beanz Magazine February 2021

Kids, Code, and Computer Science 2020 Tillywig Award Winner

2020 Academics' Choice Award Winner

: s p p A e d s o e i C h c e o T N n o N r o f s l Too

February 2021

$6.00 USD $6.00

Trojan Horses Are No Myth Interactive Fiction and Inform 7 The History of Sending Messages

beanz magazine February 2021: Volume 8 Issue 4 Issue 52 (online) & 35 (print) ISSN: 2573-3966 (online) ISSN: 2573-3958 (print) beanz Magazine© is published bi-monthly, six times a year, online at http://beanzmag.com and in print.

A print + online magazine subscription includes online access to all articles, with links to let you explore topics in more detail.

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Published by Owl Hill Media, LLC 378 Eastwood Rd, Woodmere, NY 11598 Email: hello@beanzmag.com Phone: (646) 553-3390 POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Owl Hill Media, LLC, 378 Eastwood Rd, Woodmere, NY 11598.

Periodicals postage paid at Woodmere, NY and other mailing offices Copyright Owl Hill Media, LLC with all rights reserved except as noted. Images are copyrighted by their creators, as noted with each story both online and in print.

Publisher/Editor: Tim Slavin Staff Writers: Erin Winnick, Amy S. Hansen, Les Pounder, Bonnie Roskes, Simon Batt, Patricia Foster, Clarissa Littler, Jennifer Newell, Tim McGuigan, Bianca Rivera, Tim Slavin Contributors: David Dodge, Jay Silver, Jeremy Kubica, Colleen Graves, Daniel Fenjves, Ali Hagen, Emeline Swanson, Jean-Francois Nguyen, Paul Seal, Madeleine Slavin Back Office Magic: Wendy Garrison Copy Editor: Eileen Seiler Art Director: Kelley Lanuto Webmistress: Patricia Foster COVER IMAGE: MARKUS SPISKE, UNSPLASH

Publisher’s Note Welcome to this issue! There’s a bunch of fun jokes and visual humor (big scary robots like milkshakes, who knew?), along with more serious and interesting things to read about. For example, the history of sending messages, Trojan Horse viruses, saving old games, interactive fiction, dark software patterns, and more.

Two articles in this issue also highlight an interesting dynamic playing out on the internet these days: No Code and the Small Internet. Big companies are pushing No Code, software written by non-coders who mostly don’t have or need a software programming background to create software. Meanwhile, programmers like Solderpunk are creating what they call the Small Internet where people can interact without companies, the way they did when the internet was first made available in the 1990s.

And you know those birthday cards that make noises when you open them? This issue has an article describing how to work with this technology, called piezo discs. We also have another article that shows how to create a museum with SketchUp software. Our next issue will have the second part, showing how to create a tour for your museum.

I hope you enjoy our first issue of a new year. Life has been difficult the past year with the pandemic. But we also live in interesting times full of possibility. Stay safe and make the most of the new year! !

LOOK

Tim Slavin, Publisher beanz Magazine

One of our writers, Patricia Foster, recently published a book about learning Python that’s silly and fun, like her articles for us. Look for the review in this issue. The book is called Python Programming for Beginners and its ISBN is 978-1-64611-388-0.

Definitely check it out.

Our Mission beanz magazine is a bi-monthly online and print magazine about learning to code, computer science, and how we use technology in our daily lives.

The magazine includes hard-to-find information, for example, a list of 40+ programming languages for education, coding schools, summer tech camps, and more.

While the magazine is written to help kids ages 8 and older learn about programming and computer science, many readers and subscribers are parents, teachers, and librarians who use the articles to learn alongside their young kids, students, or library patrons. The magazine strives to provide easy to understand how-to information, with a bit of quirky fun. Subscribers support the magazine.

There is no advertising to distract readers.

The magazine explores these topics: Basics of programming and where to learn more, Problem solving and collaboration, Mathematical foundations of computing and computer science, Computational thinking, Recognizing and selecting computer devices, and the Community, global, and ethical impacts of technology.

Cover Story

February 2021

Coding No Code Apps: Tools for Non-Techies

6 7

People Meet "Solderpunk" Concepts When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It.

8 10

Programming Cover Story Interactive Fiction and Inform 7

12 14

History Hang On, PS1. I'll Save You!

Tech In Real Life My Surgeon Is Who? My Surgeon Is Where?

In the Middle Cover Story Dots, Dashes, Pigeons, Tubes, and Drones

tidbitz

Didn't Know We Were 24 Betcha So Chatty!

24 What a Show!

Out of Your 25 Get Own Way On 25 Droning And On 25 Quantum Leap

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Cover Story

History Just Say "Neigh!"

16 18

Electronics Picking Up on Sonic Vibes

20 23 26

SketchUp Art Museum

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Parents and Teachers It's Time to Teach Ethical App Design

Notebook Computer Science, Unplugged

Concepts Zip It to Ship It Book Review A New Book From One of Our Own

Me and My beanz!

I'm the masked designer and I love me some beanz!

-Kelley Lanuto, beanz art director How much do you love beanz? We'd love to see!

Send us a photo of you and your beanz to us at hello@ beanzmag.com. We may print it right here and make you famous. Bragging rights!

1 contents

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2 Coding

BY TIM SLAVIN

No Code Apps: Tools for Non-Techies

JONATHAN KRITZ, FLICKR

Software connects people to do things together, whether it’s trading recipes or buying used books or other activities. Until recently, the average non-technical person has been locked out of creating software applications. They have to learn to code or hire someone who knows how to code.

But now, with help from software engineers, non-technical people have started to take back the internet and how software applications are created.

We’ve published a few articles about the small internet, which is one way to include lots of people without them having to get an education in the internals of software. No Code is another way, which involves making visual tools to create software instead of using code.

Like all great ideas, the No Code movement will take time

to evolve. The first tools were and are primitive. They limit what people can create. As time goes by, however, expect these visual dragand-drop tools to be able to create more and more subtle applications.

Today, No Code tools are used mostly by software startups and larger companies looking to create tools without needing large groups of highly trained and expensive software engineers. There will always be a need for software engineers, but No Code will be useful for creating test models for new or complicated projects and creating software applications used by many people.

For example, Voiceflow is a No Code project to create Alexa Skills and Google Actions without writing code. SquareSpace and Weebly make it easy to use drag-and-drop

tools to create websites. There are a number of other examples that turn spreadsheets into applications.

Will the No Code movement replace all software engineers?

Should you give up learning Python?

Probably not. There will always be people needed to write the code that makes No Code possible. And the goal of the movement is to allow non-technical people to create software. Usually these projects don’t require expensive engineers to create software that does routine things like collect information or perform simple tasks.

Plus, speaking from experience, drag-and-drop software interfaces can easily become annoying.

3 They often require lots of clicking buttons and typing short bits of text to configure the software. The more complicated the software, the more likely it is that some users will find it difficult to figure out how to make software with visual tools.

There’s another reality that suggests No Code will be a fun, but limited, part of programming in the future. Since people started programming computers, there have been numerous languages designed to make all other languages obsolete. These efforts led to many more languages, not less. People growing up today with Roblox and Minecraft are likely to not only understand how to make the most of No Code software, they’ll also want to create their own variations. b

Even though I am a python, I must admit I really love this No Code stuff.

BY SIMON BATT

History

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A horse is a horse, of course...unless it’s a computer virus.

Viruses can have really weird names. There are keyloggers, DNS poisoners, and spyware. Out of all of them, however, the Trojan horse is perhaps the weirdest. Viruses typically have a name that clearly describes what they do, but the name Trojan horse doesn’t really tell you anything. It’s not even a real horse.

To understand the name Trojan horse, we need a history lesson. There was a war called the Trojan War that took place during 1260–1180 BC, when the Greeks were trying to take out the city of Troy.

The problem was, Troy had strong defenses, and the Greek army couldn’t get in. However, the Greeks had a plan.

As the story goes, the Greeks built a giant wooden horse on wheels and hid 30-50 of their soldiers inside. The Greeks then wheeled the horse to the front gates of Troy and left it there, pretending it was a gift.

The people of Troy, rather pleased with their brand new wooden horse, wheeled it into their city and closed the gates.

Then, during the night, the Greek soldiers crept out of the

TAMA LEAVER, FLICKR

" ! h eig

5 horse and re-opened the gates from the inside, allowing the Greek army to take over Troy.

In this story, the city of Troy thought they were receiving a gift when they brought the horse in. Unfortunately, it ended up being a trap. It was actually a way to sneak in soldiers past the of e city’s defenses. r a Bew aring e b The Trojan s App gifts. horse virus works in a similar way. Of course, hackers won’t put a wooden horse in front of people’s houses. They instead choose to make their “Trojan horse” digital.

A Trojan horse virus is hidden away in a program that is advertised as good. This is like the Greeks hiding in the wooden Trojan horse, except it’s a virus in a program.

For instance, someone creating a Trojan horse virus may make an alarm app for a phone. The app works perfectly fine, and it does wake you up in the morning, but hidden within it is a virus that causes damage to your phone.

Sometimes a Trojan horse works more like the historical version than you may first think. Trojan horse viruses can establish a connection from the victim’s computer to the hacker’s computer, much like how the Trojan horse soldiers opened the gates to allow the main army to enter Troy.

Either way, it’s a good idea to install an effective antivirus and keep it updated. These antiviruses are programmed to not be tricked by the digital version of a wooden horse on wheels, so they’re a great way to stay safe from this tricky threat. b

6 People Languages

BY CLARISSA LITTLER

Meet “Solderpunk" In a previous article, I talked a bit about the small internet including a really cool corner of it called geminispace. Gemini is a protocol, a way of communicating across the internet, that's like a simplified version of the hypertext transfer protocol (http) that makes all websites work. Geminispace has its own little community of privacyconscious programmers, writers, and thinkers. It's practically a right of passage for people to make their own gemini servers or browsers once they get into the community.

Gemini was started by just one person, who goes by the online handle, Solderpunk. I wondered what kind of person would just decide to make an entire new way of talking over the internet, and so I reached out to ask. A slightly longer version of this interview is available on the website.

Q: So Solderpunk, how'd you get into programming and computer things to begin with?

Solderpunk: Like a lot of people my age, I was introduced to computing through 8-bit home computers. These started to appear a few years before I was born, so by the time I was old enough to do anything with them they were everywhere. My parents bought a used Commodore 64 when I was very young - actually, going to pick it up is one of my earliest memories!

I didn't start to develop serious technical skills until later, around the age of 15. At that point I started using pocket money to buy old 486-era PCs which were being sold cheaply by people who had upgraded to Pentiums. I started installing Linux on these machines, and taught myself to code in both

C and Python.

Q: So before Gemini you were involved in Gopher, an old protocol for serving text only pages on the internet. Given that the web “won� over Gopher, what got you interested in it? Why not just use the modern web?

I first learned about Gopher in the late naughties. I was immediately charmed by its simplicity, compared to HTTP which I had learned out of a book just a little earlier.

Over the next 10 years, the computing scene became increasingly bleak from my perspective. The web became a lot more centralized and a lot more commercialized. Smartphones and similar devices started to displace what I thought of as "real computers", giving users less control over the machines they owned. And, of course, the full scale of internet surveillance was made clear to us. This didn't go entirely unnoticed, but I felt like relatively few people seemed as bothered by it as I was, and even people who complained seemed to have a sense that these trends were somehow inevitable and couldn't be stopped.

In 2017, I got back into Gopher.

For the first time in a very long time I felt like I was once again amongst like-minded people, and people who didn't just complain about aspects of computing they didn't like, but who opted out of them and built alternatives. I haven't looked back since.

Of course I still use the modern web for some things. It's almost impossible to avoid. But I'm actively trying to reduce the role it plays in my daily life. I don't like how

powerless the modern web user is over the experience, compared to the host of web content. Visiting websites is basically a matter of downloading and running software, without any way to know in advance what that software might do, and very little ability to pick and choose which things you let it do.

Q: Gemini: what made it occur to you? What was the moment that made you think "why not make a new protocol"?

I started thinking about the design of Gemini with almost no expectation that it would ever become a real, actual thing. The motivation really came to me after I had noticed that more and more people were starting to get into Gopher for the same reasons that I did, but some of them were struggling to adapt to some of the differences between Gopher and the web.

I also wondered how many people wouldn't consider Gopher as a serious option due to the lack of support for encryption, something which many people became really radicalized about after the Snowden revelations.

It eventually became clear that addressing some of the shortcomings of Gopher would require a new protocol, but I was very aware that I just wanted to make minimal changes, and to maintain the "spirit of Gopher" while making a slightly more feasible alternative to the web.

Q: Would you encourage kids to experiment with making protocols and things like that?

I would always encourage young people to experiment.

Especially in a computing context, where even the simplest computer offers an almost infinite scope for experimentation. b

Forks are used in software programming. Seriously. You might wonder how a programmer manages to get a real fork into their code but it’s simpler than you think.

Forks happen when source code is copied and a new separate development project is made from the copy. It’s common in open source software projects, in part because the forked code is publicly available for anyone to work on.

While forks happen in software projects, they’re not always successful. The number and timing of forks also can reveal the health or strength of the original project.

For example, members of an open source project could fork the source code if the larger

development team decides not to add functionality they want. The risk of a fork helps open source software project developers to work together to debate and resolve problems within their team.

Forks also happen with proprietary software projects, for example, when different versions of software are needed for different groups or new technology. However, today, software developers try to maintain one set of code and treat new requirements as extensions that work off the original code.

DRY, or Don’t Repeat Yourself, is a concept to help developers avoid duplicate code which is difficult to maintain.

When a fork happens, the

separate sets of code are called branches. The idea of forks as branching dates back to at least the 1400s. Software forks date back to around 1980.

Finally, when a software process runs, it can split or fork when the original process clones (forks) itself. The parent and its child process share the same data but can be identified as separate processes. Forking a process is an important part of the Unix and Linux operating systems. It allows the computer to process data faster than if it had to wait for the parent process to execute.

And, don’t forget: What do you do when you walk up to a fork in the road? Why, take it, of course. b OLIVER ROOS, UNSPLASH

7 Concepts

When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It

BY TIM SLAVIN

8 Programming

BY CLARISSA LITTLER

Interactive Fiction is my favorite genre.

Bedroom You are in your room, which is possibly inside a space station. You can't remember.

And Inform 7 is my favorite language!

issue of Beanz! It seems to have an issue on interactive fiction. You read on...

>take magazine Taken.

Above is an example of the output of the programming language Inform 7 that we’ll be talking about in this issue:. Inform 7 is different than most languages for two big reasons. The first is that it doesn't just compile into your typical programs but rather an Inform 7 program creates an entire explorable world in a text adventure format. The second is that Inform 7 programs don't even look like normal programs but look more like describing things in English.

For example, the code that led to the above is this:

>examine magazine It's a copy of the February 2021

The Bedroom is a room. "You are in your room, which is possibly

You can see a table (on which are a magazine and the spinning wheel (in which is the hamster)) here. >examine hamster The hamster squeaks at you happily. >take hamster I don't suppose the hamster would care for that.

inside a space station. You can't remember." There is a table in The Bedroom. On the table is a magazine. On the table is a transparent container called the spinning wheel. There is an animal called the hamster.

The description of the hamster is "The hamster squeaks at you happily." The hamster is in the spinning wheel. The description of the magazine is "It's a copy of the February 2021 issue of Beanz!

It seems to have an issue on interactive fiction. You read on...".

Just from this code, Inform 7 is able to build an entire world you can interact with. It even understands, for example, that the hamster is an animal that you can't just easily pick it up and put it in your pocket! On the other hand, it knows a magazine is an object that

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That's not your line, Gary! You're supposed to “squeak happily."

KARLIJIN PROT, UNSPLASH

you should be able to hold.

Facts of Interactive Fiction

Interactive fiction, like the above example, has a long and important history in video games. These were, really, the very first games, like Adventure or Zork, going all the way back to the 1970s. In fact, Inform 7 is named so because it's a modern version of the Inform system that was used to make interactive fiction games 40 years ago.

These are games where you type commands in order to take actions in the game: move around between rooms, use objects, eat food, pet dogs.

Let's take that last command as a jumping off point. So, given our example, if we wanted to pet the hamster, we'd get the message

>pet the hamster That's not a verb I recognize.

But, we can add verbs to Inform 7. Here's the code to add petting animals into your game, a rule to make sure you don't try and pet inanimate objects, and a special exception if you try to pet the scorpion we've also added to our story.

Petting is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "pet [something]" as petting.

Check petting:

if the noun is not an animal, say "You can't pet an inanimate object! That's weird!"

Carry out petting:

say "You pet [the noun].

They seem happy!"

Instead of petting the scorpion:

say "It's a magic scorpion and it doesn't like touch! It stings you so hard!";

end the story.

So, yes, we've now shown that you can ensure that your game will get the approval of the twitter account @CanYouPetTheDog, which is probably the most important bar you can ever meet.

Of course, there's so much more you can actually do in Inform 7. There's systems for vehicles, the passage of time, keeping a score for the player, conversations with characters who remember what you've said, and all sorts of things that let you make really rich and powerful stories. All of that done in a true programming language like nothing else you've ever learned. b

10 Tech In Real Life

BY SIMON BATT

My Surgeon Is Who ?

My Surgeon Is Where ?

How comfortable would you be with allowing a robot to perform surgery on you? What if that robot was controlled by someone on the other side of the planet? This may all sound like science fiction, but in actual fact, remote surgery is a lot more real than you may think. In fact, it has already happened.

If this is true, you may be wondering why hospitals aren’t filled with robot doctors and nurses already. That’s because the technology behind remote surgery is still pretty new, but it has been done and will possibly develop more in the future.

How does someone on the other side of the world perform surgery on you? The answer is with 5G, a term you’ve probably heard lots about. If you haven’t, you can tell by the name that it’s the next step up from 4G, which we have all around us.

5G is more than just faster download speeds. It can also send data from one place to another at lightning speeds—even faster than fiber broadband. The term for the speed it takes for data to get from one place on the internet to another is called “latency” (lay-ten-see).

Latency is very, very important when performing surgery across the internet. To perform remote surgery, the doctor sits by a special desk at his hospital with special controllers that mimic his hand movements. He also has a big screen that streams the operation, so he can see what he’s doing.

The patient, on the other hand, is in a hospital somewhere else in the world. They’re under a machine that has arms that mimic what the doctor does on his end. When the doctor moves one of his controllers on his special desk. it moves the corresponding arm of the surgery machine on the other end.

This is where latency comes in.

If it took even just a second for the doctor’s hand movements to arrive at the surgery machine, the doctor would feel ‘lag’ between his own movements and the machine’s movements. Because of this, it would be very hard for him to do his job accurately, as his “robot hands” would not be in sync with his real ones.

At the moment, fibre broadband has a latency that’s too high for a surgical robot. 5G, however, has a really low latency. When the doctor moves his hands, the surgical robot moves its own hands at almost the exact same time. This means a doctor can accurately do their job as if they were there in the hospital.

This is a great piece of technology that doctors can use to apply their expertise to helping people around the world. Right now, if someone needs to visit a specific doctor in another country, they have to fly there or have the doctor come to them. With surgical robots, however, the patient can simply go to their local hospital and have the doctor connect through a remote surgery robot. Definitely saves on the flight tickets. b

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Forget the scalpel...pass me that milkshake, kid.

Whatever you say, Doc.

TOM SIMPSON, FLICKR

12 History

CLARISSA LITTLER

H IVAN RADIC, FLICKR

Without intervention, one day the last NES will break beyond repair. Same with the last Commodore 64, last PS1, last XBox 360, etc. One day, the last 32-bit Intel processor will stop working.

For every one of these systems that falls away, there is an entire swath of media that is in danger of being lost for good: video games, interactive art installations, important pieces of software like Windows 3.1 or DOS. The same way losing a human language (a serious problem in itself) means you can't read its books or understand its songs, losing the hardware needed for old software means that no one can ever experience that program again. No one can play with it, learn from it, and connect with the past. Imagine a video game you really like, maybe even one that means a lot to you, and

, n O a ng

not being able to show it to future generations. This has already started happening with Adobe Flash, which is no longer being supported on most computers. Therefore, a lot of the games, comics, and other media of the 2000s are now impossible to view without a lot of effort.

If this all sounds dire and scary, it's time for the good news. People —a lot of them—are working hard on this problem.

Store and restore

There are two basic ways to keep old things alive: restoration, where you repair what you have to keep it going—like what people do with famous paintings—and archiving where you find a way to store copies that can be preserved over time.

Repairing is difficult for old

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computer parts because we generally don't have the tools needed. Much of what makes old systems unique are custombuilt chips. So, if you don't have a facility that can make them and detailed plans for how they're built, then you're out of luck.

Archiving, on the other hand, can give you a robust, hard-tobreak way of keeping the systems around.

Start at the end

There are two ways to archive hardware: using software or using other hardware. They both involve something called reverse engineering, where you figure out how something works from a working copy without knowing the source code, specifications, or plans.

The reason why we don't have this information is because these designs were generally proprietary, which means they were company secrets. Nintendo will likely never hand out the instructions to build an NES, no matter how long it's been since you could buy one.

Archiving using software means making something called an emulator. You've probably seen emulators before, especially if you’ve ever used dolphin, retroarch, zsnes, nesbox, or many others to play old video games.

These pieces of software work by pretending to be the ANDREI!, FLICKR

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actual hardware. So, for example, a NES emulator works by literally mimicking an NES with the right clock speed, memory layout, etc. This can work great, but is sometimes very difficult to run because you need something much more powerful than the hardware you're emulating to run the simulation fast enough.

And by "much more powerful" I mean even a Raspberry Pi 0 with a 1GHz processor and 512MB of RAM struggles to emulate a PS1 that was only a 33MHz processor with only 2MB of RAM.

GEOFFREY WEISS, FLICKR

JD HANCOCK, FLICKR

KRISTOFFER TROLLE, FLICKR

A chip off the old block

The other, newer option, is to archive hardware with other hardware. This involves a cool bit of tech called a FieldProgrammable Gate Array, FPGA for short.

FPGAs are basically chips whose behavior can be configured through code. You write down a description of how a chip you want should work, apply that to the FPGA, and then the board will, for all intents and purposes, be the chip you've described.

FPGA programming is hard, but once you've got it then it's like having a way to make new copies of an NES, or PS1, or Wii, but without the complications of figuring out how the original was manufactured. Companies like Analogue are even selling handheld consoles that use FPGAs in order to run original cartridges

of old video game systems.

That's pretty cool.

There's a lot more to the world of archiving old computer systems. There are people who have reverseengineered Windows 3.1. There are people who have managed to re-implement Adobe Flash in a custom web browser just so they could keep reading Homestuck.

It's a world full of creative people working hard to keep things they love alive and I think that's amazing. b

EVAN BENCH, FLICKR

In the Middle: A Deeper Dive Into Everyday Stuff

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BY JENNIFER NEWELL

Dots, Dashes, Pigeons, Throughout history people have developed creative ways of sending messages as quickly as possible. Messages/warnings were tied to pigeon’s legs, sent over a distance with smoke signals, and even via sound though “talking drums” in parts of Africa. But for most of history, messages were carried by foot or horseback and were slow to get from the sender to the receiver.

In the late 1700s in France, abbe Jean-Antonine wondered if it would be possible to send electrical signals over a wire more quickly than other types of signals were being sent. To find out how fast electricity traveled, he lined up around 200 monks spread over a mile, all holding an iron wire. And then he sent a low voltage current down the wire. When all the monks reacted to the light shock at seemingly the same instant, he realized that electricity did indeed travel much faster than any current message-delivery system.

Soon after, people began experimenting to devise messagesending systems based on electricity. Applying bursts of electricity to communicate human language was a tough problem to solve. However, within a few decades, a rudimentary understanding of how messages might be able to travel electrically along wire began to emerge. By 1850, messages were often encoded using the Morse code and sent through a telegraph system. Sending encoded messages along a wire was many times faster than previous methods of communication. It was so fast that, as the system advanced, those on the receiving end often could not translate the dots and dashes of the Morse code back into standard language fast enough to keep up.

In London, approximately half of all telegraph messages in the city were being sent between just two offices: the stock exchange branch office and the central telegraph agency.

The huge volume created long backups in a business where information is extremely time sensitive. These two offices were only 200 meters away from one another (just over one tenth of a mile). Running messages between the offices by foot was possible, and often faster than waiting for them to be translated from Morse code back into English, but still not fast enough to meet demand. A new system was designed.

This new system was composed of tubes, mostly running underground, between the central telegraph agency and the stock exchange branch office. Messages were placed in cylindrical containers that were dropped into the tubes. They were “sucked” through the tubes in a manner similar to how a vacuum sucks up dirt. However, this vacuum was created by steam-powered engines (which

DARE ADEGBAJU, FLICKR

African Talking Drum

I'll have my pigeons message your pigeons.

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Tubes, and Drones

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

German soldiers in WWI writing a message that will be sent by carrier pigeon, 1917.

BASF, 1916, FLICKR

A pneumatic tube message delivery system

were eventually replaced by compressed air) and allowed the cylindrical containers to travel at over 25 feet per second, over the entire 300 meters between the telegraph agency and the stock exchange.

The system relied on a branch of science known as pneumatics (new-mat-ics). Pneumatics is the study of the mechanical properties of air and other gasses. Reducing the amount of air on one end of a tube creates a sucking force powerful enough to “pull� objects through the tubes at relatively high speeds. Once the people of London were able to quickly transport messages between the telegraph office and the stock exchange office, people elsewhere started applying the same concept to transporting mail in cities across Europe, as well as in Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York. The network of tubes running across these cities formed what is sometimes known as the Victorian internet.

From the mid 1800s through the mid 1900s pneumatic systems in these cities worked wonders. For approximately 100 years, they carried tens of thousands of messages through hundreds of miles of winding tubes more efficiently than most other message-delivery systems of the day. In fact, the New York City system was in use until 1953; the pneumatic system in Prague ran until 2002; and, up until 2011, there was even a pneumatic system in place to deliver orders at McDonalds in Edina, Minnesota. The Stanford University hospital continues to use a pneumatic tube system to send lab samples across the medical center.

What became of the bulk of the pneumatic systems used to send messages across cities? In most cases the tubes still remain, largely underground and hidden within walls. Like most physical systems, they began to wear out and needed frequent, expensive repair. As mail delivery trucks grew increasingly commonplace it became cheaper to drive messages from one location to another than to repair the pneumatic tube system.

Today, most messages that were once carried by delivery trucks are now transported through email and text. In the case of email, messages pass through routers, servers, and fiber optic cables. Text messages travel through radio waves, going from cell tower to cell tower until reaching the designated receiver within seconds.

We can thank developments in a range of sciences for our ability to quickly send messages. Pneumatics brought us the Victorian internet; the invention of the internal combustion engine enabled mail to be delivered by automobile. Developments in information science, electronics, and computer science brought us the internet.

Although our current delivery systems may seem impressive, every 5 to 10 years a new generation of mobile networks is rolled out (5g was first deployed in 2019) and efforts are being made to improve package delivery systems (drones, robots, and even underground pipes).

Think about how you send and receive messages and packages. What could be done to improve upon these systems in the future? Creative answers to these questions will be used to build even better delivery systems for the next generation. b

Electronics

16

n O p U g n i k c i s P e b i V c i n So

BY JO HINCHCLIFFE

Have you ever received a birthday card that played a bleepy tune when you opened it? Chances are, the “speaker” that made the noise was a piezo transducer. These little brass discs with a couple of wires attached can be found in all manner of objects that make simple beeps. You can buy “piezo discs” online very affordably.

Rather wonderfully, piezo disks can operate both as a speaker and as a microphone. It’s essentially the same process either way; piezo discs convert vibrations into electrical signals when acting as microphones and convert electrical signals into vibrations (sound waves) when acting as speakers. They aren’t quite like regular microphones, however.

They're often referred to as “contact microphones” as they are better at picking up the vibration of objects or instruments rather than human voices.

Making contact

It’s really simple to make a piezo contact microphone and it can be done with or without using any soldering. For our first contact microphone, we are going to simply use a piezo disc, some crocodile clips and a 1/4” mono jack plug (the sort of plug a guitar lead might have). The piezo disc has a black and a red wire attached. The disc is a little bit fragile and certainly the joint where the wires connect is prone

to breaking, so the first thing we are going to do is to reinforce the joint by putting a blob of hot glue over it to make it more secure. A Next, let’s get a crocodile clip and connect it to the black wire, and then connect this “ground” connection to the part of the jack plug that connects to the outside of the plug and not the tip. Next, let’s connect the red wire with a crocodile clip to the tip connection of the jack plug. B Now this contact microphone is ready to go. To keep things safe, we aren’t going to connect the microphone to any mains powered audio equipment and we are going to plug the microphone into a tiny battery powered guitar amp. C Start with the volume low and increase it slowly while tapping the contact microphone and you should get some sounds. For a more interesting experiment, use a small clip to connect the piezo disc to some object of your choosing. Springs can

make a fabulous science fiction laser shot sound.

Of course, this set up isn’t very robust or portable. A good next step can be to remake this microphone using a guitar lead and remove one of the jack plugs making a note of which of the two internal wires connects to the tip and the sleeve.

We can then make the connections using an electrical screw terminal block. D Ay Kalimba!

If you have a spare piece of screw terminal block, it can be used to make really interesting little “instruments” for contact microphones. Find some stiff wire or some thin metal strips and attach them to the screw terminals and then clip the contact microphone to it. E The brilliant thing about these scrap-built “Kalimba”, is you can alter the tuning of each metal key by shortening or lengthening it using the screw terminals. You can find free apps for smartphones that act

as tuners and, as such, you can make an experimental instrument that plays in tune with other instruments.

We love experimenting with recording sounds from our contact microphones and a good way to collect sound samples is to simply record the output of your battery powered guitar amp using the microphone on your smartphone.

However we went a step further and soldered 2 piezo discs to a stereo mini jack socket to create a pair of contact microphones that we can record using the microphone input on our small dictaphone type digital recorder. F You could also do this by adapting the wires to an old or broken set of headphones taking care to connect the red wires of the disc to the separate tips of the headphone jack and you could again use screw terminal blocks if needed.

G Having a portable way to use these contact microphones really opens up a weird world of listening.

We’ve used ours to record the sounds of stones sliding across a frozen lake or spooky creaking gates we found out on a walk. b

17

B

C

D

E

F

A

G

18 Notebook

BY TIM SLAVIN

Computer Science, How computers and computation work is a mystery to most people. Yet there are a number of ways to learn about computers and computer science without actually using a computer. Teachers, parents, and kids can be active while learning.

Several online resources offer ways to learn computing without computers, often called unplugged computing or computer science unplugged.

Here are some resources and links to get you started.

Links: Teaching London Computing: https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/ resources/inspiring-unplugged-classroomactivities/ https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/ resources/inspiring-unplugged-classroomactivities/the-locked-in-activity/ https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/ resources/inspiring-unplugged-classroomactivities/the-intelligent-piece-of-paperactivity/ CS Unplugged: http://csunplugged.org/ http://csunplugged.org/the-turing-test/ http://csunplugged.org/binary-numbers/ http://csunplugged.org/routing-and-deadlock/ Barefoot Computing: You’ll need to register to see their materials but they’re a big part of the Computing at School (CAS) effort in the UK and teaching computer science without computers. http://barefootcas.org.uk http://barefootcas.org.uk/resources/ STEM Learning: Also requires registration to see their materials. https://www.stem.org.uk/elibrary/ collection/3909/computer-science-unplugged

Unplugged

19 CLINT PATTERSON, UNSPLASH

Teaching London Computing This group supports the Computing at School computer science curriculum taught in UK schools. Their resources and information are freely available to anyone with an internet connection. Here are two examples of their activities:

The Intelligent Piece of Paper

The Locked In Activity

Forget are you smarter than a fifth grader: are you smarter than any piece of paper? This activity uses noughts and crosses (Xs and Os in the US) to demonstrate how paper can be artificially intelligent, as well as how computers simply follow instructions set up by software programmers. It also gets you thinking about how to define intelligence.

A person with locked in syndrome is paralyzed but totally aware of their surroundings.

Usually it’s the result of a stroke or other medical condition. Could you write a book if you were locked in? This activity looks at someone who did exactly that while the activity also teaches computational thinking and algorithms.

CS Unplugged

Conversations With Computers: The Turing Test

This group provides a collection of free learning activities to teach computer science through games and puzzles. Instead of computers, their activities use cards, strings, crayons, and lots of running around.

While their activities are geared for kids 5-12 years, they can work with anyone. Much of their materials are translated into other languages. Two of their activities:

This activity explores how we might recognize when a computer is truly intelligent. It gets you thinking about how to define intelligence and what makes us human. The computer scientist Alan Turing devised a simple test he thought would tell when a computer had become human.

This activity replicates the test with four people playing the role

of human, computer, and two gobetweens between the human and person acting as a computer.

Binary Numbers

How do you represent data when it is stored as 1s and 0s, two symbols? Participants use the provided materials to create a set of five binary cards to answer this question. The activity also shows how to send secret messages, something kids might enjoy. b

20 SketchUp

BY BONNIE ROSKES

Art Museum In this project, we’ll design a tworoom art museum in SketchUp. This is Part 1, and in the next issue, Part 2, we will be creating a tour of your museum. All you need for this project is SketchUp in your internet browser.

SketchUp is a free and fun web-based program for 3D modeling. You can use SketchUp to design just about anything, from furniture to a dream bedroom to an entire city. Go to https://app.sketchup.com/app.

When you start modeling in SketchUp, you start in this view, with Helen standing on the ground. She isn’t needed in this model, so press E for the Eraser, and click on any of Helen’s edges. A Press the R key for the Rectangle tool. For the first room, click anywhere on the ground to start,

A

B

and move your mouse toward the other corner. Pay attention to the measurements in the Dimensions field, in the lower right corner. A museum room should be pretty large: 20 or 30 feet (or the equivalent metric units) on each side. When your room has the size you want, click again to finish the rectangle. B In my example, the museum will have two rooms, but you can create any floor plan you’d like. Create another room to one side, and add a rectangle in between for a hallway. C Press E for the Eraser, and erase any edges that separate rooms. You should be left with one unbroken shape. D Walls have thickness, so we want to create another set of edges for the inner walls. This is done with the

Offset tool, which you can find inside the Push/Pull flyout toolbar, on the left side. E Click once inside the floor shape, and move the mouse just inside or outside the room. The Distance field displays the offset value, which should be a few inches or cm. Click again to finish. F To pull up the walls, press P for the Push/Pull tool. Place the cursor in any part of the thin face that represents the walls. G Click to start pulling, move the mouse up, look for a distance of 11 or 12 feet, and click again to finish. H The museum will need at least one doorway. So press R again, and draw an opening within one of the walls. I Press P again for Push/Pull, click

F

K

C

G

L

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M

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I

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N

the door rectangle, and push the door rectangle inward. You won’t be able to go past the wall thickness, and when you click again, the hole will be pushed through. J The walls and floor are finished (unless you want to color them).

To prevent anything we’re about to add from “sticking” to the walls, the whole room will be made into a group. Press the Spacebar for the Select tool, and draw a selection window around the entire room. K Right-click on any selected face, and choose Make Group. L The room is now highlighted in blue, and is grouped into one object.

You can right-click in blank space to unselect it. M The next step is to find images of the art you want to place on the walls.

In my example, I’m using a variety of famous paintings. But you can stick with one artist, or one art period or region, or even use your own art if you have scanned images. Or you can create a photo gallery instead, using your own photos or photos

you find online. As an example, if you want to find an image of the most famous painting in the world, the Mona Lisa, do a Google Search and click Images. N Click any image to open the website where the image is located.

For the image you want to use, rightclick on it and use the saving option provided by your browser. Note that some images can’t be saved, such as images on official museum websites.

O Save each image to a location you’ll remember on your computer.

Back in SketchUp, click the three-line icon at the very top left corner, and choose Insert. P Choose the “Your computer” option. Q Browse to where you saved your image and click Open. R And finally, choose the Image option. (The Material option is used when you’re painting a face with a texture.) S The image is attached to your cursor. Click to place the lower left

corner on the wall where you want this painting to hang, then move the mouse to get the size you want, and click again to finish. T If you like the no-frame look, you can leave each image as is. That look could work nicely for a photo gallery or a display of modern art. If you want to add frames to your paintings, though, each image must be made into a regular SketchUp rectangle. To do this, right-click on the image and choose Explode. U Once your image is exploded, you’ll probably see some “shimmering” effects while you change the view. This is because the flat image rectangle lies in the same exact plane as the museum wall, and SketchUp doesn’t know which face to display on top. But we’ll fix this later, by making the painting and its frame 3D. Find the Offset tool again, and create a frame rectangle outside the image. V To paint the frame, open the Materials window by clicking the

O

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22

icon along the right side. Use the magnifying glass icon to open the list of material categories, and open Colors or one of the other categories like Metal or Wood. W Click the color or texture you want, and click the frame to paint it. X Use Push/Pull to first pull out the frame a few inches from the wall. Y Then use the same tool to pull out the painting itself. Now it’s clear which faces go where, and there should be no more shimmering. Z In a real museum, everything is labelled: the painting name, artist, year, media, or other details. To add your own labels, open the Rectangle flyout on the left and activate the 3D

AA

Text tool. AA In the Create 3D Text window, set the letter height to something realistic, such as 3”. Keep text filled, but also keep it flat, not extruded.

Then in the text box, type what you want to say. Unfortunately, there are no alignment options, so if you want your text centered, you’ll have to do it by adding spaces. BB Click OK, then click to place the text below or to the side of the painting. CC 3D Text is grouped, so you can paint it with one click. DD If you want to move paintings around, it’s easier if the painting and its label are one group. So press the

CC

Spacebar again for the Select tool, and drag a window around both. EE Make these objects into a group.

Now you can use the Move tool (shortcut: M) to move the whole thing. FF Now that you know how to create paintings, frames, and text in SketchUp, have fun filling the rest of your walls. In my example, I looked for famous paintings by Monet, Magritte, Van Gogh, and more. GG And, as mentioned at the beginning, stay tuned for Part 2 of this project. You’ll learn how to use SketchUp’s camera tools and scenes, to create a guided tour of your museum. b

FF

DD GG BB EE GG

It's hard to get close up to the Mona Lisa in real life.

This is the Louvre Museum in Paris, France.

ANDY L., FLICKR

If you’ve ever wanted to send a huge file over the internet, you’ve probably had to “zip it up”. When you zip up a file, it makes the file size smaller so it’s easier to upload and download on the internet. But, why do we “zip” files? Where did the terminology come from?

It’s easy to assume that you’re zipping up a file to make it more compact, like you’re bundling it all into one bag. The icon for a ZIP file even has a little zipper on it, as if you can pull it down to get at all of your files.

No Pkarc-ing

Phil Katz was a little disgruntled, but he didn’t let this stop him.

Instead, he and a friend decided to create a new format, called “ZIP”.

The name implied that zipping a file was quick, and—more importantly— faster than ARC. It was basically telling everyone that their version of the software could beat everyone else’s for speed—a bold claim.

You can imagine how this story went, given that we still “zip” files today, but we never “arc” them.

It goes to show that Phil’s ZIP files were, indeed, faster than the competition.

The origin of the ZIP file’s name, however, doesn’t have anything to do with zippers. It actually uses the alternate meaning of “zip” which is “to go fast”—like in the sentence “the cat zipped by when he heard the tuna can open.”

The reason it has this name is because the inventor of the ZIP file, Phil Katz, wanted to make a point.

Back when he designed the ZIP file, it wasn’t called that at all. It went by the much less memorable name “PKARC.” However, another company, called Systems Enhancement Associates (SEA), didn’t like this very much. This is because they had a system called “ARC”, which did a similar job to PKARC. As such, they told Phil Katz that he wasn’t allowed to use PKARC anymore, because the name ARC was owned by SEA.

Of course, these days, we tend to think of ZIP files as having zippers on them because that’s what the icon shows us. It’s a little weird to think, however, that you can “zip up” a digital file to make it take up less room, just like you’re forcing stuff into a bag and trying to get the zipper around before it all falls out again.

How do you do that with a digital file?

ZIP files achieve this by finding repeating patterns and structures and simplifying them to cut down on the amount of data a file takes up. For example, take the following sentence: “I love cats, and I love when cats purr” In this sentence, the words “I,” “love,” and “cats” appear two times.

As such, we can create a “word directory” to make this sentence a lot shorter.

Zip codes

23 Concepts

Zip It to Ship It

BY SIMON BATT

For example, we can assign each word in a sentence to a number. It’d look like this: 1=I 2 = love 3 = cats 4 = and 5 = when 6 = purr Not only have we broken down a 9-word sentence into 6 words, but now we can use numbers to rewrite the sentence. A single number takes up less space than a word, so we can save bytes by typing our sentence like this: 123,412536.

Now, instead of having to store 38 characters in the original sentence, it only needs to store 11 in our new number-based sentence.

That saves a bit of room.

Of course, if you wanted to show this sentence to someone else, you can’t just give them the numbers.

After all, they have no idea what each number means.

As such, you’d need to retranslate the sentence by matching each number to each word and writing it back out in English. This is what your PC does when it “unzips” a file; it makes all the files easier for your computer to read.

What ways could you squash down repetitive data to make it take up less space? Perhaps your way may become the next ZIP file. b CLARE BLACK, FLICKR

24

tidbitz Betcha Didn't Know We Were So Chatty!

What a Show!

TDr Tzu-Hao Lin, a scientist in Taiwan, studies ocean soundscapes, all the human, animal, and geological sound emitted in an area.

Soundscapes allow Lin and other scientists to monitor the health and biodiversity of the ocean. Scientists believe soundscapes provide the quickest and cheapest way to monitor remote underwater regions of the ocean. For example, using sound to single out the activity of individual species can show whether a population is declining, healthy, or booming. Sound is more powerful and useful than light in the ocean.

b

一起聆聽海洋吧孤季 建立海洋聲景的公民科學平台

孫翊仁 王靜偉 翁以恩 林子皓 中央研究院 生物多樣性研究中心

COSMIC CLOUDS / J.-P. METSÄVAINIO, DAVID J. EICHER, BRIAN MAY

什麼是聲景孫宖宲宸宱宧家宦室害宨孬宂

我們放置錄音機在各種棲息地，並搜集由生物音、環境音、及人為噪音建構出的聲音景觀。

如何透過聲景了解生態宂

聲景監測讓我們能長期、遠端的監測生態系。 我們可以利用聲景研究不同尺度的生態議題孫如生物叫聲的行為變化、動物聲 音多樣性孬來持續關注生態系的狀況。 聽聽看孤 綠島 小琉球 環境音

宙宕體驗孽 聆聽小琉球和綠島的聲景吧孤

雨聲

人為噪音 船隻噪音

生物音

生物音

魚類合唱

海豚哨聲

生物音 槍蝦

公民科學如何幫助聲景監測宂

雖然水下錄音機可以提供高品質的錄音，但價格昂貴，目前仍難以建立大規模的水下監測網路。因此我們希望能有效利用 潛水客潛水時拍攝的水下影片及音檔來彌補目前空間及時間尺度的侷限。 水下錄音機

水下相機

宙孱宖孱

我們發想了監測全台珊瑚礁生物聲音多樣性的公民科學平台 ① 提供孽 水中錄影孮基本資訊 水深 水溫 時間 地點 相機型號

③ 呈現孽

影片中各種聲音的時間點

潛點之聲音多樣性

建立各潛點的聲音名錄 出 現 頻 率

時序變化

② 分析孽 機器學習辨認聲音種類 出 現 頻 率

春

夏

秋

冬

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/science/deep-sea-marine-biology-acoustics.html https://sites.google.com/view/marine-ecoacoustics/home

Brian May, who has many interests in addition to being lead guitarist for the band Queen, has worked with an astrophotographer to create 3-dimensional stereographic photos of nebulae, or places where stars are born.

The photos allow viewers to see the shape of a nebulae, not only the flat 2D photos we’re used to.

Stereographic photos are two photos taken of the same object but from slightly different angles. A viewer puts the two images in front of our eyes to create a 3D image.

May’s new book, Cosmic Clouds in 3-D, includes a stereoscopic viewer. b https://www.wired.co.uk/article/brian-maycosmic-clouds https://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/ https://astroanarchy.zenfolio.com

Get Out of Your Own Way

25

With software, the best user interfaces (UIs) don’t get in the way of doing whatever you want to do. Games are no different. The new Game UI Database website shows some really good examples of how to organize a game UI so people can do lots of things without wasting time or noticing the interface. It’s useful for game designers and anyone who appreciates games. b https://www.gameuidatabase.com/ https://mashable.com/article/game-ui-databasewebsite-edd-coates-interview/

Droning On and On

IVAN T, FLICKR

If you watch TV, you've probably seen images taken by a drone, usually a view looking down on a street or open field with people below. A company in Alabama, has created the world’s largest drone. However, this new drone will be used to launch satellites into orbit for much less cost than rockets launched by NASA and others. The 80-foot aircraft has a wingspan of 60 feet, stands 18 feet tall and weighs 55,000 pounds. b https://www.al.com/news/ huntsville/2020/12/alabama-companyunveils-worlds-biggest-drone-newspace-vision.html

AEVUM

https://www.aevumspace.com/

Chinese researchers have created a quantum computer called Jiuzhang that performed a calculation in 200 seconds that takes a traditional binary computer 2.5 billion years to calculate. The calculation is an example of quantum supremacy, tasks that are virtually impossible for a binary computer to perform.

Among other challenges, providing power to a binary computer for 2.5 billion probably isn’t happening now. But quantum supremacy tasks are a way to progress as scientists develop these new computers. b https://newatlas.com/computers/jiuzhang-chinesequantum-computer-supremacy/

YI-HAN LUO, NEWATLAS.COM

Quantum Leap

TA diagram of an optical circuit, where photons (red) are sent through a maze of beam splitters and mirrors and a quantum computer like Jiuzhang calculates the output

Book Review

26

k o o B w e N f A o e n O m o r F n w O r Ou

BY TIM SLAVIN

Have you ever tried reading one of those You Too Can Code Python in 1 Week books? These kinds of books that attempt to teach programming are often too complicated and difficult to finish reading. It's like trying to eat a giant birthday cake, when all you really want are a bunch of small cakes that you can easily eat one by one.

Python Programming for Beginners, a book by Patricia Foster (one of our beanz writers!), and published by Rockridge Press, is like a bunch of small cakes that, one by one, teach you the basics of programming in a friendly, easy-to-understand way. For example, loops and variables can be highly technical and off-putting. In this book, however, they’re taught in a clear and simple way. By the time you’ve finished each chapter, you have a good understanding of programming, Python, and related topics.

The concepts in each chapter are also described with activities that are easy, medium, and hard. You can evolve your understanding at your own pace. You don’t have to worry

about all the activities being too difficult. The book teaches you the Python skills needed to create games, apps. and websites.

It also neatly summarizes the different parts of software applications. For example, all software has inputs, outputs,

math, conditional execution, and repetition. Explaining each of these parts makes it easy to understand

Patricia Foster

the big picture and how pieces— like variables—fit into the overall parts of an application.

Once readers understand all the parts, the book explains the different tools that are used in most or all programming languages.

These tools include variables, data types and structures, conditionals, loops, and functions. And each of these tools are explained in accessible ways. Data structures are described as a refrigerator or lunch box that ensures no container is forgotten at the bottom of your backpack, getting gross and stinky.

The book also explains how coders think.

Programming is really about solving problems: how to create efficient code and how to fix code that doesn’t work.

While I may be biased because this book was written by one of our writers, it's great for someone starting to learn any programming language. I’ve read many similar books, so I can say this one offers a truly approachable, fun way to learn programming. b

27

Print Function: Your First Code!

Ready to flex your coding muscles? The print function is a tool used to send messages to users.

You’re not printing on paper, though. Printing is computer-speak for displaying text in the console.

The most basic version looks like this: print () Then, we place the message we want to share inside the round brackets.

Traditionally, programmers start by printing “Hello World.” But since every programmer does this, Earth’s probably getting a little tired of that greeting.

In your code editor, let’s write: print("Hello Mars!")

Run your code to see your message displayed in the console. If you’re using the IDLE editor, and you want to review how to run code, flip back to chapter 2 (page 11) for a quick refresher!

Congratulations—you’ve just written your first program!

If you get an error message, don’t worry! Double-check your spelling for things like apostrophes and brackets, then try again.

Here are some general rules for writing code and using the print function: • Every open bracket (round or square) must be closed by a matching bracket.

• Watch out for spelling mistakes in your message!

• The print function displays the exact text we’ve written, including uppercase and lowercase letters, spaces, and punctuation.

• The text inside the print function should always be surrounded by quotation marks.

Next, let’s try printing some variables: planet = "Jupiter"

print(planet)

If you run this code, you’ll see “Jupiter” appear in the console. When you print a variable, you display its value, not its name. A variable’s name just helps you—the programmer—keep track of your data. Your users never see it!

If we want to print a variable’s value (in this case, “Jupiter”) and text (in this case, “Hello”) together in one message, we need to get a little fancy, and use an f-string. An f-string is a string that includes text and variables.

First create a variable:

planet = "Jupiter"

Next, write out the print statement. Add the letter “f” in front of the text to indicate that it’s an f-string.

To include a variable, simply surround the variable’s name with curly braces. Python will swap in the variable’s value automatically:

print(f"Hello {planet}!")

The result of your print function should be “Hello Jupiter!”

Using variables makes it easy to change values, which is useful when you don’t want your messages to all be the same. Just remember, whenever you print a message with a variable, you need to use an f-string!

Excerpt from Python Programming for Beginners, by Patricia Foster, published by Rockridge Press.

Copyright © 2020 by Callisto Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

Parents and Teachers

28

BY TIM MCGUIGAN

It's Time to Teach Ethical A

Beware!

Since the introduction of smartphones, it’s been clear that the widespread adoption of technology has had certain trade-offs. Being a teacher of 8th grade students, I’ve seen both the power of mobile computing, and the way it can change human behavior. For years now, I have taught JavaScript and app design as a part of my course, but I have also noticed students continually falling into negative patterns with technology.

Largely defined by the juggernauts of Silicon Valley, UX, or user experience design, has become rife with dark patterns and unethical elements meant to increase engagement. Students wade into

these waters largely unaware of the pull some of these designs can have. However in the past year, the landscape around ethics in app design has subtly changed.

In September of last year Netflix released a documentary called “The Social Dilemma”. Within the first few minutes of watching, I realized it would forever change my teaching around app design.

In the documentary, the viewer gets introduced to Tristan Harris, who was a design ethicist at Google until 2016. Harris has become a crusader for ethical design and started the Center for Humane Technology in 2018. Harris and the CHT have helped focus the

attention of the world on the effects of dark patterns and unethical design in the app industry. From the pitfalls of the infinite scroll to the dangers of intermittent rewards, the documentary defines the inherent problems with technology built to manipulate psychological vulnerabilities. When you consider that between the ages of 10 and 14 nearly all my students become enmeshed with devices, apps, and gaming, this poses some very real problems.

As a result, this past fall I showed the documentary to all my 8th graders as a prelude to our unit on app design. Seeing developers weigh their design choices with the

29

App Design

ALAN LEVINE, FLICKR

outcomes they cause was one of the most impactful moments for students. Conversations both wary of and in support of the devices they had stowed away in their pockets ensued after the movie. Their sophisticated questions showed me that this wasn’t the first time they had pondered these issues. Aren’t the trade-offs manageable? What other options do I have? What if I’m ok with giving away my personal data?

In the end, I came back around to comparing the world of mobile technology to a casino with colors, bells, lights, and chances at a windfall around every corner. If we are designing technology to not only

make money, but be humane then is a casino the appropriate model for adolescents? What would design better suited for teenagers look like?

And so, I tasked them with building apps for their 6th grade counterparts that were human-centered and ethical. What looked like an easy goal at first, became increasingly difficult as they found that engagement and replayability were at the heart of most of their designs.

In the end, the concept of ethics in mobile design remained a thorny problem that we didn’t solve, but many students were exposed to questions that will be integral to their generation and the generations to come. One student mentioned to

me that maybe there just needs to be two ethical standards, one for adults and one for teenagers. This kind of thinking is the step in the right direction I was looking for with this unit, and I hope to take more steps in the future. While the industry has little impetus to self-regulate, we can empower students to be wary of pitfalls and practice more balance in their technological lives.

Moreover, we can teach the coming generations about how technology can be humane. Right now it seems like an uphill battle, but working with students makes me ever hopeful for the future. b

“The computer was born to solve problems that did not exist before."

—Bill Gates

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