Art 220

I went home, re-watched his video, and looked up the people and things I had never heard of. Three of the things that I found the most interesting, were Raytheon, Paul Baran, and Moore's law. The first was the company his father had worked for, Raytheon. They are a defense contractor for the US, and they manufacture in weapons, military and commercial electronics. They are also the largest producer of guided missiles. Paul Baran was the next person I found the most interesting. He was a pioneer in the development of computer networks, and was one of the early researchers on packet switching. Packet switching is when groups of transmitted data are sorted into packets of smaller data. The last thing that I looked up was Moore's law, which says that the number of transistors (a transistor is used to amplify and switch electronic signals) that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles every two years. I would have liked to find out what a temporal map was, but could not find much information explaining what they are.

I learned a lot of things from McClouds speech, and he seems to be a very intelligent person. After looking up all of those people and concepts, I gained a clearer understanding of everything that he was talking about. One of the things that he mentioned that I liked, was the four rules that a person should always follow. They are:

1) Learn from everyone

2) Follow no one

3) Watch for patterns

4) Work like hell

He especially stressed the importance of watching for patterns. Patterns can be found in many aspects of life. McCloud discussed faith, and how there are three types (faith in which one cannot see, faith in which has already been proven, and faith in which may be but is yet to be proven). Another thing that he mentioned that I liked, was the idea of looking at a monitor as a window instead of a canvas. I think that it would be pretty cool to create things and have them shown across the screen, rather than have it fit onto the screen entirely. McCloud also discussed how comics use vision to help the four other senses, which I thought was interesting. Comics do engage the other senses with vision, by using text to portray sound, and using several other techniques. I thoroughly enjoyed his speech, and was glad that I could learn from it.