Saturday, April 18, 2015

The end has come

What I have taken away from this class, is a whole new outlook of what the world has become thanks to the use of technology. This has happened at much faster rate than I had ever really thought, the events that I will talk about later in this paper shaped how stores price items, how companies could now shift work to other places.. Also I will address the question that has really plagued me the whole time in this class.
The best supply chain, this phrase is synonymous with Wal-Mart. After reading Thomas L.Friedman “The World is Flat”, I have learned a great amount about the workings of what makes a good supply chain. Prior to my reading of this book, I felt I knew everything I needed to know about Wal-Mart. But learning what makes their company supply chain the best was the key element to understanding Wal-Mart. What this companies supply chain has done has made it so they have almost monopolized the consumer market. Is this a good thing or a bad thing is whole other topic, but they what have done has made it possible for you to get the cheapest best quality things all at one store. After reading this part of the book it made me think, to stay a head you must be willing to bend the rules of the business world, also the idea of being moral is definitely called into question. Overall, this class has given me a look into things such as supply chain, I know I can see that this really is what makes or breaks a company.
Some of the other things that have still stuck with me from this class are how outsourcing is not always a bad thing. Before this class, I had always been given the one-sided opinion that it was bad, and that nothing good could come from it, but now I can see there is a lot of good that comes from it. The thing that caught me off guard was that it ultimately creates the opportunity for higher paying jobs, and also simultaneously promotes the idea that education is how to get those jobs. This class has also given me a more worldly opinion on many things that I always have been narrow minded about before.
Overall, I found this class to be a history class of things that have happened in the past 70- 50 years in the tech world. I have learned so many things just from my reading of The World is Flat.  The sad truth is that these are things I should have had some more knowledge of, but in k-12 this was never a subject that was gone over. So that being said, I really enjoyed becoming more educated on things that have happened in my lifetime before I could really understand what the milestones meant. Now I can see know the real story behind how things in the 21st century started and is paramount to understand what is possible, and what is just a branch idea from the first core ideas of this century.
I really have no suggestions for how this course could be improved in the future. At first I was a little hesitant of using a blog. But after using it for this class it was simple and easy to understand, and I enjoyed doing it because I have never done it before.  The book that we read for this class was very compelling, and it held my attention with ease. Overall, I found that the class was very easy to understand what was asked of you. The simplicity of how the course was laid out made it easy to engage the core material. I read a few pages a day out of the book, and on Saturday wrote about it. That made the class not feel like I was in a rush Saturday to read all of the pages and write on my blog.


Saturday, April 11, 2015

GNR Mind Tricks

The way that Bill Joy talks of GNR it is convincing to the reader, he is able to show the down side and some unexpected things from all three. Genetics is the first thing I will talk about of the GNR aspect of the paper. Joy talks on the unknowns that genetics bring to the table, from what I took from it, he felt that there was far too much risk in genetically altering food, and that it was unthinkable to try it on people. He felt that if you were able to genetically alter something that there would be benefits to it, but the main point  I took from my reading of his article on this topic was the risk will not outweigh the reward. Another point he drove home was that notion of equality would be lost as of the cause of human cloning.
 The second part of GNR is the Nanotechnology, this is things such as machinery that can replicate anything such as simple cell structure. This topic was something that really had Joy questioning the risk involved with them, for example his argument was that this will not be a weapon that is going to be hard to get your hands unlike the NBC. Bill Joy felt that “GNR technologies have clear commercial uses”, what this means is that it will be much easier to use as a weapon.
 The next part of GNR is Robotics, Joy felt that the world would become even more taken over by the elites of the world with the introduction of robotics. He also felt there was some chance that man power would be taken over by the more effective robots power. The end result of this would be that the need for people in the world would shrink, and on top of that the world would be controlled by the elites of the world and the lives of millions of people would hang in the balance of their choices.

Personally, I felt the author's fears where right and a little far off, but I did feel the author made a good point of how we never think of what will happen with the next big break through. When I say that I felt that he was a little far off, it is because I don’t see the same outlook he does. First, I do want to say his opinion on GNR is great, but personally I see different truths from it. This could be that he just is far more educated on this subject, and is able to have far better foresight than I.  But I just can’t see that far in to the future, I simply do not see these 3 fears that Joy does only because I am so new to the subject matter. I just don’t see robots being the reason mankind kill over, and I also don’t think that Nanotechnology is going to grow in leaps and bounds in the next 20 years as does Joy. Overall, I really enjoyed Bill JoyWhy the future doesn't need us”, it really gave me a new outlook to the way that I perceive humankinds future. But to me, I would much rather try to think of what mankind can do for the good of all with the future of technology.

Saturday, April 4, 2015

MINDLESS MOVIE

The computer-related film I’m going to talk about is Fast and Furious 7. I just want to give full discloser that I will be speaking of the plot, so if you want to see the film just keep that in mind. The reasons I chose to use this movie to talk about is simply the computer element is very heavy, and innovate. In the movie there is a tracking device called Gods Eye, this computer can track people by using every electronic in the world to do so. The Gods Eye can use street cams, cell phones, and the list goes on. This idea is crazy to me because it is plausible that the government could actual use something like this. I just want to give some idea of how powerful Gods Eye is, it can use cell phone cams on phones in your area to confirm your identity. To put it in simple terms, it uses a workflow system that lets you use all the cameras and microphones in the world to track someone.

This idea is realistic, our world wants everything intertwined and there is going to be some cost for this. I do feel this idea is great, but we have to think that it would be used to spy on the world. But I can also think of the benefits, war would never be the same. Being able to target the leaders and their exact location would save so many soldiers, and on top of that far less civilian casualties. The Gods Eye would have cut every war the world has ever had in half, by only having to target the head of the monster you would save lives of millions of people. The idea of Gods Eye will definitely become a weapon of the future, the only real question is when. In my personal opinion, I really think that there are weapons very similar to this one already. The world that we live in is a sobering reminder that we need something like Gods Eye to feel safe anymore. Our country is fighting a war that is played in the shadows by the Islamic extremist. They are using forms of terrorism that takes our country by surpasses. But if we had something like Gods Eye we could make this war a much fairer and balanced playing field.
The social and cultural issues in Fast and Furious 7’s computer elements all boil down to the inevitable downsides to Gods Eye. The question that is asked is what would happen if Gods Eye is used for evil or taken by a country like North Korea. The problem is that this power is not meant for the world, this would have so many side effects with our lives. For starters, we would be using it to invade the public’s right to privacy. Second, all other countries would feel that we would use this to gain an edge, and the end result would be hate towards us.
I chose to talk about this movie because I really could see how the Gods Eye uses a lot of what we have talked about in this class as far as things like workflow software and countless other things. This computerized weapon uses all of the innovation that the world has made, by doing this it uses a platform that was already set out for it, and it cashes in on the work of others. All this weapon is doing is leapfrogging from all forms of technology to achieve its goal. Overall, this movie has a much unexpected computer element that is actually one of the most realistic things that is portrayed in this film.