Trying to Spruce Up the Website... Ideas?

The website's new look. (Oo... Ah...)

So the image above is of the website that my group is working on.  This website is for the final project of my digital civilization class.  Our teacher asked us to make our sites worthy of being shared with his peers.  Well...  I spent some time on it today and I think it looks better.  Any additional ideas?

The website's old look.  (Boo.... Ugly!)

Besides making the site look nice, my group and I need to add content to it.  One big frustration of mine right now is that Google Sites do not allow you to use Java script codes or embed things they do not approve of.  (In other words, editing the html code of the site is a nightmare!)

Event Recap: Missionary Fireside Sharing the Gospel in a Digital World

Missionaries use technology to share the gospel

On Sunday Nov 22nd 2010, my final project group and I helped host a missionary fireside for the BYU 61st Ward  (congregation).  It was epic!  Two missionaries from the MTC Referral Center Mission, Elder Seth Spencer and Elder Andrew Howden, came to speak to a audience of 50+ members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  After a hymn (Called to Serve) and prayer, Elders Spencer and Howden shared how they are spreading the gospel using digital tools such as Skype, Mormon.org chat, Facebook, and blogs.

Getting Creative With Music

So I was on Diigo, my social bookmarking website and I was searching for a list of internet creativity.  It pulled up a list from some guy I don't know and near the top of his list was a website called Noteflight.  Noteflight is a website that hosts a free online music composition program.  There is a song that I arranged on my mission and I thought I might try to digitize it into a nice score.  Noteflight is pretty self explanatory.  It even has some videos to show you how to use the basics.  Noteflight uses the "freemium" model, so if you want all the features you need to pay and upgrade.  Fortunately, the free version has all the basics and works great.

Here is my arrangement of Latter-Day Saint (i.e. Mormon) hymn #112 "Savior Redeemer of My Soul" :





Savior Redeemer of My Soul by Andrew DeWitt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

I Updated the Image, But What are the Details?

So I've updated my Pixlr image to reflect the new title of the final project event that my class will be having on December 9th.  See the class blog for additional information.  If we want to use this image for a flyer, I can also include the date time and place at the bottom as soon as we know all the details.  Somebody please tell me the details soon so I can turn this image into a printable flyer.

Digital Romanticism: A Pixlr Remix of "Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog"

So, I have really been enjoying a new digital tool.  It is called Pixlr.  Pixlr is like an online Adobe Flash version of Adobe's Photoshop.  It is quite as nice, it doesn't have all the stuff photoshop does, but it has all the basics.  If you know how to use Adobe Photoshop, using Pixlr is almost the same.  If you want to learn how to use Photoshop and are a BYU student, BYU provides free online training at http://www.lynda.com.erl.lib.byu.edu .

Anyway,  check out this cool picture that I made with Pixlr!  In my Digital Civilization class we are preparing for the night where we will showcase our final projects.  In class we had a discussion about what we would name the evening presentation and also how we would market it.  Well... this is my idea...

Showcase evening name: Education 2.0: Teaching and Learning History Through a Digital Lens
Target audience: Other BYU students, BYU teachers, family, and friends
Marketing Strategy: Flyers/Posters to students of the above image with additional information, email to Honors Students, Advertise through the Center for Teaching and Learning, and word of mouth/Facebook.

What do you think?  Ideas?  Comments?

I plan on putting the time, date, and quick explanation  in the dark rocky part at the bottom of the image.

From the Radio to YouTube: How Millennials are Becoming the New Greatest Generation

Family gathers around the radio

Generation Y, also known as the Millennial Generation (Millennials), is becoming the latest generation to come of age.  According to Neil Howe, who spoke at today's BYU Forum, Millennials have the potential to become the next "Greatest Generation" (a term coined by news broadcaster Tom Brokaw for the generation of those born between 1901-1924).  The Greatest Generation was marked for being the generation that created a great sense of American community and built the system that ran America for the 20th century. Just as the Greatest Generation would gather around the radio and listen together, Millennials are gathering around computers and watching YouTube videos together.  This growing sense of collective and community (social networks) is something that will set this generation apart and help them as they slowly fill positions of power and begin to rebuild the American system for the 21st century.

The G.I. Generation was a generation
that served their country.  So is
Generation Y.

The radio, a multi-step invention starting from the likes of Nikola Tesla, Guglielmo Marconi, and Sir John Ambrose Flemming, eventually began airing news and other programs around 1920.  This device, which relies on signals carried by electromagnetic waves, would come to be a staple in iconic images of those from the Greatest Generation.  The Greatest Generation, as Howe argues, was a very community based generation.  They had struggled through the Great Depression, and WWII together, so when they came of age, they were ready to build and make changes in America; that is just what they did.  This generation was the response to these two great crises and created a great America.  Neils Howe makes the connection that this Greatest Generation was the cause of the First Turning (a period in a cyclical process that has defined American history), the American High following WWII.

In a similar respect, Millennials are growing up in the Forth Turning (a time of crisis) just like the Greatest Generation did.  Generation Y saw the twin towers fall, the economy crash, and political turmoil ravage Washington and voting campaigns.  Howe argues that just like the GI Generation solved the crises (fourth turning) and defined a new America, so will the Millennial Generation for the 21st century.  A similarity I find fascinating is how both of these generations find strength in groups and social networks.  Now, however, instead of gathering around a radio set, Millennials are gathering around computers to share the news, their latest posts, and YouTube videos.  Millennials are also like the Greatest Generation because they want to serve their country.  Even from my own personal experiences, I have friends in the Peace Core, I have seen others doing lots of service, and even the number of cadets is increasing in the Air Force ROTC program.

The effect this internet-sharing, tech-savvy, highly social generation will have on the future is yet to be seen.  What seems clear to me however, and to Neil Howe, is that Generation Y will be the next generation of national heroes and the New Greatest Generation.

With respect to my Digital Civilization class at BYU, and specifically my final project, Generation Y's skills both socially and technically are redefining the way they do missionary work.  Consider the huge changes on Mormon.org, New.LDS.org, and even MormonMessages on YouTube.

For additional study see:

• Generations Explained - YouTube
• Neil Howe on Millennials part 1
• Neil Howe on Millennials part 2
• The Fourth Turning website
• Neil Howe's own blog

The Dangers of Living in a Digital World

The Dilbert comic above is a great example of the dangers of the digital world.  Technology has allowed us to communicate so much faster that it has increased the expectations for everyone to communicate quickly.  When was the last time you read a complete email rather than just skimming for the most important information than clicking next so you could do more in a shorter amount of time.  The more and more dependent we become on digital tools, the harder it becomes for us to take a break or remove ourselves from the them.

I've heard of church congregations having "technology fasts" and not using things digital for a week.  I would very much like to try that experiment and see what a week would be like without my computer.  The trouble with that, however, is that so many of my classes require an online presence that my grades would suffer as a result.  Also, as much as my Digital Civilization class makes me want to plug in and make my presence online known, I fear the result of becoming too far plugged in would be that unplugging for a while might be more detrimental than beneficial.

More Reflections on my Digital Civilization Class

So, I find myself in the same situation as Ariel.  That is, unfortunately, this blog post is a little late.  What I find so funny about that is that Ariel made the kind comment that I am "frequent and timely" with my blog posts.  Thanks Ariel for your nice review.  At least I try to be frequent and punctual most of the time.  Anyway....


I have really enjoyed the semester so far in my Digital Civilization class.  The class has been a whirlwind of new information and concepts as well an examination of past people, places, ideas, and events (historical content).  Since my last reflective blog post, I have tried to do better at giving equal portion to the old ideas as well as the new.  I feel I have certainly given a lot more to research and learn more about the historical concepts that we are learning about.  From Romanticism to Evolution to Modernism, I have tried to continually improve in showing that I understand the historical concepts upon which this class is based.  My improved understanding of this historical concepts has been the result of two things.  First, I have simply work harder at it, especially since Prof. Zappala mentioned that I needed to during my interview with him earlier this semester.  Second, the historical concepts we are learning about are becoming more and more tied into the digital concepts and digital culture which is part of the second learning outcome of the class.

Image by Me

As far as learning the digital concepts of the class, I think I have been doing pretty well.  I really enjoyed Prof. Zapalla's lecture on the limitations of computers.  I never knew that there were limits that could be placed on the computational power of computers and humans alike.  As much as I feel like I am learning and understanding in these areas, perhaps I am not writing about them as much as before.  My tendency towards blogging about what was (or will be) discussed in lecture is apparent.  In the class schedule, there are computing concepts and parts of digital culture that I have skipped over, as far as blogging about them, even if I do understand them.  I just need to make more connections to the historical content and this is something that I intend on doing more of for the latter part of the class.

Image from Florida Center for Instructional Technology

Self Directed Learning!  Those seems to be the big buzz words in our class lectures (along with "getting caught up with your blogs" J).  I have done a lot of self directed learning while in this class.  The way the class is set up encourages self directed learning.  The readings are great, but they often leave me curious to go off and find more information.  I often default (Sorry, Prof Burton) to using sites like Google and Wikipedia as starting places for my learning (consuming).  Other places I enjoy beginning my content-consumption is by reading other students blogs using Google Reader or looking at others students bookmarks using the social bookmarking website Diigo.  Once I have consumed content, I try my best to bookmark things that I have consumed so I can share them with others.  Along with bookmarking, I enjoy commenting on blogs that I have read.  Although this is less visible from the teachers' standpoint (because we are not friends on Facebook, or Twitter followers), I have been sharing a lot of things via my Twitter and Facebook accounts.  


Consume, Create, Connect - the keys to vitality (and reputation) in the digital world.  From this class on, I really feel like I want to be somebody online so that I can make a difference in this ever changing technological world.  This class has been a starting point and I hope to make improvements along the way.  I am really grateful I followed the prompting I had about a year ago to take the honors version of my civilization 2 GE requirement.

How Awesome is "Kevin's Totally Awesome Blog :)" - A Review

Kevin Lee Watson's blog

So How Awesome is Kevin's Blog?  Pretty Awesome.

I have had the opportunity via a Digital Civilization class assignment to review Kevin's blog as part of a midterm evaluation.  We are supposed to review our classmate's blog on the criteria of how well he/she has been meeting the classes learning outcomes:

Understanding western history in terms of themes, events, and people.

Kevin has done a good job in applying historical context to his blog, but I venture so say that this is the learning outcome that the blog struggles with the most (but not a whole lot).  Kevin makes sure to tie in the history of whatever we are learning to almost every post that he makes.  It is clear that Kevin it making strides to learn the history; he often comments on how he has spent time learning about a certain topic, however, it is not always clear how much of that learning is being shared on the blog.  I do however, enjoy the connections that Kevin frequently makes between the historical and the digital.  In this, Kevin really shows his understanding of history because he is able to show the parallels between what happened then and what is happening now.  A good example of that is when Kevin makes the connection between the way modernism changed the way people viewed the world and how our digital era is again shifting our paradigm of the world.

Understanding basic computing concepts, digital culture and relating them to history and today.

Like I said in the previous paragraph, Kevin does a good job at making connections.  I have also enjoyed how Kevin does a good job of creating a good balance between history-based blog posts and computing-based blog posts.  Kevin also does a good job of this by mixing classic, written blog posts with posts incorporating both videos and pictures.  I especially enjoyed this in in his post on Logics and Computers.  He talked about the Turing machine (historical) as well as "Computers LDT" and unsolvable problems (computing concept).

Managing personal learning and developing digital skills to Consume, Create, Connect

Definitely Kevin's strong point, Kevin has employed a lot of tools to help him in his digital learning.  Let me just list some of the ways that Kevin has tried to expand and manage his own learning:  YouTube, Diigo, Blogger, Google Reader, and Curriki.  Kevin has watched old films and written reviews about them.  Kevin often mentions how he connects with other classmates through Diigo and their blogs to find good content to consume.  If you go onto the Digital Civilization Diigo group, Kevin's name is among the top users in the group.  Kevin also does a good job of connecting with other students by reading their blogs and linking their blogs to what he writes in his own blog.  For a quick example, see this post where Kevin has obviously read Kurt Witt's blog and relates to it.  For creating, Kevin has been actively blogging and maintaining his online presence.  His blog posts create good content for other class members to consume.

General Abizaid's Remarks to BYU Community

Gen (ret.) Abizaid came to speak today on Brigham Young University campus.  It was great to be able to hear what he said about the Middle East and the conflicts that are going on over there.

Quick Biography of Gen Abizaid, he is a West Point Graduate, and an infantry officer in the U.S. Army.  At the time of his retirement in 2007 he was the longest-serving commander of the U.S. Central Command, commanding U.S. military operations in the Middle East, Southwest Asia, and the Africa.

In his address, presented by the Wheatley Institution, he stated four issues which are the big issues at play in the Middle East.  For the U.S. to really make a difference in the Middle East, we need to pay attention to these issues and seek to solve them.

First, the Rise of Sunni Islamic Extremism.  This is what is associated with Al Qaeda.  We need to understand this enemy and what their goals are.  Back in WWII, if you held up a picture of the top enemy leaders, most Americans could identify at least the top 5 or more.  Today, if we showed people the top Al Qaeda leaders, people would recognize Bin Laden, and maybe al-Zawahiri, but nobody else.  To most Americans, their goals remain a mystery.  However, all you have to do is go online and find out.  They was to remove U.S. influence form the Middle East and replace the illegitimate governments of Islamic states, thus reinstating Caliphates, or former Taliban-Ruled Afghanistan type government.  A vast majority of Muslims oppose this happening and they do not support this ideology.  What the United States needs to do is to help the people of the Middle East help themselves in eradicating theses extremists and these ideologies.

Second big issue in the Middle East is Shia Islamic Extreemism.  Ideologically and religiously different than Sunni Islamic Extremism, this Islam is portrayed by the Islamic government in Iran.  Similar however to the Sunni Islamic Extremism, this ideology also wishes to drive the US out of region  so that it can greater influence in the region.

The third big issue facing the Middle East is, as Gen Abizaid said, the "continued corrosive effect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."  This conflict has stirred a lot of feelings in the Middle East and is making tensions amongst Middle Eastern nations and Western nations tense.  One key element in solving this problem is a White House that has continuity and passes the torch of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks from one administration to the next instead of it being a political football.

The fourth big issue Gen Abizaid spoke on was the continued reliance of the United States on Middle Eastern oil.  This issue above all has caused the U.S. to react in the Middle East more often and with more force than anywhere else in the world.  The United States must come to grips with this problem and start looking for other solutions to Middle Eastern oil.

Finally, Gen Abizaid spoke how there are various accelerants that could cause the situation in the Middle East to get worse quicker.  One of those accelerants is the proliferation of nuclear weapons in Middle Eastern countries such as Iran, Pakistan, and Israel.

Whatever happens in the Middle East, Abizaid stressed the idea that military force and war is always a last option.  What is most important to us as a country is to arm the people over there so that they can lead efforts to eradicating this threats themselves.  This is going to be a long war but not an infinite war that we are fighting.   We just need to continue to apply pressure and have the people over there take the reigns of the fight.

Quick and Easy: How the Atomic Bomb Works

Since today's Digital Civilization lesson was on the atomic age, I just thought I'd give a quick lesson to readers about how the Atomic Bomb works.  I am basing this post off of what I learned in my modern physics class at BYU (Phscs 222) along with some supplemental study.  Please comment if what I say is confusing.  Here we go:

So the basic building block in the universe is the atom.  Here is a picture of an atom.  Notice how there is a core of red and blue balls.  These are representations of protons and neutrons.  The different elements on a periodic table have to do with how many protons an element has.  Each element can also have differing numbers of neutrons for that number of protons, and each variant is called an isotope.  Keep this in mind.

Now look at this image.  Notice  how there is a lot more stuff in the core (nucleus) of the atom.  Here is the basic idea: if the core has too much stuff in it (or an isotope is arranged with a certain number of neutrons), it becomes unstable and will split apart releasing energy.  The two split parts will go flying away from where the split (fission) happened.

Sometimes these atoms will just split randomly, but you can also trigger the atom to split by hitting it with something (a neutron).  Notice how when the atom splits, the split will create other neutrons that can go on to hit other large atoms and split them apart.

This is where we get to all the top secret stuff.  The trick that scientists needed to discover in the 1930s and 40s is how many of these large atoms do we need to put together in order for there to be a chain reaction: one atom splits which leads to atoms around it splitting, and so on.  Just one split doesn't release a lot of energy, but if we can get a whole bunch of them to split at the same time... BAM!  we have the atom bomb.  Turns out the secret amount (critical mass) need for uranium is ~52kg.

Now, if you want to cause an explosion, you will need some way of getting two stable amounts of uranium, perhaps two 30 kg pieces, and smashing them together to create a mass of uranium that is greater than 52kg.  This picture shows one of the basic ways that it can be done.  You have some kind of conventional explosion such as gunpowder explode to push one half into another.  This method was used in "Little Boy" which exploded over Hiroshima Japan.

Now you know the basics about how nuclear weapons work.  Please ask questions.

Watch the this video to see a fictionalized time when too much uranium was put together and caused a dangerous nuclear reaction.

Where is Keynes Coming From

John M. Keynes
Remix by Andrew DeWitt via Pixlr.com

My professor, Dr. Burton, raised an interesting question in my Digital Civilization class on Tuesday.  What led up to Keynes's ideas about economics?  Well, here are my thoughts.


Lets go way back... perhaps to Aristotle.  This is what he has to say about the subject (from his book Politics) (thanks to wiki for this quote!):


"Property should be in a certain sense common, but, as a general rule, private; for, when everyone has a distinct interest, men will not complain of one another, and they will make more progress, because every one will be attending to his own business... And further, there is the greatest pleasure in doing a kindness or service to friends or guests or companions, which can only be rendered when a man has private property. These advantages are lost by excessive unification of the state."


So... we have an idea of public property and private property.  Well, there must be some way to designate what is public and what is private and when.  Also, who gets to decide.  Perhaps deciding is a bit on the political side of things, but politics and economics are not too far apart.  Now what?

Math, Computing, Logics and Me

Comic by Randall Munroe from xkcd.com

The above comic probably explains why a lot of people seemed really confused in class on Thursday when we were talking about problems that computers cannot solve.

Audience: "What? Computers can't solve every problem given enough time?"

Me: "That's right, in fact it took us almost an entire lecture to get that concept drilled into our heads."

Audience: "Tell me (us) more!"

Well the reading for the class period took two routes.  The first was that of Alan Turing and Alonzo Church.  The second was of Murray Leinster.  Turing came up with the idea for a simple computational machine "the Turing Machine."  The Turing Machine is more of a thought experiment than an actual device.  The purpose being, that the Turing machine can help us understand what is and isn't computable.

Audience: "Where does Alonzo Church fall into the picture?"

Church wrote a thesis about the capabilities of a Turing machine.  He is quoted as saying 'Everything computable is computable by a Turing machine.'  This meant that if there was a way of solving a problem (i.e. it is computable), then that problem could be solved by a the Turing Machine.

Audience:  "You haven't told us about why certain problems can't be computed."

I'd like to try to explain it, but really the proof that certain things are not computable would take a lot of math and somebody has already talked about this in their blog (See DigitalCivilization.blogspot.com).

Audience: "Ok, I'll go read that.  So who is Murry Leinster?"

Leinster was a science fiction author who wrote the the short story "A Logic Named Joe."  The interesting thing about this is how Leinster was able to correctly predict the digital age that we live in where we have logics (computers) in every home and they are all connected to each other (Internet).

Somehow the short story that Leinster wrote seems to make quick correlations to us today in our everyday lives.  On the other hand, the concepts of Turning machines and uncomputable problems seem so far distant from application in our real lives that it can be easily dismissed as useless knowledge.  This often seems to be the case with math, because the deeper you get into the field of math, the further you feel like you are going away from reality.

The truth is however, that both math and the consequences of the Turing machine are very much applicable to our daily lives.  Sometimes however it takes a teacher to show you how.

Math:  After learning Calculus, Matrix Algebra, and Differential equations, it took some physics classes for me to realize the applications of this math.

Turing:  Its important to understand what is uncomputable because it offers a realistic boundary for our imaginations on what programs/computers can really do for us.  I'm not saying that letting our imaginations run wild is dangerous, but we ought to understand that we cannot create programs that will debug any code for us.  We cannot create a program that will see if another  program will solve a certain task.  And of course... if we want to tile our kitchens, we should do it ourselves.

3 Stages of Faith and the Victorian Era, Modernism, and Today



"The desert of criticism is akin to being in the midst of a
blinding sandstorm, where you are forced to lean into the
wind and take one step at a time without a clear view of
where you are going." - Brett G. Scharffs
Photo by Greg Carlstrom

 I recently put up a bookmark on Diigo about a BYU devotional talk given 12 May 2009 by Brett G. Scharffs, a BYU professor of law.  I highlighted some of the good parts and I will include them in this post because they are so good.  I then want to relate Paul Ricoeur's three stages of faith that Scharffs recounts and relate them the way the world has developed in the industrial and post industrial age.  The three stages of faith that will be spoken of in Scharff's address are:

• Childlike Faith - Like standing on top of a tall mountain
• Desert of Criticism - A blinding sandstorm with limited view; walking by faith becomes difficult
• Post-critical naveté - A smaller mountain were some of our childlike faith is reaffirmed

Each stage relates to the following historical periods respectively and I will explain how at the end:

• The Victorian Era
• Modernism
• Today

Here is the excerpt from Prof. Scharff's address:

Freudian Developmental Theory

Part of today's lecture in my Digital Civilization class was about psychology, especially Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.  One interesting element of Freud's theories is the development of personality.  In his theory, a child will pass through certain developmental stages that relate to what the id desires. By the way, the id (according to Freud) is the part of your psyche that is an innate drive for self-gratification.  Your id is not concerned with any rule social or moral, it just works to pursue desire.  A person's superego on the other hand is the internalized rules from society that keeps us from breaking social norms and mores.  The ego is the balance between desires and rules.  "The ego channels impulses into socially acceptable forms." (Kimmel and Aronson, Sociology Now, 2009)

"The ego, driven by the id, confined by the superego, repulsed by reality, struggles to master its... task of bringing about harmony among the forces working in and upon it, and we can understand how it is that so often we cannot suppress a cry, 'Life is not easy!'" 

                                                                         -Sigmund Freud

 Here are Freud's stages and their relationship to the id.

1. The Oral Stage:
   When  a baby is born, they receive pleasure from breast-feeding, so that is what the id wants.
2. The Anal Stage:
   When a baby is no longer breast-fed, he/she gets pleasure from bodily functions such as urinating or defecating.  Bodily functions remain a source of pleasure until a child is potty trained (superego kicks in).
3. Oedipal Stage:
• Males:
  A boy's id then shifts to sexually desiring his mother.  However, fearing his father, the boy will renounce his desire for his mother and begin to identify himself with father.  This leads to masculinity and heterosexuality.
• Girls:
  Girls will identify themselves with their mother.  In this, the girl's id comes to desire not sex, but having a baby.  In continuing to relate with their mother, a girl will become feminine, renounce masculinity, and become heterosexual.

An interesting result of this theory is modern-day conceptions of sexual orientation.  If a man is effeminate or a women masculine we tend to think of them as gay or lesbian respectively.  They have indentified themselves more with the "traits" of the opposite gender and thus they didn't complete the oedipal stage and are then attracted to their own gender.  I put "traits" in quotations because sometimes what society views as a "trait" of a certain gender is often different in a different society.