My impressions of Allan Wicker’s Ghanaian narratives remain the same, and what I still stand by what I wrote last week about the use of narratives.  However, one thing I noted about the presentation was how the use of pictures drastically heightened the sense of empathy provided by the narrative.  With the use of images, images of Ghanaians’ homes, their workplace, their neighborhoods, etc., it becomes easier to imagine what daily life might be like living in a place such as Ghana.

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Reaction to Marianne De Laet

I thought that the lecture of Dr. Marianne De Laet showed a good example of transdisciplinary research. The processes from funding to building of the 30m telescope in Caltech presented that a modern, technology related project might requires many different disciplines as societies become complicated. Doing successfully a big modern, technology project can be considered as solving a complex problem, because the project is related to not only engineers and scientists but also many stakeholders and cultural and socio-economic factors, and the relationships between factors are non-linear and complex. Therefore, it is not easy to implement the project successfully. Usually it requires a comprehensive approach and a series of painstaking efforts, including solving conflicts between stakeholders and trying to reduce potential side effects caused by the project.

There can many examples for this kind of problems. As Dr. Marianne De Laet said, Hawaii’s antagonistic attitude for building telescope because of tradition and cultural reasons are very natural to Hawaii residents but also very important for the success of the project. There is a similar example in Korea. Korean government had tried to build a facility in a place to store gavages from atomic power plant. It was very important for future electricity of Korea and its national economic benefits were expected be huge. But Korean government failed to build the place because they failed to solve conflicts between related stakeholders. It shows that a comprehensive, transdisciplinary approach becomes more important.

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In figuring out which of the two qualitative methodologies we should use in this course, I think that we need to really think about what we are trying to accomplish.  In aligning this work with the point of the class, I think that it is obvious that we are trying to understand how inductive knowledge plays a role in their academic careers.  In the interests of time, we are also limiting the scope of this project to only examine professors at CGU.

 

As a result, I think that the best way that we can approach this project is as a case study.  We are studying a particular theme in a bounded system.  While it would be interesting to expand our results to a larger population, such as all professors, we have explicitly narrowed it to a single location.

 

The next best way to approach this study would be as a phenomenological study.  Rather than be interested in professor’s lives to better understand the person, we are trying to understand what they do, how, and why.  While this is not as appropriate as a case study, due to the limited scope, it would still be very appropriate.

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I am impressed with the descriptive interviews and vivid pictures from Ghana at Professor Allen Wicker’s talk. Traditional qualitative studies tend to use limited instruments such as voice recorder and existing documents. As Internet usage and many multimedia supported applications bloom, I think it is very important to embrace a variety of multimedia including photos, pictures, voice clips, and videos into research materials and evidence, especially in qualitative studies such as interviews and field studies. For example, Professor’s Allen Wicker’s Web site for the Ghana research project can be further enhanced and impress the audience if each interview was associated with the interviewee’s pictures (e.g., a picture at work).

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Swanson and Ramiller state that the origins for their theory is psychology and organizational theory, so it could be applied to fields other that I T as you have very succdesfully done here.  So you could be published in journals of military strategy or political strategy and analysis.  Regarding the religious angle, I also thought of the concept of mindfulness as coming from religion.  One of the Jewish daily prayers states to "be mindful and do them (the commandments)".  Another translation says the same thing as "to heed".  This means not just to mindlessly do as commanded but to pay attention to what you are doing and why.

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That is disturbing. Not too long ago, I heard on the news radio that some Army recruiters invited some high school boys to an informational social, but it ended up being a swearing in ceremony.  I don't know how it turned out for the kids who were tricked into swearing in, but it made it onto the news that the parents were upset and trying to reverse their enlistment.

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"So, my point is that the bulk of the law in this sense categorically is a reflection of the common consensus of any given society (again, ideally), and new legislation ought to keep this in mind."

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I ran a similar test to see if it was an IT article, and I think some of the specific control and security  variables are software-specific, such as scripting language, S-HTTP support, SSL Support, Database Linking.  However, many of the other variables are generically applicable to other markets. Triability is definitely something that is apparent in the detergent and cereals markets.

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You ask some interesting questions, Karen.  If you could find something for an IS360 class to read that discusses non-western philosophy of science, I would be glad to consider it.  If there is anything out there arguing for non-western PoS, I haven't seen it.  What would a non-western PoS look like?  How would it differ from any of the ones that are being considered by Godfrey-Smith?  (I would suspect that one would need to be able to say how non-western, non-science-oriented philosophies differ from western ones.  This may be part of the body of knowledge of philosophers, east and west.)

The reason we are reading "what a bunch of mostly old guys think" is that PoS is the intellectual (if not the pragmatic) foundation for what scientists do.  Since our PhD program is meant to turn non-scientists into scientists, it seems reasonable to introduce foundation ideas.  (The rationale is not that "it is important to learn new things," because you won't find lots of interesting things to learn that are unrelated to IS&T in the program.)

The question of whether there are more scientists in China than in the US and Europe would be a question of fact.  I haven't looked it up, but it should be relatively easy to get the numbers.  (My guess is that size of population alone wouldn't determine number of scientists.) 

It would also be an empirical question to assess whether Chinese scientists have a distinct PoS.  This would be a somewhat more difficult question to assess, but it should be possible to find out.  (My guess is that people who get labeled as scientists here and there would share a paradigm, including a PoS.) A careful study of this would be of interest to people in China and in the west.  (Of course, the question would have to be begged as to which PoS to use in conducting the study, if more than one exists.)

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Chapter 1 (1) Old computing was what computer could do. (2) The new computing is about what users can do (3) a. I think Bush will not be regarded in a manner similar to how we regard Da Vinchi. Da Vinci is omnipotent. If we think about Da Vinch now, he may the person who has at least 5 Ph.D.s at the same time. I think that Da Vinci is the most transdisciplinary person over the human history. Also, Da Vinci tried to implement those by himself, but Bush just described. Da Vinci is an innovator who was far ahead of the available technology. However, describing the World Wide Web in 1945 is brilliant idea. Frankly speaking, Bush is the person I have ever seen who expected the WWW. I heard that Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 space odyssey is the best description of the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21 century. I could not see any description about WWW in that movie. b. In Korean proverb, “When you started, it means you already finished the half of work.” I think this proverb mentions the importance of implementation. The unimplemented idea is dead idea. The idea is totally useless. As an economist, I have lots of idea to improve Korean welfare system. However, if I do nothing, this idea is totally useless. Therefore, in order to make my idea “alive”, I need to publish papers or try to be a government officer who can renovate the welfare system. (4) I wish to have the technology that we can install what we want to learn at our brain like in movie “Matrix”. If we have this technology, I do not even need to read “Lenardo’s laptop”. Also, I do not need live in foreign country to study. Hahaha (5) a. I think that electronic documents will exist in the future that will be high valued. I think the invention of electronic document is as great as man created paper first time. Electronic document will be the next generation paper. As we see, many libraries become paperless libraries. b. It depends on what kind of person Da Vinci is. For example, I have misophobia about electronic documents. I always check security and virus prevention update. Also, I make lots of backups for my electronic documents. However, some of my friends never believe the soft copy of document, so they always print out and keep physical copy. The life of burned CD is about 5 years, and hard disk is about 80 years. Therefore, if we want see Da Vinci’s work in that situation, anyone need to make back up of his work every 5 years or 80 years. (6) For example, information and communication technologies can support the dark side of human nature. These technologies can be used to disseminate hateful and racist messages. They enable users to spread lies and encourage prejudice. They can alienate children from families, violate privacy, and spread pornography. However, I think that there are too much benefits and potential benefits to give up information and communication technology. Chapter3 (1) a. My younger sibling: My young brother is definitely earlier adapter of technology than me. Therefore, universal usability between me and my younger brother means that I can use the tool with a little instruction from my brother. b. My child: I don’t have a child now, but I want to define universal usability means my child use the tool safely with my simple instruction. c. My parents: Whenever my parents buy some new electronics, they call me and ask me to read manual and explain it, so all electronics that my parents can use have universal usability. (2) There was a website www.dialpad.co.kr in 1999. You could make call from Korea to the U.S.A. free. However, my parents did not know how to use the Internet and install headset. Therefore, my family could not take advantage from this website because there was no universal usability for this website in my family. After I arrived in Korea, we finally got the universal usability from this website. (3) A person must know how to use the Internet (especially, search engine). (4) In Korea, the one of the most successful portal site, “Naver”, offers “knowledge search service”. Someone ask question, and anybody can answer the question. And, the asker can give point to someone who answered most understandably. Lots of people visited this website and got knowledge. This website certainly improved universal usability for the Internet. (5) I think minimal manual is the answer. People learn most through trial and error by themselves. Like, we learn how to ride bicycle by ourselves with falling down. The minimal manual with some picture of usage should be more effective. (6) Korea is one of the highly developed IT countries in the world. Korean Internet usage rate is much higher than the U.S. and the third in the world. In 1997, Korean government performed policy to make the Internet usage rate much higher. Therefore, they developed “People PC”. The price was about 200 dollars, and the function was Web-surfing and word processor. “People PC” became a lowest common denominator and leaded to innovations that benefit all kinds of users. 3. Write a response to ONE of today’s guest lectures and post it to your personal blog. Response of Speaker Allan W. Wicker Until last week, I knew that nonfiction is a story of actual people and actual events told with the dramatic techniques of a novel, and documentary film is the film version of nonfiction. However, after Allan W. Wicker’s speech, I could recognize the difference between Non-fiction and documentary film. Documentary film is motion picture that shapes and interprets factual material for some special purposes. Also, Allan W. Wicker described the Cuban family’s morning scenes by Fernando Perez’ film, Suite Habana. I could totally understand the difference Non-fiction and documentary film by his speech and the documentary film.

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