My name is Ken, I’m from Long Island and I’m interested in mobile and web development, software engineering, and music. I’m taking this class because it sounded amazing and it was recommended by Meg Schedel. I’ve been part of her Cuddle Time group for three semesters and created an app with her called Drum Circle, which is an web-based collaborative drum machine. My comfort level with technology is very strong. I’m a Comp Sci major and my primary business and hobby is creating software.

Social Networks

I’m an occasionally user of several social networks, although I’m not the most active poster. I try to stay quiet until I have something unique to say, and as a reader I appreciate others who take the same view.

I like Twitter, however I don’t like how I have to follow a whole person. What I mean is I tend to follow a lot of software people, but I’m not interested in other aspects of their lives. I like the way Pinterest lets you create boards for each topic and you can choose which to follow. I’m also on Facebook, Quora, Stack Overflow, LinkedIn, and Google+ (barely).

Is there any area of life that technology is not a part of?

Technology is absolutely everywhere, even if it’s old technology. Humans have the drive to make every area of life easier and more effective, and have done so for thousands of years.

Reply All: The Writing on the Wall

I had heard about Yik Yak but hadn’t tried it until after I listened to this podcast. I actually had an idea for this type of app about 4 years ago but decided not to pursue it. I had mentioned the idea to my Mom (who is African-American) and she pointed out that it could lead to bullying and a mob mentality. Looking back it’s interesting that she’s the one who had that insight.

I knew this kind of racism existed, but never thought it would be quite so public in this day and age, especially on college campuses which are supposed to be bastions of liberalism. Actually I suppose it’s not really “public” since the haters are anonymous but it has very real consequences IRL.

Disruption + Innovation

I found the part about Toyota interesting, and it made me think about makers of low-end Android phones and tablets. In most countries besides the US and Japan, Android has a majority market share. However Apple makes the majority of the profit at the high end in first world countries. Cars are different though I suppose since they’re much higher priced items. Also a lot of the money in mobile is made after the initial device is sold, for instance Amazon can afford to sell hardware at cost or even at a loss, but the tie-in to their ecosystem more than makes up for it.

I feel that college could be displaced by online courses such as MOOCs, but only if there’s a way to deliver an approximate substitute for the social experience. Perhaps this would take a form similar to Coworking spaces.

Disrupting the Classroom

Honestly I’m a bit skeptical about attempting to harness social networking channels into the classroom. My personal feeling is that I would be less likely to engage through Twitter for instance than participating face to face. I tend to be pretty self-conscious and knowing what I say would be saved on the Internet and also tweeted out to my followers would probably make me more self-conscious.

Also I’m not sure how asking questions online would compare to asking them in the moment. On the one hand you’re not disrupting the lecturer’s flow, on the other hand will they remember the context when they address an 140 character question about something from 15 minutes ago?

I do however very much like the idea of using tools like Yammer for private class communication, and using things like Trello and Google Docs for group projects. I adore Trello and use it for my personal projects all the time.