The kinds of questions you're asking aren't necessarily covered systematically in CS curricula either unless you specifically take a networking course, and even then, depending on the class/professor, specific application-level protocols like HTTP might not be covered in depth. I didn't really get a deep understanding of the networking stack (especially specific application-level protocols) until I started working on networking products, despite taking and doing well in a 400-level networking class at my university.
I honestly think Wikipedia is a fantastic and fairly in-depth resource for technical topics. I would start here and follow as many links as you need to get a better understanding of what's going on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model
Protocol specifications are also surprisingly readable. Here's the HTTP protocol RFC (request for comments): http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616.html
As a newer programmer recently remarked to me, it's tough when you get going because you don't even know where to look. It's a lot like learning a new (spoken) language: immerse yourself, understand that bewilderment and frustration is normal in the beginning, and keep at it until you hit that inflection point where it starts making sense. The fact that you even want to get from "phrase book" to "fluent speaker" is a good sign.
Did you read the article? The journalist is in fact saying that the "digital divide" doesn't exist because that conceptualization of the issue is too simple and doesn't leave room for the nuances of how people who aren't seen by the dominant cultural narrative as being technologically sophisticated are, sometimes, very wired in their own ways.
The critique is trying to draw attention to the ways we provide enormous amounts of money for programs that try to get people to use technology in the "right" way, which is, as the interviewee states, basically measuring everyone by how much they use technology the way affluent white men do. Other people are finding ways to appropriate technology for their own needs and uses that are just as valid and valuable for their own situations but these aren't recognized in the way this money is meted out and the ways the success of these programs are measured. For instance, you could argue that teen engagement with online social networks now serves a crucial function in identity formation, which is valuable and possibly, more useful to some of the kids than some of the things you learn in class. If, for instance, you're a 16 year old kid coming out, I'd venture that having social support in that process will probably be more valuable 20 years down the line than memorizing the difference between sine, cosine and tangent.. but when it comes to what NTIA will use as a measure of success for their programs, it'll be the trig scores.
Edit: a good starting point for research into the (imo, really important) functions online social networks serve for teens is danah boyd's dissertation (as well as some of her other work). She's not my favorite but her stuff is probably the best known. http://www.danah.org/papers/
Just a personal viewpoint based on the limited information available (and not meant as a personal knock on the OP since I don't know him or his particular situation in detail):
I would be extremely wary about joining a tech start-up that has to go through an open job application process for a CTO. If the founder can't make enough of a believer out of someone within his or her own network to join, I would see that as a bad sign -- not just in terms of the start-up's idea but also the founder's ability to sell his or her idea. If it's the case that the founder doesn't know viable candidates in his or her own network, then I'd be doubly concerned: it's a tech start-up and a strong network within tech circles will be necessary for other resources down the line (future engineering hires, advice, potential investors that add value to the company, etc). Additionally, if s/he isn't really plugged in to the tech community, I'd worry that s/he doesn't truly understand the business, my skills as it relates to the business, and the value that I bring to the table. And in this particular case, I'd also be concerned that social networking is what this start-up revolves around and the founder (again, from my limited view on the outside) doesn't appear to be able to network effectively enough to at least get introductions to suitable CTO candidates through secondary connections.
I'm not saying that this is necessarily the situation here but that's my thought process just based on the information available. I consider things like sales ability, existing network and hiring ability to be essential things for a non-technical founder to bring to the table before I would consider working for him or her -- otherwise, I'm almost as well-off starting my own thing and own a hell of a lot more equity.
There are a handful of non-technical people I know that I would join in short order if one of them ever called to talk about a job at his or her start-up. And if I declined I would refer them to other people I know that might be interested because I know no matter what he or she is doing, s/he has a great chance of succeeding. If you're not the kind of person that inspires that level of loyalty, being a lone non-technical founder at a tech start-up seems like it would make an already arduous journey incredibly difficult.
It's a fascinating complement to the "apple supply chain" articles that were making the front page a while back. None of the articles I read mentioned China's rare-earth mineral export policies as one of the factors that led to its virtual lock on electronics manufacturing - most of them rather characterized it as a snowball effect. If this was as important to the erosion of US manufacturing as it seems, this could be an important missing piece for hardware manufacturing (and its jobs) to come back to the States.
(Not that semiconductor manufacturing jobs are the kinds of "good" jobs we're so desperate to grow here, c.f. Karen Hossfeld's ethnographic study of the immigrant women who made up the bulk of silicon valley's manufacturing workforce)
Definitely agree: they have everything in place for this. Having a personal relationship with that many small business owners around the country is huge and there's so much low-hanging fruit in the "MIS for small biz" space. There's a lot of startups that are making headway here (Square, etc) but they don't nearly have the resources (the biggest being the massive sales org) that Groupon does. As soon as Grpn ships a new product along these lines, they can call hundreds of thousands of potential customers that already know the sales rep on the phone and are possibly already paying a competitor for a sub-par product.
If I were Andrew Mason, I'd be looking to acquire a small-biz focused product company at this point to accelerate the process and start shipping asap.
Seconded. Some of the most successful academics I know keep regular 9-5 hours and leave their work at the office, have spouses and children, etc. I've noticed a lot of them are fantastic at time-boxing and that some of my less successful colleagues aren't so much, and the freedom the academic schedule gives them ends up being more of a hindrance than a help.
Just for full disclosure, I did the same, in that I did research and publication as an undergrad, worked in industry briefly and then went back to do a PhD (in my case, I had gotten in before I finished undergrad and deferred my admission to work for a bit.)
Personally, I'm not bashing academia per se -- I think it's great for people with the right mix of temperament and motivation. The travesty is that so many people that start PhDs go in without a clear understanding of what the degree entails and what characteristics are necessary for success in their programs and the tenure race. I could go on for a long time about the reasons but I think a lot of it boils down to the way schools work up to undergrad -- the kinds of qualities that get you good grades up through college are not well correlated with the things that make you a great researcher. The worst is in fields where the norm is for undergrads to go straight into PhD programs.
And please note I'm not at all saying this as a comment on your situation. I suspect the fact that you've done research as an undergrad probably means you have a good handle on what you're getting yourself into =)
I recently left my PhD program too (I'm "mastering out" in local parlance ;)) and what this post doesn't address is what I found to be the hardest part: making a decision to leave a world where people that leave are construed as a failures (note: contrary to my expectation, I've only received support in my decision from my awesome and anomalous department.) (Also, I should note that I left a software industry job to do the PhD so I knew I shouldn't have difficulty finding a job.)
For anyone who wants to take the leap but is afraid or unsure, I offer some words that were incredibly helpful for me from some of fantastic friends. To quote my amazing advisor from his response to my "I'm leaving" email:
'We had a Head of Department at Lancaster who used to stomp around the corridors moaning - "I've just lost another student to industry. He's got a great job, has a starting salary bigger than mine, is working on a fabulous project with better resources than we have. In what mad world is this judged as a failure?"'
And another colleague, who's currently a junior professor:
'You know, most Ph.D.ers are smart and successful people. Hence they have a difficulty in saying “This is not for me”. They instead say “I’ve been successful all my life, and I finished everything I started, so I should finish this as well”. By saying that, they choose to hang in there for many years in a depressed state.
Sometimes, the most courageous thing and the best thing to do is to quit when you know you would rather work in another capacity, or when you know you don’t want to work in academia. I congratulate you on your decision and I hope the best for you. ( In case you later decide to come back to academia, it will be waiting for you, so I would not worry about it.)'
Best of luck, those of you that are struggling with the decision. If you're anything like me, if you decide to leave you'll feel better than you have in years =)
Think of it as a heuristic tool to analyze and evaluate human behavior when you need it. And if you find it useful, try learning the basics of a few other frameworks and/or theories too: social capital (and social network analysis in general), labeling theory, diffusion of innovation, etc. In particular, technologists (and particularly entrepreneurs) that don't have some sort of exposure to sociotechnical research are missing out on a tremendous resource, imo.
I must have been very fortunate to have, on the whole, great teachers that cared deeply about their work. But then again, my parents made it a point to make sure we lived in less-than-stellar apartments in excellent school districts that paid their teachers well and treated them with respect.
There's a systemic problem with the way we (in the US) let remote policy makers dictate how teachers should teach (especially with the prevalence of standards-based testing), instead of giving them room to be autonomous and creative in their work. Micromanagement and lack of professional autonomy turns workers into disengaged drones regardless of the field (c.f. the dead look in the eyes of that friend of yours that's at a dead-end job at a coding farm). Most teachers don't start as "glorified babysitters" and get in it to try and make a difference but become disillusioned after fighting against the tide for a few years.
I've been reading up recently on dog training since I'm watching my parents' unruly dog for a few weeks and it's remarkable how similar the keys to training a well-behaved dog are to how the french treat their kids... I'm not entirely sure how to feel about that, hah.
> the insidious thing about alcohol is that it clouds your judgement and makes abuse more likely. So you've had a few drinks and you're having fun, hanging out with friends, feeling pretty good. And then everyone is ordering another round, which is almost certainly a bad idea from a logical perspective. But you're not thinking logically anymore, so you do too.
...or you can hang out with friends who drink like responsible adults (and not like overgrown frat kids.) Excessive drinking isn't a result of alcohol consumption as much as the drinking culture in the US. We have this notion that "when people drink they act like idiots with clouded judgement," which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. In other countries where attitudes toward alcohol are different there's a marked difference in how people behave under the influence. Now, while you can't do a ton about the way US culture as a whole views alcohol consumption, you can make it a point to socialize with people who know how to have a good time while drinking in moderation (or influence your friends to be more responsible in the way they drink.)
(More about how behavior under the influence is actually determined by our social expectations and not a characteristic of alcohol itself: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15265317 For instance, "This basic fact has been proved time and again, not just in qualitative cross-cultural research, but also in carefully controlled scientific experiments - double-blind, placebos and all. To put it very simply, the experiments show that when people think they are drinking alcohol, they behave according to their cultural beliefs about the behavioural effects of alcohol.")
Cut those employee time figures by half -- FT employees cost a company about twice as much as the base salary. And even then, your designer and marketer figures are way low, even in a city like Philadelphia.
This is prevailing practice for publicly traded companies -- I feel like these Benefit and Flexible Purpose Corps are more about allowing companies to be publicly traded without having to play this game through setting social expectations than through real structural differences. (To be taken with a grain of salt as I'm not a lawyer or a financial professional, just someone that's been an individual investor.)
The author has a very limited view of the function of universities. There was recent longitudinal study that confirmed what many of us who attended college already know: a vast number of people who attend college don't actually learn anything (particularly in the fields of business, education, social work and communication). [1]
If you get down to it, probably the biggest function of a university is social: if you majored in an engineering discipline, think about your industry connections. How many of them were classmates in undergrad? Elite universities have served as social hubs for the upper class for centuries and the networking function of college and university is invaluable. I'm not using this as an argument for keeping the existing university structure, but if the author really wants to make universities obsolete, he needs to think about how one might facilitate this and other functions. (I haven't even touched the subject of research, which many professors at R1 universities think of as their primary purpose, not teaching. "Teaching" is an unpleasant job you offload on adjuncts and TAs.)
We've had institutions that function like the ones that Matt Welsh envisions for thousands of years. They're called libraries.
Your grandparent post took the argument farther than just saying that evolution has given men and women certain tendencies or proclivities (as an aggregate, allowing for the massive range of individual differences that are possible). You flat-out claim that men and women have brains that are hard-wired a certain way. If there's anything evolution has given us as humans, it's brains that are amazingly adaptable and plastic. Research has shown that things like basic perception differ across cultures (see, for instance, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCller-Lyer_illusion). You make an apparently logical assumption based on what you understand of evolution and biology (and how the human brain works) but I proffer that there's a fair amount of evidence that those assumptions might be wrong. (For instance, we have this recent study questioning the widely-held belief that men are by nature better at spatial reasoning: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/women-math-science...)
> But at the same time claim that being 'girl' or 'boy' is something that you've been taught by culture??
You misunderstand the argument. The argument is that what it means to be a boy or a girl has been taught by culture. That being said, I do personally believe there's more room for inquiry into the nurture side of the equation and that the "entirely biological" argument is something that's currently politically expedient to counter the people claiming that it's entirely a personal choice. On a personal note though, my earliest memory of having a crush on another girl was in 2nd grade and my uber-religious parents certainly weren't nurturing such notions in me (nor was anything else in my environment explicitly).
'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy
Daniel J. Solove
George Washington University Law School
San Diego Law Review, Vol. 44, p. 745, 2007
GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 289
(From: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565)