wow its over

All I am going to say is wow class is over. This class was by far my best class this semester. I definitely want to try to get another class with you Furg it was really a fun and interesting class. It all seemed to go by so fast I can not believe it is over already. This class had some really cool features that no other class has had for me. I am not a huge person for any class but something about this one just sparked my interest. Please let me know if what other classes you teach. I is really starting to shock me that I only have one more final till I am off for a month. My favorite part about the class was the discussion that we all had. They always got so interesting. Some how they would always go into different and crazy directions. It is weird to think of some of the funny and odd stuff everyone talked about. I hope I find more classes like this one it would be really nice to have. There are not many things that we could not talk about in class some how whenever we had class I would always find points to smile on my face. Its all over now and there is no more late Monday classes to go too. It was almost such a long day but I knew it would not be bad to end it with you class. My Monday consisted of class from 10:20- 11:40 than 12:00 -1:20 than work than your class. That made such a long day for me but to end it with your class allowed me to make it through it. If I had any other class I do not think I would have been able to make it through those days. So whats next you might ask who knows but all I can say is thank you furg.

NetFlix

The Netflix project was one of the best projects I have yet to do. It was a very simple group project but I had a lot of fun doing it. There was so much I learned not just about Netflix but also about how Wikipedia works. To start of I will talk about my part of the project. What I was assigned to do was to give the class a brief summary or introduction into what exactly Netflix was. There is so much that people do not know about this company. It is fun much different than other companies. There are only a limited number of people who works on a full time basic. The things the most people do not know is kind of shocking. The amount of money and how much they hurt other competitors like block buster is crazy to see. They are a company that is constantly growing and is leading their sector of the movie industry. There is so many ways now that people can use Netflix from Xbox to the mail it is really cool. Further more into what I learned about Wikipedia. What exactly I learned was that Wikipedia can not always be trusted. The site sum times im not sure if it is on purpose but they twist the truth sometimes. What they say tends to be very beneficial to the companies which make me think that they have a strong bias toward helping them out. This really hurts the credibility of the site. Some of the facts are good to use but I do not think that Wikipedia is ready to be used as a source for any papers. There are many misguided information scattered throughout Wikipedia. I believe some time soon Wikipedia will be ready and a good source to use.

FINAL COMPLETE

         Finally I’m done with this class. Do not get me wrong I love this class it was really a good and fun class to take. The reason I am saying finally is because I get excited to ever be finish with any class. This last paper was not an easy on it was kind of a big feat to take. To wrap up everything about this paper I took time to revise and edit everything I wanted to make sure I made sense. I will be honest I do not completely agree with Slade. Sometimes he makes good points but I have different views. After working plenty of hours working on my essay I feel like it is finally complete. I have so much more I can say about this topic that I could not put into my essay. I truly believe the end result came to be one outcome that it is difficult to figure out what society should truly do. I think the topic we were given was a fantastic choice of topic. There is so much that can be said about how products are disposable and how we can try and go green. There is a lot that can come from either argument. All depending on what society considers to be the best thing to do will come out on top. There are something’s that should not be brought into the changes and some that should be left out. If society comes out with the right compromises we could come to a pretty beneficial outcome for our nation. There are a bunch of questions I have for everyone who has written these essays. What do you think are the pros and cons of trying to go green? What will we lose and what will we gain from making changes? My by far biggest question for everyone is what should society do should we stay how we are or what changes should we make?

actually wrting this difficult final

           The process of actually doing the writing portion took way longer than I had hoped and had planned. I will be honest I can usually pump out a paper like this in a couple of hours but this paper was not the case. It took me so long to get this paper done. I spent hours getting everything I wanted to say onto paper. This sometimes is difficult to get what you truly want to say to sound correctly and have everything go well. Each paragraph took a lot longer than I expected. This is something I do not enjoy to do and it took me a long time to get right. I made sure I hit every aspect of the task at hand. I wanted to really make sure I got my ideas and view point across. Slade and his book was the perfect person to write about for the question at hand. The essay could have been written without having him in the ideas but the addition of him made each and every idea so much stronger. What killed me the most is I put so much into getting this done? I even tried to start extra early to figure out what I wanted to do. There were a lot of things I wanted to say. The hardest think to do was not to go off and rant. There were crazy amounts of things that I could have ranted about. That is another big problem I have when righting especially about something economic like that. The sky was the limit in the mistakes that I could have made. This causes me many problems when writing. At some points I started to rant to much and I had to go back. I know we are allowed to rant a little and put our own twist on Slades view and I did. The only thing I wanted to make sure enough of was I did not do it too much

on my way to the final

          Working on this final was no easy task at first. There was a lot of pre work to figuring out what to write and what to choose. I spent a ton of time just sitting and thinking of which to choose. When I really thought about it I came to the choice of choice number two. This was not too difficult to choose because I had a lot to say about this topic. To get started I figured out what I wanted to say about the “Made to Break” book and how Slades view on this really went with going green. I think I may have at first over thought the idea of how to put everything together. The way I started out my planning was to make a kind of web. This allowed me to figure out what every paragraph would be about. This is the way that I like to write my essays. The hardest thing to do was to find the sources that I wanted to use to help me prove his points. Working on a final is a very stressful thing and to get it just right takes a lot of pre work. Who knows if my style of writing will work for other people but it works well for me. There are many flaws in my style and there are so many things I could change. To get everything right this just helps to make things work out and be organized for me. If I do not plan out so mechanically like this I makes my job and the outcome of my paper not as good. I think the way that I have planned for this paper has really helped to make a very strong paper. If a person prepares very well than they will have a very strong outcome for their paper.

whats happening to facebook

Finding a way to pay for a company like any online company that actually does not sell hands on product is difficult to find a source of income. Yes the potential investors should have been amazed because the Facebook is different than anything else out there. The site is able to go for what college students want. It is very hard to try to analytically write about a site that we all know to now affect so many people’s lives. Like this is a company that if anyone knew what Facebook would become as profitable and so part of life than they would invest every penny that they had into it. For the lucky people who did invest they got so lucky to get into a business like this one. I feel so sorry for the people who passed up investing in Facebook. They are probably shooting themselves right now that they said no.

            The act of becoming a company is a huge step for an online business. Yes people can make profit from running a business out of your room or small office but once the steps are taken to become a company there are entire new issues. A company becomes very serious and at that point there are more legal aspects that need to be followed because of more employees. Like the book said it is a lot different being a CEO than being roommates with somebody. Getting Rothschild on board seemed to be a huge thing for the company. Getting people with experience like him is great to have when a business is growing. I also think that having inexperience but creative and ambitious people like the founders on board is what makes billion dollar companies not experience. People with experience tend to play it too safe and not take the risks inexperienced people do take. This combination of experience and ambition is a match not to mess with.

            To figure out what Facebook truly is, is not so simple to figure out. There are so many if not infinitesimal factors to determine what it really is. But when it comes down to it Facebook is a gateway. It is a gateway of communication and now part of life for many people. Without Facebook many people would not have come back in contact with people they lost touch with. More and more Facebook is changing and it is changing the world. There are becoming more and more things that people can do on Facebook. Like when they talk about photos and how people can see when friends upload new ones. This builds more and more connections between people. On another not privacy is another huge issue on Facebook. Everyone that uses the site knows about the Facebook stalker or has come across someone stalking their page. The only thing is don’t put something up you don’t want the entire world to see simple as that. People can choose what to and what not to put on their page so its up to them to decide what they want people to see. The nice thing now is that we can limit what people and who we want to see our stuff. The evolution of Facebook is becoming a necessity of life. I believe that Facebook is becoming as big as the cell phone. Where do you think Facebook will take us?

oh no its FACEBOOK what is Facebook

Finally the time is here this should be the most relevant and interesting book out of all the books we have read. Facebook has always been a great way to connect people as in the case of Morales his group grew really fast. There is becoming more and more of Facebook as a part of life. If you go anywhere more and more people are joining the Facebook community. The Facebook effect is wide and vast. It is starting to affect all sorts of variation between people’s lives. The part were it says Facebook is bringing the world together is a broad statement but it is so true. It gives people so many ways that allows people to talk across the world and share so much information across the internet.

            Only if the creator knew how huge his creation would become but I guess no one truly knows how big their inventions will be accepted and grow. Harvard was the start of a new world a new step to evolution. It is really cool that he took and evolved his ideas from things he liked in life. Like how he took the away messages from AIM to use them in his new creation. Facebook is vastly different from everything else that was out there. It is so much different from MySpace it is not even funny. The purpose of Facebook is also so much different from anything else out there.

            TheFaceBook blew up and kept growing it a huge fashion. When they tried to get investors to invest at first Y2M did not believe that they had so many people using the website so much. I bet that they are killing themselves that they did not invest as soon as possible. Imagine how just the 25 million is chump change compared to the value now. The amount of money they spend as college students is kind of mind staggering. Its so hard to manage everything and make money but I guess that’s why they are at Harvard.

            The internet is a huge empire that everyone wants to get into. This is because just a small piece of the pie is worth so much value. More into the want for Facebook was that so many people were coming to using Facebook. As they said, “This was good and bad”. Of course they want to keep growing so fast but they could not keep up with the amount of people that were using the site. This was so much to take main frames are only designed for a max amount of activity. This is a huge problem and was a huge problem for them. Even now they run into this problem occasionally you will notice that the server will be down or will have some sort of glitch this is because Facebook is constantly changing.

            It is so cool to learn some of the details and steps they took to evolve and create this site we all use. Just think if he never decided to bring the white board out and create the site. He truly changed society in so many ways. Its no even fathomable how he has changed peoples lives. What do you think life would be like if there wasn’t TheFaceBook effect?

war and radios

The whole FM Radio timeline of like evolution was kind of interesting. I had no clue at some of the problems that they ran into with all the new steps that they took. The coolest thing that I found was how much money some of the inventors made. For instance Armstrong made some much money not just cash but stocks and if you think about that that’s worth a ton. 60,000 plus the other 20,000 shares is huge when you’re the lead inventor in the company and know it will grow. That makes the value of the share exponentially valuable.

            Just the impact that radios have had on the world and society is so vast. They have been used for so many different uses. Starting at page 100 when they used the FM radios for communication in the war I had no clue the United States did that. They did not really get into it a lot but radios have also been a huge social icon throughout history. Before TVs were really big and as cheap as they are now compared to before everyone listened to radios. Also back the radios were made a little different then they are now.

            As I read more and more War time had a huge impact also on advancement in technology. When I got to the part of the book around page 142 about the Atomic bomb I got very interested. All the technology like this really gets my mind going. It is true that Pandora’s box was opened with the a bomb.
I found it really cool that they brought in all the different people that did big things in the fifties and sixties. There was a lot in here that I only knew little bits and pieces about. Know I know in detail things like on page 164 how they talk about how they designed the pocket radios to only last no more than 3 years. This is the entire basis of this book that products are made inferior so that they are “Made to Break”.  When will the day come that we no longer have to deal with products that will be obsolete or made so that they will not last and people will have to spend more money on new products. I see good and bad in these ideas. By doing this it causes me and everyone else to spend a ton of money on stuff that we know won’t last. On the other hand this allows for advancements in technology that would be slower if there wasn’t this money being poured into the industry and this cause companies to keep advancing. So here is my question for you, do you think it is positive or negative when products are “Made to Break”?

Technology

The waste alone of how many electronic are throw out is crazy to think about. It
becomes more and more aparent that the united states has a desire to find more
advanced technology. On page 3 when they start to talk about 3g cell phones it
gets me excited because I know that soon the new iphone comes out for verizon.
This is the next step for the company.
The term on page 9 of over production is something interesting to think about.
They said how its one of our biggest problems but I don't think this is that
kind of problem anymore. When we over produce product we sell it all over for
way cheaper and now a days the united states buys many of our goods from other
countries The introduction of disposible products for men and women was a great
step to take. By doing this it helped to solve so many problems. The antithrift
campains were a complex battle between people who wanted thrift and did not want
it. America getting more interested in paper goodes really helped the anti
thrift campains. I do not want to even get started talking about new models
every year I hate that.
This is something that cost me so much money having to buy new products every
year to stay with the new and best out there. This leads to the part of the book
where the clash of values is. It is so try that products are under designed when
they come out every year. In no way is a year enough time to design and test new
technology. This is why we get stuck with products that have so many bugs. Also
designing for style is cool but should not be esentiacial for tecjnology
products. Now this is by far the best book so far we have read. I normally would
say that product addiction on page 47 is irrelivant but its not. I can't go a
second literally without having my phone on me. On no chapter three completely
lost me. What is businessmans utopia this is crazy. My question of the day is do
you think that products being producted advances or slows the advancement of
technology down.

next up for wikipedia

Yes we love Wikipedia I find it as a great source for some many things. It is very beneficial when you’re trying to figure out quick fact and etc. chapter five once again states when posts go up and the same as the other chapters and its kind of getting annoying. “The freedom to write whatever we want” is a great way to express your own individuality. Some of the points of why we like Wikipedia I do not agree with. Like some of the reasons I do not think really generalize why we like it. The equality factor of Wikipedia is great this is because knowledge is knowledge. It is true that you don’t have to be a genius to make a helpful comment. This next idea is a huge issue with the internet. Anyone can pretty much same whatever they want to a certain extent. Just the devastation that words and information over the internet can cause can be horrible. There are so many different cases where people have gotten hurt to the point that it will vastly impact their life. The trust factor of Wikipedia is one of the biggest questions debated about everyone who interacts with this encyclopedia. The freedom factor of being able to say and write what you want, because inevitably it will lead to false information being posted. Times are changing and Wikipedia is becoming a new source of reliable information. They are implementing more and more way to review the input. Also the site is growing credibility like any site. It takes time to grow into the “it” site. The “it” site are sites that people all know and use. My question for you is what will happen next in the world of Wikipedia? Will the site continue to grow and prosper or will some other new site take over?

not alone

Are we alone in the vast size of space or are there others out there. Space is so large and now we finally found a planet that is very similar to our own planet. It is crazy to think that there could someday or already be life forms on this planet. The planet could eventually change the life of people on Earth. If someday we out grow this planet or pollute it maybe we could go live there. This topic is a huge interest to me because I am a very logical person and anything new interests me. I hope that sometime in my lifetime our society makes many more advancements like this. Anything that can make life a little different is really cool to me. There are places in the universe that we cannot even see and the amount we haven’t seen is by far a lot larger than what we have seen. There are so many things that can come from this. This is the start of something great for the human race. It is almost unfathomable that how crazy this is. Like its just crazy that there is possibly someone else out there and only 20 light years away. If you really think about that distance in space is really not that far. There are stars way further away then that planet so maybe sometime we will send and exploration to that planet. I hope it is sometime soon so maybe I can see if there is actually life on that planet. Just thinking about this gets me really excited. I just get like pumped to hear news like this. There is so much that can come from this. Maybe the human race will start a new space race because of this. This new finding is in perfect time with the start of our new space program.

Wki What Where & Why

It is a marvel to see how Wikipedia spreads and connects information so quickly. I remember when you could make any changes to the site that a person felt they wanted to make. Over time this site has evolved from being a site where teacher would fail a person from citing from but now that Wikipedia is monitored and all inputs are checks and filtered for legitimacy the cite is not so looked down upon. The style this book is writing in is a very interesting one. I like how in the first chapter the author consistently talks about different events that have happened and helped to make what Wikipedia is. I grew up seeing Wikipedia evolve but one thing I never knew about is where it came from. It is cool to see that it is modeled after true real life encyclopedias. I would consider Wikipedia to be the new style of encyclopedia that fits the internet boom of the 21^st century. I had no clue that Wikipedia had its own “traditions that the site was based on. I always new encyclopedias cost a lot but never knew that cd-rom versions started at 1500 dollars. This book literally gives the entire history of encyclopedias I feel like this book is kind of like the actual site. The only negative thing I see with reading this book I at times get lost with all the different names from people who are or are not important in the creation of Wikipedia. The quote that starts off the third chapter really emphasizes what Wikipedia really does for everyone. It is a treasure chest of information where people can now find information about just about anything on Earth or even not on earth. The only down fall is that anyone can try to put any input they want onto the site. Most links and info on the site is now monitored bur certain stuff can still slip through. There are many reasons why people use Wikipedia. Will Wikipedia someday take over for every other encyclopedia out there? What could be the implications positive or negative of Wikipedia?

is this book almost over

The more technology advances the more we can do with it. There are all kinds of different things that could be created in the future. The biggest and one of the most important fields that technology would be the medical field. Each advance in the medical field saves lives more and more.

            More and more computers are becoming as important as medical technology is to society. It is crazy to see how it keeps advancing more and more everyday. Technology is like an exponential formula. Every year technology grow by bigger leaps and bounds.

The whole invisible technologies are crazy. To grasp how they are actually real is really weird. I guess it is kind of cool though by how it affects society. It’s interesting on what it can do by what is does.

Scientism is a very interesting topic. I do not like how he keeps going into The New York Times as a source. I feel like he is trying to advertise for them for some reason. Doing thins really takes away from the strong points that are in this book.

Compared to the previous book the previous one is much more interesting to me. I liked the other one way more than this one. This book really bores me there is only. How do you think that the Technopoly of the world will advance technology or does it hinder it?  Can it really lead to new advances or not at all?  All in all technology is changing the world. There are so many ways that it changes everything. I just can not wait till this book is over there is relatively no interest in this book. Hopefully the books to come will bring some joy in my life lol because this is a really fun class.

Technopoly is a monopoly

Wow this is not the book for me. I am really into technology and everything but this is not my forte. The whole Thamus and the legend I felt was kind of pointless. I understand that he pretty much was the start of the Technopoly. I guess what Thamus did can be compared to things of today. Like how TV is so big in the United States. I was really interesting how he put out there how investors create great inventions but they don’t understand how these inventions affect society. The affects that they cause can be very great depending on how the invention impacts the people that use it.

I never looked at why inventions are doing sometimes. Like in chapter two things are sometimes created to go with the time period. It is cool to look at how the Stone Age Bronze Age etc happened to happen because of they were the norms.

I am kind of getting confused more on more about the authors views only confused by if I agree with what he is saying. He uses so many different people to put across his point of view but does not show it that well. I agree that technology does affect how government runs and everything but the whole where did it all start is impossible to pin points. No matter what it is impossible to do unless you go all the way back to the start of time. This is because what is technology now is way different from what is down there.

I found it hilarious how he talked to some of his colleges and did so called experiments on them. It was funny how they reacted to the different things he said depending on how he wanted them to react.

His statement “Technopoly is a state of culture” is a big statement (71). In todays culture technology is everywhere. Life is in every way changed and affected in some way by technology. How will technology affect culture next will it get stronger or will it be weaker I think it will no doubt be stronger.

advancements

I had no clue that that the first CPU was built in 1937. How cool is it that CPUs have been around since than. Microsoft is one of the coolest companies out there. The advances they made for the computer industry are amazing. Computers were a huge part of the space race which has changed the world is all kinds of ways. Without the stage of introducing the start of the internet was a whole new step to the life we have today. It would be totally different if this did not happen. There were all kinds of internts that I did not know about. I knew about Local Area Networks or LAN but also USENET. I had no clue what USENET did until now. But even great was the introduction of the World Wide Web. This is pretty much the internet we know today. Who knew that this really would widen the world? Soon came DVDs and Mp3s which was created not to long ago. At this point the World Wide Web exploded and companies started to appear more and more. With online transactions and money going from one person to another a new bread of thief’s were created. Hackers used computers to steal and cause havoc all over the world. They even cause trouble today. I use the World Wide Web every day and without it my productivity would be greatly less. I know everyone does not like hackers but without them would we be as advanced as we are today. I believe without them the internet would have evolved way slower. They really helped to make the internet what it is today. How nice would it be to be the next pioneer in the online industry to create the next great fad or product that everyone uses?

Computers and the possiblities in my mind

            I was amazed to find a mechanical computer dating back between 100 and 40 BCE was so complicated. I knew they had ways of calculating stuff but never knew that they could do calculations this complex. It is cool to know that back in the Mayan times and before people who knew mathematics where considered a higher class of status than others of the time. Naper with his interest in mathematics really spiked my interests. He helped to strongly advance what we now know today. It is crazy to know that calculating machines back then were not perfect which would could problems in certain areas. This amazes me because they must have believed it was perfect. The calculating machines of the past tended to be huge. They weighed all different rages from light to hundreds to thousands of pounds. The constant advances before the style of electronic computers today the helpfulness of the mechanical computers helped to make everyday life better. The Hollerith system is proof of this.

            Electronic computers are awesome they do crazy things today and throughout history. They advanced faster and faster allowing people to do new things. It is crazy to think if just one of the pioneers of this industry did not do what they did would we be set back years and year and not be where we are today. Like if Atanasoff did not do what he did or the Eniac was not created. What would life be like today would internet just start to be dial up. It is wild to think that just one new advancement or one less could set us back years.

            Without being on the cutting edge of advancement our country might not be what it is now. During our past the computers have helped us in vast ways. They have helped us from military use to commercial use to personal use. Each and every form helps to make us who we are.

            I one person did not do what they did do you think we would be were we are today? Would it set us back days months or even years? Here is my biggest question what would your life be like if because one of those pioneers did not do what they did today was like 1995 technology speaking instead of 2010? Would life be the same being a teenager with what we had a children?

Internet Saturation in Life

            Over a two day period I clocked in roughly 3 to 5 hours a day on the computer or using some sort of internet. This amazed me on how much I actually am on the internet. Yes I do do other stuff when I’m on but I’m still putting a ton of time online. It is even crazier to think that some people put way more time online than I do. So people do spend less but a lot of people spend a lot more than I do.  I remember when I was little and there was only dial up so internet was pretty much point less. Times have changed so fast. Where will we be in 10 or 20 years isn’t that crazy to think about. What can surpass the speed of internet now and what will be the new Facebook. The world is evolving super fast and it amazes me all the changes that are constantly going on. Life without internet with me would be horrible. I constantly buy and sell things using Ebay and Craigslist so without the internet my life would be completely different. It scares me to think what would happen if one day it was all gone what would we do?

            Life is different from before the internet was. Prices for products have changed. There have been so many different opportunities because of the internet for everyone. If there was not internet this class would be completely different also. People seem to take for granted the internet but without it communication and everyday life would be drastically slower. People do not realize how much time they actually spend on it. I can guarantee out of everyone who is reading this Blog does not go a day without using the internet. The internet has become the new crutch to make life easier and more efficient. I know that the internet is really important to me but how important is it to you? Can you go a week, a month, or as long as a year without having access to the internet. I am doubtful that any of use can.