Author: jhr360

Link: https://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~jhr360/week2/index.html

I found using CSS to be frustrating at first, since there so many ways to format a website and I didn’t any prior knowledge of any of the functions. However, I did find that the process gets easier the more I tinkered with it, and it soon became more satisfying than annoying.

I mostly had issues with the footer, though the site w3schools was extremely helpful in that respect. I also struggled a lot with the flex container and its components. Trying to edit the margins and padding of the boxes became frustrating, though I eventually figured it out.

  

I started my collage with these three images: a worm’s eye view of the Freedom Tower, the sky above the Philippines, and the sky above my hometown. I chose these three because of my love for the sky and my yearning for home.

I mostly played around with the blending mode of the layers, setting the sky above my hometown as a Hard Light layer and the sky above the Philippines as a Soft Light layer. I also lowered the opacity of the layers so the colors wouldn’t be as saturated.

As for the Freedom Tower layer, I initially wanted to use the Lasso Tool or the Magic Wand tool to get rid of the sky, but I struggled with both as they rely on the Tolerance level, and the colors of the buildings were too similar. As such, I decided to lower the opacity of the Freedom Tower layer and added a background layer with the color pink, to highlight the colors of the sky.

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~jhr360/week1/

The only issue that came up in coding was that my list was not showing up numbered, but I was able to find the correct code at https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_lists.asp. I also had issues and confusion with CyberDuck and not being able to upload my files, though these were resolved with Professor Eckert.

In Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium Is the Message,” he claims that the only aspect of a given medium that affects its audience is the medium itself rather than its content. McLuhan regards media as “extensions of man,” especially technologies. In other words, the way we communicate matters more than what is being communicated.

As such, I do not necessarily agree with McLuhan’s claims that the technology itself holds more meaning than its content. This seems to only hold true for the technologies he has cited such as the airplane or railways, but for media such as literature, art, and films, the content, more often than not, matters more than the medium. If the medium only mattered for these types of media, then there would not be such a wide library of novels, of art pieces, or of movies. 

However, it is interesting to note that McLuhan regards new innovations with unfamiliarity and fear, a he writes, “We are no more prepared to encounter radio and TV in our literate milieu than than the native of Ghana is able to cope with the literacy” (157).  Here, McLuhan describes the initial fear that comes with new technologies and how they function as extensions of ourselves.

Berners-Lee’s article on the Web as a commodity sheds light on how the Web operates while also giving insight into the sociopolitical dimensions of the Web. He discusses accessibility on the Web for disabled groups and emphasizes the free aspect of the Web, as it allows people the freedom to use it as they see fit. However, Berners-Lee also outlines the threats to Web freedom, including government censorship and competitive practices of Internet Service Providers (ISPs). These practices by the government and private corporations are by nature manipulative, as these larger institutions have control over what people might see on the Web. Not only this, but Berners-Lee’s article raises questions about public knowledge access, as there are many databases of articles and scholarly journals that are not available to the public. While Berners-Lee does not touch upon sites charging people for access, this makes me wonder what he thinks about public access to information.

On a more structural note, Ingrid Burrington’s “The Internet Is Everywhere” is a sentimental piece about the physical structures that make up the Internet. We take for granted the Internet (especially those of us who grew up with it) because we cannot fathom life without it. As such, I had never thought much about the physical aspects of what makes the Internet the Internet. Burrington’s piece highlights the little things, the underground sites where cables are buried in the middle of nowhere, as opposed to large electrical landmarks. This article is an anecdotal experience about something commonly regarded as scientific rather than evocative.