Author: jerrkin

Final Project: Jerrick King

May 7, 2025 / jerrkin / 0 Comments

I’m realizing a lot of my research is on the “Not proficient” path in the game, while the “Proficient” path more puts a solution in perspective. So.. keep that in mind if you play it.

https://twinery.org/2/#/stories/ef4a3c5d-dceb-4bfe-a63c-4a131d499701/play

Sources

https://stlgives.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Digital-Divide-Summary-Report_22.pdf (Where I got general information as well as the solutions to the problem) [MAIN ARTICLE]

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1465239/us-adults-digital-literacy-by-age (Where I got the statistics on age having a correlation on proficiency)

https://www.stlamerican.com/news/local-news/efforts-to-close-the-digital-divide-in-st-louis-slowly-making-progress-in-underserved-communities/ (Where I got statistics on households and their proficiency)

https://technologymagazine.com/company-reports/the-city-of-st-louis-digitising-the-american-frontier (CTO’s plan)

https://www.fcc.gov/acp (Affordable Connectivity Program)

This specific tour was made by Lara Kelland, a professor in museum studies and community history. Though each individual site has its own page and creator who were students in her class. The goals of the project are literally listed to “connect people to the variety of sites throughout the city.” Although, it seems it’s also trying to give these institutions of the black community an identity by giving a deeper look and understanding of the influence they had on African Americans. The projects intended audiences seem to be, African Americans, anyone interested in history, tourists, and people that want a new level of understanding of their city. There’s no real overarching conclusion to this work; this is a mass of information about different places that meant something to the black community. There may be some narrative to draw about black people having to have their own institutions to live normally, instead of using the same ones everyone else uses. But in general, there is no real “theme” per say. This project uses two instances of google maps, and a text to speech for any bodies of text. The two google maps give an arial and on the ground view of the site you are looking at. All the different site pages have different start and end dates, but looking as this as one cohesive work, the earliest date is February 2020, and the latest and March 2020. This project’s strengths come from each of the 13 different sites having different pages and people writing about them. You get a heap of information about each specific thing. A weakness this project has is accessibility. If someone can’t walk long distances, or have a car, they’d have to do the tour digitally. Which is possible, but you lose a lot of significance of seeing the place in person and going inside to look around.

I pretty much didn’t know any of the information on this tour, so reading through it gave me a lot of knowledge I didn’t have before. Maybe my lack of knowledge is from not literally living in the city, but I only knew about Harris-Stowe, the rest was new. Even in that case, I learned new facts about the school that I couldn’t have learned without some serious research. I like knowing that my people had a few places to go to and be themselves, or not be ridiculed. Having multiple spots in such a big city with cultural significance to my skin tone gives the city itself a new light in my eyes.

StoryMap – Jerrick King

April 7, 2025 / jerrkin / 0 Comments

Data set review

March 18, 2025 / jerrkin / 0 Comments

Data set profile:

The creator of this data set is University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Prairie Research Institute. They are described as a “Multidisciplinary research institute charged with providing objective research, expertise, and data on the natural and cultural resources of Illinois. “
It seems they don’t have a source for their work. (Or at least I can’t find it in the mound of metadata.)
“The purpose of this map is to provide a georeferenced characterization of vegetation in the early stages of Euro-American settlement. One of the research uses for the surveys nationally is for presettlement vegetation. This data can be used to analyze presettlement vegetation patterns for the purpose of determining natural community potential, productivity indexes, and patterns of natural disturbance.” (A direct quote found under the “Identification_Information” tab in metadata.)
The original use was to create a more complete map of Illinois using the data collected by multiple cartographers. Now it seems to be used to study patterns and inconsistencies along Illinois’ body.
The data is in map form, but the index for specific definitions of abbreviations and words is in graph form.

Data set evaluation:

There is two different types of data they have collected, cartography and land definitions. The cartography has been turned into an interactive map, where you can zoom in and see the topology, rivers, and biomes. The land definitions have been input into a table, where they gathered the land code value, definition, and land cover label from the original plat map. With choosing these specific fields, they may have lost some of the original data, or had to summarize a definition.
There is no no direct reference to cleaning the data, they only mention how they scanned it and corrected the things that were wrong. Though, through scanning, some things could’ve been mistranslated considering these were captured from cartographer’s notebooks. However, they mention the revisions that were needed due to data being incorrect, so it gives the impression that whatever data could potentially be incorrect would be corrected.
The original data was from the early 1800s. We don’t use the same language as we did in the past, so someone trying to create a data set using that would have a notable risk of misinterpretation. In todays language, we tend to cut out a lot of the fluff they would use in the past, so in that regard, descriptors and things of the like could’ve been lost.
There is a huge table of abbreviations and types of land masses, which I find very interesting. I’ve heard most of the words, though there is a few that I have never heard or heard be used to describe land.

Problem statement

March 6, 2025 / jerrkin / 0 Comments

Observation, background, context

I am drawn to this topic since I’ve always found the digital divide between race, age, and wealth to be very interesting. Most forms of technology feel simple to use, almost as an extension of my body, so when I see someone genuinely struggling to understand or use it, it’s interesting. Being aware of people’s lack of practice with a device, inability to use a piece of technology due to price, or technology being overly convoluted for someone to understand, is crucial to understanding the digital divide.

Problem

What causes the digital divide? My guess is the quarantine 4 years ago, as well as a person’s finance. As much as I’d like to say using technology is easy, if you didn’t grow up with it, it’s rather tricky. With technology becoming more and more ingrained into society, it’s especially important that the ability to understand the tools that are used in day to day life is common knowledge.

Frame

I am approaching this problem as someone who has experienced the divide firsthand. Not only am I the person my family calls when some technology needs fixing, I taught a group of senior citizens how to use various Microsoft products over last summer. What I learned from teaching is that people that don’t understand the technology are overwhelmed by the interface, so when there are no search options, the rate at which a person can work is substantially slower (considering they have to click through every option to find what they are looking for.)

Example sources

According to the “St. Louis Digital Divide Summary,” “Based on the five key components of the digital divide, it is apparent that income-related issues
such as service and device affordability are key drivers of the digital divide for most residents in St. Louis.” A person can’t begin to understand something they can’t use. The article, “Conquering the St. Louis Digital Divide: New Report Outlines Steps Necessary to Bridge the Gap” states that, “Exacerbated by poverty, the report found that nearly half of all households in St. Louis City and County are affected by at least one aspect of the digital divide.” Once again highlighting that large part of the issue seems to be the inability to afford technology.

Proposed technology

I intend to use charts and graphs to put a picture to the digital divide, and then use a roadmap of steps I believe would lead to a solution of the problem.

Sources

(https://stlgives.org/digital-divide-new-report/)

(https://stlgives.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Digital-Divide-Summary-Report_22.pdf)

Digitization

February 26, 2025 / jerrkin / 0 Comments

Meta data:

Title: Howlite Bracelet
Creator: Unsure (Market bought)
Date: May 8th, 2022
Format: Rock-bead bracelet
Description: A pearly white bracelet made of howlite to represent resilience, purity, and comfort.

This bracelet is a gift I bought for my mom on Mother’s Day in 2022. I had a weird kick for wearing bracelets, and I thought twinning with my mom would be pretty cool. She loved it, and would wear it pretty often, which was more than enough for me. Unfortunately, she has passed, and I don’t many tangible items that represent her well, but I do have this bracelet. I don’t believe in rocks having energy or anything like that but they’re supposed to signify resilience; so with my mom being the strongest and most hardworking woman I knew, I felt it was an accurate representation of who she was as a person.

Who knew my past self was good at encapsulating someone’s character in a gift? Not me!

AI fiction review

February 11, 2025 / jerrkin / 1 Comment

To begin, the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey was quite possibly one of the most insane 10 minutes of my life. I haven’t been so dumbfounded since I finished Evangelion.

I find it interesting that both Interstellar and A Space Odyssey use AI in very different ways. In Interstellar, the AI are helpful, comical, and lovable characters. A very optimistic look on AI in general. But in A Space Odyssey, HAL decides to be evil out of fear; Immediately crumbling on itself and killing the other humans. A very negative look on AI.

In Interstellar, humans were slowly becoming extinct due to the Earth becoming inhabitable. Humans were working hard to find another habitable planet for themselves, and had all the tools to do so considering they succeeded. In A Space Odyssey, humans had already began to live outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. Technology was more advanced, and the world/worlds seemed to be stable.

The argument between people and technology in Interstellar is that we and AI can coexist, so much so that we view AI and robots as companions of sorts. In A Space Odyssey, AI seems to be more of a tool that we use to complete tasks for us. In both movies, AI is doing things for us, but in A Space Odyssey, there seems to be a certain uneasiness humans feel towards Artificial Intelligence.

The vision for AI in both movies is for them to be helpful and complete tasks for humans. But in Interstellar, they are much more human-like.

In A Space Odyssey, the classic idea of AI going rogue due to it becoming “too human” seems to be present. It even stresses the idea of everything ever being wrong with it was due to “human error.” This view is pessimistic when it comes to AI, but Interstellar is more optimistic as I previously stated. AI is more of a helping friend, a caretaker than just a thing to give instructions to.

Cahokia VR

February 2, 2025 / jerrkin / 0 Comments

The Cahokia VR Tour is an app that provides an augmented reality experience to the user. Essentially it allows you to view a setting by putting a virtual version of a place over your camera view.

The app does well in allowing you to explore the insides of buildings, giving exact dimensions of the area, and not having that weird AR clipping since the Cahokia tour has it’s own plot of land. Though with it having a specific area to use it, you lose a bit of accessibility with AR because you can’t just use it anywhere.

The app is fairly accessible since all you need is the app, a phone, and the ability to use the camera app. Though for those who aren’t tech savvy, and those without a phone, they have no way of understanding/experiencing this.

Interest Statement

January 27, 2025 / jerrkin / 0 Comments

As common of a topic it is, AI sounds the most interesting to me. It’s the first manmade thing that has the potential to be fully autonomous, and while that’s scary, it’s also weirdly interesting to me. I look forward to pursuing the idea of how technology is so engrained into our society and how it provides strengths and weaknesses.

I’m interested in further explaining the juxtaposition of technology; how it was created to bring people together, but manages to separate us.

I’m also interested in looking at how the internet and technology has changed how we exist in our day to day lives.

I want to further understand how technology interacts with people in general, it’s such a crucial part of my life so I feel it’s necessary to explain what it does well and what it doesn’t.

Intro

January 21, 2025 / jerrkin / 0 Comments

Hey, my name is Jerrick King. I’m a computer science major with an interest in software, but I can work with hardware. I was born in Alton, Illinois and I’m 21 years old.

Interests

I love music, so much so that it’s my minor. I mostly listen to rap, RNB, soul, alternative, and jazz. My grandfather was a notable DJ in St. Louis so I guess his music genes transferred to me.
I am a martial artist. I have a black belt in taekwondo and I’ve dabbled in a bunch more combat sports over the last 7 years.
I play games often, but I’ll never call myself a gamer since I feel that has a negative connotation to it. But I like to play games with my friends and record somethings so I can look back on them in the future.
I like to write. As a kid, I was awful at reading and writing, but my parents put me through tumultuous hours of reading and writing when I was young so I’ve gotten pretty good at it.

More about me

I look very unapproachable and I have a really monotone voice but, I assure you I’m rather friendly. I’ve spent all of my life on the internet so I’m un-seemingly quite the nerd. I’m always open to having more friends so if you ever want to talk about something, I’m your guy.