Module 13

Ryan Williams

April 18, 2015

Module 13

            I have really enjoyed this course. Reading from the book The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman has been a real eye-opener for me. Never have I thought about how much the world is flattening. Industry has changed in many different ways. Companies today rarely do every single thing with a product. One company could design a product and order materials from another company while a third company is the actual seller of the product. These companies do not even need to be on the same continent. You can have your company in the United States where you design and put together the product while getting the materials from China and then sending the finished product to England for a company to sell.

            In the book, Friedman brings up an example for the flattening of the world. One of the examples he uses is his Dell Inspiron notebook which he wrote the book on. He talks about many of the parts of his computer and where they came from. He says that the memory came from a Korean factory, the cooling fan from a Taiwanese factory, the battery from an American-owned factory in Malaysia, the hard disk drive from an American-owned factory in Singapore and other parts of the computer from many other different places too.

            We did reading other than from the book too.  One thing we read was a short story written in 1946 called “A Logic Named Joe”. The story talked about “logics” being everywhere and people having access to them at any time to do anything. It also talked about how this would turn out bad because people knowing how to do whatever they wouldn’t ever need to get help from anyone else and this would be bad. Another thing we read was an article on Wired called, “Why the future doesn’t need us” written by Bill Joy. In the article, Joy talked about how technology is evolving enough that in the future, technology will have out-evolved us to a point where we are not good enough for technology itself. One example he talks about is robots. We are improving on robots more and more and he talks about how we will evolve them too much and they will begin to work on their own and to succeed they will need to get rid of us. This brought me to talk about I, Robot. In I, Robot, almost the same thing happens as what Joy talks about, but to an extreme.

            Overall, I enjoyed taking this course. The reading was never very dull. At some points it may have been a little slow but for the most part, I was very into the reading and the subjects the authors went over. The writing was never bad either. No one writing was ever “too hard” or “too easy” but seemed to have a balance of not taking a long time to write, but still making me be engaged and having to think about what I had read.

Ryan Williams 

Module 12 

GNR stands for Genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics. Genetic engineering is the direct modification of DNA. This isn’t always in favor of good. For example, as we create new vaccinations to improve our resistance to bacteria and viruses, the bacteria and viruses are also gaining a resistance to the new vaccinations by having their DNA adapt to them. This basically makes a never-ending war on vaccinations where one side is almost always a little bit ahead of the other side and are always trying to catch up. 

Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter on a very small scale, more accurately the molecular scale. This also can be used in a variety of helpful ways, but also bad ones. At one point in the article, the author says, "Unfortunately, as with nuclear technology, it is far easier to create destructive uses for nanotechnology than constructive ones." 

Robotics is the use of constructing objects that can move and function to do tasks. Building robots and making uses for them, like the genetic engineering and nanotechnology, can be used for good or evil. In a bunch of movies today, robotics is seen as good for the population but later it turns against them and to survive, they end up having to disable or get rid of the robots in order to regain control. 

I think that Bill Joy has a pretty solid sounding argument on why GNR should be feared. I think movies have done a pretty good job on showing and extreme version of what could happen if technology were to take for, like the movie I, Robot  where robots are made for good and to help people in their everyday lives but the artificial intelligence is allowed to improve the life of humans which results in humans not being good enough to continue and they have to be eliminated which is when people have to take the robots back over and shut them down. 

I really enjoyed reading this article. As I have probably said before, I like reading about technology and where it could be heading and this article was just that. I thought the author also made the article interesting to read and he never lost my attention.

Module 11

Ryan Williams 

Module 11 

The movie I picked to watch is "Minority Report". In the movie, there are two "types" of computers used. There is one main computer used in this movie. What the computer does is take "precognitive" visions from three different Precogs and sends them all to a computer to be analyzed. The videos are analised by the Precrime police to find out what type of crime is going to happen, where it is going to happen, who it is going to affect, and who is causing the crime. The Precogs brains are wired to the computer and the signals from the Precogs brains are sent through wires to the computer. Once the videos are received, the computer pulls them all up in a 3-d virtual video analysis software. The user of the computer can then fast forward and rewind through the video as well as rotate the angle at which the user is looking. From there, the user identifies key elements from the visions to determine all of the things that they need to stop the crime from happening. 

Of the two parts of the computer, the 3-d video analysis software is definitely probable, the visions of the future from mutated human's brains is pretty ridiculous. The reason I am saying the 3-d video analysis software is probable is because of technologies coming out right now. For one example, Microsoft's "HoloLens" is a type of computer that can be used in a very similar matter to the software in the movie. The HoloLens is a computer that creates an augmented reality around the user and the can interact with holograms through the wearable computer. This is very similar to the software in the movie, the only main difference is that in the movie you do not need to wear any sort of headgear, but you do have to wear a glove to interact with it. 

Module 10

Ryan Williams 

Module 10

"Joe" in the story is a good representation of the internet today. Throughout the whole story, people are asking "Joe" tons and tons of questions. From simple ones like what the weather is like to the complex question of how can you make cold electron-emission work. 

 What I think the author is trying to get at in the story is basically that you should not be able to find out anything you want, just by doing something simple. You need to work at it and find everything you need on your own and not just be lazy and have someone else do it for you. You should also not become dependent on technology because it will not always get things done without some bad consequence. This is very true today. When you walk around outside in a city, technology is everywhere. Most people you pass on the street are either using their phone or listening to music. This is not bad, necessarily, but in a way, it can become bad. For example, imagine walking outside and everyone you see has glued their face to their phone. There is no face-to-face interaction and the only sounds you here are the clicking of the keyboard on phones and the notification sounds on them. Doesn't sound very fun, does it? This is quite extreme, but it is partially happening already. 

It is not the younger generations fault. They had no choice in being born right now into the world filled with technology. Since they have grown up with it, it is what they have become used to. But, just because they have been raised with is, doesn't mean that they have to use it. They have a choice, and lots of people are choosing technology and becoming very dependent on it. Finding out the weather is very simple today. You just hop on the internet and do a quick web search. Finding out how to make cold electron-emission to work is not something you can just find on the internet, its something you have to find out without the internet. In the end, technology can and should be used for good, but if you become to dependent on it, then it can take over too much. 

This reading was very interesting for me. To start off, they style of writing is different than most I am used to. The whole story is written exactly as people would talk. Not all the words are pronounced completely, and lots of words are left out. This is cool writing though because it sounds as though someone is actually telling you the story, rather than just listening. Since it is written like that, parts of it were hard for me to understand because people don't always talk in the most clear ways so parts of it were harder to understand. When I first started reading it, I was not sure whether some of the names were actual people, or if narrator had given human names to objects. Overall, the story was and interesting take on what could possibly happen to someone with the advances of technology. 

Module 9

Ryan Williams 

March 21, 2015 

Module 9 

When you order a product online, you rarely think about what happens when you click the "Confirm Purchase" button. Freidman discusses in this chapter all of the things that can happen. He starts off with telling you what type of computer he has. After this, he tells you of the journey of all the parts from his laptop that came together to form the final product. In order to build a computer you need to have all the parts and obviously you won't make them all yourself. So when he presses "Order", messages are sent to a bunch of different companies. Each company then sends the needed part to an assembly factory where all the pieces come together. That sounds simple right? Well, he tells you where a couple of the components of his laptop came from. His battery coming from an American-owned factory is Malaysia.  The wireless card from either an American-owned factory in China or one in Malaysia. That is just a few examples. When you think of the whole assembly, parts from just one laptop can have come from all across the world. 

Al-Qaeda has a supply chain. Before you start thinking 'Who in the world would be supplying al-Qaeda?' let me explain. Companies produce millions of products throughout the year. After the produce them, they send the out to distributors to sell them. Once they leave the factory, the company the produced them have no control over who will buy them. This means that anyone, even members of al-Qaeda, could walk in to one of those distributors and buy it. The producers have no control over that and they most likely never will. This would mean that al-Qaeda does have suppliers. 

The curse of oil is basically this, When a country finds oil and starts drilling it and selling it, they don't have to worry about using that money to improve their country. What this means is that a country can become rich, but the conditions in that country can still remain poor. Since the money is not coming from taxes, the government does not have to worry about using the money for the people of the country. When this happens, people living in that country can bet very upset with the government because they are not doing anything for the people and this can cause a lot of problems. 

Module 8

Ryan Williams

Module 8

            I use computers a lot in my education. Nearly every one of my classes uses computers in one of or another. If it is using any type of computer, including anything that has even the small computers in it, then even most things outside of school use computers.

            One of the classes I am currently taking in high school is an intro to engineering class. Every day in this class we are on the computer the whole entire class period. We mainly use two programs on the computer, Google Chrome and a program by Autodesk called Inventor. Google Chrome we use for internet, obviously, using it to access our assignments that our teachers posts on the web version of One Note. The rest of the work is done on Inventor which is a 3-D CAD software. On this program, we make whatever the teacher tells us to. From simple cube objects to reverse engineering an object then building each separate part of the object on the software.

            Another class I use a computer in is my Principles of Engineering class. In this class we are on the computers a fair amount of time using a program called Robot C in which we write code for robots that we build. The robots we build are made from VEX kits. These kits then connect up to the Robot C program which loads the code onto the robot and runs it.

            Even in a class which may not seem like it would use a computer, we still use one. Math class is an example. In each calculator is a small computer. Each time we press a button for the calculator to solve an equation, the small computer runs the calculation and displays the result on the small screen. Other than the calculator, my teacher also uses her actual computer and projector to display notes on a board for us to write down.

            In this class that I am typing this for, we use the computer a lot. First off, it is an online class so everything is going to be online. Since it is online, you need a computer to do most anything. Each assignment is typed on a computer where it then can be uploaded to the internet. Each assignment given to us we have to use a computer to access it online. Even the book that I have is digital so I use my computer or my phone to read it.

            Outside of school you still use computers. The cars that you may drive have computers built into them to do a variety of things like displaying how fast you are going or how much gas you have or any other gauges you have on your car. Your phone also have a small computer in it and most people use their phone a lot so you use computers a lot in most everything.