Assigment 13

Technology is changing and advancing at a rapid pace. Ray Kurzweil thinks that this is a good thing. It can cure disease, prevent aging, and invent new things that can advance the way we live. Kurzweil has a good point about how technology can be a huge benefit, however it can be just as dangerous. Kurzweil is anticipating where this technological age will lead humans. He has theories of how computers will not be machines, they will be embedded in our brains. He believes that we will have millions of nanobots that can communicate with us. On the other hand, Bill Joy thinks that advances in technology will be a potential danger. He believes that if we continue with this technology then humans will be out of jobs and the machines will take over.
We have been advancing in technology rapidly in the last fifty years. Most inventions and advances have been good, however they also are killing the environment we live in. Hopefully technology will advance safely and it does not suffocate humans as well as our habitat. Technology is an amazing thing and it is great to be able to live in an age where new things are being invented everyday to boost our lifestyles. It could very well be dangerous or can help.

A.I. Writing Assignment 13

The Turing test is a good test for determining if someone, either person or computer, is intelligent. It is difficult to have a computer program answer a certain question that is asked of it. If the program can reason and put together a reasonable answer, then it has some type of intelligence. But the same way it was a human who created the machines intelligence. In the chatbots online, they are programed to reason so that it can take certain words and figure out how to respond back in an intelligent way. Being an online program, the program can therefore fool the user easily. This issue of whether computers can be intelligent or not is more about the way it is programed because the machine cannot be capable of thinking on its own.

Week 12

This is a difficult situation for the editor because the Danish paper should be able to print whatever they want in their country. It is good that the editor did not give into the pressure from the protestors. The editor had to have known that by publishing this cartoon that there would be an outroar in the muslim community. If anything the editor should just except the consequences and take responsibility of their actions. The editor should be able to publish what they want, however there are some topics such as The Holocaust, child abuse, and rape that are too sensitive to be satirized. These topics happen all the time and can damage someone emotionally if it is made fun of publically.

Net Neutrality

"Net Neutrality ensures that all users can access the content or run the applications and devices of their choice. With Net Neutrality, the network's only job is to move data — not choose which data to privilege with higher quality service. Net Neutrality prevents the companies that control the wires from discriminating against content based on its source or ownership" (savetheinternet.com). The fundamental issue underlying the net neutrality debate is about Internet freedom. "Network Neutrality" on the save the internet website, savetheinternet.com, dicusses why users want to keep the internet from being free of use. Big companies such as AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner are choosing what sites are fast, slow or completly unable to even load. These companies are blocking their competators unfairly. The Free Press is in favor of net neutrality. They try to expose big companies such as "AT&T and Verizon of dirty ways they manipulate the public opinion by co-opting not-for-profit groups and aligning their leaders against Net Neutrality" (savetheinternt.com). MoveOn.org is also in favor of net neutrality. The organization is about how "internet freedom is under attack as Congress pushes a law that would give companies like AT&T the power to control what you do online" (MoveOn.org).
"Net neutralism is in that sense a way to repress, or to postpone that which is unmanageable to the future. It is a safe assurance that the relative statelessness, facelessness and independence from commercial actors that the base structure of the Internet has been able to gain from will remain" (handsoff.com). An organization that is opposed to net neutrality is AT&T. They believe that it is alright to have control of the internet as well as the America Channel company. They both "support for an unregulated approach to Internet access in which consumers, not government, choose the method that is best for them; and opposition to government attempts at regulating and/or taxing Net content or commerce" (handsoff.com).
I am all for Net Neutrality because it is not right for large corporations to have control over the internet. It turns users away from certain companies because of the difficulty to use the website. AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and the other major companies have no right to have this control over the internet it is not right because it stops internet freedom.

Mashups

This mashup called Msg-Time.com in includes PayPal, Flickr, Facebook, eBay. I am not very familar with paypal, but I use facebook, ebay, and flickr. You can Create, share, upload, and store audio messages online for friends and creative uses. The next mashup is called emokoo it uses YouTube, Flickr, Blogger. It is a community site that allows a user to share media from other social web 2.0 communities. Another mashup that looks interesting is called MoochSpot and it is a website where if you forgot how much you owe from that last group dinner, then you use MoochSpot. It helps you and your friends easily track expenses. Built on the Facebook API. Facebook. I basically like any mashup that includes facebook, I will look at.

Week 10

I personally never thought that downloading music for free of the Internet was a bad thing. I has just recently come to my attention that it is stealing music. Downloading music from a major label artist is not as bad compared to downloading from a struggling artist who depends on there record sales to help them survive the music industry. Copying a CD from a friend should be in the category of "good sharing" because your friend has already purchased the CD anyways, and maybe listening to their music may prompt you to go out and buy another one of their albums. It is good to share music with friends because that can also open your ears to different kinds of music and then you will want to buy the CD. I do that all the time and I am sure others do it as well. The only thing that is "bad sharing" is downloading music from independent, struggling bands, new musicians like that should not be free to download unless they are established as a major label artist.

The fact that we have no privacy what so ever with anything is a scary feeling. Most people, including myself, trust the internet and what information we give out over the internet. It is a shame that the government feels justified to collect our information. It would be one thing to monitor network traffic to find a felon and arrest them, but that is not the case and is not happening. This is an awful thing and it is good that the public is aware about this issue, however I only use my email through the school, so I feel some what protected. But this makes me feel extremely unconfortable and unsafe to open a new account with any other email program for this very reason. I would not know how to go about suggesting a type of safeguard to put in to protect people's privacy. Maybe for users to just give a name or give very little information about themselves when signing up for an email account.