Artifical Minds

--> In this short story Artificial Minds it discusses the possibility of one day programming computers or robots to have artificial minds such as humans. Although we are not close yet, the possibility of computers having artificial minds can become true one day. Human are known for their freedom, creativity, having a soul, moral significance, and being responsible. Computers today can do things us humans can do and are able to do tasks even better such as the computer Deep Blue who defeated Kasparov in a game of Chess. For the people who lose feeling due to brain damage, pain is a very important part of the human body because signals send from the body to the brain that there is stress on the body. Say if we could replace the missing signals in the brain into data that could alert the body there is pain, that part of the brain would be functioning again but artificial now. Although it is one part of the brain it is still a part, and if we could figure out a way to “artificialize” every component of the brain neuron for neuron, thus the artificial brain will be complete. Just because a computer is programmed to do what it is told, doesn’t mean it cannot be creative like a human. In the example of Deep Blue winning in a game of chess against a human, Deep Blue did what it was programmed to do which was to play chess, but in a game of chess in order to win it takes creativity proving that both computers can do what they are programmed but yet still be creativity. Although we are miles away from creating the first artificial brain, reading this short story has shown that one-day, the possibility of making an artificial brain can become true.    

A.I.

  --> In this clip of the movie A.I. or Artificial Intelligence, it starts off explaining where our future world has came to, due to the world’s Green House gases, our ice caps have melted causing a rising in our sea level drowning many of our world’s major cities and wiping out most of our resources and starving many humans. In this new developed world now, over population has become a problem because it was way to big for the scarce amount of supply there is left for the world. The government was forced to regulate and put a license on pregnancy to reduce the human population. Thus, human-like robots called Meccas were created because they were never hungry or did not consume any resources humans needed. A group of humans who are in charge of creating Meccas start discussing about how all these robots look, talk, and carry themselves like real humans, but the models of robots they have made can do everything except love and dream. They now want to make a robot child that can love and dream, and is driven mainly to love their human owner like their own parent. They want to create the perfect child who is always loving, never changing or gets ill, and with all human couples out there who can not get a license this would be the perfect solution. They then to a problem that even if they do create the perfect Mecca child, what responsibilities do these humans have toward the child Mecca and if they will love the child as much as the child loves them. 

 

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus

In the short story “ Gin, Television, and Social Surplus,” written by Clay Shirky is about how the amount of television is affecting our society from becoming productive. People today don’t realize how much free time they have and how productive we can be with our free time. Shirky explains that if even the smallest amount of people realized the amount of time they spend watching television and decided to cut back on it we would be so much productive and would make more time for cognitive surplus. The average human in the U.S spends 200 billion hours of a year of human thought watching television and 100 billion hours on ads when we could be using the billions of hours thinking about how to make our country better. The only problem is that people don’t think very much of how much they are thinking of television and the show they are watching when they are watching television and that we need to help people realize this. Clay says biggest concern is how to slowly make people realize how much they are using their cognitive surplus on useless unproductive things, when they can use it and deploy it into other productive things to make it useful.

            Clay Shirky was very optimistic in this short story but only talks about how television affects us as humans where else, Sherry Turkle talks about how multiple technology devices affect a person and our society.

           

Can You Hear Me Now?

-->In the short story, “Can You Hear Me Now,” written by Sherry Turkle is about the struggle between humans and how technology is determining the lives of where humans are headed. She says there are 5 troubles that are affecting humans making our lives more virtual than realistic. The first trouble is that “the virtual” is becoming reality and that with all these games where we can live a second realistic virtual life, where it is so much easier on people because there is no failure or disappointment because we can simply create it. The second failure is that our society is growing up in a world where there is constantly responding to technology such as e-mail, instant messaging, texting, and much more, but with all this kids growing up never learn the value of taking the time for the things that matter in real life. The third trouble is also about kids growing up, learning to be independent and to navigate your way around life used to be a rite of passage but with technology always at your side kids can look up how to get around or call their parents when they don’t know how to deal with something. Our generation has became dependent on technology and would not how to deal with a problem or navigate their way around if we don’t have any sort of technology with us. The fourth trouble is always living our life in the public, such as logging into Facebook or Myspace when in reality it could hurt us because no matter what, when we are on any of the social websites someone is always watching us. The fifth trouble is Split attention, we’ve been raised in a society where we have the opportunity to simply choose whom to give our attention to with the accessibility of talking to someone online then to the person in real life.

            Sherry Turkle was a little less optimistic in her short story about how technology is affecting us but I feel she gets the point across more than Clay Shirky because she states multiple valid reasons behind her reasons and does a very good job on supporting them.

The Veldt Summary

--> In this short story called, "The Veldt" written by Ray Bradbury it is about a couple named Lydia and George Hadley with a daughter and son named Wendy and Peter living in one of the most highly technologic house out in the market. Since they bought this house they haven’t had to worry about doing any household chores relying on their super fancy house. They no longer have to tie their shoes, make breakfast, clean the floor, or move around the house to get whatever they want. Having this sort of automated house has let them have more free time, but to a certain extent, can having to much free time be a bad thing? With the house comes a virtual reality room that feeds off of the minds of whoever is in the room, and the mother Lydia is somewhat worried for her children because the virtual room no longer has a sweet and innocent feeling in it because her kids are always in virtual Africa watching lions eat their pray. George and Lydia are concerned about the violent thoughts and decide they take a “vacation” from their high-tech house by turning it off and locking the virtual room, which the children have grown very attached to. The children disobey their parent’s decision and decide to break into the room to go back to virtual Africa and seeing this their parents begin to question how they have raised their kids and if they are spoiled. George decides to call a psychologist to see what the meaning is of their children imagining violent Africa, and the doctor comes to a conclusion that the house has became the children’s parents and they were just the people that take things away from them channeling the kids thoughts into violent ones. Lydia and George decide to move out of the house and shut off the house as a whole but before they go the kids beg their parents one more time to turn the virtual room on one more time and to see it. The parents agree and they are summoned to the room one last time where their kids in virtual Africa lock them in the room with lions surrounding them. When the psychologist returns to the house to help them move out, he returns to the virtual room where the kids are, to eat lunch with the Hadley’s in the blade grass of Africa the parents are no where to be seen. He sees the lions eating and gnawing on something from a distance but doesn’t think twice of what it was. He asks the kids where their parents were and they told him that they would be back soon.

            One of my favorite quotes from this short story was, “ You’ve let this room and this house replace you and your wife in your children’s affections. This room is their mother and father, far more important in their lives than real parents.” I liked this quote because it is true, in today’s society our generation values our technology way too much and it can eventually become to a point where we are so attached to our texting or instant messaging that our parents will slowly fade away from us because we push them away. Another quote I like is, “ You turn the nursery on for a minute, Lydia, just a minute, I mind you.” Not only is it our generation’s fault for being obsessed with our technology but some parents can be way too lenient and go against their words and promoting the use of it. If you are a parent and you are concerned about your children being spoiled, stick with your word and don’t allow them to control you because every time you let them slip by one last time, all those last times can add up and become a serious problem.