Kid Tracker

Over the past few years I have noticed that the trend of tracking your kids every movement has increases in popularity. It seems like there are now all kinds of way to not only track your child's every movement, but now you can know everything about what there doing. It seems like the need to know every little thing your kid does has grown. I understand that a responsible parent should know what there kids are up to, but to track their every movement takes away all the trust and if anything will end up making kids distrust their parents. I wouldn't expect anyone to track everything simply because it's an invasion of privacy.

The easiest way to track your kids is through their cell phones. Parents have a choice many different plans from a few different providers. Sprint has a plan that will allow you to check where your kids are at through your own cell phone. The plan shows you exactly where your kids are as long as the phone is on and has signal. Verison also has a simular plan that will allow you to see exactly where your kids are. This plan allows you to see the streets their by and direction/speed if their moving. This all seems like a over protective parents dream, but thats not the only way to see what those no good kids are doing.

The latest in keeping up with your kids every move is the car gps. You can now use your kid's gps to see where their car is and many other options. This gps allso allows you to see how fast your kid drives and where they typically go. you can also set it up so that if they break any traffic laws, ie run a red light, it will text your self phone allowing you to see when and where they ran the light. If this isn't enough for you then you can get a visa card for your child and then you can get alerts everytime they use it or spend money on specified items. Who knows what this consistant way of telling your kids you don't trust them even for a second will have on their over all self est

Human Computer Interaction and the Future

Is technology becoming integrated with us so much that it will eventually cause major issues in how we live everyday life? For instance, take a look at this cartoon below:

http://www.personal.psu.edu/hzd106/blogs/logme/2008/09/01/Pics/hci.JPG

This cartoon may seem funny, but is this really what life is coming to? Computers and humans are becoming closer to each other as the relationship between users and computers become stronger. The goal of Human Computer Interaction is to improve this interaction by making computers more usable and receptive to the user's needs. Just think about what we have seen in the past twenty years. Computers needed a mouse, a keyboard, speakers, etc. Now, everything is combined into one. We are starting to see the popularity of touch screens in the cell phone market, and pretty soon computers are all going to be touch screens as well so that we can interact with them more easily. But how far will this go? As we witnessed in class on Tuesday (March 9th), there is technology out there that relies on motion rather than touching a screen. We have already seen this with the Nintendo Wii (although this requires use of a controller). But Project Natal for Xbox is taking motion sensing for video games to another level without the use of controllers. Here is a video of what that might be like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oACt9R9z37U

So what does this mean for our personal computers, and how is this going to effect the future of technology? Remember, the goal is to make the interaction between humans and computers easier, so will we soon live in a world that will require nothing more than motion sensing and tracking devices? We saw a video in class of a person that looked like he was shop-lifting, but actually, everything was paid for automatically when he walked out the door. This is going to make everything easier, and a world like this would be amazing to live in. However, what is going to happen if the technology fails, if systems crash, or if we lose power? Is a technologically based world going to come to a standstill every time this happens?

www.deepamehta.de/docs/hci.html

As you can see in the picture above, there are a lot of components that make up the Human Computer Interaction to make our lives easier. As we develop a deeper understanding in each of these areas, technology is only going to get stronger and become more integrated with each area. Just think about technology and how it relates to one area, such as engineering. How might technology improve everyday life in this area? How about linguistics? Will technology allow us to communicate with people who speak other languages across the world quickly and efficiently? We have already seen what technology is doing in areas such as neuroscience and artificial intelligence, as well as plans for future technology in these areas (during class discussions and videos). Imagine what our world will be like once all of these areas are improved and enhanced through advances in technology.