laptop not only serves as an education tool for traditional school subjects, it also allows students to be familiar with computer and internet. In the following years, other low-cost electronics such as smartphones, tablets and kindle-style electronic readers were distributed to the students in Africa to address the lack of books and school textbooks problem.

The project is successful as it provided a localized/tailored solution that address the particular problem that students face in Africa. These programs also included user feedback for further improvement. Last but not least, constant public awareness and support help to sustain the project funding which is crucial in ensuring the long-term success of the program.

Interactive Educational Television in the Amazon

https://blogs.worldbank.org/edutech/interactive-educational-television-amazon/

Description: this article describes the use of digital technologies as a viable approach to support education and improve literacy for the Amazonas regions in Brazil. The Amazonas regions is geographically isolated, which had limited access to common education resources. Interactive Educational Television is set up with either live or pre-recorded TV programs. The program covers all the subjects that are taught in school and made is more accessible to the local students. With the help of the program, it helps the local schools to provide more support, especially these schools are usually short-staffed and under-resourced.

The long-term effectiveness of the project is yet to be determined, but given the lack of educational resources that the Amazonas tribes are currently facing, The interactive television program was a very good starting point. The program can be viewed as a pilot program to improve literacy for local tribes, as well as raising public awareness on the issue.

Mobile phones help promote literacy in Papua New Guinea | ICT4Education

http://ict4d.co/research/ict4education-sms-story-papua-new-guinea/

Description: this article describes the use of mobile phone to promote literacy in Papua New Guinea. In Papua New Guinea (PNG), there are lots of isolated remote communities. In addition, there are more than 800 spoken languages, which is one of the main struggles faced by their education system.

With the help of the Australian government, a technology project was setup to use Mobile phone as educational tool to deliver story in SMS (Text Message) format. This help to provide alternative reading materials to the children as often time they have limited/no access to reading materials.

Though the assessment report concluded that a mixed result on the effectiveness of the program. In my opinion, the project is still in its infancy stage. The project is an important step in raising literacy awareness in PNG.

7. Evaluating and Controlling Technology
While with the rapid advance of technology and application, it is our responsibilities to evaluate the merit & drawback of technology. In addition, user shall have control over the technology. This section describes the many of the useful applications benefited from technology. These applications contributed in areas such as distance learning, internet connectivity, automation, as well as simulation (Diane Wong)

Automation: (Diane Wong)
What Impact will automation have on society - Four Scenarios

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/02/what-impact-will-automation-have-on-society-four-scenarios/

This article describes the four possible scenarios on what automation will have on our society. To me, I feel like the automation transition will take placed in a steady and balanced manner. The thorough analysis provided in the article, covered differential potential scenarios. In addition, the supporting examples, statstics, and figures helped to support the article theme. The references included for each scenario increase the credibility of the article. Finally, the article has proper conclusion.

Automating jobs is how society makes progress

https://qz.com/work/1212722/automating-jobs-is-how-society-makes-progress/

This article argues that automation is the driving force for our society to make progress. The author used the automation in the mining industry that boost the productivity in the past 100 year as a prime example. From that, the author argues that automation will benefit our industries as well as our society. The article is well organized and well-planned. The author has detailed elaboration on his stance. However, the article lacks adequate examples, statstics, and reference. And the quoted selective past automation examples (e.g. agriculture, mining) may not be suitable to predict the upcoming wave of automation.

Dependency (Diane Wong)
https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/07/25/we-need-to-reduce-our-dependence-on-technology-if-we-want-to-keep-innovating/

In this article, the author argued whether our growing dependency on technology may in fact hinder our ability to innovate. The author recommends that we should keep a clear goal and draw a line on how much we rely on technology. If we blindly accept technologies as they become available, as time goes by, our dependency on technologies grows and our ability to innovate may be hindered.

Though I don’t fully agree with the author’s view on the topic but I do think the author raised a very valuable question.

Errors (Diane Wong)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/04/meltdown-spectre-worst-cpu-bugs-ever-found-affect-computers-intel-processors-security-flaw

This article talks about the CPU bugs named meltdown and spectre, which affected pretty much all of the CPU designed by Intel, AMD, and ARM. These two bugs are security related vulnerabilities that can potentially exposed users to hacker’s attack, gaining access to the systems.

As we grow more and more dependent on technology, technology errors become more and more relevant to us. Just like these two bugs that were mentioned, they affected electronic products that has a microprocessor in it. These include products range from computer, smartphone even to smart speaker like Google Home.

Change leadership (Diane Wong)
https://peopledevelopmentmagazine.com/2017/09/10/technology-leadership/

This article describes how technology brings new impact on leadership. With technology,  it allows the management to give more flexibility to the employee, better management remotely, expanding on new markets, and use new technology to manager’s advantage  in providing influence to the team.

Indeed, if managers can utilize new technology  to their advantage, that certainly will benefit not only the management, but increase team morale as well as productivity.

Telepresence technology - Ocean Exploration NOAA (Diane Wong)
https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/technology/commstech/telepresence/telepresence.html

This article talks about the adaptation of telepresence technology for ocean exploration. The page provides history, current status and future prediction. It is a very promising area for ocean exploration as we still have fairly limited knowledge about the ocean. Telepresence technology helps to facilitate the task efficiently, minimizing cost, and reduce risk in exploration such that human physical presence at these extreme environment can be minimized. The article is very informative with lots of detailed information about the history, scope of application of these technologies, with supporting materials/links for further reading.

Though the site is already very informative. Relatively speaking, it lacks actual statistics to demonstrate the effectiveness of this technology. For example, how effective is telepresence ocean exploration compare to ocean exploration by human.

Telepresence Technology - Education and Future of E-learning (Diane Wong)
https://elearningindustry.com/telepresence-in-education-future-elearning

This article talks about how telepresence technologies are used in the education sector and additionally how it will shape the future the E-learning. The author of the page starts off by identifying the difference between telepresence education and e-learning. The page has constructive discussion and description on the use of telepresence in education. In addition, Author's projection/prediction on its impact on education is thought-provoking. While on the flip side, the lack of supporting evidence and example limits the effectiveness of the article.

Anywhere is Possible (Diane Wong)
The challenge of this grand challenge is to replicate the sensory functions, such as vision, sound, touch and interaction.

From the few articles that I found, it appears that there are existing technologies that can address each sensory area, and their projection/development path looks very promising. From time to time, I will come across of these videos on Youtube (such as Hologram used in Concert, VR flight simulator with haptic feedback….e.t.c). The pace of development in this area this astonishing.

Here are the two questions on the back of my mind, AR Hologram: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/hololens-2-news-roundup/
 * 1) I wonder if the integration of all these sensory function into a single product will be the main challenge.
 * 2) I wonder how these technologies will sharp our life style in the future. For instance, say with the advert of the Avatar System, perhaps we don’t have be physically present at work/at school anymore? 😊

VR Haptics: https://www.gotouchvr.com/

Interaction: https://atap.google.com/soli /

Technology and Elections
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-to-hack-the-midterm-election-with-social-media/ (Diane Wong)

As social media becomes more and more integrated into our daily lives, its influence grows considerably also. As the author has pointed out, we are at a point where the influence of social media can impact our election choice.

To me this is a valid concern, as it’s rather difficult to fully understand people’s political affiliation on social media. If social media is “manipulated” or used in propaganda, then that surely can have an impact to influence our elections.

10. Technology Advances, Social Trends
As Technology advances, its applications are getting more and more integrated into our society and daily lives. It’s obvious that many of our social trends are closely tied to technology innovation. As end users of the technology, we should develop critical thinking skill to analyze the pros/cons of the application, rather than blindly following the trend. One way to do that is through continual education so that we can keep up with the details of the technology applications. (Diane Wong)

Interesting Quantitative Facts:
http://www.internetlivestats.com/total-number-of-websites/ (Diane Wong)

This website listed several interesting figures regarding total number of websites on the internet. Two questions I had regarding these statistics are
 * Total number of websites (2000 - 2018)
 * This is represented as a bar chart over the years. Chronically, the number of websites increase in a exponential fashion, which grew from 17million websites in 2000 to 1.7billion websites in 2018. The year that saw the most increase was in 2017. It jumps from 1 billion to 1.8 billion between 2016 and 2017.
 * Statistics regarding number of new websites & number of internet users (1993 – 2015)
 * These statistics were tabulated side by side in columns. The website even calculated the ratio website-to-internet user ratio. This ratio went from ~9000 users/website in 1994, gradually down to ~3 users/website in 2015. Keep in mind the number internet users are growing along side with the number of websites. This ratio symbolizes how fast the number of websites has grown over the years.
 * The website defines new websites based on the number of unique domain name. As the website pointed out also, over 75% of these domain names are not active
 * I am also curious on how the website defines as internet users. For example, many people have access to multiple electronic devices, including phone, IoT devices, multiple computers.

Future of Computers:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/style/why-google-glass-broke.html (Diane Wong)

This article from New York Times has rather detailed analysis on why the limited Google Glass release in 2012 failed. The social issues discussed in this article include bugs, privacy/security concern.

The article highlighted two issues associated with many other modern wearable electronics. First concern is bugs, as these applications become more and more integrated to our society and daily lives. The error and bugs can potential have wide impact of us. Second concern is privacy/security, as we rely more and more on these products, we are sharing a lot of information with others, one way or the other.

To me, the analysis provided in this article is well-rounded, addressed all of the reasons that the author thinks that contributed to the fail of the Google Glass Release in 2012. Each argument is supported by related history. As I am reading through this article, I wonder if we are ready for wearable products such as Google Glass, even as of today. Google glass was a prime example of the struggle that we face between the desire technology innovation and the privacy/security concern. Google glass, in a sense, was like a thermometer, gauging our confidence between these two conflicting desire & concern.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17575-ditching-binary-will-make-quantum-computers-more-powerful/ (Diane Wong)

Compare to our current computer system (Classical computing) which is based on binary system, the quantum computing surely is very interesting. The binary system, which uses transistor as the fundamental storage bit, only hold data as either “0” or “1” while the Qbit in quantum computing has 5 states for each bit. More interestingly, in theory, these 5 states can exist “in parallel” (Of which the article named it as simultaneous existence).

Quantum computing is particularly useful in solving problems that the classical computing is relatively slow at. Such as applications that require a lot of “trial-and-error”. Example applications include optimization, calculating unique large prime number, factoring very large numbers.

That translates into more computing power in optimization related problem and stronger encryption to our society.