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.