User:Youngjos

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My full name is Joseph Young. Often, I get called "Mighty Joe Young," from the early 90s movie of the same name. Before I landed on Informatics as my concentration, I bounced from major to major. When I first arrived at U-M in the fall of 2008, I was part of the Residential College (RC). Then, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to major in. However, I thought I would go on a humanities course through programs offered by the RC. By the end of my first year, I had decided on concentrating in Psychology. However, by the end of my second year, I knew that that was not a good fit: The material was interesting, but it was not engaging, and the topics studied in my classes were too constricted to pure memorization. By the beginning of my third year, I briefly thought about pre-med. Then, after hearing more about the Informatics program, I decided to make a advising appointment. Charles Severance, the adviser for the Social Computing Informatics program. He solidified my interest in the program. Not only did it seem extremely interesting, it also was engaging. After beginning to take some of the basic Social Computing Core classes, I began to explore related topics on my own time. Influenced heavily by a graduate seminar, taught by SI professor Victor Rosenberg, I explored books on topics ranging from information history to information ethics to information philosophy to information policy, and everything in between. Some of the books that really influenced me included The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood, by James Gleick; Alone Together: Why we Expect more from Technology and Less from Each Other, by Sherry Turkle, and, mostly recently, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, by the late education theorist Neil Postman. I highly encourage all informatics concentrators to read these books, as they will provide a great foundational understanding of information that expands the scope of the SI 110, Introduction to Information. I am also involved in UM::Autonomy, a student-run autonomous robotics team that competes in an annual competition, usually every June. Additionally, I am tasked with finding content to showcase in the newly-renovated Bert's cafe in the Shapiro library. Besides concentrating in Informatics, I am also minoring in Computer Science. The reasoning for this is because, when I decided on Informatics, there was not enough time to complete a CS concentration without staying at Umich for 2 - 3 years longer. So, I took the middle road: obtain the technical knowledge (CS) and obtain the abstract, philosophical knowledge (Informatics). My graduation date will be April 2013, which is a full extra year from my inital graduation date, April 2012.