Chunk 3, question 3, 5th response

From what I could find, steganography is a way of hiding data within another piece of data. Some people may confuse steganography with cryptography, but in reality these two methods are very different. While cryptography is used to make something unreadable to a third party, steganography’s goal is to hide data from a third party completely, much more private that cryptography. The one thing that is most scary about steganography than anything else is the fact that an ordinary person is not supposed to know that it exists, so someone could be planning the next major terrorist attack right in front of our eyes and we would have no idea or defense mechanism against it.
http://www.garykessler.net/library/fsc_stego.html
In the book, Chumbo describes his way of using steganography. He says that using iPods to hide information and transfer potentially harmful information is very useful because a person is a lot less likely to check an iPod for steganography that they are to check a laptop or something else much bigger than an iPod. I was very confused on how he might achieve this because I am not 100% sure what Chumbo says he puts on these iPods. Does he just put songs in a particular order that signify a message, or does he record other things and just put it on an iPod? I believe that Chumbo is using steganography to tell people, or at least lead people on, about where the containers are and what is inside of them, but I don’t think he tells anyone the truth, and in reality, he is the only one who knows about the containers.
Steganography could have very easily been used in the planning of the 9/11 attacks, and since this is a post 9/11 book, I find it very hard to believe that a concept like steganography finding its way into Gibson’s book is a coincidence.

Spook Country, section 2, question 4, third response,,,, i think??

In chapter 29, Gibson makes a lot of interesting points about the war on terrorism and America’s role in the war on terrorism. Milgrim says that if you are scared of a terrorist, you essentially are letting the terrorist win because that is what a terrorists goal is, to “terrorize” you. Personally, I would have to say that I agree with Gibson on this point because a terrorist, while he/she is a very dangerous person, a terrorist is simply that, one person, so how much “damage” can one single terrorist really do? There is no such thing as a person who is bigger or more important or more dangerous than a country, so the idea of being deathly afraid of a terrorist is relatively unthinkable to me, especially since the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack are so minute, as minute as the chances of winning the lottery, which Gibson also points out in the text.
Also, I have to disagree with the notion that Gibson is trying to make a real-life political statement by having this scene as a part of “Spook Country.” I think that Gibson is trying to demonstrate Milgrim’s views about the war on terrorism, not his own. It is very possible that Gibson does agree with the view of fearing a terrorist being pointless, and the idea that if a nations laws are situational, that nation has no laws, but I feel that in this situation he was simply trying to go in-depth with the feelings of the characters in his novel. Gibson seems like a very professional person to me, so I feel that if he had a problem with something the government was doing he would find the proper forum to say so, he would not make a backhanded statement in one of his novels to display his unhappiness.

Vikings-27 49ers-24, an amazing finish as Favre does it again and snatches victory from the jaws of defeat with a 32 yard TD pass to Greg Lewis with 2 seconds left to win the game, Minnesota 3-0.

Spook Country Question #2

Personally, I feel that Gibson uses specific product names in “Spook Country” in order to make the story seem more believable. If he were using product names that were made up or simply not using product names at all, readers would have a harder time following, but when you read the word “Bluetooth” or “Ipod” or ‘Lego” or “Astroturf”, these are items which the typical person is familiar with and can easily relate to.
While looking at the webpage for the Mondrian hotel in Los Angeles I was struck by how “modern” this motel appears to be. A good amount of the furniture is very curvy and modern looking. This hotel is very pricy, not to mention the extremely good looking girls they have posing on every page of the website.
On the other hand, the Standard Hotel in Los Angeles, while still very adequate looking, in my opinion, pales in comparison to the Mondrian. It still has that curvy modern look, but the rooms do not appear to be as big. The prices are also significantly lower, which may be exactly what someone is looking for, but when renting a hotel room, you get what you pay for, so a cheaper room usually means a worse room.
I feel that using modern technology terminology and including hotels and technological items that exist in real life helps Gibson’s cause. However, some people, maybe more of the older generation, would say that using modern terminology is bad because it confuses them when he mentions an Ipod or something that they do not know what he means, but figuring out what some of these items are can simply be achieved by looking at a computer for 5 minutes. Even with those people in mind, they are a small minority of the general public in today’s world, so therefore using modern terminology is a bigger plus than it is a minus.

william gibson info

William Gibson, an only child, lost both of his parents before the age of 18, so at an early age he was virtually on his own. He is from Conway, SC, a town which I have oddly enough actually been to, but in 1967 he moved to Canada in order to avoid the Vietnam War draft. "Spook Country" is a novel written by Gibson in 2007. "Spook Country" deals with the issue of privacy and the notion that no one is safe and could be being followed or watched. This is a topic that most people will tend to shy away from because they don't like to think about things like that, but it seems as if Gibson takes this challenge head on. I am very much looking forward to reading this novel and being envolved in some very interesting class discussions.

Vikings 27 Lions 13, Minnesota 2-0, you can look forward to more Vikings updates in the future.

My digital life, or lack thereof

For a 19 year old college student, I do not use modern technology as much as you might think. I have a cell phone which I have with me all day, but it is not one of those fancy ones which you can get the internet and all types of other stuff on it, I use my alarm for texting, calls, and an alarm almost exclusively. I have a laptop which I use to go on facebook and play games, and of course, to do homework for BHP. The TV in my room is on almost constantly, but that soesnt mean that I am always watching it. I really don't play video games too often. I feel that I might be as technologically inept as any college student on the planet, I have an Ipod, but I havent used it in 3 years. Most of these new inventions go right over my head.

Postmodernity definition and example

According to www.thefreedictionary.com, postmodernity can be defined as follows: Of or relating to art, architecture, or literature that reacts against earlier modernist principles, as by reintroducing traditional or classical elements of style or by carrying modernist styles or practices to extremes. In this definition, I feel that the major point is that postmodernity, whether it is taking the norm to an extreme, or if it is going 100% opposite of what the norm is, postmodernity is always something which deviates from the norms.

When I think of postmodernity, the first things that comes to mind are what humans view as the future. For example, a tv show like The Jetsons, which is a very futuristic view of what the earth might be like in the distant future is what I think postmodernity is.