Module 13

Jayden Nyman

IST 1100

Module 13

            Taking this class has been a great decision for me. I have learned a lot of things that I had never even thought about that were very interesting. Technology has advanced and changed so much over the years it is crazy to look back and see how it all started.

            What really amazed me was the book we read by Friedman “The World is Flat”. It really showed how technology has grown and the different ways that it is successful. One of the major things I learned in the book is about globalization 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. He talked a lot about how the world is has become a flatter more open world. He showed us many things throughout the book that proved that it was a flat world. The supply chaining is another things that I never really thought about. I knew what it was, but never thought too much of it. He talked about Wal-Mart being a huge supply chain and the ways that they are making it operate and become successful business tactic. Many of the things that we learned in the book have had a major effect on how technology is today. Most of the major corporations use other countries to produce their products for them. They really only send off the produced product to the customers in the United States, everything else is made and produced in other countries because it is a lot cheaper. There are a few exceptions though with some companies that produce everything in the United States, but that is becoming more rare with how much money you can save by producing products and services in other countries. Being able to research other topics besides Freidman’s book throughout the class was cool and I liked the assignment that we had about watching a movie and looking for computer related technology to write our two page essay on. Technology and computers has definitely changed the way that we live our lives today.

            This class was set up in a great way in my opinion. The workload in this class was tolerable, which is good because of all the other classes that we have assignments and tests to study for. A lot of classes at Weber State University give you way to much work for the course and this class was well balanced. I really liked how we had breaks in between some of our reading out of “The World is Flat” to be able and write about other topics. This helped to keep me interested in the book and not get worn out from continuous reading. The best park of the class was the fact that we did not have any tests. This was by far the best part for me because I am not a good test taker. Tests have really been my issue the past years so being able to just focus on the assignments helped out a lot. I will recommend this class to anyone who is interested in technology whatsoever it really was a great class and was enjoyable.

Module 12

Jayden Nyman

IST 1100

Module 12

            From module 12 I read an article written by Bill Joy for the Wired Magazine. The title was “Why the future doesn’t need us.” He talked about many things that we could do to make our kind extinct. There are certain things that Joy discussed that could be used to our advantage, but there were also things that could be used to our downfall. Joy talked a lot about nanotechnology, genetics, and robotics. Those topics he stated could all be used to our own advantage if dealt with in the correct way.

            Bill Joy talked about how nanotechnology could be used for the good dealing with medicine, but on the other hand people would use it for bad and good. Anything that can be used for good things with medicine can be altered into a bad form. These could lead to things like new illegal drugs on the market. But if people were smart nanotechnology could be as a major benefit to medicine.

            Genetics seem to be abused by people in scary ways. The really scary part about genetics is that it can be used to make biological weapons. What does that mean? Well, that means that whether it is used by the good or the bad, anyone and any country could make a biological weapon using genetics. This could means either good or bad, because it could be used by us a defense mechanism, while it could be used by our enemies for terrorism. He used the Atom Bomb as the example of a way that we were able to use genetics as a benefit the United States. I feel as it will spread to the people whom we do not want having the access too. If we used genetics in a way that other countries and enemies could not copy and duplicate then I would say it would be a great thing. If we can’t, then I suggest we don’t try and do not let the ideas and information slip into the wrong hands.

            Bill Joy really interested me with the robotics topic. He talked about how humans would want to use robotics as a way to prolong the human life span. This is pretty crazy and scary, because robotics could be used to pretty much takeover the human race, and especially if robotics was used for making artificial intelligence. This could takeover the human race, but really only if we allowed it to get to that point. Robotics could be used as an awesome tool if we decided to use it in the correct way. It would make life a lot easier to maintain if we could have that technology available to us, but in the same sense it could make people lazier than they already are becoming in our world today.

            All of these topics could be used as a way for greater good, or a way to completely destroy the world as we know it today. The simplest way to put it is that we will both succeed with nanotechnology, genetics, and robotics and create a world that is so much different than what we know, or we will end up ruining the world as we know it. So much thought goes into these articles coving topics that have huge impacts on our society. Hopefully we will manage to find a way to incorporate the good benefits of nanotechnology, robotics, and genetics into our lifestyles. While we want to fight for the good affects, we have to push away the bad outcomes from happening at the same time in order to achieve success.

Module 11

Jayden Nyman

IST 1100

Module 11

            I chose to watch the Matrix it has been quite some time since I last saw the movie and it is really good. I had a hard time finding it though with all the movie rental stores being shutdown because of the Redbox takeover. The movie consists of a dreamworld that is completely computer generated. And of course it is fictional because they use humans as a way to power the dreamworld. Its like the human is literally the power source, and the brain is what is powering the game. In the Matrix movie it states that there are rules that can be broken, this talking about computer systems. In our world I feel as if that statement is true, there are different rules and things that can be broken by very intelligent hackers. This is scary and I know that our identity is something that can be stolen and is a major concern in our society.

            It is almost like a game that we would play nowadays. How, or why? Well, because we would just put the game into the system and play it, but in the Matrix you put the human into the generator that allows the user to be sent into a computer generated dreamworld. This is crazy, I’ve always been a fan of science fiction movies and the Matrix is definitely one of the best I have seen.

            To talk a little bit about how the Matrix is fictional is quite easy. Can we dodge bullets and go into slow motion in our world? I would say no, but it would be pretty cool to be able to dodge a bullet. I know that the movie is fictional, but try to imagine a world where the Matrix was real. What would you do if you were in a computer generated dreamworld? In my opinion I would think it was cool, but at the same time it would be pretty scary. If I could be plugged into a machine and sent off to another life it would probably scare me, but then again if everyone else was doing it then I wouldn’t look at it the same way. If we had technology that advanced in our society it would be a life changer. No single job would be the same as it is today, and everyone would know the world as a completely different place.

            If our world turns into a brain powered dreamworld I would doubt it would be in our generation. I feel like something like that is so far away it seems ridiculous to even talk about, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t interesting because it definitely is. The Matrix is an awesome movie, one that I will watch many more times in my life.

Module 10

Jayden Nyman

IST 1100

Module 10

            This story is about a maintenance man and is set in the future. His name is Joe, he works for the Logics Company and his job is to service logics. Logics are really just like the Internet nowadays. Except that the hardware is what they call the “tank”, and what we know as the Internet is a collection of computer networks to Joe and his workers. How it works is whatever you want to do requires you to punch in the information into the interface screen. This is practically what our Internet does today, with a computer to input the information and then the browser to find whatever it is you want.

            Continuing with the story, Logics can now be asked questions of how to do something if you’re unsure. One of Joe’s workers punches in “How can I get rid of my wife?” Just playing around to see what it says. Soon after the screen pops up with a question asking “is she blonde or brunette?” He then punches in “Blonde.” After a few minutes of waiting the screen says, “Hexymetacryloaminoacetine is a constituent of green shoe polish. Take home a frozen meal including dried-pea soup. Color the soup with green shoe polish. It will appear to be green-pea soup. Hexymetacryloaminoacetine is a selective poison which is fatal to blond females but not to brunettes or males of any coloring. This fact has not been brought out by human experiment, but is a product of logics service. You cannot be convicted of murder. It is improbable that you will be suspected." This is crazy because you can really type these things into the Internet now days and find out how to do terrible things. The story was without a question prophetic when it comes to what Logics does, and then what the Internet does now. You can ask the Internet, or even Siri on the IPhone direct questions and receive answers. This is cool because it is what the Logics system was doing.

            What is completely prophetic with the entire story of Logic and our Internet we all know and love today, is that if the Internet or Logic was shut down our society would not know how to live. This was even mentioned in the story. They stated that if they were to shut down Logics, then they would be sent back to a civilization they had forgotten how to run. This completely relates to todays technology and Internet. Imagine today’s society dealing with the loss of all communication and technology. It would completely shut down the world, as we know it. All that would have to happen for the collapse of the world is an EMP going off and taking out anything in the United States that has anything to do with electricity and power. If you think about this it is truly pretty scary. Imagine not being able to contact any of your family members, and not having any power to help us survive. We wouldn’t even be able to start up our cars to drive to family members, because every car uses a battery to start and run.

            This story was pretty amazing. The fact that they could predict pretty accurately what we have today is crazy. The only things we don’t seem to have today are computers that do everything for us. I will be looking for that in our future.

Module 9

Jayden Nyman

IST 1100

Module 9

            The building of a Dell Laptop consists of many different parts. First off production of the laptops are run throughout different countries to be built before they are shipped off to the United States. The first process of the building of Dell laptop consists of the customer going online to pick out their desired laptop with the specifications desired. After choosing the laptop of choice the customer will call a Dell sales representative, or complete the order online. Once the order complete and paid for it is shipped off to Taiwan to begin the building process. Once the Dell laptop is built it is then shipped off to the United States to be processed and sent to the customer’s home. Friedman explains that we are collaborating with different countries to successfully build the laptops. He also states that if we ended up going to war with these countries there would be major geopolitical damages. I definitely agree because going to war would shut down many of our countries ways for distribution, because almost every company now days relies on another country for the production of their products. If you think about everything you buy and how many of the products are made out of the United States it is almost all of them. Most everything I own was made in a different country. I think that we should make more of our products within the United States.

            Al-Qaeda does have a supply chain like we do in the United States. They use their supply chain as a way to create products of terrorism, which is pretty scary if you think about it. How affective supply chaining is results in good things for the United States, but it could used to produce terrorism against the United States with terrorist groups like al-Qaeda using supply chaining to their advantage. Even Friedman states that al-Qaeda uses all the functions of the flat world to their advantage. Al-Qaeda uses the flat world to send terrorism threats over video or message using the Internet. A perfect example of the flat world being used to send threats is just recently with ISIS. This terrorist group sent the United States a video of a new reported they had held hostage. Not only did they just show the news reporter, but sent a video of him being decapitated. This is disgusting and we need to find a way to stop things like this from happening, but with the flattening of the world their will always be a way for terrorist groups to send gruesome content to whomever they please. Knowing that terrorist groups are using the flat world to their advantage is a very scary thing.

            The curse of oil stated by Freidman is when the leaders of a country take advantage of the money coming in from drilling for oil instead of “drilling” the natural talents and energy of their people. Doing this keeps them in control, and or in office forever. The leaders use the oil money as a way to control all things used to create power. They do this so that they don’t have to share the power. This is where our country is so much different than the others. These other countries do not tax their people because of the ways that the leaders run things. This being why “the curse of oil” exists.