I wish to say by Sheryl Oring

I think there was a variety of letters in this project. Some letters were powerful, others were of gratitude and others were just cute. My favorite part are the  stamps in every letter "confidential,"
"urgent," "important,"etc. I truly think that one of the major problems addressed in most of the letters is the shortage of electricity in Arizona, that is definitely a problem that should be fixed by the President. Some people haven't been able to move forward because they have no power and this is from 2004, which means not too long ago. Hopefully they have power by now. The kids writing letters to the President are too cute, I really enjoyed those. And one letter I thought was really powerful was from the  unemployed veteran that is blind and has many injuries in his body because of the service he provided. These letter are very touching and moving but it is almost impossible for the President to read all of them because he is clearly busy enough but at least they are trying to get their message across someway. I think this project aids people into letting their frustrations and actually doing something about their every day problems.

Dada Manifiesto

The Dada Manifiesto was quite confusing but a different type of confusing, it was more of an interesting confusing than a boring confusing. Dada was born as a need for independence, Tzara said. I think even though the word Dada doesn't mean anything, these Dadaists gave meaning and became a united group that fought for independence. They did not live through a theory, they just wanted to express what they felt at that time. Most of the time Dadaists were exaggerated, humorists, creatives and   bizarres, but as they describe this was like their medicine to a disease, a monetary system to a government or a rehab center for the crazy. In other words, this movement was like a positive solution to overcome every stress, fear and frustration this Dadaists had. Although the article was somewhat confusing it definitely serves the purposes of explaining the depth of this word and movement.
 

Grid Art Project

This project was inspired in the Keyboard Grid-made Celebrity pictures. My favorite singer and celebrity is Rihanna, so I chose her to be in my project.

Persuasive Games

The Persuasive Games has many interesting games that caught my attention. The first one I look through was Colorfall. I was intrigued to read more about this game because as an Advertising Major, I have to deal with many colors and I think it is very cool that you can take a picture of your own color until you match the rainbow. The other one I looked into was the FatWorld which is actually a game to persuade a person to stop eating junk food because obesity is among the most popular diseases in America. I was really interested by this one because being an International student at UT, I have gained so much wait and maybe this game could help me figure out how to lose some although it isn't directed to that specific subject matter. It is more to create awareness of obesity in the U.S. The last game I stumbled on to was The Arcade Wire: Xtreme Xmas, the game that relates to shopaholics, again me. I really love to shop so I'm thinking I would  be go for this games. It is incredible how you can choose games that fit your personality or interests from such a small list. Games are now part of our everyday life and I think most of them are very helpful!

The Video Game Revolution

In this video, an old man along with video game creators explain the origin of video games. They mention that the average game player is around 29 years old. Video games can now be played anywhere, in computer, game consoles, cellphones, arcades, and also can be played on your own, with friends or with strangers. It has now become a dominant form of entertainment. The first game was created by Rusel deMaria called Spaceboard but it was too expensive. Nolan Bushnell was the genius that created Pong in 1972. Pong was placed in taverns and bars and people would have their beers while playing. Ralph suggested making games in a television set. Odyssey was the first video console in 1974 followed by the home version of pong. Although the most successful console of that time was Atari. It had many games such as Sims2 and Breakout invented by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Atari had its moment until it was sold to Warner Bros. After that came the revolution of Asteroids and Amco or Puckman today known as Pacman. Pinball machines created by Marcus O'Farrell were also a big success. After all this boost in the video game revolution the business started to die. They needed a new idea so this is when they tried to be more family oriented and targeted games that could be played at home. The rise of the Famicom or the family computer home console by Nintendo which had many games such as Don King Kong Jr., Super Mario Brothers,  and Zelda, all created by a japanese man with the name of Shigeru Miyamoto. He was the father of game design. Later in 1989, Nintendo's Gameboy was a boom because it was portable and along with it came the popular game Tetris. Japan was and still is a massive market for video games. In 1992 Mortal Combat arrived, and it received high rankings but also high complaints. Mortal Combat is a violent game and because there was many complaints the gaming industry decided to create their own ratings and warnings. After all that bad taste, in 1994, the revolution of the PlayStation by Sony arrived. Games like Nancy Drew and Tomb Raider became popular and began to target the female audience. Girls are also part of this industry even if boys do not think so. The military and the US army were also an audience to video games. In USC they created games to train them and the more real they were the more effective the training was. In 2000 and 2001, 3 products changed the video game revolution: the PlayStation2, the Gamecube and the Microsoft Xbox. I can still remember when these products came out. I used to have the Gameboy Advance, PlayStation2 and the Gamecube. These last consoles did make a change for video games, the graphics were amazing and they was a variety of games for each one. Lately the consoles have evolved, there is now the PlayStation3, the PlayStationPortable, Xbox live, Wii and more. All of these games are first tested by a group of people to calculate if the audience will or will not like it.  Although this has been a dominant entertainment it has its pros and cons. Games challenges minds and allows the gamer to learn without he/she knowing. The audience likes to learn but doesn't like to be taught as they mentioned in the video. Not all games are violent and many of them are used to teach, but there is also the downside to gaming. Some games are too violent. or can be considered as soft porn which to me should be prohibited to kids under 16. Technology is making today's society to grow so much faster but I think everything has its own time and violent games or movies should not take away a kid's childhood. Even though kids will eventually learn the bad things in life I do agree with that starting anywhere before 16. Addiction and obsession are also things that parents or guardians should watch out for because anything in great quantities can be harmful. 

Triumph of the Nerds

Triumph of the Nerds is a documental that takes us back to when the personal computer or PC was first created. It honestly is a win for the nerds because they were able to accomplish many softwares, chips, models, etc. that make today's technology all possible. Cringley, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, John Sculley, Paul Allen and more nerds were part of this amazing adventure. It was funny to hear how they just had pizza and coke, didn't have to take showers or personal relationships because they were too busy inventing, creating and coding. They did not sleep for days and their work hours were continuous.

In part 1, Cringley mentions that personal computers are one of the three largest industries in the world. It also made clear that this was all an accident. These were nerds that shared the same dream and that instead of having a social life they put their minds into creating. Everything happen in Silicon Valley in San Francisco, California were six Stanford Graduates shared the dream of making the first PC. Computers used to be the size of humans and they work on a system of binary codes of 1s and 0s. 1 was on and 0 was off, they also had a set of instructions which was called program and these were like a set of commands so the 1s and 0s could add, subtract, multiply or divide. This was also known as the machine language, where you had to switch buttons to give these commands. Steve Wozniak fell in love with the 1/0s and started to see how he and his partner Steve Jobs would take from that. Computer's data was first processed by vacuum tubes which was why the computers were so big but Intel invented a chip that allowed the main frame computer million transistors. Intel was a company that also work every day and night. Intel didn't not have offices only cubicles. They launched this chip but only for calculators and traffic lights they did not see the future of the chips in a PC. The first PC was launched in January 1975, on the magazine Popular Electronics, it was called the Altair 8800. Altair 8800 was not available for sale because it was more of a computer quit than an actual computer. The Altair 8800 was a panel with switches but the main problem was that it didn't have any connections to a monitor, printer, or keyboard. Paul Allen, a 19 year-old boy that listened to acid rock and watched action movies, solved this problem. On the other hand, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs worked in a garage creating the Apple 1 which was a total failure. Two years passed, and they came up with the Apple II which was a total success. It had the spreadsheet of Visicalc and by 1980 Apple became a billion dollar industry until the rise of IBM.

In Part 2, these inventors explained that all these were creations for fun, none of them taught it would actually be a business. IBM became the largest computer company in the world of american industry. It's founder Tom Watson and his son hired conservative hard workers and enforced a strict dress code. For the PC IBM wanted a language system with and operating system. Bill Gates, Microsoft was willing to provide the language system and Gary Nutt had the operating system. Gary refused to give their operating system but Gates bought that operating system from a local company owned by Tim Patterson. Bill Gates was a wealthy yet competitive teenager that wasn't going to miss the opportunity of IBM's deal. In 1981, the IBM PC was developed in Boca Raton, Florida with a new spreadsheet call Lotus 123. IBM thought they had already won the battle, little did they know that all companies started to clone IBM PCs by adopting the strategy of reverse engineering which was to create something that worked the same way. Compac was one of the companies that hired virgin people in the field to clone PCs and sell them a little bit cheaper. Intel sold the microchips to all these companies so they could clone the PCs. Microsoft was with IBM through all of this because they thought that if they were in their side it will also lead to their success until they came up with the Windows program. IBM took Windows as a threat from Microsoft and they decided to break off.  Later on, in 1984, Apple created the first Macintosh computer. 

In Part 3, they give a brief history on the Xerox company and how they were able to revolutionize the PC in 1971, but they didn't see it. Speaking of Apple, in 1976 Jobs wanted the Macintosh to be the best computer. He even made a parody game called the Macintosh Dating Game in 1983. Bill Gates participated in this game and Jobs didn't not realize that he was about to become his number one rival. Macintosh was the first affordable personal computer but there was a problem. The computer did not print what was on the screen so Apple bought Adobe systems created by John Warnock. This allowed the Macintosh to create graphic designs and desktop publishing. Although all of this sounded great, Macintosh computers were not selling and Jobs was incapable of seeing that. With that said, John Sculley fired Steve Jobs. In 1990, Microsoft created the Windows 3 program which sold over 30 million copies. Apple sued Microsoft because they said that the fonts and designs were the same as the Macintosh. Apple lost the demand. In 1995, Microsoft created even a better and updated software Windows 95 which was the first software I used as a kid. Later on, Larry Ellison created Oracle and he truly believed that the PC was a waste because isn't of saving everything into a floppy disk, they should be saved into the Internet. Nowadays there was been many more softwares and devices invented such as the iPhone, iPad, Tablet, Android, iPod, iCloud etc. It is ironic to think that this started with a bunch of nerds that had coding as a hobby. 

Alan Turing - Pardoned

Alan Turing was a very intelligent man that contributed in the decoding of Enigma code. Mr. Turing uncoded many important messages that allowed the U.S troops decipher where the Nazis troops were. This provided the U.S troops and intelligence a great advantage during World War II. Sadly, later on in 1952, the US government found out that Mr. Turing was gay and at that time  homosexuality was a big taboo without mentioning that it was also against the law. Mr. Turing was giving the choice of being in a prison or being chemically castrated and he chose to be chemically castrated. He was also fired and his services were no longer used by the government. He died and later on he was giving a royal pardon by the British government. I think this is ridiculous. Mr. Turing was part of the key to winning War World II and his sexual preferences have nothing to do with this work. I honestly think he was a savior at that time. It doesn't really make a difference if he is pardoned after his death. If Mr. Turing would have been pardoned before he wouldn't have killed himself and he would probably had become an inventor of great things.
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The Mother of all Demos

Douglas Engelbart was an incredible early computer pioneer. In the article and in the video he is presenting the new software called WYSIWYG which practically works and looks very similar to today's Excel. What made this so amazing was that at that time computers were for military and government use only. This software was more for personal computers or "PC" because as the first example that Mr. Engelbart made, it allowed women or men to create lists for the supermarket or any to do list. It also allowed categorizing and organizing everything like an outline. With this software there was also the copy and paste text or more commands that would help. I think the presentation was amazing as I was watching it, I can't imagine how shocked people were at that time when it first launched.

Link to video

Raymond Kurzweil and Mark J. Stock

Although my generation takes computers and technology for granted because we have always had it to our reach, researching on these two men actually made me appreciate and value more the inventions they came up with. Raymond Kurzweil is an American inventor, futurist and creator. He was the one who invented the flatbed scanner which is the one we use today to scan documents and import them to the computer. He also came up with the speech to text for people that were blind and were not able to read. This even helped musicians such as Stevie Wonder. Kurzweil's inventions also include the music synthesizer and the text to speech synthesizer. His inventions have definitely helped many people in need and have also contributed to the future of all technology.
Mark J. Stock is more of an artist with coding and visual images. He has created beautiful digital art work and has been active in shows and exhibitions since 2000. Stock's works consists on various images that look like DNA but they definitely stand out and can be appreciated most by those who know how difficult coding is. His career has just started and I think he is off on a great start.

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Steve Jobs' 2005 Speech at Stanford University

Steven Jobs also known as Steve Jobs gave a speech at Stanford University in 2005. The speech was about three short yet deep stories that gave everyone a message. The first one was about why Jobs dropped out of college to pursue his dream. He thought that college was a waste of money and time because instead of taking courses he was interested in, he had to take required courses which are pointless. I kind of feel the same way about this. Instead he dropped out and took a calligraphy class that helped him develop all types of fonts which he included in the Macintosh computer. So the lesson of this story was to follow your instincts and feelings to pursue what you truly love, so later in life you can connect the dots when you look back.
The second story was about loving and losing. He invented the Macintosh along with some people he taught were smart and ambitious, but he was then fired by that same people he hired. At the time he felt that he lost the company he created but then he started looking at the positive side of being fired. This is when he developed neXT and Pixar Animation which is the biggest animation company in the world. He later realized that being fired got out the best of him instead of getting the worst. I can totally understand how anyone can apply this to the everyday life and in fact, I think everybody has without even realizing it. Every time you fail to accomplish something, you can learn from the mistakes and make something even better than with what you started.
The third story was about death. Jobs was detected with a tumor in his pancreas and there wasn't a cure for this. He was told that he would live only 3-6 more months. He was shocked about the news and sticked to the quote "Live everyday as if it was your last one." This is probably a quote that we have all heard of and I think it is motto which all of us should live by. I think you start being happy when you realize that being sad, angry or frustrated is not worth it. Every minute you are angry or sad are 60 seconds of happiness you will not get back. So I truly believe that Jobs did the same thing and that is what everyone should do. Jobs' speech was definitely very touching and inspiring for those college graduates and for anyone that watches it. He was definitely a legend.

Electroacoustic Music & Multimedia: Mark Snyder feat. Becky Brown and Paige Naylor

This concert was very different from the concerts I usually attend to. I really enjoy classic music though and this music was perfect because it was acoustic and peaceful. Most of his tunes started at a slow paced and ended in a faster pace. Mr. Snyder also explained where he got the inspiration to make these tunes. My favorite piece of his own was Messy, which he played with the clarinet and electronic music. I liked this one in particular because you could feel that everything was a chaos and it was very fast paced. Although Messy was really cool, my ultimate favorite was Owee because I had never seen someone play the harp live. It was amazing and touching to listen and watch Becky Brown play the harp. I really really loved this one, I can definitely picture myself listening to it a million times. I enjoyed the concert, Mr. Snyder was very prepared yet nice.