Module 13

                At the beginning of this semester I was not looking forward to this class at all. I thought that it would just be a huge waste of my time and I wouldn’t learn anything. I thought it would just be read something from a book and write about what you read. At first I thought that Friedman’s book, The World is Flat would be a super boring book. However I was very wrong and I learned a lot from this book. I think it opened up my mind to a lot of things.

 I read the title “The World is Flat” and thought well that’s stupid because it’s obviously not flat. Now after reading the book I’ve realized how right he is. I never would have thought of it that way unless I read this book. When I was younger I always thought that America was the best and had the best everything and nowhere else even compared. Growing up and going through this class helped me realize that there are other foreign countries that are just as advanced if not more advanced in somethings as we are.

A couple weeks ago I got to witness this first hand. I’m an IT developer at a software company called Reading Horizons and one of our employee’s emails was hacked by someone in Russia. After fixing the problem and making sure other people at the company wouldn’t get hacked I looked into people hacking from Russia. Russia actually has a crazy amount of hackers over there. There’s actually people that lived in America that were extremely good at hacking and Russia paid them to move to Russia and work for them. If I would have heard that when I was younger I wouldn’t have believed it.

This class also opened my mind to the artificial intelligence debate that has been going on. Before this class I wasn’t really sure where I stood in the argument. Now I know where I stand, I think that we should stay away from artificial intelligence because while it has a lot of pros to doing it I feel like the cons outweigh the pros. Not including the debate where if we taught them how to adapt by themselves that they would just take over the human race (which is very possible). I think that it would make millions of people lose their jobs and it would only benefit the big business owners and would save the owners a ton of money. Just for the sake of the economy I think we should stay away from artificial intelligence.

I’m actually very happy with the outcome of this class. I went in with my expectations really low and wasn’t expecting anything out of this class but I actually loved this class and got a lot out of it. I’m defiantly going to going to recommend this class to my friends to take.  

Module 12

            In this module we had to read the article “Why the future doesn’t need us” by Bill Joy. I absolutely love the topic of artificial intelligence because I love to see everyone’s outlook at it. I’m actually at a point where I love to hear both sides so much that both sides have such good points I can honestly see it going either way. So that scares me but it also excites me to see where this technology is going.

            In this article he basically says that he’s afraid of computer scientists succeeding in developing intelligent machines that can do better than humans can do. He thinks that if we let them make their own decisions that they could easily come to the conclusion that they could overturn us and become the more dominate species. Another point he has is that if we make them and we have humans control them that there will be some greedy human that will try to take over everything with their machines.

            I think that the author’s fears are very justified. In my opinion artificial intelligence is only going to take over people’s jobs and the unemployment rate will skyrocket. I think that if they don’t make a law about it that some very greedy people won’t care about the unemployment rate just because they will be saving money.

 That’s what worries me the most about all of this. I honestly think that the whole terminator thing with Skynet is very possible and it could happen but I’m looking at it from a simpler point of view because there’s really no way of saying what’s going to happen with all of that. I just think that the one percenter’s are going to try to push so that they can replace all of their employees with artificial intelligence so that they won’t have to pay their employees.

However when I do look at the bigger picture and thinking about if artificial intelligence could take over the world and just wipe out the human population. I think that they could easily do that depending on how far we take it. If we make them so that they can adapt and evolve then I think that they would take over and just totally wipe out the human race.  

Module 11

            I watched the film Wargames for my computer-related film. When I saw that the assignment was to watch a computer-related film I got really excited because a lot of my favorite films fit into this category. At first I didn’t know what to watch because I have so many favorites. I decided on Wargames because it’s one that I haven’t seen in a really long time so I couldn’t remember the whole thing.

            The film Wargames is about a kid that finds a way to hack into the governments military’s main computer. And basically creates an artificial intelligent computer that gets confused into thinking that the real world is a game and almost starts World War Three.

            When I was younger I thought that there’s no possible way that something like this would ever be able to happen. I thought that there wouldn’t be any way for someone to hack into the government’s computers. After years of maturing and learning more about computers I actually think that this is possible. I’ve actually read some books about hacking and I’ve found out that really anything can be hacked if the hacker can just find a way to break in if the creator of the firewall or even have physical access to the computer. I’ve found out that if a hacker has physical access to a computer they can get into it almost every time.

            Artificial intelligence is going to be very big advancement in our society. There are some people that are very afraid of artificial intelligence because they think that they are going to take over the world and somehow kill every human. One person in particular is Stephen Hawking. Stephen Hawking is terrified of artificial intelligence. He thinks that they will become way more advanced than humans and at a much more rapid rate. They’ll be able to re-design themselves before we would even know.

            I personally believe that because there are a lot of people that agree with Stephen Hawking that will push as hard as they can to make it so that there won’t ever be artificial intelligence. I don’t know exactly know where I sit in the argument of artificial intelligence because I can see very great things to come from it however I could see very bad things coming from it. So I guess we’ll see where the future will take us!    

Module 10

          When I first started reading “A Logic Named Joe” I was really confused and had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. It wasn’t until about the third paragraph that I finally decided to Google what logic was that he was talking about. In my search there were so many options that I just ended up getting more confused. So I just decided to finish the reading and see if I would understand after all the reading. Turns out after reading the short story I was still very confused. So I decided to take a break and come back to it after. After coming back to it I realized that the author was just very opened minded about the future and all the possibilities that came with it.

          One thing that I found funny is that he thought that all the information would be stored in buildings. He basically thought that if you could control how you got that information and how useful that would be. What I thought of when he said this was that it’s like a library that has a quicker search to find the information. Which he was pretty close because of search engines like Google. However he was scared that if we had access to that, we would have access to everything. Like there would be no filters and we wouldn’t be able to hide anything. Like just an average person could go and find the government’s deepest darkest secrets just from searching for it.

          Sure you can find out a lot of information on the internet about someone, probably even a creepy amount of information you can’t find out something like the government’s deepest darkest secrets because they have security on it that won’t allow the average person finding it.

          I find this all so crazy that he had pretty good ideas of the technologies that we would have today. I feel like if I was born in the time that this article was published I wouldn’t have had any idea of where technology was going. I have somewhat of an idea of where technology is going now. It’s probably not correct or even remotely correct but I’d like to think that it is.

          

Module 9

In this module we were required to read chapters fourteen through seventeen. In those chapters it talks about Friedman wants to see how his Dell laptop was made so he went to go see how they were made, it also talks about if Al-Qaeda has a supply chain, and lastly it talks about the "curse" of oil. 

Dell laptops are started by when one is ordered and from there, the manufactures get all the parts ordered from the supplier logistics centers. No matter where your Dell system is being built the supplier logistics center is always close by so that they can get started on your system right away. Once they get the parts that they need they use a design that was created in Texas. Their engineers get working on putting the system together.

Of course Al-Qaeda has a supply chain. I don’t think that most people in America realize how advanced they are. I think the majority of Americans think that they are just hiding in the mountains of the Middle East and then come out to attack when they can. They are just as advanced as we are here all because of the “flattening world.” They can access all the same things as we can.

The “curse” of oil is basically that there is so much money to be made from oil that very greedy men get put into power. I feel like the more money you have the greedier you are. Along with all that greed over in the Middle East there isn’t much government so there isn’t taxation on the oil and they just make so much money.

In this module we read chapters fourteen through seventeen talking about how Dell’s supply chain works and how all of their things are made. Also about Al-Qaeda has a supply chain and how they are getting so advanced because of the world flattening. Lastly we learned about the “curse” of oil and how it puts such greedy evil people in charge.

Module 8

            If it wasn’t for computers I honestly do not know where I would be today because I am majoring in NTM so if it wasn’t for computers I probably would not be going to college. I also would not have a job because that’s all my job is based on.

            I have known since I was thirteen that I wanted to work with computers for the rest of my life. Ever since I actually started using them and figuring out how they worked and all the things you could do with them I have wanted to learn more and more about them. I haven’t met another person that has known what they’ve wanted to do for the rest of their life that young and stuck with it.

            However if there weren’t computers my hand writing would probably be a million times better. I’ve never really worked on my hand writing because I’ve always just thought why would I write something down when I can type it at least four times faster? The last time I checked I could type one hundred words a minute on an actual keyboard and about eighty on my laptop.

            I’m an IT Developer for a small company called Reading Horizons. If it wasn’t for computers I would not have a job. My whole job revolves around computers. If I didn’t have computers I probably would be doing construction or some kind of hard labor. I would have just skipped going to college all together and I would have just tried to make as much as I could working hard labor. I’m very grateful that I don’t have to do that because that sounds awful. I absolutely love what I do and I’m so grateful for the opportunity that I’ve gotten from computers.

            Computers are such a big part of my life I use one every day. Some people would hate that because they don’t like sitting and starring at a computer screen all day. However I don’t see myself spending my life any other way. Computers are my passion, if I’m not doing schoolwork or working I’m playing computer games all the time. My life would be exponentially different if it wasn’t for them. There are some downsides to computers but there are just so many upsides from using them.    

Module 6

In this module we had to read chapters five through nine. In those chapters he talked 
about free trade, what skills and personality traits make a “new middler”, and what CQ + PQ > IQ means and why it’s important. I’m going to talk about free trade and explain my opinion on it, I’m also going to talk about the skills and personality traits that make a new middler, lastly I’m going to go in on CQ + PQ > IQ. 
Free Trade is a policy that in international markets that governments do not restrict imports or exports. I personally think that free trade is important. I believe that it is important for people that do not live in the United States. If we didn’t have free trade then a lot of people in other countries would not have a job. However I think that if we didn’t have free trade the United States would be able to help the economy because even though companies would have to spend more money it would be spent in our own economy while with outsourcing the money isn’t going into our economy. If you think that’s a good or bad thing just really depends on what way you look at it.  
The things that describe a “new middler” are they can take something complex and explain it very simple so that the average person will understand it. These people are usually teachers, journalists, managers, writers, producers, and editors. If we didn’t have these people in the world there wouldn’t be any doctors or really profession that involves something complex. Even though the people that do those jobs are very smart if they didn’t have a teacher they wouldn’t understand the complexity of the things they do by themselves. 
The equation CQ + PQ > IQ means curiosity and passion greatly outweigh intelligence. I personally think that is very accurate. If you find someone that is very intelligent but they are very lazy their intelligence really doesn’t do much. However if you have someone who is curious and passionate about what they are doing they will always be a better worker. This is very important because that’s what a lot of employers look for now-a-days. If they feel like you are passionate about it and willing to learn they will take you over the smart lazy person almost every time. 
In this module we read about free trade and learned what it is and why it’s important. We also read about what “the middler” is and why they are important to today’s society. My personal favorite part of this was the CQ + PQ > IQ. That explains that curiosity and passion outweighs intelligence.