Final Thoughts

After writing this paper, I learned what it meant for modern-day colleges to be technopolies. I can understand that the colleges control the decision making for students for their field of study. But this is not as bad as it sounds. Colleges control which field a student can study, but they are deciding the best opportunity in the best interest of the student's future. These technological tools allow students to browse their options predetermined by the college and manage the required courses for graduation. These tools are intended to aid and assist the student in making the right decision. When students choose not to use the decision making tools properly it usually results in problems. Colleges can be considered technopolies but when the system is used the way it was intended for, then Colleges can be considered good technopolies.

Not only has this paper educated me on topics our society is experiencing as i type, but the class as a whole has as well. After the final paper, i felt as though everything was brought together well about the dilemmas of a generation where technology plays a humongous role in everyones lives. The debate of whether we are a spoiled generation that take advantage of the advance tools that surround us has brought up my awareness. I will be eager to see how the next generation will be portrayed and how they adapt to the technological resources that will most likely be more advanced then the technology today.

Final Assignment Progress Blog 1

Just started my final paper today, so far so good, but i find myself getting distracted easily due to something called facebook. I am assuming this is what was meant by tracking your progress while writing the final paper, if not this is part of my progress anyways. I'm sure other students have faced this dilemma as well, while writing their papers. Facebook has gotten to the point where it is a necessity to check, as much as an email account. Students are posting up statuses that are all similar in someway since every student is going through the same thing. "Oh i hate finals" or "I hate studying" or "I just want winter break to come!" And under all those statuses you can find hundreds of likes and comments because other students take mini breaks from their work to check up on their friends. Also another thing was, when i came to the library i knew the place would be packed with students who were working on papers and studying for finals, so i whipped out my laptop, went to facebook, wrote on my status, "is anyone at alexander library" and sure enough i got a few responses in a less than a minute. I am writing about technopolies and the use of technology in colleges. This is one incident that I used facebook in a way to help me get my work done. A nice place to sit and concentrate. Back to my paper.

The Social Network

From what i can take from the movie. The movie portrays Marc Zuckerburg as an asshole pretty much who is self indulged and focused solely on the success of his website. He does not pay attention to his close friends and makes friends with people who do not really care about him like his true friend. I keep hearing that The Social Network story is a bit misleading. Though it is true that the brothers who claim that Zuckerburg stole their idea at Harvard and are still in settlement agreements in court. The Social Network for the most part is based on the real story of the development of facebook and little is fictional. It is just a Hollywood spin on the story and is making a big impact in the theaters. The director is the same guy who did "21" which is a movie about the MIT students who counted cards in vegas to cheat the game of blackjack and make money. I do not have a problem with The social network movie. Nowadays, everything is over-exaggerated and taken out of context a little bit to make room for a better outlook and final product for better entertainment. The social network was the best movie ive seen in a long time, other than the length of the movie, everything else was very entertaining and interesting. In class we discussed how people perceive time when it comes to facebook, this was portrayed in the movie in the scene of the crew race. When the old man was like, "my daughter at another school already has heard about the close lost on something called facebook". It is true that we are more connected through facebook and we are updated by the click of a button. I would suggest that you incorporate this movie into the "Technology and Culture in America" course. Since we were the first class when this movie came out we could not really go deep into its possibilities of being an academic resource. Facebook is the future and the future of this class, i think, will be based on the capabilities of facebook. I give this film, 2 thumbs up and 9.5/10. Without this extra credit assignment, i dont think i wouldve went to see this movie, i was not interested and it seemed boring. But im glad i got to experience a great movie, based on a revolution that I am apart of today.

Facebook Effect 3rd Part pg. 214-333

At this point of the Facebook effect by David Kirkpatrick, it begins to introduce the platform that was integrated into Facebook. This allowed users to use applications on the interface of the website. At this time, myspace was still more known than facebook. But at the offices of Palo Alto were being filled with employees at a steady rate. Facebook seemed to be growing at a fast rate and it seemed to have trouble keeping up with its own growth. The new Platform allowed facebook users to play games such as the Texas Holdem and later on a bunch of other games would create crazes for the facebook community. These application companies were doing extremely well due to the success of facebook itself, "There are more than 500,000 applications operating on Facebook, created by over 1 million registered developers from 180 countries" (232). The Facebook company would form many partnerships with many application companies.

Due to the rapid growth of Facebook, Facebook needed to raise money to pay for more servers to keep the site running properly. They had begun thinking about advertisements on facebook and ended up getting a deal for 15 billion dollars. At this time Google pretty much was in control of over half of the advertisement online. And Google wanted to buy Facebook from Zuckerburg for less than 15 billion. But Zuckerburg was not at all interested.

Facebook spread around the whole world changing society not only in the states, but in different countries as well. Countries with dirt roads would have facebook. It has become an epidemic of the world's society and who knows where the end of facebook is. So far there seems to be none in sight. Zuckerburg's intentions were to create a social bound between people but being able to protect people's personal information at the same time. So far i think facebook has been a staple in American society and is considered part of the society as well. So if you do not have a facebook you may be considered not part of a social network and seem to be the outcast in terms of social situations.

Facebook Effect 2nd part pg 107-214

In the 2nd part of the Facebook effect by David Kirkpatrick, how Thefacebook got off the ground is being discussed. As all starting companies, Thefacebook needed investors to jump start the project. An investor named Warren Buffet came to Zuckerberg and Graham's office in Palo Alto, "He said the arrical of Buffet was a transformative moment in the life of the company" (108-109). What the investors like the most about Thefacebook was the audience it targeted and how much the audience interacted with the website on a daily basis. Like the poll on the Class Website now, the question is how often do you sign onto facebook. For the most part people sign on ATLEAST 3-5 times according to the poll but im sure that students check facebook more than that. American society is obsessed with social interaction and facebook, "...what drives them is their extreme interest in their friends - what they are doing, what they are thinking, and where they are going" (107). In Fall 2005, Thefacebook changed its name to Facebook and broadened its targeted audiences, "Facebook was no longer just a college phenomenon" (150). At this point, Facebook continues to grow at a rapid rate and sees no end of success. In 2006, the News Feed Application was added to Facebook. This allowed friends to see top news of what their friends were doing without having to go to their individual page "The News Feed would be a radical change. "It's not a new feature, it's a major a product evolution...It would remake Facebook" (182). At the end of the section we needed to read, Kirkpatrick talks about privacy on Facebook. He said, "The reality is that nothing on Facebook is really confidential. The company's own privacy policy is blunt on this score" (204). I have not read Facebook's privacy policy because i do not really care, but i agree with Kirkpatrick. We have discussed this in class one day, about how users are able to set their privacy options to who is able to see their information and what information they are allowed to access. But there are little ways here and there that your 'Face', info, and you personal matters you post on facebook to leak out to the world wide public. Facebook is not perfect and in terms of privacy i do not think it will ever be perfect. Americans need to learn that when you enter these types of societies where there is a mass number of people invloved, someway, somehow things you do not want strangers to know will get to them eventually. That is unless you do not put anything up in the first place.

Call of Duty influences Violence?

So after the last class where one group presented the Wikipedia article "GTA", the class discussed about how kids were influenced by games such as Grand Theft Auto (the kid who killed 3 cops) and Counter Strike (the kid from Vtech). Many believe that kids are easily influenced by social media and socialism. Kids who are exposed to other kids who do bad things like drugs, drink and sex are more likely to get involved. Now these games are rated M for mature for a reason. Meaning that you should not be playing the game unless you are 18 years of age. Otherwise, the parents are in control of the content their kids are exposed to and should not allow their kids to play these games if they think it is going to have this effect on them.

That being said throughout the week i was watching TV and a Call of Duty: Black Ops commercial came on. Black Ops is a First person shooter, taken place in Vietnam with Vietcong Guerrilla soldiers fighting against US special forces. But the commercial used known celebrities and professional sports players. The idea behind it was that these celebrities were holding guns acting as if they were the soldier in the game. And the slogan of the commercial was "there's a soldier in all of us". I thought this was exactly what we were talking about in class and thought it'd be nice to post this up. These war video game producers are trying to reach out to young kids and make them believe that they can be just like these soldiers and be a killing machine. If i were a parent i would not let my kids play this game until i thought they were mature enough to not take it seriously.

http://www.youtube.com/user/CALLOFDUTY?v=Pblj3JHF-Jo&feature=pyv&ad=7241155292&kw=black%20ops%20commercial

Midterm Wikipedia Audit Process

I think the Wikipedia Audit process was a good project for this class. It gives us insight on the Wikipedia Articles and Entries by showing us that some articles are almost useless for scholarly work. Most of the professors ive had at Rutgers, if not all, do not allow students to use Wikipedia as a source for research papers. I agree with this, Wikipedia should not be used as a scholarly source to research topics. As we have discussed in class, it can be used to look up a subject for a broad overview, but for detailed facts and points, the subject should be backed up by other sources such as news sources or medical journals for example. The Wikipedia's strength is to have a common place for people to search topics they are not familiar with to get familiarized with it, but it's weakness comes into play when it needs to be used in a scholarly manner.

As we all know, the American society is somewhat lazy to say the least. Technology, i believe, has had a big impact on American laziness. Since encyclopedias were all made of paper before Wikipedias addition to online search engines, people have become dependent on technology to get tasks done faster than they could before. Bottom line, technology has given individuals all this information readily available at their finger tips in mere seconds. And it has effected American culture tremendously in terms of a lazy and spoiled society.

Overall this project was a well designed assignment. The only thing i would say about the process is announcing the assignment earlier in the term to allow for students to organize better and create even better presentations. Other than that, i enjoyed auditing a Wikipedia article and have become aware of the liability of the sources in Wikipedia articles and the pages content.

FaceBook FX Part 1

In the book "The Facebook Effect" by David Kirkpatrick, Kirkpatrick explains to his readers that the Facebook has revolutionized social networks. There has been many other social networks that have been before Facebook's time,like Myspace, but why haven't they flourished and made as big as an impact as Facebook has on the world? Facebook has taken the flaws of these other websites and incorporated all the ideas of all social devices into one super website, the one we all know well, www.facebook.com. I am not familiar with the other networks mentioned in the book such as "Well", "an electronic bulletin board called The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link" (pg. 66) or theGlobe.com, but i am familiar with Myspace and AIM (American Online Instant Messenger). Facebook has taken the idea of an "away message" that was a big asset in AIM and incorporated it into the interface of Facebook.com, "the status".

The main reason for Facebook and for other social network's success is their social target. Like the first network that was aimed towards college students. "The first social network explicitly intended for college students had begun at Standford University in November 2001. It was probably also the first real social network ever launched in the United States" (pg. 77). It says that only students that attended Stanford and had a .edu email were able to join and use this social network. This is the same concept that Facebook has required for their members. I have had a facebook for about 4 years now and i was not able to get one until i got my Rutgers .edu email. This idea confirms that the people that are signing up are real people and are signing up as themselves and cannot pose as another person.

All these ideas have made facebook a household name and in my personal opinion an imperative device to have if you have want to have any sort of social life. As important as an email, it is automatically concluded that someone has a facebook to be able to contact other people with.

"Social networking has now extended across the entire planet. Facebook is the world's largest such network. It is the rare high school and college student who does not routinely use Facebook..." (pg. 85).

Facebook has revolutionized the web and social life, and will continue to grow in the years to come.

Made to Break Last 3rd pg 186-281

In the last part of "Made to Break", the author Giles Slade begins to talk about knowledge and skills involving applications on computers. He brings up the idea that the information that people have right now about technology is going to be close to irrelevant in 10-15 years. For example, people have the knowledge of using Word processor and are able to type words fast on a document. But Slade is trying to say that that particular skill or knowledge may not be useful in the future because technology is made to keep advancing. That is how companies make so much money on their products. The older technology is outdated and therefore the new technology is sold for the same amount of money that the older technology was sold for when it was "new". Technology obsolesce, as mentioned in my previous posts, plays a huge part in technology and its advances. Slade says, "The speed at which this technological obsolesce occurred became obvious during Apollo's last flight in 1975, when American astronauts aboard this joint Apollo-Soyuz docking mission carried with them programmable HP-65 pocket calculators that were several time's more powerful than the capsule's inboard computer designed less than a decade before" (pg. 197).

In the last chapters, Slade brings the up the problem of technology in terms of hazardous waste. There are many technological products that still work, that are thrown away because consumers buy new products that are more updated than the old ones. These waste can cause health problems for people in the US and affects the whole wide world for that matter. That is why Slade thinks that obsolesce plays a part in harming the world because these products are being outdated so quickly that the waste piles gain more and more electronic waste that can be a health threat to people who live near these landfills. Slade states, "E-waste is not the only problem associated with cell phones. The introduction of every new technology brings with it a complex set of challenges, some of what cannot be recognized initially. In the 1980s, these were referred to as "technological "hazards." Today, they are usually described with the more neutral term "technological risk," a phrase which encompasses many more issues than the creation and disposal of hazardous e-waste" (pg. 277).
As you can see obsolesce has an indirect link to harming American society and also puts the American society's mindset in having to purchase companies' products that will be outdated by their newer products that will bring in revenue for the corporates and bring in more "technological risks" into American society for American society to feel health problems from the very same products they use themselves.
Smart

-ChristoPHO

Made to Break 2nd Third Pg 83-185

In pages 83-185 of "Made to Break" by Giles Slade, Slade talks about the AM and FM radio. The FM radio helped with communication during World War II. But the AM radio have shorter wavelengths than FM and therefore cannot reach a certain area for coverage. The whole ideal behind the AM and FM is that people think that the FM was available when the AM was out but they only release the AM to make as much money from it as they could until they released FM. Since FM is better there would be more of a demand for FM after people got used to AM. American society is sort of oblivious to the fact that corporations manufacture their products to purposely stop working after a certain amount of time. Usually around the time the factory warranty expires, therefore forcing the consumers to buy more products and give the companies more money. I feel as though it is a smart tactic in the industry world because just like the encyclopedias mention in the Wikipedia novel, products get outdated and the companies need a way to make more money. Once a product is outdated its time to produce newer products for consumers to buy and American society tends to purchase products that are popular at the time.

Made to Break 1st third pg 1-83

In the book "Made to Break" written by Giles Slade, Slade talks about the Capitalist Government and the industries in America and how they use products to produce more revenue. They are able to produce more revenue by purposely making products that will break after a certain amount of time. This amount of time could be right after the manufacturer warranty expires. Giles Slade exaplins it as, "Planned Obsolescence is the catch-all phrase used to describe the assortment of techniques used to artificially limit the durability of a manufactured good in order to stimulate repetitive consumption"(pg. 5). That way consumers, American society, will continuously buy the same products once every 3 or 4 years (depending on when the product is set to discontinue to operate). These products range from everyday household items such as toasters, tv's, vacuums, to large products like cars. (I heard BMW's are set to break down after they reach the 100k miles mark).

With the ever-growing rate of technology today, technology is getting out-dated faster and faster. A technology that was made today can be outdated quickly in a matter of months, weeks, or even days. That is why the brand new technology being sold on the market is the most expensive and a few years later you can get the same product for about 1/8 of the price. I remember when i bought an I-Pod (the really bulky one with no graphics on the screen and it was 300 dollars). The technology is outgrowing itself and is a perfect product to be used with "planned obsolescence". Justus George, an advertiser, brought up the notion of "Progressive Obsolescence" because consumers are not dumb and become wearer of the products that magically just stop working. He suggests, "the progressive obsolescence principle...means buying for up-to-dateness, efficiency, and style, buying for....the sense of moderness rather than simply for the last ounce of use" (pg 58). American society wants products they can rely on and pay for the newest product in its category. They do not want to see their personal belongings die after a short period of time after they have purchased the item.

Wikipedia Analysis 2nd Half

The second half of "The World and Wikipedia" by Andrew Dalby begins by talking about why society loves wikipedia. Dalby suggests that society loves wikipedia because it is like a virtual world, "We love it because it's a virtual nation, or rather a virtual world" (pg. 120). Also since Wikipedia is so interactive and anyone is able to change its content. But i believe we love it because when we need information it is so easy for us to go to the online encyclopedia and access the information that we need. American society is in love with laziness. Whatever is easy and fast for people they lean towards and rely heavily on it. That is why people are in love with the internet and great sites just like Wikipedia. In the book there are a lot of examples of articles wikipedians put on the website. There are many articles about people and usually the information is from the authors themselves. Dalby also says, "We love Wikipedia because we love talking about ourselves" (pg. 148). Which i agree with completely. Society is filled with a bunch of people who love to think highly of themselves. These people combined with the wikipedia website creates a reason for people to use the site.

Cars Drive Themselves?

My current event was about the Google car, which is an autonomous car capable of driving itself IN traffic. The article was from nytimes.com. The link - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/science/10google.html?_r=1&ref=technology Sebastian Thrun, the director of Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory is the mastermind behind the project. The car is equipped with sensory cameras which give the car a 360 degree view of what's around it while driving. The only time the car was in an accident was when it was on a test drive and someone rear-ended it from behind while it was at a red light. How ironic.

My question to the class was "Are we as a society ready to put our lives in the hands of this technology?" And the other question was "If the car was to get into an accident who would be liable, the passenger behind the wheel or Google the developers?"

There was mixed thoughts about the technology. Of course this project will take many more years until it is ready to take on society. Some students thought it was not safe and we cannot trust it. What if the car malfunctions? Stuff like that.

People thought the person behind the wheel should be liable because they are capable of taking control of the car anytime. It is still their responsibility to make sure the road is safe.

Overall i thought this was a very interesting article and would like to see this product further in the future. But for now society is not ready for it.

Why Wiki Web? Critical Analysis 7-113

In Andrew Dalby's "The World and Wikipedia", Dalby tells us about the people who contribute to Wikipedia, (Wikipedians) who invented Wikipedia, why it was invented, and the pros and cons of Wikipedia. A brief overview of why it first came into existed: Gaius Plinius Secundus, referred to as Pliny in the book, spent everyday getting books read to him as well as always had a notebook in his hand. He uses the word encyclopaedia which meant "full circle of knowledge", "He is the first known author to have used the word encyclopaedia, 'full circle of knowledge'" (pg 20). There was simply too much information to be put on paper. As well as the problem of updating the material, "One annual issue looked very much like another, and people soon discovered that a slightly used set of Britannicas was very nearly as good as a new set while costing a small fraction of the price" (pg.29). So then encyclopedia enthusiasts moved on to CD-ROMs. This was a good idea at the time but then it was too much a hassle for users to switch between CDs if they needed information from another CD, "Encyclopaedia Britannica itself appeared in a CD-ROM version, in 1994, it would not fit comfortably on one disc; a big nuisance to any home user..." (pg. 30). Wikipedia came about from the initial idea of an online encyclopedia, Nupedia- started with Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales. Later Sanger thought of an idea of adding software that allowed “anyone” to alter the information. That is how Wikipedia got its name from the Hawaiian adverb ‘wikiwiki’ which meant ‘fast’. Wikipedia started on January 15, 2001. Since then it has grown exponentially. Some problems that come with Wikipedia is that people can conduct vandalism and put information that completely false and it will be able to stay on the website until someone else changes it, “The best feature of the site is that anyone can edit virtually anything contained on it. The worst feature of the site is that anyone can edit virtually anything contained on it” (pg. 50). There was an incident that someone falsely wrote a biography about a certain person, John Seigenthaler Sr., the guy who did it was named Brian Chase and after he was found had a Wikipedia article titled Brian Chase (Wikipedia hoaxer) named after him.
To state the truth, I use Wikipedia for my classes to find information about subjects I am not educated in. Is that a problem? Some teachers believe that Wikipedia is a way of cheating if used to research topics in class. Others do not mind at all, in fact teachers use articles from Wikipedia in their lectures and teachings, “Ever more often, students find themselves using Wikipedia because their treat it as a teaching aid” (pg 104). I feel as though we are in a day and age of technology and if all this information is given to us at our fingertips, why not use it to its advantages? If the material that one researches is incorrect then that student should pay the consequences and get a bad grade for not looking up other sources other than Wikipedia to make sure the information is liable.

From Tools 2 Technocracy 2 Technopoly pg 92-199

In the second half of Neil Postman’s “Technopoly”, Postman introduces the innovation of medical technology in American society. Of the first inventions of medical equipment, the stethoscope was the most significant. The tool is used to listen to internal problems of sick patients and indicate to the doctor what could be causing illness. After the stethoscope, the same technology concepts were innovated into other areas medicine. Other instruments would include “ophthalmoscope, which allowed doctors to see into the eye; the laryngoscope, which allowed doctors to inspect the larynx and other parts of the throat, as well as the nose; and, of course, the X-ray, which could penetrate most substances but not bones” (pg. 100). After all of this new technology was created and implemented into regular medical procedures, training for doctors had to be changed as well. This all leads to patient’s expectations of medical treatment being high when they are paying hospitals for surgery: closely related to Postman’s argument that American society has become so dependent on technology to the point where without it the society would be lost. Again to reiterate from my last post, Technolopy describes how society, mainly America, has become dependent on the ins and outs of technology and the beliefs people have on science/technology playing a larger role on decision making than humans do. Postman believes people should not fall into the trap of technology. He strongly urges people to spread the word about Technolopy and don’t let technology take us over. I personally think that Postman is over exaggerates a little; technology in American’s society today is necessary is some ways. Like medical technology, for instance, without medical technology there would be a significantly higher amount of people who die in hospitals every year. Though Postman does not argue that technology is not necessary he wants to point out that people are not well educated about the technology and also other education. He believes teachers nowadays should teach differently, “Every teacher ought to be a semantics teacher, since it is not possible to separate language from what we call knowledge. Like history, semantics is an interdisciplinary subject: it is necessary to know something about it in order to understand any subject” (pg. 194). So that being said all Postman wants is for American society to be more educated about technology and to not let technology run people’s lives or someday it will literally run the human race. I agree to some extent; people cannot become lazy and let technology figure out all their problems for them. If we become dependent on technology, we cannot be dependent on other people and most importantly cannot depend on ourselves.

-ChristoPHO

From Tools 2 Technocracy 2 Technopoly pg 1-91

In "Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology", Neil Postman, the author of the novel, writes about how technology runs people's lives. People who can only see what technology can do for them, and not able to see what technology can undo, are referred to as Technophiles according to Postman. The term 'Technolopy' describes how society, mainly America, has become dependent on the ins and outs of technology and the beliefs people have on science/technology playing a larger role on decision making than humans do. He argues that humans have lost connection with information, meaning since the world wide web is so vast and accessible to anyone people are more likely to get confused on what is real or not. America is considered to be the first to by a Technopoly, one reason being, “…the success of twientieth-century technology in providing Americans with convenience, comfort, speed, hygiene, and abundance was so obvious and promising that there seemed no reason to look for any other sources of fulfillment or creativity or purpose.” (pg 54) I completely agree with this assessment, students now-a-days use the internet to complete class assignments and use Google to find sources to copy from. Even though students may know it is wrong it is so readably available to them that they cannot help but to type only a few words, a few clicks and have all the information needed for the assignment appear in front of them on their screen. When one is confronted with a task or problem they rely on technology to solve it for them. "Those who feel most comfortable in Technopoly are those who are convinced that technical progress is humanity's supreme achievement and the instrument by which our most profound dilemmas may be solved" (pg 71.) After reading this book, and the previous book, there is so much more to technology that I have no realized. I am beginning to understand that there are more negatives involved with the exponential growth of technology. i.e.) Laziness as well as less education due to convenience of information at the fingertips of American society.

Yours truly,
ChristoPHO

Critical Analysis Computers pg 84-149

The second half of "Computers:The Life Story of a Technology" by Eric G. Swedin and David L. Ferro continues to elaborate on the evolution of computers. The first personal/home computer, which is known as desktop today, was first thought of in 1973 by Les Solomon. It was called the Altair because that was what planet Enterprise went to on Star Treck's episode when Solomon created it. The Altair 8800 was the beginning of the computer market business and after its invention other companies tried to compete, by making different concepts. The second half also mentions Bill Gates and how he created Microsoft as software to be ran on these new computers. It also mentions Apple as well.

America's digitally connected society is a result to the packet switching discuss in the Computers book. Basically data being sent to certain locations; and later would expand to wireless Internet and Networking. Obviously today everyone is connected and is part of some sort of network. Interestingly enough, Americans, as well as the whole world, seems to depend on these networks for communication between one another; although they do not know the origin or how these networks came about. Before this class I was one of 'those' people, but now after reading just the first book of the class, have become acclimated to the history of networking/computer.

Computers have become world wide. Almost everything has technology/computers in it. Pretty soon the world will be ran by computers just like all the hypothetical movies and shows. The Artificial Intelligence and Robitics development foreshadow this theory. It is scary to think that computers are able to have cognitive abilities that resemble that of humans. When it comes to technology the possibilities are endless. At the end of the book, Swedin talks about nanotechnology and pretty much endless technological power that cannot be seen by the human eye. We live in a fast paced world, but technology is moving at a pace that may be uncontrollable in the future. Who knows...maybe when the human race is taken over by AI robots they may develop even more enhanced technology that will take them over as well. I feel like the end of technology surpass infinite. We are only in the midst of the beginning of an technological age.

ChristoPHO

Critical Analysis Computers pg 1-83

After reading the first half of “Computers: The Life Story of a Technology,” by Eric G. Swedin and David L. Ferro I have learned that there were many early inventions in technology that has helped the development of technology in the modern world. America’s involvement in wars played a key role; the US army invested in a machine that is considered the first modern age computer called the ENIAC, which stands for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (pg. 3). Without the demand of higher quality technology through our government’s homeland security, the growth of technology may not have been as exponential as it is presently. This is the first case to imply America’s dependency on technology to survive. In saying that, the whole world has become dependent on technology as well.
Computers are only able to run if it is programmed correctly. The first programming languages were created through wires and plugs that had to be placed in different locations at different times to allow the computer to perform the task at hand. An IBM employee named John Backus, created a team called FORTRAN which stood for Formula Translators and sought to create a programming language that was not based on binary numbers and were more complex for computers during the 1950s. These languages allowed the computer to perform different calculations faster than previous languages. FORTRAN is considered to be 3rd generation technology and is among the first program languages. There are numerous of others; List Processing (LISP) and Algorithmic Language (ALGOL), to name a few, were created just a little after FORTRAN.
During World War II, nations found themselves funding more and more money into their research of technology and science. The nation with the best technology would win the war, survive and become stronger. Ideally, this concept has incorporated into America’s culture. Today everyone competes to have the best technology: the latest phones, laptops, video game consoles. You are considered to be an outcast if you haven’t got the latest technology in stores that same day. So analogous to surviving in the past when our nation was at war with half the world through having better technology than the opponent, it can be evident in our society today, a sense of accomplishment or even dominance over one another, to have the latest hardware and software.

Still working on HTML codes, kind of new to this. Maybe next time!


- ChristoPHO

Views on Internet Usage

Hello my name is Christopher Nguyen. My blog name is ChristoPHO because there is a famous Vietnamese soup called Pho. If you havent tried you should, you‘ll instantly fall in love! This is my first time blogging. After paying more attention to my internet use for the past few days, I noticed that there are only a handful of websites that I consistently visit. These websites include, face book (everyone’s favorite), Rutgers sakai, you tube, gmail, fantasy football, and my fraternity’s forum. I can see now that I rarely explore the humongous world wide web. I guess other things just don’t intrigue me enough to go out of my comfort zone and try new things on the web. And on top of that I think my personality  factors in on my narrow minded outlook and interest of the sites I visit daily on the internet. As mentioned in the previous class, I do find myself using face book as a leisure filament . When I have down time with anything I usually will check face book or my email, but when it comes to school work I explore the resources available to me through sakai. Like face book and sakai, I enjoy watching you tube videos, subjects that interest me, as well as new songs that are readily available in a few seconds through the google powered search engine of you tube. After rambling on for a while, I didn’t even realize I had so much to say and before this I was kind of iffy on the whole blogging world. Now I see it as a place and opportunity to get my thoughts down somewhere about random matters that I would not normally think about. I enjoyed participating in this assignment and look forward to seeing other people’s blogs and standpoint.

Until next time,
ChristoPHO