Week two of this wonderful class was a bit more nerve-wrecking, but I had fun with it nonetheless. The classes were fun and I feel I’m learning a lot about simple technologies!
Question 1:
I interact with technology a lot on a daily basis. I love technology and considering that in this modern age a person is pretty much required to have some knowledge in electronics and interacting with them, I’m happy. I know for a fact that I utilize my Laptop, iPhone and Apple ear-pods on a daily basis.
My laptop and IPhone have the similar qualities.
My Laptop is an Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop, and I tend to utilize it mostly for schoolwork, video games and typing up posts for the writing website that I’m on. Its enjoyable to utilize because it has a good microphone and sound system and I could talk to my friends with. The fact that it has a keyboard that lights up and has several USB ports makes it very versatile for me to plug in a mouse, headphones, and whatever other devices that I could need to have a more comfortable experience working or spending time with my Online friends.
My IPhone is sort of similar to my laptop, I tend to use it to check up on homework, my schedule and generally chat with my friends when I’m free. I don’t spend as much time on Social Media as most other people too simply because I’m a gamer and I prefer Discord, which is where the people that I care for are. My family generally uses Whatsapp and Viber to communicate with me overseas and that’s another function for my phone.
Lastly, the other super important technological Item that I use are my Iphone Earbuds. I consider myself someone who needs her alone time and the earbuds help me isolate myself sometimes with just my thoughts and music. On a different note they can also hype me up, depending on the music that I’m listening to, or can give a little bit of a skip in my walk when I’m talking to my friends using them
Looking up at all of these forms of technology that I interact with, I’d say that my definition of interaction, specific to these items would be “The act of communicating ideas and intentions to other people or yourself through technological means.” I say “or yourself” because the utilization of headphones is just generally isolating, and while a lot of people don’t consider them social, I believe that a person cannot be social if they’re not stable with themselves, and music and just having a couple of minutes a day to yourself can aid with that.
Also, all three of the devices listed above can transmit sounds between people and therefore allow for communication on a larger scale basis, which I like a lot.
:3
Question 2:
I’m assuming that in this question we’re talking about Arduino Circuits, so I’ll pray that I’m correct in this assumption as I answer.
There were many electronic components that Tiana and I used when we worked on our Basic Arduino circuits on Friday. The Arduino Genuino board, a breadboard and wires were present in all of these.
For the first circuit that we worked, we could easily recognize the symbols for LED and Resistor because they were present in the last recitation’s graphs. Finding the proper resistor provided a bit of a challenge as my partner and I tried going by the color tags at first, before resorting to using the Multimeter.
The first circuit was fortunately really simple and the use of Ground, Power and the Arduino board as well as the app felt very nice and polite.
The Second circuit felt pretty kind to work with. The only thing that Tiana and I needed was a buzzer, the already plugged in Arduino Board and a couple of wires. We ran the Tone Melody basic test which turned out to be a success. I liked the tune that the buzzer played, I thought it was cute.
The Third Circuit which we prepared was very difficult for me. There were a lot of cables and electronic components. Tiana and I went for creating the two-player Speed Game and it took us a bit longer than all of the other circuits.
There were a lot more cables and components to watch and try to place comfortably on the breadboard, which suddenly seemed very small. There were two switches which were supposed to be used for the game as buttons which two competitors were supposed to press as fast as possible. Tiana and I had the issue of not placing them around the breadboard properly- We barely had space for the second one once we fit in all of the resistors, LED’s and cables!
We didn’t really have any problems recognizing any of the technological components though, so I’m content!
Question 3:
Oh Wow, this is very random but I’m really in to it…Hmm…
If I had 100000 LEDs of any brightness and color at my disposal I would love to use them to decorate a cave. I’m Bulgarian and I adore mountain climbing and hiking. I’ve gone into several caves but generally a lot people get frightened a the though of experiencing sudden dimming darkness.
Caves are beautiful, especially when they have stalactites, stalagmites or Ice in them and if I could light those up the cave walls with LEDs to either create or enhance people’s awe of Mother Earth’s creations, I really would. I am a very visual person who tries to find the positives in anything so, this seems like a fun idea to do.
Question 4:
I find that the reading on Physical Computing was very interesting! I agree that “Computing is like Human Thinking,” as said by Igoe and O’sullivan. I think that the human brain is a much more complicated machine that a computer is, but I think that they have similar functions of reacting to inputs and expressing outputs as responses.
Computers and other such technologies can indeed provide a medium of expression for humans with images and sounds that they are unable to produce by themselves. All that we need are our fingers, eyes and ears ( and maybe mouth if there is a microphone involves) and we can input information into a technological machine such as the computer.
I think that the ideas expressed behind Input, Output, Processing and Transduction are interesting and important and the example with the microphone changing the energy in the air into electrical input is amazing. I never thought of it this way!
Lastly, for me the best part of the whole article that made me reflect on the nature of interaction is the idea that “You need to know what you want to do in order to make it happen.” If you don’t know what to input, then you can’t input it (a.k.a. one needs to know what they want if they want to make something at all). It’s accurate and actually resonates with me. I need to understand what the circuit wants to accomplish with its functions before making it, otherwise I will simply get lost somewhere along the way.
I don’t know what else I can say, I hope my response is satisfactory and I thank you for reading it! It’s always a pleasure to study how technology works; Considering I grew up playing videogames and going to an arcade, getting to build a mini-button-pressing game was awesome
Thank you and Have a Nice day!
Monika V. Yosifova