CompSci//Media Arts - Writing History, p3

Writing History, part 3

Today's Goal

Continue exploration into concepts of what information actually is.
Create your own "Rosetta Stone".

Completed

Publish your Portfolio & Submit URL
Write your 1st Python Program
Start Info Theory

Today

What is information?
Communication & History: Ancient Civilizations

Upcoming

Number Bases
More Python

What is Information?

Have you thought about information before?
Like the actual concept of it?

Listen to a bit of discussion about it in the video below.

library-info-sciences.mp4

From Pictograms to Letters

In discussions about the development of language, Ancient Egypt is commonly discussed. Keep in mind the over time, information is lost, and our understanding of history is based on the interpretation of the data we have.

Was Egypt the first region to make developments that led from pictograms to a proto-alphabet? Maybe. Its hard to ever really be 100% certain, as we know there may be important information lost over time.

heiroglyph.mp4

Cracking Egyptian hieroglyphics was not an easy task, it required and important discovery and decades of work.

The discovery that led to our modern understanding was the Rosetta Stone.

rosetta-stone.mp4

The Rosetta Stone was such an important discovery that the name Rosetta Stone has become a general concept now; used to describe something that provides clues or helps others understand something that would otherwise be difficult or impossible.

This concept became pervasive enough that there's a company called Rosetta Stone; its a company that sells materials to help you learn other languages. A well-known programming website called Rosetta Code has many commonly known programs written in a vast variety of programming languages; for example, here's a Hello World in Python, and here's one for C, and one for JavaScript, and there's many many many more on the Hello World page on Rosetta Code.

TASK: Your Own Rosetta Stone

In a previous class, you were to create a set of symbols used to communicate a message.

Go back to your set of symbols, and choose a new message to write out. The Rosetta Stone had the same text written in three different languages; Demotic, Greek, and Egyptian Hieroglyphics. We're going to create our own "Roserra Stone".

Write out your new message in english, with your selected set of symbols, and in one more way; specifically, using someone else's set of symbols. Talk to someone else in class, and write your selected message using their set of symbols as well.

When finished, upload a picture of your work into today's Canvas task.