The Guillermo Gomez-Pena piece made me think a little bit about an issue that could or already is a problem. Are those in different classes being boxed-out and sort of disenfranchised through the advancement of different technologies? The social and racial biases that Gomes-Pena encountered through his story I think is something in society that may ( Read more... )

The excerpt from Jean Baudrillard was one of the more dense and not so easy to understand readings we've had this semester, but one of the connections I thought about after reading it was the connection between simulation and digital computing. Digital computing, or digital anything for that matter is all about extrapolating data in order to create ( Read more... )

Art in the digital age means a couple of things to me. One, it's about finding new mediums to express new ideas. Tommy mentioned his learning about photoshop, illustrator, indesign and other programs like that. I am going to learn how to use Adobe Flash ( Read more... )

When thinking about the Internet, and technology in general really, one thing that constantly comes up is the idea of newness. Thinking about it I wonder, "How often does advancement in study or development in a particular field actually yield something totally unheard of, or fundamentally change the way people think ( Read more... )

Considering what we have read this semester alone in terms of the actual stories and first-hand accounts of where the internet originated, I believe that the single biggest influence on what we have today in terms of on line communication is the Whirlwind Flight Simulator which later influenced the creation of SAGE ( Read more... )

Analog computing is a significant step in the development of the digital world that we know today. Analog essentially means that it is a network or device that is self-sufficient in that it supplies its own power. Examples in class of clocks and Pascal's adding machine were landmark because they helped to accomplish difficult, often tedious tasks ( Read more... )

J Dawn Mercedes provided the clearest indication of where the feminist orientation of design and application in technology is going. For the most part I agreed with her classification that the characteristics of women thought processes lent more to new and innovative ways of organizational structure and management as opposed to the hierarchical ( Read more... )

Andre made a good presentation in that it got straight to the point that the robots will be able to withstand the typical attacker and lessen the need to put dozens of SWAT members in dangerous situations. I still have some reservations about the effectiveness of the fail-safe mechanism installed though. If the robots are going to have a level of ( Read more... )

- Why do we have these computer dystopias?

- Why are people scared of a computerized future?

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The biggest reasons I believe that people's fear of a computerized future is centered on the concept of computers removing thinking from the individual.

That loss of control, and in some ways consciousness, is a scary ( Read more... )

The latter portion of Chapter 16 and basically the entirety of Chapter 17 in Heinlein's novel I feel is the most compelling portion of my readings so far.

I believe it was Chris who mentioned in class one day that science fiction is famous for representing the values, beliefs, and practices of the society and time period in which they are written. ( Read more... )