Author: Vivian

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My Portfolio (Vivian Zhu)

Here is a screenshot of my portfolio site, with the link to my site.Most of the work is done by referring to the lecture slides, as well as the W3school instructions. Just for fun, I changed the navigation part into button-like boxes, instead of hyperlinks that many other classmates may use. I may add the link towards them in order to add some interactivity. One of the two biggest challenges I ran into may be the margin between the blocks. Initially all the blocks are stick to one another, making the whole website really noisy. Yet when I tried to manipulate the “margin” as well as the “width” variables in defining my blocks, I found that’s exactly where the problem came from. 

Another challenge is somehow I couldn’t let the navigation bar be in a line with the six boxes. In other words, they are in separate lines. I finally solved this problem as I changed the  “justify-content: center” to “justify-content: flex-start”, without a hint of why. I will ask professor/TA about it next week.

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Photo Collage—Vivian Zhu

Hi, the photo collage I’m showing uses three pictures: A photo of myself, a background scene of afternoon tea, and a plate of breakfast (toast with an egg) I made by myself. I collaged them together to make it look like that i’m enjoying an afternoon tea. Though the output still looks a little bit awkward, I guess you could get what is done here.

Below is a brief summary of how I did this:

First I use the magic wand to wisely select the region (my fact and body) I want to cut out.

Then I copied and pasted it on the background pic, adjusting the size and position.

The same cut-out process was applied to the plate of my breakfast. Then I transformed the shape so that it looked the same as the plate in the background.

Lastly, I copied and pasted it on the background, covering the original plate of bread. All is done!

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Response to McLuhan’s “Medium is the Message”–Vivian Zhu

The main point McLuhan tries to make is that the way we send the information or message is far more important than the information itself.  The form of a medium embeds itself in any message via which it would transmit or convey, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived.

The medium indeed has changed the way we behave. I was born from China before the 2000, witnessing the degradation of television and the spreading of social media tools like Facebook, Wechat and Twitter over the past twenty years. I remembered in my childhood, I fight with my sister for the remote control in order to watch my favorite TV channel. Now several clicks enable me to do so on my mobile phone, and the previous fights and quarrels become unnecessary. TVs have gradually gone out of sight. Instead, the instant exchange and conveying of information expose us to the most updated news happening around the world in no time. On the other, short and concise stories become more popular than heavy books as the latter have much redundancy and weight. Though the targeted recommendation and info manipulation has blind us from a comprehensive approach of learning the world, the advancements of media still benefits human beings in more ways than one.

It is impossible to understand the social and cultural change without a knowledge of the workings of media, as so many things are presented in front of us using media as a tool. Undeniably, this type of change has also brings challenges and confusions. Privacy becomes no longer capable of being protected, each trail of a person online will leave permanent record even if the person has attempted to delete it. The propaganda on the media becomes a significant battlefield especially for new businesses and politics, mobilizing the power in a subtle and unconscious way. Given those potential negatives, I could see McLuhan’s caution towards this change. No matter what, it is quite excited to see the prediction of McLuhan—-“an international, interconnected, interactive global village is now becoming an actuality”.

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Week 2 Response to “Long Live the Web” and “The Strange Geopolitics of the International Cloud”–Vivian Zhu

Please see my INDEX website here:
sftp://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/home/www/week1/index.html
The website is designed to introduce myself. I’m not intended to build the About Page a long one with lots of information. Instead, you can get most of the information about me in a few sentences with links. I hope you will like it. 
More decorations and polishing will be done. Keep tuned.
 
The two articles I read: “Long Live the Web” and “The Strange Geopolitics of the International Cloud” both talk about to some extent of how does the Web reflects the real world and shapes it.
 
The Web, by metaphor, is one of the applications that run on the electronic network, i.e. Internet, to transmit information according to some open protocols like TCP/IP. Five principles apply in order to get rid of the threats towards the Web development. They are universality, open standards, separation from the Internet, net neutrality and no snooping (which is a result of mixing with the Internet). Some future capabilities of the Web are provided such as HTML5 language, linked data. 
 
From an institutionalist view, communication is power and the Web is an instrument (equivalent to instant messages and email) to make that happens. Because of some innate characters the Web owns such as liberty, freedom, and equality, the Web is entitled to some political sense. Those in power (like totalitarian government) regards the Web as a useful tool to control people, interpret the human rights and distinct groups, thus resulting in the fragmentation of the Web, causing isolation and power separation around the globe. For example, the dispute on “data sovereignty” is a product resulting from the allocation of the Cloud (international data storage). Because of the surging of the amount of data, they can no longer be stored in their own network or server, but be subcontracted towards outside managers, who build warehouse specifically for data storage. The Cloud is hence built. The geographic positions is depending upon factors like weather, tax and sovereignty etc. Nevertheless, governmental policy affects the accessibility of these data, given different positions they have been stored in, like Russia’s data sovereignty that forces data storage to switch to Germany. Though the article “The Strange Geopolitics of the International Cloud” didn’t propose any suggestions on this geopolitical impact, combining “Long Live the Web”, I recognized three advice which would be helpful in mitigating this issue:
  •  Build up a universal consensus on the data storage instead of negotiating with only one side or partial side. Consensus is the key to universality. A robust consensus equip all the participators inside the network with the same goal, mission, tasks etc., hence building a strong and efficient web management. 
  • Develop an international communicating mechanism. After all, most the conflicts is caused by the disconnections between two parties. When figuring out the consensus mentioned above, it is significant that all the parties have a clear package of appeals, sit together to work out an agreement. Compromises and conflicts happen during that time, but no more conflicts should happen after the consensus is built. In this way, potential risks and delays would be avoided in advance when the data warehouse (the Cloud) is working. International organization like WTO can be a proper platform to set up the conversations.
  • A committee representative to the nation’s regarding the Web should be built. The Internet is a virtual world that reflects the real world. Similar approaches like those in the real world should be adopted to regulate problems happening in this virtual world. In this sense, I recommend each nation collaborate and set up a committee individually in addressing all the problems that come up. 
The Internet is a transmitting machine that transfer the information created in each Web. In order to make this machine work smoothly, not only the communication in the virtual world is necessary, the exchange of information and negotiation should also happens virtually, in order to maintain worldwide data openness, safety and stability under today’s cosmopolitan context.
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Week1: Response to “The Machine Stops”—Vivian Zhu

We don’t think things as they are, we see things as we are. Vashti is a typical human being that passively and subconsciously accept all the environment, rules, religion that imposed upon her. This story, on the perspective of Vashti, is a story of reborn, of civilization, of the process how Vashti finally realized the real truth of the world. Yet on the perspective of the relationship between the machine and humans, a message of warning was delivered—-a world controlled by technology will eventually turn catastrophic for the human race. 
 
The first thing that impresses me are two facets of conflicts: first the setting of characters. Heroes Kuno and Vashti stand in opposite position on the view of the machine. Kuno is an experimentalist and life critique, questioning the existence of the world ruled by the machine; while Vashti is a conventionalist, obedient to the rules imposed upon her and accept the environment setting. On another facet, the geographic setting of this story. Underground and above ground metaphorically suggest a sealed world without real truth, and the world with genuineness. This setting is quite similar to The Matrix, and the choice between the red pill or the blue one remains as an unsolvable question. I used to interview Prof.Astrada about the matrix in law. As the supreme court’s researcher working for the academics half of his life, he sees law as merely a tool employed by and for the service of the authority. In this regard, people can never acquire real protection on their rights. Yet many people still believe law is a powerful thing to get all their rights under cover. But is this recognition of truth a good thing? It really depends. From my point of view, Prof. Astrada is not as happy as those who trust the government and believe in law, even if he always insist he never regrets for learning about the truth of the world. The same logic applies to the story. Can we say Vashti’s final arousal a success of liberty? Not really. When the scar is uncovered, the one who uncovers it has to bear with the brought consequence. 
 
Another thing relates to the relationship between human beings and machine. I always had the question when I read the story: how the world in the story gradually evolves into the one Kuno and Vashti live in? I mean, what specific mechanisms, both psychological and physical, drive the direction of social development? The answer to this question may in part make us clearer about our correct attitude towards the machines in real world. I recognize two mechanisms: first, the religion/worship of something. In history, people can rule the world because we can have a common belief: this can be a religion, a belief in the government, or even a belief as small as getting up at 6 o’clock. These consensus aggregate human beings and keep the brutal “state of nature” in stability. A wrong belief on machine builds the wrong world in “Machine Stops”, leading to the ultimate catastrophic situation: the blind worship that machine can do everything for human being, and hence is the god. Hence, to prevent today’s world (which is at the risk of being “taken over” by machines), there should always be voices and belief-holding that human beings, are the species that control the world. Machine plays an inferior role for the service of human beings. Another mechanism that draws to the current state in the story is human nature: laziness, arrogance and cowardice. We will feel annoyed at accepting new concepts, will not change our views instantly if we being challenged, and get rid of possible rebel and conflicts as much as possible. When the first mechanism is triggered, people can hardly jump out of the loop and accept the new things again, even they are true. Of course, in the story, Kuno pioneered to be the one that guides Vashti learn about the truth. But in the real world, how many of us can be Kuno, who is willing to step outside and see what the world looks like?