Erik Hanberg

So our class had a guest speaker named Erik Hanberg on 11/24. He owns a business called Mary Holste Design and runs a fund-raising website called The Little Book of Gold. He has written 9 novels but unfortunately, hasn't had much success with them. He told our class about Black Swan opportunities and how blog posts are a lot like Black Swan because you never know who's attention you'll grab. He noted that Black Swan opportunities are nothing but work and parties. He had a good explanation of scalable work and how the internet can be a tool for being successful (if you're lucky). I liked how he gave us examples of people who used the internet for success such as "the wine guy" and the person who basically traded a house for a red paperclip. Interesting stuff.

Scavenger Hunt

I kind of underestimated the scavenger hunt we had to do in class. I thought I would be able to find everything by simply typing it in Google but it was much more than that. My group had a pretty hard time finding some of them because you had to be really specific on keywords. We actually managed to find them all through Google .. some people don't realize how powerful this search engine really is.

Concept of Convergence

I didn't really grasp a meaning to "technological convergence" so I looked it up. Basically, the meaning of "technological convergence" is the tendency for different technological systems to evolve towards performing similar tasks.

"Today, we are surrounded by a multi-level convergent media world where all modes of communication and information are continually reforming to adapt to the enduring demands of technologies, “changing the way we create, consume, learn and interact with each other" is a quote I took from wikipedia. In other words, technology is always evolving so devices, such as cell phones, always change/upgrade to keep up with how fast technology increases. In the past, cell phones were used mainly for communicating but currently, we have phones that have the internet, a calculator, a calendar, a camera, etc. built into it.

There are so many devices that were used for one specific purpose, but now are used for other things. Game systems, for example, were used primarily to play video games. Now we have consoles that have a music player, the internet, a DVD player, and other things that game systems didn't have before. I actually have a friend who uses his Xbox 360 to mainly play DVDs rather than play games. A couple years ago when I had a Nintendo 64, I never would have imagined that a game console would be used as a DVD player .. and that was only a couple years ago. It's seriously scary and amazing how fast technology is increasing.

Physical Documents vs. Online Documents

Physical documents and online documents are similar in the way that you can get information on a certain topic but depending on which one you view, the information may not be accurate. Physical documents are usually written by a person who is professional in that topic and the document is revised then published depending on its accuracy. If a person was viewing a physical document, he/she shouldn't have to worry on whether or not it is legit as they will see the author of the document and at most times, references the author uses.

Online documents can be written by anybody on the web so the reader has to be aware that the information they see can be false. Some online documents do not have an author, but the ones that do are usually from a credible site. You should be able to determine whether or not an online document has legit information by the website its on and the references the author uses. Also, most online documents are regularly updated and that would probably be the biggest difference between physical and online documents. The author of an online document has much more control over their document, whether it be editing, moving, or deleting at any time; which an author of a physical document cannot do once their document is published.

Searching for Myself

So I did a vanity search on Google and sadly, I couldn't find myself. What surprised me though, was how many "James Cha"s there actually were. I honestly thought my name wasn't very common compared to most, but there are actually a few "James Cha"s in the world, mostly in Korea. So after failing to find myself, I tried to put in a few keywords after my name, such as "myspace" and "youtube," and I still couldn't find myself (even though I have a myspace account AND a youtube video). I guess I'm either a horrible searcher or the internet hates me.. I'll go with being a bad searcher though.