tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37423840077660259132024-03-07T22:05:16.158-08:00alohaworldAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10166343577622287443noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3742384007766025913.post-21906084420532300122016-12-05T10:30:00.000-08:002016-12-05T11:53:36.044-08:00Dude, where is my job? <div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><b>I
remember when I started working in a bank a couple of years ago, the teamwork at
that moment was constituted with approximately a hundred people and
each one was in charge of a single duty. After two years, the team
was reduced to half and four years later the team was formed only by
twenty people and the workplace was occupied with more machines than
human workers. But who should we blame for a such an enormous
redundancy? The person who refuses to follow the advance of
technology or the technology itself? Technology is here to stay and
there is no other alternative than accept it and adapt to its power.
The same thing that happened in the bank, happened in other areas as
well. It is happening now in all areas of society. Human organic machine is been substituted by A.I (artificial intelligence) which is another kind of machine, much more efficient and this machine
never get tired or get sick. It just need some maintenance regularly. The Big Corporations, as usual always eager for profits,
have Interesting examples of how human beings are not necessary in
some jobs any more. I.e: Drones have been tested by Amazon to
replace its delivers, according to the Guardian: </b></span>
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<i><b>“<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="color: #333333;">Amazon
has announced that it will partner with the British government to run
tests exploring the viability of delivery of small parcels by drone –
the first time such tests have been run in the UK. The company
announced that a cross-government team supported by the Civil
Aviation Authority (CAA) gave permission to Amazon to explore three
key areas: operations beyond line of sight, obstacle avoidance and
flights where one person operates multiple autonomous drones. The
experiment will look at drones carrying deliveries weighing 2.3kg
(5lb) or less – which make up 90% of Amazon’s sales, a company
spokeswoman said.” </span><span style="color: #333333;">(1)</span></span></span></b></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="color: #333333;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><b>With the exploration of high technology in all areas of human life, what could
happen to our beloved area, Library and Information Sciences? How the old fashioned librarian should behave in these modern digital times? </b></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><b>The same kind of redundancy that has happened to the bank that I once worked to, has been happening to my local library as well. The
warm and happy faces were substituted by efficient and cold
computers. Again, according to The Guardian:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><i><b>“<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Pe</span></span></b></i></span><span style="color: #333333;"><i><b><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">ter
Preston, in dismissing Save Our Libraries Day, asserts that
technology has changed our reading habits (</span></span><span style="border-bottom: 1px solid #dcdcdc; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; display: inline-block; padding-bottom: 0.05cm; padding-left: 0cm; padding-right: 0cm; padding-top: 0cm;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/feb/06/libraries-closing-technology-change-habits"><span style="color: #005689;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">Making
way for the new</span></span></span></span></a></span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">,
7 February). He means, of course, that technology has changed </span></span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">his</span></span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">
</span></span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">reading
habits. His view is typical of many journalists and politicians now
commenting on public libraries: comfortably off, with internet
access, Kindles, iPads and Amazon accounts, they have no need to use
their local libraries, and have little idea how much goes on in them.
Yet they advocate, as Preston does, that "some things have to
go" and point to libraries.” </span></span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">(2)</span></span></b></i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">
</span></span>
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<b><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Unfortunately,
it is sad but true words, specially for the old fashionable reader
who really loves the smell and the touch of books and compares the library as some sacred place like the Vatican for Catholicism
or some sacred stones for the native Hawaiians. For these kind of readers, closing a library or changing its physical collection to digital collection which is accessible only through a machine instead by their own hands, has the same effect of closing a church or destroying a sacred stone.
But at the end, the one who do not want to be included in the massive group of people who are being superfluous every day in the I.T societies, is the one who thinks that adaptation in this kind of society is the
cleverest decision to be made to prevent redundancy. </span> </b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><b>References:
</b></span>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">(1)
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/25/amazon-to-test-drone-delivery-uk-government">https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/25/amazon-to-test-drone-delivery-uk-government</a></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">(2)
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/feb/17/libraries-cuts-technology">https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/feb/17/libraries-cuts-technology</a></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10166343577622287443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3742384007766025913.post-55139556422400819232016-11-13T09:50:00.001-08:002016-11-13T09:50:19.585-08:00Data left by ancient civilizations<div align="justify" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">How
amazing is the transmission of information through time, connecting
the distant past to the present moment. Ancient civilizations
experimented diverse types of material such as baked clay tablets,
papyrus, stones and so forth, as data. Some part of those data would
survive through time and space, but a massive part would be lost
forever. The access to all those information would be impossible
without the work of some people, those people who left the data with
precious information; and those people who would be able to interpret
those data and access the information, in a remote future. The Epic
of Gilgamesh and Princess Enheduanna`s poems are examples of data
registered in baked clay; and The Rosetta Stone, an example of data
registered in black granite stone. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The
Epic of Gilgamesh, considered the oldest registered data of human
history was written in backed clay tablets, it is an epic poem from
ancient Mesopotamia, each tablet contains the story of a single
adventure of Gilgamesh.</span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Princess
Enheduanna from the City of Ur, left a corpus of literary works and
many personal devotions to the goddess Inanna and a collection of
hymns known as the “Sumerian Temple Hymns”, in backed clay
tablets. She is considered as one of the earliest author and poets
known by name in world history. She composed 42 hymns addressed to
temples across Sumer and Akkad and the texts are reconstructed from
37 tablets from Ur and Nippur. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The
Rosetta Stone, perhaps seen as simply a weird black granite stone
with some curious signals written in it. Actually, it was an
essential data which holds information about the ancient Egyptian
civilization, and in 1822, Jean-Francois Champollion, a brilliant
young Frenchman, who was a scholar, a philologist, an orientalist and
a professor in Egyptology, the secrets of ancient Egyptians begun to
be revealed. He showed that the Egyptian writing system was a
combination of phonetic and ideographic signs. The Rosetta Stone has
a message in three inscriptions: 1) Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs; 2)
Egyptian demotic script; 3) Ancient Greek. The message is a decree
issued at Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC on behalf of king Ptolemy V. The
translation was the essential key to modern understanding of Ancient
Egyptian literature and civilization. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
secrets of </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">those </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">mysterious
civilization</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">were </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">uncovered
through space and time. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">It
shows that </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">the power of
information is </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">an </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">essential
tool </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">used by </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">scholars
to scrutinize </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">the data
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">available. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Ancient
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">civilization</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">w</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">ere
interested </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">to transmit
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">information</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">
about their glory to the future generations. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">But
how much secret still hide to us because it was lost? H</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">ow
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">many </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">civilizations
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">has </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">existed
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">and suddenly </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">has
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">perished </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">without
leaving </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">at least a </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">trace
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">as a key </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">to
open the door to </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">their
mysteries? </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">H</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">ow
many </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">undeciphered</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">
symbol we have encounter</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">ed</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">
and yet we cannot revel </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">them
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">because </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">we
have limited </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">understanding </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">of
how </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">access </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">them?
</span></span>
</div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">n
a time where the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">access of
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">information resources were </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">very
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">limited. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Time
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">completely different from our
modern time </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">where we have the
net and </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">computer</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">,
people like Champollion </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">would
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">interpret the data left by the
ancient Egyptians. W</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">ithout
internet, without computer. How </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">such
an </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">amazing mind! </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">capability </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">to
understand </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">the meaning of a
message written a long time ago </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">and
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">transmitted </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">through
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">space and time, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">is
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">really amazing. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">
</span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I
think that everything that exist, for instance, human Beings,
planets, stars, black holes and so forth, can be seen as types of
data holding information. Some of those data are much more complexes
than others. The world is an infinite metadata, holding the data
about data of everything.</span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10166343577622287443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3742384007766025913.post-32195086039612811712016-10-09T14:55:00.000-07:002016-12-05T12:09:29.434-08:00Information is the new black (INM348)<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div align="justify" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial", "helvetica", sans-serif;">Not
so long ago people used to go to the temples and
places that they considered as sacred. They
used to pray for miracles expecting some kind of
alleviation for their pain and suffering. The access to
information was limited to the hands of few men who knew
exactly how to keep control of the truth and
people`s faith. Information was manipulated
by a minority who decided of keeping
men and women deepen in ignorance and darkness for
ages. But the access to Information slowly started
to be spread to the world by
some few courageous people who risked themselves of
being burned alive in public fire pit.
After being living in a Platonic cave for centuries, accepting the
reality showed by shadows as the only truth, some
brave men challenged the established system and
learned the way out of the cave taking the risk to embrace a new
reality. In modern times, Google is the new miraculous temple, where
people can go when they need answers and remedy for their
suffering.</span> <span style="font-family: "arial", "helvetica", sans-serif;">A
reality based on information which everyone can decide what accept or
not. And like a powerful virus the will for information was
contaminating everyone by some new tools of dissemination and forcing
to choose between being in ignorance and darkness and praying for
answers or learn how to adapt and to access the new power.
Information became the new master in recent times. You are what you
read. The atoms of the new reality is bits.</span> <span style="font-family: "arial", "helvetica", sans-serif;">Objects
used in the past to store information like rock tablets, papyrus and
books which were very useful, are no longer capable to keep such a
huge amount of data which we generated every day. New technologies
were needed to be invented for this task. Nowadays the new reality is
constituted by bits. Where:1000 bytes = one kilobyte (KB); 1000
KB = one megabyte (MB);1000 MB = one gigabyte (GB);1000 GB = one
terabyte (TB);1000 TB = one petabyte (PB);1000 PB = one exabyte
(EB);1000 EB = one zettabyte (ZB);1000 ZB = one yottabyte (YB).
According to IBM: 2.5 exabytes of data was generated every day in
2012. But how much of these data were really usefull? </span></span></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial", "helvetica", sans-serif;">The
technology developed to store information in recent times is really
fascinating. For instance, the capacity of a human being's functional
memory is estimated to be 1.25 terabytes or the equivalent of the
memories of 800 human beings fitting into one petabyte. </span> <span style="font-family: "arial", "helvetica", sans-serif;">If
a person decides to belong to the modern society, the person should
not resist being involved in the massive power which Information
mechanisms achieved on people`s life. Each part of the planet
is connected to some powerful information centre and "resistance
is futile", according to the Borgs from Star Trek series.
Assimilation is the new rule. But between so much infinitely data
how to decide and choose what we should assimilate or not is the key.
How to know the discernibility of the "I" of the useful
information from the useless data must be clear if we want avoid the
accumulation of rubish in our minds. We are in the centre of an
invisible information war between the big information corporations.
Facebook and its "mates" are deciding our past, our present
and what will be our future. They are in charge of our footsteps and
they know each movement we are going to do next. We are being
observed all the time by virtual eyes.</span></span></span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10166343577622287443noreply@blogger.com0