COMM 352 - Blog #7 - A Computer That Teaches Itself

iO9.com put out an article on March 25th about the Pentagon's desire for a computer that can actually TEACH itself.  According to the article they are launching an initiative to "design automated tools that will make it easier to not just program computers, but to help computers teach themselves" (Dvorsky, 2013).  Now, if you have read this blog post that I wrote about the "Future of the Computer" than you know how I feel about where technology is going and you should also understand why having read this article has only scared the shit out of me even more.  Now I understand that advances in technology have done great things for the human race, and for the most part, will continue to do so.  However, the idea of a computer than can change, learn and teach itself is seemingly something right out of Terminator 2 (1991).  And comparing this to a film may seem farfetched, but I am just saying that the coincidence in the chain of events is eerie.


Maybe I am crazy and paranoid but I leave you with this quote from the iO9.com article so that you can REALLY think about what this means:

"And looking further ahead into the future , this could represent an important step in advanced computer bootstrapping - the ability for an artificially intelligent system to not just teach itself, but to re-write and improve upon itself. It could be seen as an important stage in the development of a recursively improving AI — a system that can continually become better at optimizing itself, potentially leading to an exponential increase in intelligence" (Dvorsky, 2013).

COMM 352 - Blog #4 - Wifi For All!

After reading this article about the concept of having "Free Wifi for All"(meaning having free wifi available to everyone in the country EVERYWHERE), I decided to make a pros and cons table to weigh whether or not "Free Wifi For All" is a good idea.

After creating the pros and cons table above from what I read in the above Washington Post article, I have decided that "Free Wifi for All" is a good idea that should definitely be pursued.  I fully believe that the pros outweigh the cons.  I also believe that the majority of the cons that are presented are coming from companies that do not want "Free Wifi for All" because right now they benefit financially from the lack of "Free Wifi for All", and the last thing they want is for there to be a disruption in that financial flow.

COMM 352-Blog #2-Patents & Steve Jobs

This story from TheVerge.com is an example of how Steve Jobs and Apple have used their patents as a means of seeking litigation and controlling the mobile market.  Now, the popular debate in regard to this is whether Apple is right in their actions or whether it is wrong that they have the ability to do this.  My personal opinion on this matter is that it is not right that Apple has the ability to sue someone for the shape of a phone, or as in the story above, sue a company for hiring former Apple employee.  The way I see it is that with these outrageous abilities to sue a company over the shape of a phone or the fact that they hired former employees of Apple is bordering on having a monopoly over the entire mobile market. I absolutely believe that the mobile market is big enough and diverse enough for more than one company to exist.  As for the story from TheVerge.com, I believe that former employees of Apple should be able to work wherever they want and if they want to work at a competing company, than the company should be able to hire that person without threat of litigation from Apple.  And lastly, for the idea of Apple being able to sue a company for have the same shaped technological device is ludicrous. Bottom line:  Apple does not and should not be able to own shapes.

COMM 352 - Blog #1 - Aaron Swartz

Aaron Swartz was a co-developer of RSS and a co-founder of Reddit; he helped "lead a campaign to defeat a law [SOPA] that would have made it easier to shut down websites accused of violating copyright protections"; and was also an advocate of free information.  It was because of his advocacy that, according to an article from the Associated Press, "he illegally gained access to millions of academic articles through the academic database JSTOR. He allegedly hid a computer in a computer utility closet at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and downloaded the articles before being caught by campus and local police in 2011" (Wagner & Dobnik, 2013). While I understand how Aaron Swartz's actions could be considered illegal by some, I do not agree that he should have been pursued as heavily and with as much intimidation.  Because he was doing this for the people and he had no malicious intent when doing this, I do not agree with the treatment of Aaron Swartz before his suicide and I don't agree that the same laws used "to go after digital bank robbers" should be the same laws used to prosecute people like Aaron Swartz.  In fact, I do agree that advocates like him should " be protected from the full force of laws used to prosecute thieves and gangsters" (Wagner & Dobnik, 2013).  The lack of accounting for the variety of different technological "crimes" within our legal system is clearly a problem, the case of Aaron Swartz is just one example, and this needs to change.