Assignment 13

Justin Olsen

IST 1100

Module 13

Definitely an interesting class. I have learned that I do not have the motivation to take an online course. The reading itself is quite interesting. I found The World is Flat to an interesting book.  The stories and information that Friedman talks about are quite interesting and and give valuable insight on the world of business and technology. This book is outdated though. Even an updated text like this will be missing several things that are even more important that what Friedman discusses. I would suggest searching the internet for more recent articles. Right now I would suggest a site called waitbutwhy.com. This site has a very interesting article about artificial intelligence that is informative and entertaining. As I said, look for recent articles. The most informative part of this course is probably the parts about how much globalization has and will affect us in the near future. I will have to take a good hard look at the future to figure out what I can do to profit from this quickly changing world. Another thing that I realized during this course is that we are living in a world of specialization. This is more recently evidenced by the large number of 3-D printers that are hitting the consumer market right now. Another example is the site Etsy. We no longer need corporations to make our baubles and knick-knacks, we can make them ourselves. This may mean that everyone may want to individually make one thing and have other sources of income. Whatever happens in the future will definitely require all of our creative power to push forward and make the world a more interesting place and thanks to the internet that future is now. Side note: I would suggest being a bit more descriptive in the description of this course. I had no idea what I was going in for when I started this.

Assignment 12

Justin Olsen

IST 1100

Module 12

I have noticed this type of article springing up recently. Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Steven Hawking have all recently expressed their fears of future technology. The problem here is that none of these people could be considered experts in genetic engineering, nanotechnology, or A.I. (robotics). Bill Gates and Bill Joy may be excellent businessmen but that does not mean that they have the expertise to make such Luddite statements. Joy and the others fear what they do not understand. They fear these new technologies because they do not understand people. Joy assumes that just because the information is out there that people will use it to do harm to everyone. This is a very foolish. The internet is filled with information on how to do many illicit things. Such as: rigging a car to explode, making TNT, hiding bodies, and several other terrible things. So why is it that the world is safer than it has ever been? It seems to me that Joy and his kind spend more time in fictional worlds filled with plot holes than in the real world. I think that stopping progress for the sake of ancient ideas made by corrupt people is not only foolish but impossible. Genetic engineering, nanotechnology and robotics may change what it means to be human but that is ultimately a good thing. Someday in the possibly near future we will look back and wonder how it must have been living in a world that was constantly dying. Artificial intelligence is by far the most exciting part of G.N.R. Joy believes that a computer with the intelligence of a human would act like anything biological. This is absolutely ridiculous. Our behaviors and thoughts are made primarily by evolution. While a true A.I would be made entirely by us. Self preservation is a biological trait, one that a machine would not have. This is the end game though. When we first create a human level machine we will retire as a species into a comfortable utopia filled with things beyond our wildest dreams.

side note: While reading about this online I found a really interesting post about this. I'll leave it here. http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html

Assignment 11

Justin Olsen

IST 1100

Module 11

I actually have recently watched a movie and read a book about computers that I thought was interesting. The movies that I watched is the Matrix trilogy. As many people have said before, the first Matrix is a ton better than the other The ways that they use computers is a little ridiculous. Reading code in a top down fashion would not give much information. Especially to the extent that they show in the movie. The way that they jack into the matrix is actually a fairly popular idea of how we will use computers in the future. After all, what computer is better than the human mind? Being instantly able to learn anything is a neat idea but, I am not sure that the brain could handle a large influx of information like that. The whole humans as batteries thing is silly from a literal standpoint but some people theorize that the robots that control the matrix are keeping humans alive out of empathy for the species. Agent Smith may add to this theory because Neo became The One by fighting him time after time. Agent Smith did this so Neo could be computer Jesus and save the city of Zion. This theory is also proven by how the matrix was originally a paradise but humans could not accept it. The book that I read is called Snow Crash. It uses the internet in a similar fashion to The Matrix with a brain implant to enter the world. In Snow Crash, the main character is an early adopter of this type of internet and behaves much in the same way that early adopters of our internet behave. The noteworthy part about that book is a drug known as snow crash. This is a virtual drug that crashes the mind of the user. The way things were described in this book is actually sort of similar to the game Second Life.