12th blog

Well this is my final blog of the class, I never thought it would end lol. At first when I heard that we had to do all these blogs I was sad and thought blogging was nerdy and pointless. It turns out that I was wrong for a few reasons. I think that there is a lot of information from other people that you can lean this way, and it turned out to be pretty sweet.

In the last two classes we talked about ethics and the future, respectively. Ethics have always been a topic briefly covered in various classes. Thics are a system of moral principles, or the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group or culture.

A big threat to the future of any business is failure in ethics. Business ethics as an issue are much much more powerful than globalization or even the internet, and can destroy a business almost instantly. The standards of business ethics however, are changing rapidly. What was good is becoming bad and vice-versa, very fast.

A good site to get some information of this is: http://www.globalchange.com/businessethics.htm

The Future of the Web

In class we talked about Web 2.0 and the changes that have been made from Web 1.0, which allows us to have more interactive web sites rather than sites used only for retrieving information. Therefore, you do not need to go to 20 different websites to see everything you want to see. Instead, you only have to view a "half dozen." In the future, you won't even have to view that many sites to get the information you want. How is this possible? The answer is Web 3.0. It will allow for searches to become faster and easier, and you will be able have multiple searches through typing just one complex sentence. Relax, the Web will do the rest.

An example of a sentence you could type into your browser would be the following: "I want to see a funny movie and then eat at a good Mexican restaurant. What are my options?" The browser will then analyze your response, search the Internet for all possible answers, and then organize the results for you. This is known as the semantic web, which means that the meaning of information and services on the web is defined. The information will be understood by computers, and therefore, they will be able to perform more of the "tedious work" involved in finding, combining, and acting upon information on the web.

Will this make us lazier? Maybe. However, I feel the damage has already been done as far as the ability to retrieve information quickly and easily, so why not make it easier? It will save us more of our valuable time because it will be able to aid in decision-making. That's right, it will be like having our own personal assistant. The browser is going to have the ability to learn our interests. After your browser learns more about you, it will be able to answer questions for you, like "where should I go for lunch?" It will then look through records of what you like, what you don't like, and where you are currently located in order to making a suggestion for you.

Sources:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-30.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web

Picture:

http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/images/2007/10/04/web20301.jpg

My Future Life

The class activity on Monday really got me thinking about mashups and what they will be coming out with soon. I really liked the brainstorming section of the class because it was nice to think what I could do to contribute to the internet. Sometimes I think that people don't think that their ideas are good enough or that other people wouldn't care about what they have come up with. Maybe there are a lot of ideas that aren't put out there because people think it's only themselves that care about this, but in reality thousands of other people are thinking it themselves.

I have been thinking about the academics website since Monday. I think that it would be awesome to have this type of resource out there for other prospective students. Imagine being able to look up a school and seeing different resources available. These students could assess the school in a more thorough manner because of this added knowledge. Students could look at other current students and perhaps see their ACT or SAT and high school GPA and see if it is realistic for them to get in. I think that people don't apply to a lot of schools because they think that they aren't good enough to get in.

When using this site you could look at the night life and safety of the surrounding area. There could be a timely warning area that is for the notifications from the university. Another area that I think would be great would be to have testimonials from students and faculty about certain areas of study. Branching from the professor angle there could be a specific page that had updated results from Rate My Professor.com. I think that this would be great for students to see when considering their intended course of study.

There are a lot of great ideas out there. Some people just need to find help facilitating them. We should put our ideas out there and the worst that can happen is someone saying no. But if we don't put them out there, the only person shooting them down is yourself.

Moore's Law

We talked about Moore's Law the other day. This, of course, is the law that states that the number of transistors in a circuit will double every 2 years. In addition to being an observation of trends, it was stated that this has become a sort of "self-fulfilling prophecy". This is a very important factor in our technological world, but it also makes me wonder. How close are we to having computers do most of our work for us? I believe that, with minimal human input, computers will be able to do so much in the future that a lot of jobs, industries, and even just facets of everyday life will become obsolete. We will have computers readily available that can do complex calculus and physics formulas just by observation.
I am ambivalent toward the concept. On one hand, it would make things easier for everyone. Not to mention that all the programming in computers is put there by humans. So we wouldn't necessarily have an age of technological rule over humans or some hyped-up thing like that. However, those with skills would be completely unappreciated. This, combined with the number of human jobs taken by computers would make it difficult for people to find work. It's an interesting concept. I'm intrigued to find out how it will turn out in the near - and far - future.

Technology and Society

In contemplating the impact of technology on society, it is easy to quickly come up with several dramatic improvements. Life expectancy and quality are the two primary headings under which we could place many examples of technology's positive influence on the lives of mankind. And as we progress unabated on an exponential path toward an unknown point, perhaps an asymptote, it is easy to get swept up in the glorious rush of new technology. The business cycle has gotten so short that a device that you've purchased in a fit of "gotta-have-it" could be made virtually obsolete while its still in transit on the UPS truck. Well, perhaps that's a bit hyperbolic, but we're getting there!

There is a problem, I believe, in the direction we are headed. This problem is certainly not with the expansion of technology in general, but probably more localized to consumer electronics. The problem is two-fold in my estimation. A society that values PS3's, iPods, iPads, iPhones, Google phones, etc. as strongly as ours does is in danger of losing sight of some of the more important aspects of what it means to be a member of a society. I'm talking on the small scale about things as simple as the reduction in human interaction brought on by video games and the like. The iPad, which came out yesterday, seems to be a perfect example of this. This device appears to serve the sole purpose of being another shiny way to pump content into our minds. Another revenue stream for the consumption of entertainment via the iTunes store. Another bridge we can use to further shut out the rest of the world in favor of what appears before us on our screens. This, not specifically the iPad, could have grave consequences for our society going forward. To limit human interaction in this way is to progress the ease of dehumanization. Respect for our fellow man comes from our getting to know him. It is shown time and time again that irrational fear or hatred can be dispelled simply by sitting down and talking to one another. I fear that this process will grow increasingly rare as we are increasingly tethered to machines designed to distract us.

The second aspect of this problem is perhaps tied to the first, insofar as the dehumanizing process of decreased interaction can have grave consequences for the particularly vulnerable among our society. While we live relatively charmed lives that find us capable of clamoring after the newest gadgets or keeping up on the latest trends via intense blog study, the members of society who cannot afford such luxuries are pushed even further to the edges. Some may point out that the amount of money raised for Haiti was an example of the opposite, but I would say that such an outpouring was made easier by technology, and it made it easier to keep the reality of the situation in Haiti at arms length. The earthquake was just the last of a long line of terrible hardships brought upon the people there, and no number of millions of dollars is going to fix what is at the core of the problem in that country. And even within our own country, the disparities between rich and poor grow, undoubtedly to some extent because of a difference in technological access.

Ultimately, I don't want to come off as sounding overly pessimistic about our society's future. But I do think that we would benefit from finding moments to liberate ourselves from the constant stream of media that is finding new ways to enter our lives every day. And find a way to liberate ourselves from the revenue stream that counts all of our wallets as tributaries. Think of what else could be done to make our society a better place with even a fraction of that money. Stop and smell the roses if you will. And, equally important is to take a moment to reflect on the plight of those that have not been given the type of opportunities that we enjoy, and try to figure out a way to help, no matter how small.