Making Meaning: Tubes

Growing up I had always regarded the internet as something that just was. I never thought of it as having physical locations in the world. Tubes helped to further my understanding of the internet by describing the main locations of the internet and the main power brokers. But Tubes had its downsides. The book itself was pretty boring at times but it did do a decent job in teaching what the internet was. I really disliked the explanations of all the different companies buildings and setups because they were never enough for me. I had trouble visualizing what he described so I ended up looking up certain pieces like the MLX-32 for example. This search for pictures of the machines led

me to more information on them which was very helpful throughout reading the rest of the book.
Some of the things that I learned from this little bit of research is that these things are very expensive. The MLX-32 for example was around 164 thousand bucks. Another thing that I found amazing is the speed that it forwards data. 6.4 terabytes a second, which seems absolutely insane to me but I'm guessing that its not that much from an internet brokers perspective (http://www.brocade.com/content/dam/common/documents/content-types/datasheet/brocade-mlx-series-ds.pdf). Another thing that I found interesting was the importance of networking for networks. Blum described this process in chapter 4 of Tubes. What I found interesting was the willingness of large companies like Facebook to let networks peer with them. I guess it just makes sense from a business standpoint though. With the direct connection Facebook gets more people on their site faster and the network company makes their customers happy by providing them more speed to get them where they want to go. The term peering slut used by Blum was also pretty fun (Tubes chapter 4). Another thing that this book brought to my attention was the sort of secrecy and security that these networks had. Every time a network building was described it held a shrouded appearance. Buildings that were basically big sheds covered in cameras with unmarked doors and a lack of windows. The insides didn't seem much more appealing. Security seemed to be a constant theme in Blum's tours of the networks. Fingerprint scanners, guards, badges, and locked cages seemed to be everywhere (Tubes Chapter 4 pages 141-146). One thing that was really weird was the small amount of people that actually run the networks. When describing the network conference thing he kept saying how few people there actually was. This was very strange to me because the internet is such a big and powerful tool, I expected there to be a large amount of people working on it. Another thing that was very strange to me was the fact that almost all of the main networks I had never even heard of. Like Equinox for example. After looking up Equinox I found that they have over 145 data centers and over 180,000 cross connects. This is a lot more than I had imagined for these network companies to have.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about the workings of the internet and its many networks. The only downsides of this book are that the reading is pretty dull at times and the descriptions never seemed to be enough. Pictures would have made this book so much better to follow and visualize. I understand why this book was chosen as a textbook its has language that is very easy to follow (almost no technical terms) and helps to demystify the internet and how it works.

Works cited
Sheet, Data. Brocade MLX Series Routers (n.d.): n. pag. Web.
Blum, Andrew. Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet. New York: Ecco, 2012. Print.

The Filter Bubble

The Filter Bubble

While exploring the effects of the filter bubble I decided to compare what came up in my YouTube, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Netflix to what came up on my Dad's. The results where strange. All of these sites seemed to cater around what we like. For example, the videos that YouTube recommended for me where all video game related. The majority of which being for League of Legends and Overwatch. Then I went to my Dads, he is not super big into video games but he recently built his own PC using YouTube for part reviews and to look at builds. This was very evident when looking at the recommended section. He was recommended videos like "RX 480 doesn't suck" and "The silver bullet PC of the month". He was also recommended Videos on sports like "Cowboys vs Packers week 6". Amazingly enough the gaming videos that seemed to be all that my YouTube consisted of where nowhere to be found on his and the PC building videos where nonexistent on mine. As I continued my search through his Amazon, Google, and Netflix this was a consistent theme. His Amazon was computer parts, because that was where he purchased his computer parts while mine was all textbooks, headphone adapters, and phone cases because that is what I purchased. What it seemed like to me was that your internet starts out as a blank slate. As you write on the slate, look up things that you like or that you find interesting, your internet picks up on it. It then adds what you looked up to a list of things that it thinks that you are going to like seeing in the future and shows you related things based on that list. As Eli Pariser put it, it creates a "personal ecosystem of information thats been catered by these algorithms" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble). But why does this even matter? Whats the big deal? Well, this filter bubble is a big deal because it is a fact barrier. With the algorithms set to only cater to you and your views it denies you from the truth. It puts you comfort and pleasure above knowing. The whole concept of the filter bubble also reminded me of this scene from Minority Report

I was reminded of this because it goes along with the idea of catering. But instead of basing what is shown on searches and what you watch it was instead based on your purchase history. While continuing my search I hit all of the sites that I did before but instead of using someones account and search history I went on incognito mode. This provided yet another unique result. YouTube for example provided what I see as more mainstream content. A lot of the videos where of popular music videos and presidential debates. But what I found very interesting was this.

Before you even begin to search and fill out your "list" of things that appeal to you the site starts probing you for information on your preferences. Amazon had a similar approach in the fact that it, like YouTube, displayed the popular areas. I also began to think about Tubes while researching this. I would think that since networks are connected on a need for speed if networks holding a lot of similar information where connected to increase the speed that you can receive more recommendations for like things (Tubes Chapter 3). I also thought back to chapter 5 in Pattern on the Stone, which was about algorithms. Since an algorithm is a mathematical equation that will solve a problem what is the equation for preference? And how do you decide that your equation meets every persons wants? (Pattern on the Stone Chapter 5).

Works Cited

Hillis, W. Daniel. "Chapter 5." The Pattern on the Stone: The Simple Ideas That Make Computers Work. New York: Basic, 1998. Print.

Blum, Andrew. Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet. New York: Ecco, 2012. Print.

"Filter Bubble." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 17 Oct. 2016. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble>.

Making meaning: Pattern on the Stone

Pattern on the Stone does a great job in explaining the basic concepts of computers. It may be boring at times but this book explains complex ideas in a very simplistic manner thats easy to follow. One of the most helpful parts of the book to me was the descriptions of simple computers using sticks and string and one using water pipes. The accompanying pictures provided a good visual representation of these simple computer and greatly impacted the effectiveness of the chapters. Another example of helpful diagrams is where Hillis shows the logic behind or and and statements showing what these statements would look like if built mechanically (Pattern on the Stone chapter 1). The diagrams of what things would look like if built mechanically really helped me to better understand the concepts being presented.

One section that was very interesting to me was the section on simulated evolution. Basically this section describes the process of testing a batch of random programs to find which accomplishes the desired task the best. Then using survival of the fittest, take the best ones and combine the successful aspects of each to create a even better program. Then repeat this process until it has been optimized. After reading this section I looked up evolutionary computation and found that the selection process is not just the strong programs moving on. There are other methods that allow the weaker programs to survive and become mutated into better programs. I also learned that the search process is guided using parallel processing which was a section of the book that I found boring, but my interest in evolutionary computation got me to reread that section and helped me to better understand it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_computation).

Another thing that this book taught me is what a bit actually was. Previously I had only thought of bits as the 32 or 64 bits of a computer operating system. But after reading this book I learned that bits are actually "the unit of measure for information" (Pattern on the Stone chapter 6) These bits are very limited so bits are compressed to allow for more storage. That chapter also went on to talk about image segmentation and how pictures of a face for example will contain less bits than that of a pile of pebbles because the adjacent pixels are similar. It was also explained that this process can even be done for sounds and video.

The only part of this book that I disliked was the section on neural networks, This section didn't make any sense to me on my first read through it. I was never really big into science, and neural networks are based on the human brain, neurons, and their connections. So the majority of this chapter flew over my head. But I did understand the part on training a program to learn to recognize letters. It does this by receiving several inputs of the letter and then comparing the shape of the thing given to them to the curves and lines of the letters that were inputted.I understood this mainly because it somewhat reminded me of image segmentation and the process of comparing surrounding pixels.

All in all I think that this book is a great source of information for someone with a interest in computers. It does a great job at explaining so even if you have no background in computers you will still be able to understand it. I also really enjoyed Hillis including things that he had created in his life. Like the Tinker Toy computer, which played tick tack toe and never lost.

Works cited

Hillis, W. Daniel. The Pattern on the Stone: The Simple Ideas That Make Computers Work. New York: Basic, 1998.

"Evolutionary Computation." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 03 Oct. 2016. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_computation>.