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.

The Myth of the Renaissance in Europe
By Dr Jeremy Brotton

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.

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

References
Bunt, Henry. (1998). Issues in Multimodal Human-Computer Communication. In H. C. Bunt,
T. Borghuis & R. J. Beun (Eds.), Multimodal Human-Computer Communication:
Systems, Techniques and Experiments. 1-12. New York: Springer
Ruben, Brent D. and Budd, Richard W. (1978). Human Communications Handbook:
Simulations and Games. Rochelle Park, NJ: Hayden Book Company Inc.
Pickett, Joseph P. (Ed.) (2001). The American Heritage Dictionary (4th ed.). New York: Dell
Publishing
Shannon, C. E. (1948). A Mathematical Theory of Communication. The Bell System Technical
Journal, 27, 359-423.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been journeying to other departments in my building in order to document the various computers (assets) that the university own on to the myucs webpage. It is very simple. All I need to do is log on to myucs, take down the information of the computer (serial number, BSU number, processor speed etc.) and enter the information. The only other tasks I have is to download Windows Defender, make sure the firewall is on and make absolutely certain that the computer is receiving updates at 3:00 every day.

As you can see, I am not really doing anything. The only real change that should happen is that Windows Defender gets downloaded and that is a minor safety feature. The computer users should be informed enough to know to leave their firewalls on and to let their computers receive updates right? Don’t make that assumption. Even when it comes to basic things like firewalls and updates people can be scared and confused. It is our duty as IT professionals to treat each person with dignity and care even when we think they are being unreasonable.

I have been in two other departments now. The first department completely spoiled me. It seemed that most of the time I didn’t even have to enter all their computer information because they were already on myucs. Everyone in that department was willing to give me total control over their computer, they didn’t ask questions and the majority of them were there. They had received the message that I would be coming around and were more than happy to give me the space I need.

The next department would prove to be more difficult. When I walked into one office I was immediately accused of having wrecked one occupants computer and the other was afraid to let me touch hers. I told them calmly that there was nothing that I was doing that would harm their computers. However, that did not stop the tiraid. I just had to deal with it and my boss looked at their computers later and informed them that there was nothing that I did and all of their problems were their own fault for not keeping up careful maintenance. However, this whole experience made me nervous to even walk around in that department to help others.

I guess what I am trying to say is that despite everything, you have to keep a professional appearance and handle people politely. I'm certain that if you keep your head cool, you can get along with anyone, even those who seem intolerable. Sure, I was upset, but I didn't let them stop me from doing my job.