Day 3, or: Talking toilets and refrigerators! Hahahaha!

Cybernetic Systems

Among other things, were made amazingly interesting by this short but informative lecture.

First observation about class though, I'm still rather surprised that Professor Tuggle gives us all the time we want to include additional news volunteers. In my experiences with teachers, or rather, just people choosing volunteers in general, they usually start big, end up picking 2 people, and then cut it off. I LOVE the fact that Professor Tuggle's so generous with his time...and extra credit. Make no mistake that I'm out to get an A in every class I take, so getting the extra padding wherever I can never hurts.

I thought the first case of Autosystems presented an interesting and useful concept. Definitely a cool and efficient idea to insert notes about the manufacturing into IT networks. GIGO, garbage in garbage out, is such an amusing phrase that it doesn't seem like it fits into the technical jargon.

Cybernetic systems were indeed the most interesting type of system, as promised. The examples about the human body temperature regulation, and the home cooling system, by relation, where both fairly straightforward to see. I enjoyed the analogy of the a business being a cybernetic system, mostly because of how complex the relationships are between getting from economic resources as inputs to goods and services as outputs. It's kind of surprising to find that information systems, themselves, are also considered cybernetic systems. Kind of a circular definition, in a strange way, but I suppose it ties into the meaning of the class.

The examples of other wireless sensors, though, was extremely funny. The idea of my refrigerator talking to me about forgetting to buy milk was especially cute. The toilet I guess would be useful, and would avoid the uncomfortable idea of having to take stool samples to the doctor in a baggie.

Overall, this class I thought was a lot more coherent, and properly paced, than the previous one. Or, maybe I'm just getting used to the methods to Professor Tuggle's madness.