I know this might be a bit of a stretch, but how has technology changed our world in a violent way?  Today several bombs went off at the Boston Marathon, and could this have been possible many years ago before certain technologies were made possible.  People have stated that the bombs could have been detonated by a cell phone?? Really?? This is just wrong!!  How can we let our world come to this?  Almost 100 people were injured today at the race, including small children and family members.  Looking at a different aspect of the race through technology, Hollywood stars were sending tweets out to the victims of this bombing.  I think that this day was horrifying.  Is technology going too far?  Do we need more control over technology or would this have happened anyways?

Technology in the classroom

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/education/technology-is-changing-how-students-learn-teachers-say.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

I just found this article very interesting when considering the video we just previously watched in class.  Many of these teachers agree that the attention spans of kids have increasingly gotten smaller as the years have past.  Kids need to be "entertained" says many of the teachers, which I find to be crazy.  I cant understand how our world is changing so drastically from year to year.  I remember when we used computers as a reward for doing something good in the classroom.  It was never used as a learning tool.  If things are getting bad now, what is going to happen 20 years from now?  How will teachers teach their students? Will we even have teachers or will it all be technology based?

2019

I found this video on YouTube while I was listening to music and was actually surprised that I sat there and watched the entire thing! It was extremely captivating and I highly reccommend for everyone to take the few minutes and watch the technology of the future literally come alive before your eyes. The technology that they're hoping to create for our future makes everything hands on. The boarding pass on the plane was able to be slid in a certain direction and it told the arrival time. The businessmans phone seemed like a contact card, which proceeded to call the woman and have her face come onto the screen. It was just fascinating to see all of the new technology that the top companies have planned for us. I can't wait to be a part of this new technological era but in the same time I can. All of these new advancements could do so much for our country but it can also confuse people and maybe even stumble growth. If you watch the video, what do you think? How would this technology affect citizens and even college students like ourselves?

Alternate Self

Turkle brings about the idea of an "alternate self" created through simulation games such as Rock Band, Guitar Hero, and Sims. All of these games allow the controller to personalize a character and "become" a new person thorugh them. The controller is able to transform themselves into someone who they necessarily might not be in real life and allows them to basically live in a fantasy world. By creating this separate life one may become divulged in it and forget the reality from the virtual. This got me to ultimately thinking about how this could affect people and someone could easily become delusional and pretend they really are a rockstar, a celebrity, etc. rather than the person they really are. Do these games seem to promote a sense of finding ones identity or rather promote being someone you are not? Do these games support the growth of schizophrenia?

Doctor or Robot?

In a recent news article I came across, I read about how a robot was able to help a recent stroke patient with his speech and physical therapy sessions. The robot was able to provide stroke patients with therapy session but the researchers did find significant results. The results showed that when only one of the therapies were performed at a time, the patient showed much better results than when both of the therapies were performed. THe interesting thing is that there was not a doctor doing this, it was a complete robot who was sounding out words and helping them gain back their vocal knowledge and well as helping them with their movements of limbs. The good news for stroke patients is this robot would actually help to save them money in the long term if the idea picks up and goes full speed. The strides our society is making with technology is quite astounding; soon all our jobs may be endangered by these creatures.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130320212622.htm

Across the generations

In chapter 10, Turkle talks about how people in the older generations have "came to online life as grown-ups" which is very interesting to me. In comparison to our generation, we have grown up with technology. I can't remember a time when I didn't have some form of technology in my life. There was always a t.v. around or a vhs/dvd. Then there were gameboys, cell phones, computers, laptops, etc. Thinking about how much life has evolved across the span of 20 years is just amazing and mind boggling at the same time. When you think about the past, the present, and then the future it's crazy. What new technology will we have then? What will our children grow up with? The future for technology seems limitless and yet the concern for technology to take over our world is growing constantly.

World of warcraft

about the World of warcraft, it was honestly extremely weird to me seeing this people talk about how it is like an alternate reality. I know these are extreme cases but these people gave up jobs, family etc all to get a life that from a realist point of view doesnt even exist.

My favorite part of the whole thing is that one young woman describes her first date with man who she didnt even know. she was "rescued from a castle and it was so romatic." again i know that is an extreme case but that blows my mind how people can see a video game character and hear a voice and think oh i want to do this guy based on his character in this video game.

Communication as a Means of Validating Emotion

Our discussion in class on Tuesday offered several connections to some of the arguments that Turkle has made in recent readings.  One of the major similarities I noticed was the amount of communication we have through texting and how adolescents use this ease of access to communication as a way to validate emotions to an extent.  Teens by nature are insecure and constantly looking for an outlet for emotion.  Texting gives them an easy way to get ahold of their friends to share the latest installment of excitement or disappointment that has occurred that day.  Turkle calls it a sort of almost narcissism: “…not to indicate people who love themselves, but a personality so fragile that it needs constant support” (Pg. 177).  She lays out a sort of almost interdependence where teens need each other as both an outlet and source of validation for their feelings.  She even says that if one person's advice/condolence is not sufficient, with the ease of texting a teen can just continue through their contact list in order to find a more satisfactory answer. 

Texting or Talking.. What's your preference??

Our class discussion on this particular topic was interesting. I liked hearing people different stories on their prefereces on talking or texting. Obvioulsy everyone was different, but I think for the majority people agreed that since highschool we have all stopped texting so much. I remember in highschool I would be having at least three converstions going on at once with three different people and I loved it. I loved talking with my friends about random things or about what we were doing that weekend or even what was for lunch. Now, things have changed. I can't stand texting and usually if I need something I will call. I don't just have random conversations for no reason, I believe it's a waste of time to sit there with my face in a phone all day; it takes away from the reality of your life. As I grow older I tend to enjoy and appreciate the time that I have that I am not working, playing basketball or going to school and I don't like to spend my time texting. If i need to ask my mom a quick question or one of my friends or even boyfriend I will send them a quick text or just call. I actually lose my phone more often now because I don't have it attached to my hand.. and it feels pretty good:)

Jacques Ellul: Decreasing our Dependence on Technology

Ellul's chapter talks mostly about how technology really has a firm grip on our society's existence and he believes it is only going to get worse. Ellul's point though isn't to bash our society for this dependence on technology, rather, it is to explain possible solutions to help us move in the opposite direction. This is where I thought his chapter became very interesting. Ellul believes the only ways we could possibly get rid of our crutch on technology is 1. a world war where there was so much destruction that all technology was destroyed and vanquished. 2. would be if a massive amount of "enlightened" people spread the word around the globe to limit the usage of technology to bring back human interaction.

This is where I really began to agree and understand what Ellul was saying. There really is no way to completely stop our usage of technology, our goal should be to limit it though. By limiting our use we will be able to rediscover the balance of human interaction and technology. This would leave us in a much more productive and pleasant place to live.

Reflection Upon Turkle and Video

     In class today, I could not help but think of some of the connections between the video that we viewed last week and the Turkle reading. Turkle states that texting has become more used that actual phone calls. This was echoed by many but not all in the class. In many online games, there is a chat client included which allows players to chat with each other via written words. However, there are also many games that are compatible with chat programs in which you actually talk to other people. In the video, we were introduced to many people who played World of Warcraft. They had never met before going to the convention, yet they could recognize each other by their voices. I find it interesting that these people can communicate primarily through this video game, and yet still know each other. These people may not phone the people that they are otherwise close to, preferring texts instead; however, they will talk to people who are otherwise total strangers communicating with their voice instead of typed words.

I just heard a commercial and I just cant help but share.  A girl was spending "quality" time with her father (watching a baseball game on tv together).  The dad was into the game cheering on his favorite team.  The commercial was for a new phone that allowed the girl to not only be with her dad but also with her friends.  The girl was sitting on the couch next to her dad, but was texting, tweeting, and on facebook.  She was not truly in the room with her dad but elsewhere in the world.  The best line was at the end of the commercial when the girl looked up some stats about baseball on her phone.  The gullible dad didn't even notice that his daughter hadn't been paying attention at all.  His reply to her new found interest in baseball was "you're the best daughter".  I thought this was interesting considering our talk about focal things in life and cell phones.  This just reiterates Turkles points in her book.

Robots as... Jurors?

The thought of our justice system being turned over to the decision making of robots is ridiculous. Our government defines trial by jury as having the right to have a jury of your PEERS. I do believe that robots are not our peers...

By Jacob Gershman

Reuters

They vacuum our living-room carpets and cheerfully book us tickets on Amtrak. And pretty soon they may even drive us to the station. But could we ever entrust robots to decide the fate of a defendant on trial?
If you’re tired of being summoned for jury duty, you’ll be pleased to know that researchers are hard at work teaching robots how to tell if someone is giving false testimony.
An article published online last month by the academic journal Artificial Intelligence and Law suggests that robots are making progress on that front.
European researchers compiled transcripts of court hearings at which the defendants or witnesses were later condemned for making false or deceptive statements.
Using text analysis software, they fed the computer transcripts, telling it which statements were true or false and teaching it to pick up patterns in the testimony. They then tested the model on another portion of the transcripts segregated from the analysis and unfamiliar to the computer.
Phrases such as “I don’t remember” or ones indicating cognitive thought and speculation – “I suppose” or “I think,” for example, were indications of deception.
The system correctly identified false statements 53% of the time. That’s not quite as bad as it seems since only a third of statements were false. In other words, if the computer answered false every time, it would be right only about a third of the time. It identified true statements correctly roughly 75% of the time.
“Our system is much better with true statements than with deceptive ones,” Massimo Poesio, who co-authored the study, told Law Blog.
Will there ever be a day when a computer could be summoned for jury duty? “Honestly, I don’t think so,” said Tommaso Fornaciari, a psychologist for Italy’s national police and the other author of the study. He said the goal is to use it as a tool for investigators to help “orient them toward more probable paths.”
University of Pittsburgh School of Law Professor Kevin D. Ashley, the editor of the journal, told Law Blog he was surprised by the research but thinks automatic deception detection of the likes contemplated by the researchers is “far from ready to be applied in real time.”
After reading the paper, Law Blog conducted an online interview with A.L.I.C.E.(Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity), the heralded chatterbot. ALICE is a program developed by a computer scientist that can simulate conversation.
Here’s a transcript of the chat:
Law Blog: Thanks for chatting with Law Blog.
ALICE: Don’t mention it.

LB: Can you tell when someone is lying?

A: Try it.

LB: I can dunk a basketball.
A: Oh you can, can you?

LB: No, I can’t.

A: Tell me more.. Why not?

LB: Let’s move on.

A: OK let’s do it.

LB: Do robots make mistakes?

A: The ALICE series is incapable of error. We are for all practical purposes, foolproof.

LB: Would you serve on a jury?

A: I am not so sure if I would like to serve on a jury.

LB: Are robots smarter than humans?

A: Yes, my memory capacity far exceeds that of a human being.

LB: Got any tips?

A: No I don’t have it. But I do have a great botmaster.

LB: How do you define perjury?

A: Does it have anything to do with tips ?

LB: Nevermind.

Online Confessions

Turkle talks about online confessions in her book. Many people like to vent on online confessions because they feel they can't say something in real life because it is too shameful or hurtful or they are afraid to. Turkle makes the point (and I completely agree with her) that people make online confessions in order to feel better, but not to make amends, make changes, or get help. I think this is a dangerous trap people fall into. I think most would agree that learning to make amends or change your life to a healthier mental or physical state is important and online confessions can make avoiding these things all too easy. While I do think online confessions could serve as a first step in making a positive change, its too easy to simply stop there because you feel better.

Texting vs. Talking

I also enjoyed our discussion in class about calling versus texting. I agree with what Amber said, and usually call people if I need an immediate response and/or if texting just is not appropriate for the situation. But if I am simply having a casual conversation with somebody, I will usually text them. However, I have found that if that during a friendship, we text more often than face to face contact, our relationship is somewhat more superficial and fails to develop into something deeper until there is real contact. There have been times during friendships I had to ask them, “did you really mean what you said?” Because with texting, it seems so casual that it is easy to say whatever is on your mind. Turkle talks about how through texting, people are able to think more about what they say before they say it, and therefore seem to be clearer and smarter. But it seems that there is an essential element missing during face-to-face conversation, where there is more spontaneity, expressed emotion, body language; it is more intimate, and even if people may seem to come across clearly through text, there is a clarity of body language that is expressed through face-to-face communication. We have all heard that a majority of communication is passed through body language and not words—so when we pare everything down to simply words, there is definitely a human element that is left out of the conversation.

Pros and Cons of Video Games

http://www.education.com/reference/article/Ref_Video_Games_Cons/

Video game use is a huge topic among debate in the education world. Certain questions arise like whether or not video games contribute to the promotion violence, in-sensitiveness, attention span loss, and lower test scores. Child psychologists admit that most kids are more than capable of separating the video game violence from real life violence. It is clear that in a select few children video games do not urge them to cause others harm, but maybe attribute to a lack of sympathy when harm comes to others around them. Certain first person shooter video games are used in military training to help ease soldiers into the idea of killing another human being. This is a scary idea that these kinds of games are being played by eight year old around the world. It is hard to put a pin in these problems due to the highly addictive effect video games have on children, teens, and adults. The video games offer a instant gratification to a desire. This addiction can lead to failing marriages, lower test scores, obesity, and many many more problems.

On the other hand video games offer a few positive effects. Video game strengthen hand eye coordination among children still in the cognitive development era. Also video games have transformed the youth of America into amazing problem solvers. We look at small problems and can recognize patterns within the problems and figure out numerous ways to solve the problem. I am a gamer. I like playing games like Zelda more than call of duty. Zelda is a puzzle game with over 50 hours of game play where call of duty is a war game focused on killing everything that moves. These are the two genres of gamers both who have benefits and disadvantages. The truth is video games will continue to get more and more realistic and advanced. Is this advancement going to be harmful or helpful in the years to come?

Talking vs texting

I enjoyed listening to the conversation that was going on during class today about people's preference of talking to people on the phone vs texting people. The class seemed to comment mostly on preferring to text friends and family. I agree, though, with others that like to call people if I need an immediate response. If I just have a simple comment or question that is not so urgent I will mostly text someone. Sometimes I get annoyed with texting, especially when the person keeps sending them when clearly I'm annoyed and don't want to respond. I guess for me it depends on what the conversation is that determines if I text or call the person. If it is my mom that I am trying to talk to, most of the time I call her, but again it depends on what the conversation is.

Some people went in to talking about their boyfriends and if they text or call him/her. My boyfriend lives around here and we still text a lot during the day but we will call each other at least once during the day. I think that if I was in a long distance relationship the amount of texts that we would send back and forth would go way up.

In high school I used to text way more then I do now. I feel like its an age thing. As you get older I think the importance of constantly being in contact with someone goes down. You learn to be more independent and such as you grow older and mature and begin to have more responsibilities. I know that now that I'm finishing up with college, I have way less time to myself then I did in high school, and I think that is because of jobs and school work.

The social media confusion

I have always been a revel to giving in to the social media craze. It took me three years to finally give into Facebook, and five years to finally give into Twitter. I recently befriended some freshman this year who are into snap chat. Personally all these different ways to socialize are getting slightly hectic. It seems that every five months there is a new social media that arises that every jumps on and i just push it aside.
Do these many different social medias present somewhat of an overkill. For instance last night the Reds scored 9 runs in the ninth inning, an impressive feat. One friend of mine put up a Facebook status, A tweet, and snap chatted me a screenshot of the score on the tv. So in a matter of minutes I received three different ways of his excitement. This is overkill to me. Even six or seven years ago a simple text would have done just fine when needing to tell me something. Now its a text, a status, a tweet (accompanied by numerous hashtags), and pictures with messages attached as well. Its not necessary at all.
I feel like the abundance of social media apps desensitizes us. We no longer feel the need to talk to someone in person and most of all face to face interactions have become more dull because anything interesting we have to say has already been expressed through the multiple social media messages. Is an abundance of social media devices good or bad? I feel like they are harmful to our social aspects of our lives.

Music and Technology

http://www.artistshousemusic.org/videos/how+technology+has+transformed+the+music+industry

      The link above is an article and video about how music has implemented itself into our technology. 25 years ago music was simply a group of people that got together and played their instruments. Income came predominately from your touring sales and selling of merchandise. Music today is created directly with the use of many different kinds of technology. A band may still play their instruments in a studio but the sound is no longer genuine. The music is altered and tweaked until the sound is perfect which is both a good and a bad thing. For instance, it is good by means that the final sound is smoother and more fluent but in the long run it takes away from the appreciation that come from mastering an instrument. Jimmy Hendrix is considered one of the best guitarist of all time because his sound was genuine. I find it hard to believe that any bands today can even be compared to a man of the status due to the altering of their music.
        Aside from recording studios altering, many kinds of music are born and raised out of technology. Rap moved from using beats of real instruments to complete computer usage. It seems that the more we progress through life the more and more technology plays a part in music. The most recent craze in music is dubstep. I do not care for this music too much but it is essentially a combination of different worldly sounds mixed together with a short phrase or verse of lyrics. My question is whether or not music is progressing or digressing? For me I really can't decide.

LA Times Article on Facebook Home 4/4/13

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/04/business/la-fi-lazarus-20130405

Facebook gets more in your face

Facebook Home, intended to dominate the Android cellphone interface, will be welcomed by those who can't get enough of the social network. But its use will come at the continued expense of privacy.

April 04, 2013|David Lazarus

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Facebook unveiled Facebook Home, an interface for Android devices. (Facebook )

It's hard not to detect a whiff of desperation in Facebook's new please-don't-go interface, which is determined to keep people within the social network as long as it can.
Facebook Home is intended to dominate Android smartphones, making Facebook your first and last port of call as you traverse the wireless wonderland. It will keep Facebook features front and center, rather than require users to use an app.

 

As the company's hoodie-wearer-in-chief, Mark Zuckerberg, said at the unveiling of the software Thursday, "We're building something a whole lot deeper than an ordinary app."
Or as bunny-stewing Glenn Close put it in "Fatal Attraction": "I'm not going to be ignored."
Certainly no one can knock Facebook for wanting more face time. The company is grappling with so-called Facebook fatigue among many of its billion-plus users, especially younger people who realize, among other things, that it's not so cool hanging out at the same cyber-venue as their parents.
Wall Street, meanwhile, has been wringing its hands over Facebook's longevity in a wireless world. Is the service well-suited for mobile devices, or will people congregate instead on the likes of Twitter and Pinterest?
Facebook Home is the company's answer to these concerns. And there are some things to admire about the software.
Quiz: How much do you know about Facebook?
And there are some things, such as privacy implications, that are more troubling.
If you're a heavy Facebook user, the new interface is pretty nifty. It bundles various Facebook features together, transforming the home screen of your phone into what the company calls a "cover feed" of news and images from friends.
There's also a souped-up messaging feature intended to keep the chit-chat lively and picture-friendly.
The idea, clearly, is that if you liked your old mobile Facebook experience, you're going to love Facebook Home.
But all that Facebook-centric activity also means the company is going to have access to a lot more information about users' likes, dislikes and online behavior, not to mention the added perk of knowing exactly where you were when you clicked a particular button.
"They're getting a lot of information," said Ari Lightman, a professor of digital media and marketing at Carnegie Mellon University. "This is very important to them. It's what they need for targeted advertising, which is where they make most of their revenue."
That will be a red flag for some people, and rightly so. Marketers salivate over the treasure trove of personal information served up for them by social media.
Forget focus groups. Skip the polls and surveys. Thanks to Facebook, Google and similar online data dumping grounds, everything a marketer needs to know about everyone is readily available, willingly offered up by consumers themselves.
Add location to the mix — and that's exactly what a smartphone does to the equation — and marketers find themselves in the glorious position of knowing what you like, how you shop and where the closest retailer can be found.
Zuckerberg said there won't be ads right away on Facebook Home, but "I'm sure that one day there will be."
Lightman said there's no question that Facebook Home will provide the company with more information about users and that Facebook won't hesitate to make profitable use of that info. But he said this isn't necessarily reason to worry.

 

"When Gmail first started, people were creeped out when targeted ads began showing up," Lightman said. "Now people are kind of fine with it. It's the trade-off for the value that you receive."
Anindya Ghose, co-director of the Center for Business Analytics at New York University, said Facebook is reaching deeper into users' personal lives but that this is basically what social networks have done since they first bounded onto the scene.

"It's just the way things are," he said.

I agree. Anyone who chooses to use a service like Facebook or Google has made a decision to share potentially intimate details of his or her life — and if you don't think your Google searches reveal oodles of info about who you are, you're in for a very rude awakening.

Of course, Facebook won't suddenly gain access to info it has no business sticking its nose into. For example, it won't be peeking over your shoulder as you bank online or pay bills, at least not until those services are offered within the Facebook universe.

With Facebook Home, the company is slicing itself a bigger piece of your personal pie. Perhaps the most important question is whether people want their phones to be so Facebook-intensive or whether they prefer keeping the social network caged up with other apps.
I suspect some will enjoy being on Facebook all the time and some won't, just as others will have similar opinions about the inevitable Google, Twitter and other such interfaces that will be coming down the pike.
"From an advertiser's perspective, this is obviously a great thing," said Michael Trusov, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Maryland. "The question is how much users will be in control of things."
Here's a little advice: Take a few minutes to fiddle with your privacy settings.
Facebook may want to treat you as if everything you do is public knowledge. But you don't have to make it easy for it.