Social Alarm Clock

My biggest problem as I entered Stevens Institute of Technology was waking up. Alarms appear to have no affect on me and my parents have trouble trying to wake me up at times. There is an app for the iPhone and Android phones called Wakie. It was launched in 2011, and finally made its way to the App Store after a reported nine month wait. It already has 1.5 million users in 80 countries. It's nicknamed the "social alarm clock" and "a friendly community of people who wake each other up in the morning".

Wakie's CEO and cofounder said that there was research that after one minute talk to a stranger wakes up the brain with a 99% guarantee. I actually have this app on my Samsung Galaxy phone  during every exam week. The most effective calls seem to be when a girl wakes me. I try to focus and try to act nice. If a guy calls it becomes awkward and our conversation is short. Either way, I awake enough to get out of bed and start my day.

There is a creep factor when a guy wakes people up for fun by breathing weird and making weird remarks but it does it's job. I've used this app for the past year and I would recommend it to anyone. Maybe not my sister.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/11/tech/mobile/wakie-alarm-stranger/index.html

Solar Sunflower

When I look at solar power stations, I admire what it does, but it has a vibe that it's just wasting space. When walking near Davidson Lab at Stevens Institute of Technology, the solar panels are covering what appears to be a garden with some beauty.

The Sunflower Solar Harvester, developed by the Swiss company Airlight Energy have developed transportable solar power stations that track the sun like a sunflower and cools itself by pumping water through its veins. The power station can produce 12 kW of energy from 10 hours of sunlight which is enough to power several househoulds. The head of research Gianluca Ambrosetti said "It's an integrated system so it supplies both electricity and heat. You can use this heat to drive a cooling system too, if you need refrigeration." This power system will have appeal to those that have multiple requirement and alot of sunlight.

This technology will not replace fuel powered generator sets which produced 10 times the power of one solar sunflower. 100 sunflowers would be needed to run a hospital that requires 1.2mW of power. However, it would be awesome for a small camp hospital with minimal refrigeration requirements for medicines, it could be set up in a remote location and just one dish could satisfy quite a lot of those needs.

This solar power station has visual appeal, portable, and provides multiple functions. When it comes to renewable resources, this is a great new start to the right direction.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/16/tech/innovation/sunflower-solar-harvester/index.html

Amazon shipping robots

Robots from Kiva Systems, a company that is now owned by Amazon, are roaming around the warehouse floor to find everyone's orders online. Amazon now has 10 fulfillment centers across the United States that houses more than 15,000 Kiva Robots. Amazon said the technology inside the centers includes the Robo-Stow, a gigantic robotic arm that shifts orders. There are also new inventory systems that cut down time taken unloading and proceessing products and packages, getting the needed products to the customer quickly. These Kiva Robots work harmoniously and are aware of each other's location which prevents any accidents.

When reading the article on Amazon's Kiva Robots, I was like," Great! Machines are replacing humans again." In a way this is true and Kiva Robots should be more productive and efficient compared to normal humans. However, Amazon released a statement this year that the company plans to hire 80,000 employees to cover the season rush which is 14 percent more that last year. Amazon expects that out of the 80,000 short term recruits, thousands of them will move into full time roles as the holiday period ends.

Amazon has done a great job incorporating new technology into doing great efficient work. Drones for delivery and now drones to work inside the warehouse. It is scary thinking about machines doing most of the work at a Amazon warehouse but amazed at how far humans came.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/01/these-cool-robots-are-processing-your-amazon-orders/

Plastic Dresses

With all the great products that can be made with 3-D printing, clothing is the newest product that can now be printed. Nervous System has created a novel process that allows a 3-D printed dress to move and sway like real fabric. The software that Nervous System uses is called Kinetics. Kinetics combines origami techniques with novel approaches to 3-D printing. The dress starts out as a model in CAD, where Kinetics breaks it down into various triangular segments. Once the designer is satisfied, algorithms add hinges to the triangles uniting the garment into a single piece and compress the design into the smallest possible shape to optimize the printing process.

The plastic that is used are cleaned and dyed to various colors of interlocking bricks of plastic. This dress flows and moves as a person does various motions. For Designer Jessica Rosekrantz, she made sure that the 3-D printed dress was comfortable instead of it being a plastic suit of armor. The model's body is 3-D scanned to ensure a perfect fit.

The problem with this dress is that it costs $3000 dollars and does not exactly keep a person warm. It was very interesting to think that designing can now be done on CAD, instead of hand drawing or experimenting with other fabrics. 

Fancy Toasters

     Scrolling through cnet not that long ago, I stumbled upon an article asking how much you could justify paying for a toaster. My first reaction to finding articles like this is usually to laugh at how unnecessary it would be to pay such a high price for whatever the either practical or impractical item is, but procrastination led me to clicking the link  and reading through the article since toast could potentially be more important of an issue than I might have assumed.
     The gist of this article was justifying the price difference in appliances that serve the same purpose. All toasters have a similar mechanics. Bread can be lowered into slots where it can toast as it is exposed to heated wires that line the metal grates holding the bread in place. The click that locks the lever into place triggers electromagnetic waves to run through the wires and start the heating process by completing a circuit. After the wires reach a certain temperature as specified by the user, the lever will release and the toast will pop up, ready to serve.
     The factors that make one toaster 25 times more expensive than another are in the additional mechanics that make the toaster unique. A few of the differences listed in the article include automatic lowering of bread, material of the unit exterior(stainless steel, aluminum, plastic) which indicates durability, aesthetic, number of slots, slot size, number of wires, amount of spacing between wires, power usage, timing cycle, heat sensors, and much more. Each element of the toaster seeks to add to the quality of the user's experience making the toast to improve evenness of toasting, time taken to finish the job, aesthetics, safety, energy consumption, etc.
     After spending a great deal of time talking about the features of these fancy toasters, the verdict of the article was that no toaster over $100 was worth the expense and that the $30 Hamilton Beach toaster is really all you need. That lackluster of a conclusion was what I expected from the article, but what I did not expect was the amount of thought and detail that was put into these mechanisms and features. Coming from a very conservative family, when it came down to making a purchase the general consensus was to buy the cheapest brand of the item available. Never had I actually considered the amount of research and thought put into these items which I had always considered unnecessary. As someone who aspires to create applications and products for consumers, it is vital to possess this kind of attention to detail and concern for user experience. While the importance of this concept might not show itself as well in the form of toasters, it is a way of thinking that is very applicable to engineering and computational development. Understanding the consumers restrictions and knowledge is the first step to creating effective products that will enable the proper utilization of the creation's potential.

http://www.cnet.com/news/should-you-ever-pay-more-for-a-toaster/

Elitest Culture Within the Tech Community - identification through Disassociation

     iPhones are ridiculously inferior to nexus and galaxy phones. Never will I understand the sales that Apple rakes in annually for the terrible quality and design of there products, not just with phones, but also with operating systems. It is clear that the one and only Operating system that should exist is none other than Linux. Open source is a paradigm that we must implement to destroy capital America and bring peace and sanity to the world. Wait, are you playing an iPhone game right now? smh iPhone games are the actual worst. PC master race!#winning

     That entire paragraph is my attempt at summing up the elitest culture that is VERY prevalent in computer science and the tech community. I must hear at least half of these statements being made several time a day by my peers and it is quite unsettling. this blog post is not meant to be a rant about people expressing their opinions and preferences, but rather it is a questioning of why individuals within the tech community must present their opinions in such a condescending manner.
     One of the many regrets I have in life is not playing more video games as a child. My sister was never very fond of video games, so if I had to play it would have meant playing by myself. Autonomous gaming is definitely an acquired taste, something which I do not have. As a result of my lack of knowledge and skill in gaming, I spent much of my time participating in other subcultures, that is until I found the game that would consume my life for the following two years. Puzzles and Dragons is a match three mobile game that incorporates the idea of unit management similar to that of training and evolving Pokemon. The game, at its core is very simple, but in order to really partake in the experience, players must be well-versed in monster updates as well as current events that are posted on the games main website. This Japanese mobile game was released in US iOS app stores in October of 2012 and quickly took my 80% Japanese high school by storm. a month after its release to the american market, I began to play Puzzles and dragons thinking it would be merely a phase just like cut the rope, angry birds, and candy crush, but I was gravely mistaken. I, to this day, very actively play this game to the point of setting alarms in the middle of the night so that I won't miss special dungeons.
     The reason I bring up my obsession with this game, is that as soon as I got here and spoke about it to other CS majors, I was instantly scoffed at because I was advocating a mobile game. Techies are so quick to judge others based on their preferences and skill sets that it makes fitting into the culture quite difficult. The topic we went over in class, identification through disassociation and association was one I really enjoyed that brought this issue to light. Identification through disassociation is a consistent trait that spans even beyond the students onto the professors. Having preferences is perfectly fine and encouraged, but they way those preferences are vocalized does matter. What individuals of this discourse fail to realize is that their disapproval of the general community for their lack of knowledge is offensive and creates a negative image for other computer scientists as being condescending and judgmental. While I do enjoy computer science, I do see this attitude as a major issue within the community that I would like to see corrected. The type of phone in my pocket and the OS that I am running are completely irrelevant to who I am as a person and as a computer scientist. to be judged and categorized on such factors is childish and overall unnecessary.

Feminism

     Something I see pretty often, not as much recently, but frequently at a certain point in time, is the association of radical feminist and actually feminists.  For clarification, a radical feminist is an activist with very different motivations than that of actual feminists. Rather than striving for equality, radical feminists look toward female superiority, putting down men whenever they get the chance in order to feel a sense of authority. Having spent more time on tumblr than I am proud to admit, I can vouch for the fact that many of these radical feminists are motivated by a severe case of penis-envy that clearly does not represent what feminism is about.
     This topic of radical feminists is definitely bring brought to light more often in practical conversation. I can think of at least 5 instances where this topic was brought up in classroom situations since I have gotten to Stevens, which is something that I am really proud to say. The Instructors of this institution bring up the topic of feminism as a means of combating ignorance. From these discussions I have yet to hear any questionable responses, giving me a little more faith in humanity, that is, until I have to observe the ignorance that exists in the actual community.
     Two weeks ago, I was playing Smash 4, me and my other friend being the only women playing out of a total of 8 players. During the team battle, my female friend had been the lone survivor of her team at some point, to which she responded in protest by shouting, "NO YOU CAN'T LEAVE ME ALONE I'M A GIRL!" or something along those lines. I threw some serious side-eye before I told her how that statement was a deprecation to all women, something that no one should say, especially not another woman. The fact that she said this as a reflex is really what I had the biggest problem with. Not only does it show her own insecurity in herself, but it also shows her intrinsic belief that women are inferior to men in her situation. It is small events like these that really highlight the issues that stand in the way of feminism, some of which were well represented in the panel that occurred a couple of weeks ago.
      One of the things I am always unsettled by is seeing women put down the general female population. I have never been a key-board warrior activist for feminism, nor have I even been vocal about the issue of feminism, but in the face of those types of situations I feel the obligation to speak up. It is a sad truth that women cause the downfall of other women to feel superiority, because all it really goes to show is that individuals disregard for their own gender. other issues mentioned in the panel that I had really never thought about was the idea of chivalry co-existing with feminism. chivalry can exist with feminism as long as it is reciprocated and is not expected. The idea of being polite and doing good to others is a concept that should apply to all people regardless of gender, but there are aspects of traditional chivalry that definitely don't do well with feminism. Men feeling the obligation to act like men is something I find to be very irritating, like needing to pay the bill, or needing to be of some service to women. In order to co-exist with feminism, chivalry must focus on equality and reciprocation, not a one sided obligation based on gender.

Disney's depiction of modern technology

     In light of Disney's newest blockbuster Big Hero 6, I thought it proper to make a blog post about the movie's extravagant approach to depicting modern day technology as well as potential products of technology that have yet to be materialized. (and possibly the kawaii-ness that is Baymax)
     The highlight of this movie's utilization of actual technological discourses is a topic I have talked about quite often in these blog posts. Biomedical robotics are greatly applicable to contemporary society. Various studies have proven biomedical robots to be more proficient in performing simple tasks such as giving vaccinations and diagnoses. The margin of error that exists with a robot performing these tasks is much smaller than that of a human performing the tasks. so for overall accuracy the implementation of biomedical robots and assistants would be a beneficial policy to implement. Baymax, a white, balloon looking robot is a nursing bot, created to revolutionize the healthcare industry. Japan has shown variations of nursing bots like Baymax, one specifically in the shape of a bear that is implemented as a nurse for the elderly, an industry that needs more workers. Disney created Baymax with various considerations such as the material of his skeleton for mobility and weight, as well as his playful design to appeal to children. Though Baymax serves as more of a super hero sidekick than a nursing companion by the end of the movie, I do appreciate that Disney took it upon themselves to bring that branch of robotics to life for the younger generation.
     Disney really outdid themselves with this movie, pulling ideas for invention from many discourses within robotics. The algorithm that Baymax uses to move is actually very reminiscent of a programming lab I had to write in CS 115, called picobot, not to be confused with the pico-bots in this movie. The pico-bots, an invention the film is quite centered on, are quite unrealistic in their functionality. Disney did incorporate the idea of creating large structures from these tiny units that can be attached through magnetism, also playing with electromagnetism for a friction-less bike in a separate part of the movie, but they lose the techie audience when it is introduced that the bots can completely reform themselves into different colors and forms of matter as controlled through a neural sensor headband. The grandeur of these robots was exaggerated, but, in my opinion, not something that took away from the film. During a techshow that happens in the movie, Hiro, the main character and inventor of the picobots, talks about the practical capabilities of his invention, branching into construction, transportation, and many more issues that engineers entire careers are meant to solve. So while Disney's content was a little out there, I really do appreciate the exposure they put onto the tech community. Showing young children this grandiose image of science and invention is a method that will most definitely bring more interest to the field and serve as aspirations for future engineers and scientists.

Tissue Engineering in the Future of Prosthetics

          Speaker Hongjun Wang gave a seminar on a biomedical approach toward functional tissue regeneration during a Chemisty and Biology seminar I took last spring. Achieving such a feat starts with creating an environment where cells can grow and prosper into a proper scaffold, or structure that supports the growth of cells into tissue.

          For the purpose of this seminar, Wang focused on the use of tissue engineering for the harvesting of cartilage, needed mostly for worn joints usually due to string from being overweight or being of old age. A biopsy is taken and put into a cell culture for the tissue to grow and be used for materials applicable to bone, skin, and muscle regeneration. That tissue can be implanted go through rehabilitation to heal and become a native structure within its surrounding environment. The Vacanti Mouse was shown as a prime example of this practice being put to the test. Using tissue engineering, cells harvested from a patient are seeded into a scaffold that is sculptured to look like an ear, where it is left in an incubator to later be attached to the mouse’s back. The mouse now has an ear constructed of pure, generic cartilage attached to its back. While the ear is not functional, it is a major sign of the future tissue engineering has in prosthetics. The use of generic regeneration is also widely applicable because it uses the patient's own cells as a basis of generating the tissue. Performing transplants in such a way deters rejection that is commonly seen in replantation. 

          The regeneration of skin is a little more complicated than that of cartilage due to its many layers and functionalities. The outer layers prevent bacterial invasion and hold in moisture to prevent dehydration while the inner layers contain hair follicles and other functional structures. Under those two layers lays the fat that does not need regeneration due to high availability. The top 2 layers are the ones that are important to grow and harvest. By cutting a square of skin from the back of a mouse and placing on that wound a skin graft, regeneration can take place and the skin will heal in place of the wound. Mimicking the high complexity of actual tissues poses as engineers’ biggest issue. High density and uniform cell seeding throughout the scaffold, maintaining cell viability and retaining tissue forming activities, incorporation of multiple cell types with appropriate spatial arrangement similar to native issue and creating a functional vascular network to supple nutrients and oxygen to the cell are a few of many functionalities that the skin can provide, but that scientists cannot reproduce. 

Waldo: My CS577 final project

I am currently taking CS577, Cybersecurity Lab. We have to do a final project relating to security (pretty much a mini research project). For mine, I created a protocol that allows you to not be held accountable for the websites you visit. Most security services try to keep your connections confidential using encryption, but all mine does is keep you anonymous.
The way this works is before you go to a website on your phone, you communicate with a bunch of phones in the local area, then one of them goes to the website instead, and sends you back the results. This means the website can't actually figure out which phone really connected with it. So just to quickly summarize so I'm clear, your phone kind of “hides in a crowd” of other phones, so a spy could tell an internet request is coming from one phone out of that group, but can't figure out exactly which one.
This raises an interesting question. What if one of those phones goes to an illegal website and gets illegal content? Can all of the phones be held responsible? If not, then using this there would be no way to blame someone for something like piracy you could always, have arguably just been “downloading for somebody else”. When I thought of this, I figured that it probably makes sense to blame every phone in the network.
However, if using this app is illegal, and let's say somebody makes a virus that “infects” your phone with a program that runs this protocol. Then, can you really blame a person for being part of this network? Eventually, there's no accountability anymore. You can't blame anybody for going to any website. I'm pretty sure there is no solution to getting the original phone that original sent out the request when using this protocol, unless you're in the direct vicinity of all of the phones in the little mini-network.
That's a cool thought experiment, and it's also kind of cool because it's not something anybody would be able to spy on unless they're physically nearby you, so it actually has some practical usage, if you don't want to be blamed for websites you go to. It's 2:30 AM right now and I don't think I can write anymore. I liked this class.

I wrote this a while ago, sent it by email, and am only posting it now, my bad

This isn't really a current event, but I've been wanting to put this down into words for a while. I'm a Computer Science major and even though job prospects right now are GREAT, I'm terrified that I'll be obsolete in a few decades. Computers are advancing so fast, that a few decades ago people we were using punch cards. Now everybody can stream HD videos online. The market is great for programmers, because currently, everybody is playing catch-up with technology, making the latest websites to use the latest cool new thing, but what if everything that needs to get coded gets coded? Like, there hits a point where all of the “major” programs are already written. Facebook is done making all its new features. Google doesn't need to keep updating. Companies have their websites. Will there be room for as many programmers as there are today? Will there hit a point where new programming languages come out less often, and most “coding” is just maintenance?

This isn't the only reason I'm scared for my future. Right now, programming is a niche skill. However, there's been a lot of encouragement from tech companies for kids to learn programming. I'm with them on thinking that programming is a useful thing for people to know, but the cynic in me believes that this is a long-term conspiracy to make every kid being able to program, so programmers will be less valuable, and can be paid less. This might not happen, but if programming becomes super common, companies won't need to spend 80k a year to have a person write a simple webpage.

I'm really, really scared for my future. I'm investing in a career that's only a few decades old, so I have no idea how long it'll be around. I've been trying to figure out how long programming has to stay a good profession for me to be able to retire happily. Let's say I need to spend 50k a year to be decently happy, and that I live until 90, and I earn on average 120k per year after taxes over the course of my professional life. This is pretty generous. K is the number of years I need to work. I'll start working at around 23, so that's 67 years to account for. I'll save about 70k per year of working if I do REALLY well. 70k – 50(67-k) = 0, solve for k number of years I need to work. That's 27 years. So I need Computer Science to stay a stable job for about thirty years, if things go perfectly. There wasn't a widespread internet thirty years ago, so I hope it lasts that long.

My hope is that even if computer science becomes obsolete for money-making purposes, it'll be one of the last professions to go, because once programming becomes obsolete, it probably means almost everything else already got automated first. So by the time I lose my job, I'll still be better off than most other people, and maybe there'll be some solution to mass unemployment. On that note, it's kind of weird that it's a bad thing that there aren't enough jobs, since that just means that not everybody needs to work, but that's a whole other story.

If everything goes really bad though I used to be a professional magician so I guess I can always do that again.

Coffee's equivalent of DRM?

DRM is becoming more and more common in today's world. It was previously most prominently seen in digital entertainment such as movies and video games. However, these days even our coffee makers get DRM equivalent protection installed in them. As ludicrous as this may sound, this is precisely what the Keurig 2.0 has done to force its customers to purchase their coffee pods. However, as all forms DRMs usually are, the coffee maker's protection system was broken.

http://blog.lifars.com/2014/12/13/keurig-2-0-hacked-to-make-unauthorized-coffee/

This shows an increasingly disturbing trend in the economy, where instead of trying to fix problems with their business models. The companies trying to prevent a few from circumventing their systems, this has the tendency of making the user experience worse for the larger portion of their users. Instead of adapting better marketing techniques, the companies try to force users into the broken system.

In a way this mirror the developments of how net neutrality is currently experiencing similar issues. Whether it is using DRM or providing fast lanes, these solutions provide only temporary fixes for larger problems.

The ‘New’ Method of Censorship

At the annual Hack in the Box (HITB) Security Conference in October, the applied research company Thinkst proved that online mailing lists, comments and polls are fairly simple to manipulate. Using so-called sock puppets (fake accounts), researchers hacked news sites, Twitter timelines, Reddit comments, and Disqus (a “comments system…used in forums, blogs and news portals like CNN, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, The Next Web, The Daily Telegraph and even Digital News Asia”). This is amazing both because of the extensive list of targets and the relative ease with which they were manipulated.

When people think of online censorship, they usually think of the great firewall of China or how several Arab Spring countries temporarily shut down access to the internet. But as Thinkst showed, there’s a much more insidious threat that few people consider. As Haroon Meer, the speaker about the Thinkst research, said, “So it’s not only certain people have a license to speak, now everyone has a license to speak. It’s a question of who gets heard.”

Previous research by Gilad Lotan focused on the effects of buying Twitter followers – namely, that a large enough number of bought followers will convince more people to follow (‘organic followers’). “Those real followers stay on even after your bought followers dropped off.” This is important not just because of politicians using bought followers, but also because it is extremely useful in timeline crowding, crowding out anything you don’t want the target to see.

The Reddit attack comprised 50 accounts that were used to consistently downvote “all new articles as they appeared” on particular subreddits, but the same method could be used to downvote (and eventually hide) articles with a particular keywords in the title. The more limited the attack, the harder it would be to discover.

News sites’ vulnerability lies in panels of “most read” or “most popular” articles. Page views are easy to manipulate. Even on The Wall Street Journal, where “Popular Now” is determined by “a combination of metrics: Page views (30%), Facebook and Twitter (20% each), email shares (20%) and comments (10%),” could be influenced by hacking page views and using sock puppet accounts on Twitter. The New York Times’ “Most Emailed” panel required creating 30, 000 accounts, a simple task that was also showed at HITB, and sharing 30, 000 stories, all for a total cost of roughly 30 cents in machine time.

The simplicity of Thinkst’s hacks implies that these aren’t new. Malicious or mischievous individuals, companies and even nations have probably utilized similar attacks, and they certainly will in the future. While there are some methods to detect sock puppets, for example comparing the age of accounts and comments posted using them to find several with similar timelines, they would require going through a ridiculous amount of data to be applied to most comments on a given site. It’s easy to find evidence when a thread is known to be compromised, but ferreting out compromised threads in real time is much trickier.

All of these hacks focus on controlling the content that people are most likely see. The implications of that sound like conspiracy theories, but the frightening part is how technologically sound those theories are.

Source: http://www.digitalnewsasia.com/digital-economy/censorship-shadowy-forces-controlling-online-conversations?page=0%2C0#sthash.V2D8jrgX.dpuf

The (Old) Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay is back up! Well, sort of. Almost a week after The Pirate Bay data center was raided in Sweden, there are several sites offering a cached version of the archive, IsoHunt’s is the best by far. It created http://oldpiratebay.org/ which has “a functioning search engine, all the old listings, and working magnet links.” While the description of the search engine as “functioning” is a bit of an overstatement, the links are definitely usable. This is proof that magnet links are better than trackers, because to take down a torrent you’d need to shut down all of the seeders. So although The Pirate Bay is permanently down, all the torrents still work (assuming people keep seeding). Even better, there’s plenty of new content.

The Old Pirate Bay looks the same as the original site, asides from being far bluer and slightly prettier. IsoHunt did add a statement at the bottom of the home page, which reads:

As you probably know the beloved Pirate Bay website is gone for now. It’ll be missed. It’ll be remembered as the pilgrim of freedom and possibilities on the web. It’s a symbol of liberty for a generation of internet users.

In its honor we are making the oldpiratebay.org search. We, the isohunt.to team, copied the database of Pirate Bay in order to save it for generations of users. Nothing will be forgotten. Keep on believing, keep on sharing.

“A symbol of liberty,” it says, as if The Pirate Bay was the Lady Liberty of the internet, accepting all information, irrespective of legal status, and giving it the opportunity to be free. Actually, if you read the comments on Survey Bay, that’s exactly what some users believe. (If you’re not familiar with The Survey Bay, go to thesurveybay.com – it surveyed 75,000 users of The Pirate Bay over 72 hours in 2011, and contains really interesting graphs of the results. For example, Europeans constituted 53.1% of those surveyed. Do they torrent more, or are they just more likely to take an online survey?)

But ideology aside, there is a practical concern about using The Old Pirate Bay. It seems legitimate, but there’s no way to tell if it is a honeypot or not. IsoHunt seems an unlikely source for a honeypot because it has faced its own copyright infringement legal battles, but there’s no good way to tell. People should be wary of uploading and downloading on the new site, at least for a while. Demonoid has been up again for months, but there are still suspicions that it’s a honeypot.

Various Pirate Bay alternatives still exist, but no others are of particularly good quality. The Old Pirate Bay seems to be the only one with new content, and some others are blatantly terrible. For instance, thepiratebay.cr “provides fake content as if it was new and even attempts to charge users.”

Of course, for movies there’s always Popcorn Time. It’s like Netflix, but cheaper and more illegal.

Quotes from: http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/12/isohunt-unofficially-resurrects-the-pirate-bay/

Uber's Ethics (or lack thereof)

Uber may be entirely unethical, but the car service isn’t going anywhere. It excels at minimizing the cost to users (except when there’s high demand – then they maximize the cost), and the app incredibly simple. For those of you who don’t use Uber, here’s how the app works. It shows the nearest Uber cars and an estimate on how soon the closest could get to you. Just drop a pin on the map for where you’d like to be picked up and a pin for where you want to go, hit the “Request an Uber,” and wait. The driver sends a text confirming they’re on their way and a text when they get to the pick-up point. There’s no cash involved because the app charges your credit card, and you’re not supposed to tip. The entire process is easy and streamlined.

Of course, Uber Technologies Inc. has really immoral business practices that barely toe the line of legality and its CEO, Travis Kalanick, is a terrible, albeit successful, human being. Uber has been sued about its background check policy (San Francisco and Los Angeles), a lack of permits and inspections (Portland), and driver testing and insurance (Nevada). And that’s only in the US. It had billing issues in India due to its one-step payment process, because the Indian central bank requires everything to be in rupees (sometimes Uber charged Indian customers in dollars) and a “two-step security procedure” (here).  There are lawsuits in France, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands. Thailand banned Uber outright.

Other issues include its planned promotion last year “that promised to pair passengers with 20-minute rides in cars driven by models it called ‘hot chicks’” (the program was canceled); its practices of ordering rides from competitors and cancelling them, and of using “brand ambassadors” to poach competitors’ drivers; surge pricing; blatantly talking about doing opposition research on a journalist; distancing itself from the death of a six year old “struck and killed last year by an Uber driver;” and the rape of a woman in New Delhi by her Uber driver just a few days ago (here).

While I’ve never had a bad experience with Uber, I’m starting to rethink my use of the service. Every few days there is another terrible story related to Uber. But it’s so cheap…and easy…and who wants to walk when it’s so cold and gross out, especially at night? My last ride was less than $6, from Hoboken to Jersey City. For that I can overlook a lot of shady business practices. And with Uber, I have to.

DARPA Is About to Build IronMan

Popular Mechanics published an article today updating the progress of DARPA's Warrior Web program, many are calling it the Iron Man suit, do ill stick to that phrase for the rest of this piece. Currently they have just finished their "first phase" of development. Obviously this is still in its infancy, but researchers say that the rudimentary exoskeleton-type suit can already assist troops in carrying heavy loads of equipment on their backs.. up to 100 lbs! The process seems to be moving at snails pace, considering they haven't even been able to construct a suit that goes over the full body; but it also is pretty impractical at this point (considering Tony Stark's suit was built out of micro computers). A majority of the research is being done at a few universities around the U.S (including Harvard and Arizona State). The D.O.D has been issuing grants and competitions for researchers to build the best models.
 This sounds surprisingly like one technology we studied this entire semester THE INTERNET. Surprise surprise DARPA is at it again, building the coolest things in the wold, just for "defense." In my wildest dreams I imagine our troops fighting aliens in Tony Stark inspired suits, but that's neither here nor there. It is interesting to see how science fiction can influence real world actions or vice-verse.In "Images of Science and Technology in Literature" with Penino, we discussed themes like this a lot, like the humanoid robots in Blade Runner, or the cyber worlds in The Matrix, science fiction and real world developments have gone hand in hand.
 Looking at this from a "Computers and Society" point of view, I'll examine the values inherit in this technology. Obviously its DARPA related, so we know all the terrible motives potentially behind it. I also highly doubt this has any cyberlibertarian values either. If anything this could become the symbol for an oppressive police state like something from the Hunger Games. Maybe the suit can become something else entirely, lets say it is made public (and in an ideal world) everybody has the ability to fly! Or at least it will assist in everyday tasks, like carrying heavy objects (like the current prototype). In that sense, the iron man suit would have a lot of positive inherent values, sort of like the internet...until it becomes commercialized. Well that's my two cents on the possibilities on a Tony Stark iron-man suit, I hope you enjoyed it because it is my 7th and final blog for this class forever. 

Downloadable Guns

Imagine looking through a shopping website. You see something you want to get, click on the details page, decide that it's the one, and then download a file. This file isn't a receipt. This file goes into this hollow cube lying next to your computer. You load up the file and go for a multi-hour walk. When you return, the cube contains the item you were looking at. This isn't science fiction- it's 3D printing.

3D printers, as one might have guessed, are devices that allow the use of special digital design software and some material to make a physical object. While expensive for personal use, 3D printers are being used to create 3D art models, plastic car parts, metal tableware, rocket parts for NASA, and human organs. With the correct setup and material, be it plastic, metal, or human cells, one can make almost anything with a 3D printer and a "physible", a digital model, including fully operating firearms.

On May 6, 2013, a company called Defense Distributed released, online, the plans and model files for the world's first public "physible" gun, the Liberator. Of the gun's 13 parts, 12 of them were able to be printed using a 3D printer and commercially available plastics. At this time, the United States government has demanded that Defense Distributed take the plans off their website, which they have. The United States government has very good reason for its actions; this influx of unregulated firearms is not only widely accessible, but legal. Under the United States constitution, every citizen is allowed to own firearms- this includes building one's own. The use of a 3D printer falls under this category, allowing any citizen with a 3D printer, some plastic, and an internet connection to legally own his or her own unlicensed firearm, threatening every possible attempt at gun control. Attempts have already been made in California to create a bill to prevent the printing of firearms, but, at the time of writing, this bill has been overturned, and no legislation stands to prevent the widespread manufacture of personal weaponry. For now, the world will have to wait to see if society learns to live in a world where firearms are easy to obtain, or if the governments of the world will find a way to restrict them. For the time being, take care not to aggravate your local nerd; he may be packing.

Twitter Improves Their Reporting System

With every social media website, it is almost guaranteed that there will be users on that website who abuse other users. And as this social media website grows, it begins to gain attention from the media and other outside sources that expect this website to have appropriate reactions to these cyber bullies. Currently, as Twitter continues to grow to almost 300 million users, it’s outdated and clunky reporting system cannot simply keep up with amount of abuse that is happening on the site. In response, Twitter is beginning to build upon its current abuse system and is taking a “first step” in their quest to keep Twitter a positive place on the internet.

The first issue with these sort of social media websites, is that stopping a user is not as simple as banning them from the website. Since Twitter cannot stop someone from creating multiple accounts, they must try to give the user enough reason to be afraid of losing their account information. By example, if someone gets their account removed from Facebook, the abuser would lose out on tons of different data  (posts, comments, photos, videos, likes…..etc) and this could be devastating. If an abuser is banned from Twitter, they can simply create a new account and follow the people they are interested again. Sure, they also lose all their tweets and photos, but those may be less valuable compared to other social media sites.

Along with this, it is difficult to make a reporting system that is both good at detecting abusive users and also banning them accordingly. If Twitter makes it easier for people to report each other, there will be many more false reports that are created simply due to the user being upset at someone and trying to get them in trouble. Some websites actually keep track of this false reporting and use it as a way to ban people who are abusing the reporting system.

As we discussed in class, it is difficult to keep the internet organized since it was not built from the ground up with a strict set of standards. By example, in South Korea, gamers are required to provide their Social Security number when they sign up for their gaming accounts. This way, the government can directly track who is playing too often and can make sure they do not get addicted to online gaming. If we had this standard for our social media websites in our country, Twitter would have an easier time keeping their users controlled through their abuse systems. But, due to increase in data breaches at many major companies, I simply do not trust Twitter or many other companies with my social security number.   

Article: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/twitter-improves-tools-for-users-to-report-harassment/?ref=technology

Lose Blood as you Game: A New Way to Experience Shooting Games

       Gamers always strive for realistic games and as technology progress further into the 21st century, there are inventions that bring them as close to real life as possible. With virtual reality headsets gamers can feel like they are actually in the game. With specialized walking platforms they can even move around in the virtual world through real movements. As interesting as these devices seem, another invention is breaking the barrier of how realistic video gaming can become in the future.

       The recuperating health systems in games are often seen as flawed. Even though they work well within shooting platforms, they are highly unrealistic. In a way to combat that, Brand & Grotesque thought of Blood Sport: a mechanism that will draw real blood from your body as you get hurt in games. This allows gamers to get as close to reality as possible as lives in the game begin to have more importance than simply a statistic on the scoreboard. Blood Sport is a device that uses the controller's rumble feature as a trigger to pull a small amount of blood from the gamer as they engage in a shooting game. Since rumble is often activated through getting hurt, either falling from a high distance or getting hurt by someone, in some cases this can be an effective way to transfer that to reality. It’s an interesting twist on a rather normal gaming experience.

       However as of now, this is not intended for the general consumer to purchase and use in their living room. The device requires the gamer to have a needle in their arm, which can become uncomfortable after a while. Therefore, the creators of this project see this being implemented in blood clinics around the world, to entice people to donate blood for good causes. By engaging in a fun activity that distracts the individual, they can donate blood by simply doing what they love.

       The project appears on Kickstarter and has raised only $3390 of the $250,000 goal in two weeks. While the possibility of this project getting funded seems grim, especially as it is currently suspended for an unknown reason, it brings into question the type of gaming that might exist in the future. As the dark name implies, Blood Sport might eventually become a reality, and the idea of a Hunger Games-esqe experience continues to reside in my mind. Although a scary thought, competitions where gamers compete against each other to near death might exist. It’s an idea that should be monitored, and regulated if eventually implemented.

It’s pretty much as close to reality as video games can become.

Source

Myths of Net Neutrality

Myth #1: Net neutrality is ‘Obamacare for the Internet’

When Senator Ted Cruz tweeted “’Net Neutrality’ is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of the government,” he invoked a spectacle – similar to the splitting of the Red Sea – between himself and the rest of the world. As PcWorld points out, the difference between Obamacare and Net Neutrality is accessibility and quality, respectively. The philosophy behind Obamacare is to provide basic health care system for all Americans. On the other hand, Net Neutrality leaves accessibility stagnant while oscillating the quality based on money.

Myth #2: An 'open' and 'neutral' Internet are the same thing

In a fight between three individuals, an “opened” fight means anyone can watch the quarrels between the two foes. “Neutral” means the third one will declare a winner without assisting one or the other. Similarly, the Internet has always been “opened” for anyone with access. Even at McDonalds, “free Wi-Fi” was made so that anyone can check their emails. Now, the “neutral” aspect was only a term coined by Columbia law professor Tim Wu to express his belief that Internet traffic must indiscriminately flow regardless of its origin or content.

Myth #3: Regulating ISPs is good (or bad) for users

Although some may consider stricter ISP regulation will be beneficial for Web entrepreneurs, others consider that it will only hinder the investment into the improvement of network infrastructure across the United States. As AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson remarked, his company will “pause” the improvement of its’ fiber network until the decision to the Net Neutrality was made.

Myth #4: Without net neutrality, some Internet users will experience slower service

There is a bit of logic in this myth: if a network rarely transmits heavy traffic, then there exists no reason for potentially fast traffic. Instead, pay the minimum for the basic services – and extra for “fast” services. However, there is a loose interpretation of the word “fast.” Will the ISPs consider currently default speed to be “slow” and create “faster” reservations for higher throughput of data? Or will it consider the default speed to be “fast” and throttle down the others? For this reason, the Internet is uncertain.

Myth #5: President Obama has the final word on net neutrality

As with almost everything in democracy, one’s word has a heavier weight than the others – but it’s not final. Likewise, President Obama’s opinions hold denser influence than the others, but it cannot be obligatory. President Obama expressed his belief that the final decision of the Net Neutrality resides in the hands of the “independent” FCC.

"Feminist" is Dead, Long Live Feminism

This is my response to the feminism panel. It's more about my experiences than sourced information.

After attending the Philosophy Club's feminism panel, I've realized two things. The first is that feminism in the general sense and feminism in the activist sense are two completely different things. This may have a bit to do with the Internet turning mild opinions into extreme ones but there are major differences between the two. In everyday life and in this panel, feminism seems to focus on second wave feminism, more prominently accepted. However, the Internet's feminism is more third wave feminism, focusing on concepts such as privilege and the patriarchy. I cannot find a study that proves this so this is based on my own observation. I've actually been told several times that I am not a feminist because I do not 100% believe in third wave feminism, which is why it's difficult for me and others to call themselves feminists. This would be all well and good as a misunderstanding, but it has intense ramifications.

The second thing I realized is how the Internet's feminism is accepted by the average feminist so readily. For example, GamerGate is seen as a misogynistic movement because some feminists believe it targeted a woman unfairly. One could argue GamerGate has sexist undertones. However, people confuse this with GamerGate being ABOUT harassing women. For example, the Newsweek article claiming female voices against GamerGate get the most harassment is not especially truthful. Their stats for harassment are just users who get mentioned with the hashtag. The majority of tweets are neutral and many are positive, these individuals simply engage on Twitter more. You could argue that the article is questioning why these women have been speaking more, but "GamerGate women engage more" is less eye catching than "GamerGate harasses women."

GamerGate is just one example. However, it is a prime example of the disconnect in feminism. Most people want women to be equal but, when trying to engage on the Internet, it's about more than equality feminism. When somebody rubs an Internet feminist the wrong way, they are torn to shreds and all feminists look down on that person. There are a few articles I can cite, but I'll use this one from The Nation about feminists tearing apart a feminist movement.

"[Courtney Martin's] long believed that it’s incumbent on feminists to be open to critique—but the response was so vitriolic, so full of bad faith and stubborn misinformation, that it felt like some sort of Maoist hazing. [Mikki] Kendall, for example, compared #Femfuture to Rebecca Latimer Felton, a viciously racist Southern suffragist who supported lynching because she said it protected white women from rape. 'It was really hard to engage in processing real critique because so much of it was couched in an absolute disavowal of my intentions and my person,'"

http://www.thenation.com/article/178140/feminisms-toxic-twitter-wars#

Disagreeing with Internet feminism can lead to a ruined movement or even a ruined personal life, even when you are a feminist. I consider myself a feminist, but I've been called nasty names just because I believe in X or don't believe in Y. The reason we have so many people saying "I'm not a feminist, but…" is because of this hateful response from Internet feminists. The ideals are the same, but saying you are one either invites a chance for your life to be ruined or to be associated with life ruiners. It's no wonder why Time put "feminist" on their poll. It's just sad Internet feminism is seen as so hateful that Time felt that was necessary.

Mars One will not go to space today

(Reference: http://xkcd.com/1133/)

Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to live to see human colonization of space, at least in its infancy. I plan on devoting a huge chunk of my career to furthering the technology that puts people into space, and I've logged hours on the space simulator "Kerbal Space Program." Naturally, I'm thrilled that someone has come along and done what Mars One has done. Mars One is a not-for-profit that has generated immense interest in the form of an open application to be one of the first four permanent Martians via their planned trip in 2025. Support for Mars One's mission is planned to come largely from a reality TV show tracking the progress of the mission. Mars One's mission is just the kind of bold leap humanity needs to take it's first, clumsy steps towards permanent extraterrestrial colonization, and it's found a creative way to fund itself. It's going to fail.

Mars One is going to fail because it is not realistically assessing or addressing the problems inherent to starting a permanent settlement on another planet. Firstly, they've focused basically all their efforts thus far on securing funding and selecting a crew- both important goals- but neglected technical elements of the mission. As Canadian former astronaut Chris Hadfield pointed out, concerns about recycling water and oxygen, as well as about power structures, protection from radiation, and extended periods of inactivity in near isolation are largely unaddressed.
Supposedly. Mars One is courting companies including SpaceX and Lockheed Martin, but no solid contracts have materialized thus far, and though the actual mission is far off, contracts should have been long since signed in order to get the unmanned practice missions ready on schedule.

Even with this attention to funding, there won't be nearly enough.  Mars One forecasts the total cost of the trip to be about $6 billion.  That's quite a disparity from NASA's estimate of a similar mission, which was set at $100 billion.  Admittedly, NASA was planning a round-trip, not a one-way flight, but despite increased fuel costs, NASA's estimate should realistically be lower than the cost of actually creating a largely self-sustaining habitat for four on Mars.  With the budget Mars One proposed and current technology, the crew will die only 68 days into the trip, according to an analysis by students at MIT.

I still do hope that Mars One is successful, but I fear the worst, and hope that no one loses their life without being fully aware of the risks involved.  Realistically, extraterrestrial colonization should start closer to home, with the Moon, and move to Mars and beyond from there.  Companies like SpaceX are doing well, and gradually making space more available to common people, but expeditions to Mars are going to require the kind of huge investment with little immediate payout that only governments are likely to make.  If mankind is so eager to get to Mars, maybe we should increase our funding for Space agencies to at least a penny out of every tax dollar.

Security and Standards for the Internet of Things

For a research paper I have been working on for CS 573, I have been studying the Internet of Things, focusing specifically on its industrial applications and security. Two recent articles show why the "Industrial Internet," which is a term coined by GE used to describe the connection of industrial machines and infrastructure to the Internet, will be a big and important part of the future and that the security of it is crucial for its development.

The first article from Forbes was about GE's recent announcement that the revenue from their Predictivity solutions (basically their current Industrial Internet software and systems) will exceed $1 billion in 2014. GE has generally been the leader of what they believe to be the Industrial Internet Revolution (kind of like a Second Machine Age), connecting a wide variety of devices to the Internet such as jet engines and power generators. It appears that they are succeeding not only in connecting devices but also in making money and actually improving various industries as they have claimed they would. Improvements they have shown include increased output from wind turbines and large gains in fuel efficiency from their jet engines.

The second article was about the importance of security to the success of the Industrial Internet. Connecting computers to industrial control equipment introduces new dangers like vulnerabilities to cyber-attacks, and the connection of those devices to the Internet provides even more ways for the devices to be attacked and introduces the problem of network security. The articles described the recent discovery of a variant of the BlackEnergy malware, which targeted "popular human-machine interfaces (HMIs) of industrial control systems." The most famous example of a cyber-attack on the industrial world, however, is the Stuxnet worm, which was most likely developed by the United States and Israel as an attack against Iran's nuclear program. It reportedly destroyed 1/5 of Iran's nuclear centrifuges.

So, security of the Industrial Internet is a big issue, and it even becomes a national security issue when critical infrastructure is involved in cyber-attacks or cyber warfare. However, because there are huge benefits of the Industrial Internet in both the public and private sector, governments and corporations are taking the issue of security very seriously.

I have also thought about the similarities between the creation of the Industrial Internet and the creation of the Internet, specifically in regards to the creation of standards as described by Russell. In many ways, the development processes appear to be similar, although perhaps now private corporations are more involved and security is a bigger concern. Still, government funding and research, along with efforts by private companies and new collaborative organizations, seem to be the driving force of standards creation. For example, companies like GE, AT&T, and IBM formed the Industrial Internet Consortium just this year, which mirrors the formation of organizations like OSI during the development of the Internet.


Sources:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2014/11/12/ge-is-beginning-to-see-strong-returns-on-its-industrial-internet-investments/
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1324538

‘Right to be forgotten’ across the globe

What could be the possible implications of the ‘right to be forgotten’ expanding from Europe to the rest of the world? One: “forget” requests would be immensely popular. Two: requests would be made to bleach one’s life’s darkest spots – thereby creating a misleadingly clean and exemplary image. Third: noted that one’s request is upheld only in Google’s subdomains (i.e. .co.uk or .fr), quite frankly, feeling hidden and secure by essentially removing a link from myopic search results is only fanciful.

According to EuropeanNews, on the first day of engagement in ‘right to be forgotten,’ 12,000 requests were made to be “forgotten” in Google. Since then, Google saw that the numbers only increased. The ‘right to be forgotten’ is based on the context from European Union’s Data Protection Reform: “[…] reflects the claim of an individual to have certain data deleted so that third persons can no longer trace them.” Whenever a person feels something misrepresents or invokes harm to his/her reputation, he/she can request it to be removed. Unfortunately, the same sentence doesn’t exist in laws of the United States – thereby giving Europe the higher ground in terms of legislative respect in one’s privacy.

In the recent months, Article 29 Working Party (WP29) has prepared a set of guidelines to remove “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive” search results. However, similar to #3 (“noted that […] myopic search results is only fanciful”), WP29 had pointed out that simply “de-listing” search results in a small scale doesn’t “satisfactorily guarantee the rights” of a person in a ruling. Therefore, WP29 made a request to remove results in a global scale (www.google.com), in addition to 28 EU country domains (i.e. Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, etc.).

In a reflection of this, I realized that European Union, in some ways, casts a different light in the term “freedom.” All the derivatives and context of “freedom” can be expressed in different ways (i.e. Freedom of Speech) – however, there exists a fundamental difference between how the United States and European countries tackles its’ interpretation. United States does not enforce its’ freedoms. Instead, with each instance of a controversy, a loose interpretation becomes more delineated (i.e. Elonis v. United States, 13-983). In the European Union, a party is made (i.e. WP29) to enforce and challenge the single meaning of its declaration: “an individual to have certain data deleted so that third persons can no longer trace them.” In a way, I see that freedom is made more powerful and clear when they are elaborated in detail – not loosely hinted.

UPS - Technological Innovations

                In their book, The Second Machine Age, authors Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee state that with the coming of the new technologies of the Second Machine Age, such as driverless cars, robot diagnosticians and even multi-functional androids, the productivity of companies, GDP, and bounty, capital acquired from the more efficient technologies, will increase. With their argument that we have already begun the Second Machine Age with computers and digital technologies, they give reasons for our current lack of increase in productivity and the recession. These reasons boil down to the need to restructure the current business model to harness the power of new technologies and the need of innovative entrepreneurs and CEOs to raise efficiency. While this may be a long process, one article about UPS’s innovations might be a promising start to raise productivity and introduce new technologies.

                One example, in The Second Machine Age, of technology not taking its full effect is the layout of factories. When electricity was first introduced, the largest electric motors were put where the steam engines used to be, piled close together to minimize the distance. This layout kept productivity constant, it did not increase. When the motors were moved away from each other however, productivity soared.  This same occurrence is happening at UPS today with Delivery information Acquisition Devices (DIAD). For the past 20 years, DIADs were used to document deliveries as they were completed but that is beginning to change. With a new algorithm called ORION, DIADs are filled at the beginning of the day to provide the drivers with an order of the deliveries. ORION analyzes the distances between locations to provide the optimal order for travel distance while still following UPS’s regulations. As a result, millions of gallons of gas are saved and output increases while the input remains the same. Improvements like these will help companies take advantage of new, and old, technologies to raise productivity.

                Another point worth noting is the importance of an adept innovator or entrepreneur in this process. The Second Machine Age proves this by the statement that “a single decision that increases value by a modest 1 percent is worth $100 million to a ten-billion-dollar company”. Thus, “even a small difference in the perceived talents of CEO candidates can lead to fairly large differences in their compensation”. UPS shares this view: “when you have an organization the size of UPS – with 99,000 vehicles and 424,000 employees – every single little bit of efficiency that can be squeezed out of daily operations translates into a big deal”. The CEO of UPS uses analytics in order to better utilize technology which leads to productivity.

                By changing business practices and adopting new, innovative ideas, companies like UPS will be able to harness the power of the technologies of the Second Machine Age and raise productivity and GDP. With more companies following UPS’s footsteps, the stall in productivity, which could be seen when electricity was first introduced, could be overcome and the effects of the current recession could dissipate.

Source: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2853427/how-ups-uses-analytics-to-drive-down-costs-and-no-it-doesn-t-call-it-big-data.html

Technological Evolution - Poor Outlook on Health.

            Technologies developed in the 21^st Century, as mentioned in The Second Machine Age - our last piece of reading material for this semester, maximize the output that is created from companies and factories while keeping the same input. Thus, technologies increase the productivity and gains of the company by speeding up production and keeping things cost effective. By demonstrating the fast growth of technologies, their new capabilities, and their future potential, the authors warn the readers about the ill effects of technology, mainly machines replacing humans in the workplace and the ever-increasing spread between social classes which is created by technology. What the book does not mention are the negative health effects that technologies today, and of the future, have on people. Similarly to the authors in the book, I will present the causes and effects of current and future technology and give proposed solutions and recommendations to amend the situation. While the authors focused on job displacement and society, I will focus on health.

            In the article “As Technology Gets Better, Will Society Get Worse?” by Tim Wu of The New York Time, technology is presented as a type of evolution. Biological evolution, the natural selection process, has always been viewed with success. We, as people, are confident that biological evolution has helped us gain immunity against diseases, allowed us to develop our brains - which led to language, complex thought and problem solving, and helped us survive as a species. However, although biological evolution is essential, it is much slower than technological evolution in changing the way we live. The many technological advances such as cellphones, televisions and internet have had a great impact on our health, much greater than that of biological changes.

            In order to show the effects that technology has on health, Wu mentions the Oji-Cree, a group of people that live in an isolated area south of the Hudson Bay. In the 20^th Century, the Oji-Cree used little technological advances in their daily tasks. They used dog sleds and canoes for transportation, hunted their own food, and generally had a tough life with much physical strain. The hard life they lived helped them stay healthy and kept them away from mental breakdowns and substance abuse. However, with the introduction of technologies such as trucks and snowmobiles, the Oji-Cree was now able to import their food and cease their travel through old technologies. These new technologies lead to a decrease in exercise and an increase in consumption of television programming, sweets and alcohol. As a consequence, the people of the Oji-Cree suffered health problems such as increases in obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. They also faced social problems such as alcoholism, suicide, and drug addiction.

            The story of the Oji-Cree brings about problems – negative health impacts due to technology - not discussed in The Second Machine Age. Thus, solutions must be discussed so that future technologies will decrease the problems rather than increase them. Some of my recommendations would be to refuse or limit the technologies that will foster lack of movement or exercise – such as robots that are programmed to bring you things, make technology that will encourage exercise – such as physical trainer robots, and foster technology that value their users’ health by notifying them of the negative health effects it may have on their health. By enacting these, and any other, positive recommendations into the design process of future technology and the laws directing the technological regulations, people of the future will be healthier because of technology, as opposed to our current situation.

The Robots in Interstellar

I saw Interstellar this past week. I really enjoyed the brick shaped robots, TARS and CASE.  In form they reminded me of HAL, but definitely not in function.  If you have not seen Interstellar these robots were basically large walls with screens on them.  They used what looked like magnets to hold themselves together and this allowed them to change into many different shapes.  The robots proved to be very useful and very loyal.  The robots would always do what they were told. There was even a point in the movie where the robot said it didn’t have to be asked to do anything, it could be told to do something and it would have to do it.  This fact was strange compared to the way the robots were treated.  The robots were treated as people and were even referred to by humans as “he,” implying that the robots themselves are people. The robots even had unique personalities, but were still treated as tools. So the question is “when is robot really a person and if so how should they be treated?”

In the game Mass Effect there was an uprising of robot slaves against this creator.  The question that started it all was “does this unit have a soul?” In other words have we created an AI so intelligent that it is actually as sophisticated as the human consciousness?  I believe it is theoretically possible to create a machine that fully simulates the human brain and thus leading to the machine having a “soul.”

The humans in Interstellar constantly interacted with the robots in very personal way.  It even seemed that the humans had formed friendships with the robots through the course of the movie.  Humans would casually converse with robots. This is very odd given the fact that humans were able to reprogram the personalities of the robots at will.  The humans could adjust various settings of the robots such as humor or honesty, and this would effectively change how the robot would act.  In a healthy human to human relationship one party couldn’t just change the personality of the person at a whim. I believe that it was unethical to treat the robots as humans at times and machines at others.  I believe the humans in Interstellar have not ever posed the question from Mass Effect.  They treat the robots as people only when it is convenient to them.

Furthermore the robots would have to obey the humans for any request.  This would include endangering themselves in order to save humans.  The robots were treated as second-rate citizens. In the Interstellar world the society has not evolved enough to treat robots as humans.  This is surprising because the movie is set multiple generations in the future and these questions are already being posed today. It is just odd that the humans at times decide the robots are worthy of human rights and other times they decide that they do not deserve any of this.