Lisa Ann Wade

Wikipedia

My favorite Web 2.0 application is Wikipedia. When I first heard of it through my brother, I wasn’t all that impressed. After all, I thought, what kind of boring person wants to spend hours of their time pouring over the contents of some encyclopedia? However, not long after being introduced to it, I was hooked. It was so easy to get started on reading one subject and soon be clicking a link to read about a related subject. One query led to millions of possibilities.
What makes Wikipedia a Web 2.0 application is that it depends on its interaction with its users. Anyone can edit Wikipedia. There are over 9 million entries thanks to the active participation of its users, however it is the fact that it depends so much on its users that makes Wikipedia unreliable. There have been instances where people have abused Wikipedia and its honors system. One night, watching my favorite pundit-parody show The Colbert Report featuring Stephen Colbert, it became clear how this system could erupt in a wave of misinformation. Stephen encouraged all of his viewers to embrace “wikiality” and change the elephant page on Wikipedia to reflect that the elephant population had tripled in the past ten years, although it was a blatant lie. His devoted legion of followers did just that, editing the elephant page so many times that Wikipedia had to put a lock down on it. While everyone in Stephen’s camp, myself included, thought this was very funny, it just goes to prove that you can’t believe everything you see on there.

Posted by Lisa Wade at 05:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Renaissance and Numbers
The Renaissance was a time of “rebirth” for Europe. In this time the classical Greek and Roman values of literary purity and aesthetic beauty were reintroduced after the dark Middle Ages. Just as importantly, there was also great growth in trade, finance, science and cultural exchange, although it is a habit of many to focus on the art alone. During this period, specifically around 1202, Fibonacci introduced the use of Arabic numerals to conduct business through addition, subtraction and multiplication. Before this time, Europe was still using Roman Numerals. When Fibonacci first started using Arabic numerals to do his accounting, he realized that this was a much simpler representation. We can certainly imagine that even without Fibonacci, eventually Europe would have evolved or borrowed a numeric system, but then again, we might all be using Roman Numerals to this day. Imagine if binary ran on Is and Xs instead of 0s and 1s. What would digital be like without the digits? Fortunately, we will never have to know.

The Myth of the Renaissance in Europe
By Dr Jeremy Brotton

Posted by Lisa Wade at 05:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tyranny of Architecture

I thought this was an interesting topic and I wanted to bring it up in class, but I was being a Nervous Nellie and sat it out, but here is an example of architecture that while it does serve one need, it fails on many others.
The Alumni Center at Ball State University was built a decade or more ago and it is a beautiful building. Every day that I walk inside it I feel privileged to be given the opportunity. It has a gorgeous reception area that has a huge glass conservatory ceiling. It looks awesome on sunny days and is kind of intriguing on snowy ones.
Anyway, as you walk through the Alumni Center offices there is one feature that seems to be missing. A feature, when implemented, makes locating people and places a whole lot easier. You see, none of the offices have the names of the occupants placed on them. While this may not seem like a big deal, when you are in a building with many different offices and you are looking to find someone that you have never seen before, it is difficult to know exactly which office you should be going into.
There are names on the doors, but these are the names of the people who donated the money for the building. Of course, I think it is a great tribute to these generous individuals to have their names on the doors, but it is nearly impossible to find any actual employee without stopping to ask for directions.
On one hand, we have a beautiful tribute to generous people, but insufficient way of recognizing the hard working employees that occupy the spaces. My solution would be to keep the plaques as they are now, but install plaques above them with office occupant’s names, but I have been told that this is prohibited by a policy.

Posted by Lisa Wade at 03:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Desiderio

All students of the renaissance and perhaps all students in general have heard of the great masters of the renaissance. They’re names were Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo. Their names were of course made more famous to modern audiences through their use as monikers for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. If they we’re going to add a fifth turtle (forgetting the whole Venus debacle) they should probably name him Desiderio after Desiderio Da Settignano. Desiderio was a sculpture who was born into a family of stonemasons around 1429. He would only live to be thirty-five years old, but he would have a very successful ten year career.
Not long after he and his brothers had started their own workshop in 1455, he received a commission to build the tomb of Carlo Marsuppini, the chancellor of Florence. It was a masterpiece, but you will need to see the photos for yourself to really appreciate it.
Desiderio had a unique understanding of marble and could carve a relief to look very life like and was unafraid to try different subtleties. He even worked closely with Donatello for a time.

Title:
THE 'LAUGHING BOY' AND THE INVENTION OF SCULPTURE. By: Butterfield, Andrew, New Republic, 00286583, 9/24/2007, Vol. 237, Issue 6
Database:
Academic Search Premier

Posted by Lisa Wade at 09:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)