Aaron Swartz

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How is America suppose to grow if the there are limits to the knowledge that we have access to? Aaron Swartz, the 26 year old who had committed suicide after an extensive and relentless case against him rose because he wanted others to have access to scholarly documents that we should have all been able to read. The author of the article, Aaron Swartz: Opening access to knowledge, Pamela Samuelson, choose to agree with Swartz (from what I presumed). Samuelson lists plenty of good reasons as to why Swartz may have decided to do what he had because the articles that could have been founded through JSTOR were already supplied because of research grants from the government and foundations. Most of the articles were published my the universities professors and we all have an idea as to how much a person with a Ph. D earns. As Samuelson states, maybe Swartz thought that the public was owed access to it. Such a sad way to start the new year when a 26 year old man decided to hang himself because he was only providing the public with knowledge that should be shared with everyone.

Knowledge Oct. 7

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Information and knowledge is what helps a society grow. It is important to not only have the information but also have access to the information. In the Samuelson article, she discussed Aaron Swartz, who made it his mission to promote broader access to knowledge. Swartz felt that the public should have access to academic and scholarly journals and articles, so that they could broaden and advance their knowledge instead of being limited. In the Brian Martin chapter, he discusses the factors that influence research and thereby limit it. When a group funds a specific research, it is generally to fit their agenda and to benefit themselves. Research should allow for people interested to engage with it and broaden the idea of knowledge and information.

Plagirizing

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Maurice Isserman wrote out such a clear concept however, it may not be taken so easily. Though Isserman says that it is, in fact, easier to copy another person’s work as your own; won’t you be putting it up with a higher risk because of the punishments you could encounter in the future for yourself. I have to say that if a person doesn’t document wherever the concept/idea came from he/she is causing a fraud. It isn’t a difficult concept to add quotation marks, the author’s name, the piece that it came from, etc. It is unfortunate when a student who knows that plagiarizing is looked down upon, he/she still chooses to do it just for a few more hours of sleep or something. There have been cases where a student has earned an immediate F because of what he/she decided and forever that grade has to remain on his/her permanent record. It is an unclear thought to me as to why people would put themselves in situations like that when they could be at risk of losing everything that got them to that point.

Information is Golden

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Knowledge is power. Information has been a valuable commodity, probably since man came into existence. We have built upon pieces of information, networking these ideas to help leap frog us to the next ground breaking idea. Now it takes a person years to learn the foundations to reach a new apex. Researching becomes expensive and important to understanding more about life.  Martin’s article, The Politics of Research, gives us an in depth understanding at the complex value of research. The second article by Samuelson, Aaron Swartz: Opening Access to Knowledge, tells us of the lengths individuals will go to share research, and the extent of what people will do to protect it. Having research accessible is an important factor in developing new ideas. Research must be made available to everyone, to stimulate more ideas.

Notes from today, and reading/blogging assignments for Monday, October 7

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Today we discussed plagiarism and touched on issues of academic integrity. Slides from today are available here. On Monday, we will discuss access: personal, institutional, as well as the “digital divide.” Please read the following: Martin, The Politics of Research and Samuelson, Aaron Swartz: Opening Access to Knowledge.

Your blogging assignment is one reading response blog post.

Be sure to bring the Developing a Research Topic sheet with you Monday; we’ll build in some time to work on it some more. I distributed the Research Topic Proposal guidelines in class; be aware that the first draft of that assignment is due October 16 and the final version is due October 23.Questions about the research topic proposal? Get in touch!

~Prof. Leonard

PS: those of you interested in privacy might be interested in PRISMBreakup, a series of events, workshops, and talks on the topic of surveillance, all taking place this weekend at Eyebeam, a gallery at 540 W. 21st Street in Manhattan.

Be original!

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In this article we read about plagiarism and some of the serious results of it. In reality plagiarism is to basically steal someone else’s idea and call it your own. It’s similar to copyrighting but differs where copyright requires permission and one can’t really request permission to steal someone else’s work. Sometimes we read something somewhere of interest and it sticks to us. unintentionally the words that we read can be used again without realizing that they’re actually not your own. Plaigiarism can actually result in expulsion from schools and legal actions can be taken. It wouldn’t be right if someone works so hard to put their thoughts together and another person who is too lazy to think, thinks they can use someone else’s ideas as their own.

Everyday thieves.

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284541-2059-24Do we steal ideas and not even know it?  In elementary school before the Internet was used  daily, I would write an essay by copying striaght out of my textbook. I would do this and give no credit to the author. I assumed it was already known I could not have come up with that idea, and it was also known I copied it from somewhere. I was a kid, so who cared. Widdicombe writes of an author who was notorious for plagiarising various authors to wright his own book. It was like an addiction. Even he believed he was not doing anything wrong at one point. Later he became paranoid at the theft of ideas he was guilty of. Isserman’s article says we all commit plagiarism and are not aware of it. I was a kid so no one paid attention to my innocent theft. Today I understand the reward in being original. Even though I understand this, I still ask do we steal ideas and not even know it?

HW.02/10/13

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In my opinion people who steel other persons thoughts or who copying some thoughts from other blogs and after that publishing those thoughts in their own blogs, don’t have own opinion.Basically they live other person’s life,they can’t make something own.The best example of plagiarism is “Assassin of Secrets” where most of the text was stolen from other famous books.Thirty-four instances of plagiarism in the first thirty-five pages was found in that book.The making of a plagiarist can be hard to distinguish from the making of a writer.The author of “Assassin of Secrets” is Quentin Rowan.In this book he used specific method,where he stick together text from different books and outcome is absolutely new book,that is not similar to other books from other authors.From my personal experience i can compare this method with method which famous DJ’s use today.They choose some famous song.Mix this song with some other , or just change tempo of this song.They make beat faster or slower, they have thousands of techniques how to make song better for listeners.Same with this book by Rowan.Some people liked this new book , for someone it become more interesting than books,that they read before.

Plagiarism

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In the article by Isserman we know that Plagiarism is not good and no one should use anybody Else’s work for his or her purpose. We say plagiarism is bad but we still do it, in the case of the president of Hamilton College, either he did not do it intentionally or for him  plagiarism was going to be ok. In his case he had to resigned which was the best thing to do considering he was the president of the college and should be the romodel of the students, but yet he still did it. We know that there is a serious consequence for plagiarism but for some of us its a risk we are willing to take.

 

 

Oct 2nd Hw: Plagiarism

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Plagiarism is something that we as readers are unaware of until we notice a sentence or quote that belonged to another author or until we go looking up similar novels and find out that the author we just read from took the ideas of a different author of a different book or article. To me plagiarism is taking someones words or writing word for word and claiming it as your own. But writers tend to take other writers ideas or thoughts and tend to “alter” them and make them their own. I would not call that plagiarism, as long as the writer who took the other writer’s ideas and thoughts and not copied it word for word.