How Technology's Accelerating Power Will Transform Us:Ray Kurzweil

I chose this particular talk because after thinking of the many different aspects of this course I came to the conclusion that this course has shown me the thousands of ways that technology has brought us to be where we are today. Not only has the modern technologies advanced with computers and cell phones, it has also advanced with the ways of the world, the speed of the world, and the togetherness of the world. Throughout this class we learned the ways of making web pages, from the old fashioned way of HTML, all the way to working with collaboration tools from different geographical locations. As Ray Kurzweil talks of the many advances within technology, he tries to analyze the ways of the world in a couple years to come. Such as in 2020, what will the world be like? To me, it is hard to believe that it is almost 2008, and with that, there is everything from handheld 'miniature' laptops to cameras on phones. Technology has come a long way, and through this course I have seen the many different ways of the world dealing with the Internet and the technologies to come are only beginning!

Online Tools and Programs for Collaboration: Research Project

I know this is a little late, but I completely forgot about it!!

My research project was about online tools and programs for collaboration. It was a completely foreign subject to me when I picked it, so throughout the entire process it was a learning experience. The gist of it is, is the ability for two or more people to work on the same project while being in different geographical locations. There are many types of tools and programs for collaboration available, and you must purchase them before being able to use them. Although I was not able to find out much about the entire process in my short period of time, I learned much about the topic considering I knew nothing. Seems it can be used for many different things, school, work, fun, entertainment, or whatever! Very interesting and glad I picked a topic so foreign to me.

Anand Agarawala: BumpTop desktop is a beautiful mess

In this modern day, people rely on computers for doing their work almost more than cars for transportation. When you think of all the technologies that have come out, the computer truly is one of the most prevalent. I decided to listen to Anand Agarawala's talk about the "BumpTop" desktop. To me, this seems like a very helpful tool for organizing your desktop, although some of the concepts that are available seem to be more for playing around than for actual work. Some of the features that would be helpful would be like being able to flip through all of the files in a folder at one time. Being able to flip through your files like a book rather than always having them pull up in front of you would make things much easier to look through. I believe that the design of this desktop meets the expectations of the modern "cool" look of technology, rather than sticking with the "normal" start, menu, and go buttons that everyone is used to seeing with computers. I think this invention could go far for the work environment, as well as for people that just want to play around on their desktop, like being able to crumple up your final paper!

Creative Spark

This weeks topic 'the creative spark' made me interested in a couple of the talks so I am not blogging generally about one talk as much as I am blogging about the differences of the many talks that available for blogging about. Some of the talks we were assigned to watch throughout the semester (such as Theo Jansen creates a new creature and Jonathan Harris tells the stories of the web) and which both of those were very interesting to me. Other talks I watched, such as Jeff Skolls makes movies that make changes and Kenichi Ebina's magic moves. The many different TED talks that were available for the topic of 'creative spark' got me interested in the many different ways that people are creative. Some people think of creativity as a completely different aspect than another person. For some people, creativity is creating new things, such as creatures that walk and talk, some think it is being creative personally by dancing, singing, or such, and others think creativity is making crafts and doing handy things. So the question that this TED talk got me pondering was, what is creativity to me? I think creativity is all in what a person makes it. To Kenichi Ebina, it is his creative dance moves. To Theo Jansen, its his walking creature. To Eddi Reader, its singing. To me, my creativity is my house. It is the one thing that I take take to create, to change, to make look its best. During holidays, I create scenes to make it look interesting. My creativity is all about making people say 'that looks nice'. Everyone has a creative spark, but no one's creativity is quite like the rest. Creativity is what makes a person who they are...be creative with everything and always keep people wondering what sparks you!

Building Webpages

My experience within this class is the only time I have really had to put together a webpage. I guess you could consider MySpace a little like a webpage, but thats pretty simple, just putting stuff on a page if you want it, otherwise leaving it plain jane. So I really don't guess I know much about building a webpage from scratch or anything of the sort. I really enjoyed blogging this semester and thought that the TED talks brought a lot of talks out of the people that otherwise would have just written the usual, 'it has been a good week, got my homework done...and the such'. By blogging about given topics, it has made our blog logs much more interesting and I think that the talks are about more than just normal things and it keeps the students on the edge. I am not a webpage designer by far, but I think it will be interesting to be able to create and design things and what not. I'm looking forward to looking at everyone else's webpages also!

AI

After watching both those movies, it really makes you think of how far that technology has brought people. Not only with work and school, but also for the fun and pleasures in life. People have gone from scrolls to laptops, atari systems to XBox360, the world of technology is never ending. In the newest video for technology there were many more features that are still not offered as of yet, and if they are than it is still so far away from the shelves for consumers to buy no one even thinks about it. Some of the technologies were the touch screen and the voice activation. Being able to walk across the room and do another task while still doing your research and what not on the computer would make a lot of people happy, they would be killing two birds with one stone.

My website that I found had a lot of interesting information in it about AI and where it is coming from and is going to. As stated, "the approach of artificial intelligence researchers is largely experimental." Still going through many different stages but before long there will be more AI on the world than people could imagine. There are movies, video games, books, and much more just about AI and how it has come to be.


http://www.answers.com/topic/artificial-intelligence?cat=biz-fin

TED Talk: Thomas Barnett-The Pentagon's new map of war and peace

Barnett made some very clear statements throughout his speech about war and the changes that have taken place and that need to be taking place. I completely understand where he is coming from when trying to seperate the soliders and make the US a stonger country, but he makes it seem as easy as buying candy in a gumball machine. Making peace and stopping war is much harder than Barnett is saying. Everyone has their opinions and very rarely will you find someone that agrees exactly with what you feel. Since the war with Iraq began, everyone has had something to say, but there is only a very few that will make the changes. People can potition everything they want but at the same time no one is there to listen. The president and his crew decide what should be done. I'm not sure where Barnett was taking things, he seemed to be making jokes of the whole war situation when he refered to the Twin Tower attacks and the US going over to Iraq as "a home game and an away game." This talk completely shocked me that someone would joke the entire time while trying to get people to be convinced with his thoughts and values.

TED Talk: Sheila Patek clocks the fastest animals

When given the topic of the environment to blog on this week I decided to look for a talk dealing with animals in the environment. I found that Sheila Patek did research on the fastest animals. During her research in 2004, Patek and her crew members found that the peacock mantis shrimp had the fastest feeding strike that she had studied. That animal held the fastest clocked speed for around 2 years until Patek continued her research and found that the trap-jaw ants could snap their jaws between 75 and 145 mph. Now that is some extremely fast eating if you ask me!! I found this talk to be interesting towards the environment because it shows that there are many more creatures in the world that you have never heard about. I had never heard of either of these two animals and to learn that they were clocked as the fastest eating animals baffled me. I have not yet, but am going to do more research on these two animals to find out what areas they are found in and what they look like. In such a big environment, people find that they don't ever know the entire atmosphere until they begin to explore, as Patek has done.

People Poisoning Their Own Land

Isn't it amazing to think that in the only place you have to go, you throw trash on it, put debris on it, and leave it as messy as you would a trash disposal? This one place is our world, our environment, but yet people treat it as one large waste basket. You can not drive half a mile, shoot, not even a quarter of a mile without seeing over a load of trash on the sides of the roads, in the woods, on the road, and everywhere in between. It seems to be ridiculous that people would poison their own beautiful environment with disgusting ugly trash all over it. I have helped through community groups and what not to do community and environment clean up several times and I feel that if more people would help with these clean ups that the world would be a much prettier place. Think of how you would like to hang up a picture in your new home of you and your significant other on a beautiful beach in Nags Head....and then to the right of your foot... an empty soda bottle and to your left a beautiful sandwich bag, how attractive! In order to help this environment be a cleaner and better place, the solution would be to stop poisoning it with our pollution, but since not everyone cares about the looks, well being, and health of our one and only planet Earth, not everyone is going to feel the same way about not throwing that empty McDonald's bag out the window of your new vehicle to keep the inside clean. If only everyone thought of the world as their new vehicle, or house than maybe it would be a better place. The world is a huge place, and there is nothing that little old I could do to change the entire situation of the worlds well-being, but in my town and surrounding areas, I think that putting together a community cleanup would be the first place to start. Slowly, people will begin to see the beauty behind all the filth and maybe will respect the only place they have to call their hometown.

TED Talk: Carl Honore-Slowing Down In A World Built For Speed

Carl Honore spoke of the ways of our fast paced world. Whether your calling someone, reading, walking, or exercising in the modern world you are now doing it with speed. We are living in "a world stuck on fast forward" as Honore states. And to every degree, I believe his statement is true. Too often we as humans are worried about losing time, wasting time, or missing something and for this reason, we feel we must always be living in a race against time. Never thinking of the tolls that this race is burdening our lives with, whether it is dealing with your relationship, work quality, health, or happiness always running around from one situation to the next puts an extreme burden on a persons well-being. I personally have never took the time to think of the world being so fast that everyone is missing the enjoyment from life, but after listening to his speech, I see more now so that there are more people that think this same way about life being held on the fast track, but others do not think it is a bad thing all the time, such as Kenny Chesney's 'Living In Fast Forward' song, he is putting it into a text that he doesn't mind that his life is held on fast. A question that Honore posed was, how did we get so fast? I pondered on that for most of the speech there after and came to the conclusion that as technology progressed so did the speed rate of the world. The Internet was too slow, so technology made it a thousand times faster with high-SPEED. The world revolves around the different technologies and the more advanced the technology becomes, the faster this world is going to spin. Another question that was posed was, is it possible to slow down? I believe it is possible for a single person to slow down with their own life, but for the entire society I do not believe it can be slowed down at this point simply because the advancements in technology, speed dialing will never go away, high-speed Internet will never go away, Rachel Ray's 30 minute meals aren't going off air. The world is not going to regress because a couple people feel that everyone is missing out on life. Although this may be true, people are missing the greatness of their lives by watching the clock for 5 o'clock everyday Monday-Friday, and at the same time praying that Friday will come as quick as the weekend is over. Time is only what you make it, either its a race against life, a short memory track that you take slowly and enjoy, or its just that...time whats kept on a clock. Everyone has different views of what time can be and it's all in how you look at it.

People need to do like Carl Honore did "find the inter-tortoise in yourself."

RSS Feed

For my RSS feed, I chose to subscribe to Yahoo. I only subscribed to one website so far because beings it is only my first time using a reader I wanted to get used to it. I must say, it is very helpful in reading up on the top news stories. I picked to subscribe to Yahoo's most viewed stories. It does seem very addicting as the video mentioned because when you start reading into one story, you see a headline for another story and want to read more into that one. Seems very time consuming! But, it is a very helpful tool.

The link that I subscribed to is http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/mostviewed. Check it out! :)

TED Talk-Theo Jansen:The Art of Creating Creatures

Theo Jansen created what is called the "Strandbeests". Simply made out of electrical tubing and lemonade bottles, but are called mechanical beast that roam on the shore lines of beaches. Seems crazy to think that someone would be creating a creature with no blood, no brains, no vessels, or veins and yet can consider it a creature. Jansen's creation is both remarkable and interesting but at the same time it is nothing more than materials. Can one consider it to be a living creature? It has a mechanical brain that simply tells it where the water line is and where the safe dunes are, but is that enough to call it a brain? To me, Jansen has come up with a very interesting creation but I would not consider it a creature. Although it has life-like forms, it knows that water kills it, it can "die", it turns away from enemies, but it truly is not real or living. It doesn't "die", it only gets washed away and would never be thought of as missing. To me, the creation would be more of a beach toy to watch walk around during the day, but to imagine it walking down the beach while making a sand castle seems absurd to me. If anything can be made to move and do things on its own, than who is to say the robotic vacuums are not "living creatures"?

MySpace/Social Networking

Oh boy, the wonderful MySpace scene! At first, it seemed like a great place to talk with your friends that are away at a 4 year college, leave comments to everyone giving them a smile for the day, and just being able to check on the ones you really cared about. But in reality, it was just building up to be the biggest soap opera on the Internet! I used to have an account, and I still do somewhere on there because when the drama began bubbling and people wanted to start fussing and running their mouth about what was on this ones page or that ones page, I just completely stopped trying to use it for communication purposes. I find that old school email works just great! As for the social networking aspect of it, I feel that it is great for people that want to communicate online fast and effectively but at the same time everyone can read what you post (unless you send it as a message) and sometimes it seems to me that keeping your personals away from anything public keeps you the farthest away from trouble. Myspace=Trouble in my experiences, perhaps it would be better if we didn't live in such a small no body town where everyone knew everyone within a 20 mile radius...or maybe it was just a bad experience for me!

The Web's Secret Stories

Jonathan Harris speaks of the never ending World Wide Web. Harris created a secret experiment called "We Feel Fine" that involves everyone blogging (not sure if it did private blogs or just public). Searching the blogs for statements that begin with "I feel, I believe...and so on". From those prefixes of statements, Harris pulled what the ending of the sentence would be, such as 'I feel beautiful' and from that he created a project that would calculate many different features. It pulled over 20,000 feelings a day which were all from people stating in their blogs how they felt. From it, I began wondering, if people are constantly doing experiments on you and you never know, than they always will get the true you. He stated that the experiment was set up as a "passive observation on people that had no clue they were being watched, therefore I got very honest information". It makes you wonder how many people search the web doing experiments like those. "We Feel Fine" was very detailed with the information that it could pull, it showed that more women blogged about their feelings than men, as well as the ages and location of the person blogging. With all the information that Harris covered in his experiment, he began another experiment called "Universe" which would be like a spider web in English class. From one word, you could spawn off it in every direction that the topic was brought up in. For instance, if you put in the word "Hawaii" you would come up with words and pictures of islands and palm trees. During his speech he asked the question, "In today's society, what would the constellations in the night sky look like if we could make up new ones?". It puzzled me throughout the rest of the conversation and got me thinking about what it would look like. Putting together the two experiments that Harris created, I realized that the most prominent thing would be situations that had emotion. For instance, the tragedies of September 11th were shocking and horrific to everyone, not just the ones involved therefore I feel that the Twin Towers and the Pentagon would be two of the constellations. Also, things such as importance's to most people like rings, which symbolized weddings and love. Throughout his talk, Harris spoke of the many feelings people have and share, it makes you realize just how hurt, happy, mad, etc. someone can be at a time when they show photos of themselves during their time of the sentence. Harris is a very smart and talented person to create "We Feel Fine" and "Universe" and I think he did it to show just how often people share their feelings and why they felt that way on that day at that particular time.

Surfing the Web

It seems like there is just not enough hours in the day to get everything done and then still have time to surf the web for odds and ends. Sometimes I catch a couple hours here and there (Like today, while I'm at home!) but for the most part I spend just enough time to get my school work done and hope off. I would estimate about 5 hours a week, if that. I try to do as little on the Internet as possible. If I had more free time, it would probably be dangerous..I'd spend more money online than the account would supply me! Since I don't have much time to just flip around on the net, I only have a few websites.

www.mycardstatement.com- check on my Visa card status

www.rcc.vccs.edu- of course, do my school work!

www.blogger.com- BLOG!

www.Ted.com- Listening to the TED talks!

www.autotrader.com- Attempting to find a fairly decent putt-putt car (Gas is extremely high these days you know!)

www.ebay.com- Just to search for whatever!

www.google.com- If I need to use a search engine!

Those are the sites that I use most often, but very rarely! I would have to say though, that at work, we use many work-related web sites on the Internet as tools to do research and what not.

TED Talk-Helen Fisher

Picking only one talk to blog on became more of a task than I had expected. There are many interesting talks available, but after looking through and reading about some of them I chose to listen to the entire talk of Helen Fisher about The Science of Love and the Future of Women. She had many key points in her talk, some I agreed with and some I did not.

The beginning of her talk was based on the question of what is romantic love. Many people would have different answers for this one question. Her answers seemed to be some of the most popular (focusing on a person, intense energy, craving them, obsessed). To me, I feel that romantic love is a lot of things put together to create the passion a person has for another. The main answer I would have to give would be that romantic love deals with someones feelings towards another, not necessarily their sex drive and energy. Fisher states that "romantic love is not an emotion-it's a drive." Perhaps she is right, but what pushes the drive, your emotions!

Fisher stated that women are moving forward in the modern time. I believe she is very right. There used to be a time when all the women of the household did were to clean, cook, and play house all day. In the modern day, the standard households have double incomes, which means that the man is working as well as the woman. Men used to have the right to say they were strong and could work on heavy and more extensive projects than women, but in the modern time it is nothing to see a woman working on a truck or helping out in the yard. As Ted Hughes (spelling?) says, "we are like two feet, we need each other to get ahead." I believe this statement is a perfect fit to describe how men and women work together. The man needs the woman, and the woman also needs the man. Neither should be considered better than the other because without one another there would be missing pieces.

During her talk, Fisher stated that people can have more than one romantic relationship, I believe that this is not so. If you have a deep attachment to one person, there should be no reason to lay in bed next to your loved one thinking about another person. To me, that seems to be false, because if that is so, you don't have a deep attachment to the one you say you do while looking at ours for the pleasure you are not receiving. Fisher made many great points but at the same time seemed very bias towards women. It is true we are moving up in the modern world, but at the same time it does not make us any better than when the men were high on their pedestals.

"A world without love is a deadly place."-Helen Fisher

Internet & Education

When considering my adventures past the high school doors, I came to the conclusion that since I was not going away to a four year college I could do more with the time span put in front of me while I was getting a degree. I didn't want to sit at home all day and only do a couple hours of school work every now and again when time came for my classes, so I ventured into the world of FLO classes. Ever since I have taken one, I haven't taken another class at the campus (unless it is only offered that way). I find that being able to take classes online and using the Internet is much more effective and feasible for someone that is working full time, taking care of a house, and at the same time still trying to consider their education and future. I have used the Internet for my education farther than just in my college semesters at RCC. During high school, the Internet was the first place I turned to when needing research or any type of information whether it be big or small. The Internet has such a wide vast amount of knowledge out there that people just have to sort through in order to find what really interest or helps them. Without the Internet, I would not be able to have a full time job and be going to school for my degree at the same time. Taking FLO classes allows me to have a flexible schedule and complete my assignments when my time prevails.

In five years from now, I feel that the Internet is going to be even more advanced than it is so now. The Internet has more information than any one person could ever begin to imagine so in the next five years I believe that there are going to be more computers available and changes being made every day to enhance the technologies. Technology has come a long way from huge desk top monitors and huge towers, to small portable laptops that can be used virtually anywhere. The Internet is going to be the most used and worked on technology in years to come.

When I was just entering high school, there was a total of 20 computers that students could use in the library. Although our school system is not very large, a classroom would be larger than the amount of computers that was allowed when I first went to high school, so as my years went by the school system acquired many more computers before the time that I graduated. I felt all throughout my high school year that if students could have laptops throughout their school year, they could be able to more efficiently takes notes, do assignments, and get work completed faster. Although there would be many bumps to pass over when first attempting to have laptops for every student, I feel that in the near future the public systems will allow for students to have computers in school. It is nearly impossible for a person to complete a project, research paper, or anything of the sort without turning to the Internet in the modern day. The Internet allows students to have fast and accurate information at the click of a button.

When the question arose about how could an academic setting be used to connect people international it reminded me of years go when one of my English teachers assigned a project throughout the year where the students had to have a pen pal outside of the state of Virginia. We had to write them so often and what not, I feel that something like that would help pull people together from other nations by having them keep in contact with other students via email and Internet connections. By doing so, the students could use the Internet as their source of communication while also being given the chance to learn about the different cultures, lives, and backgrounds of other people.

I think the solution to education and the Internet is to let technology run its course. It has gotten this far, I feel that there is many more changes in the works. In the modern day, there are cell phones that pick up cable television, soon there will be Internet in the steering wheels of our cars if the laws will pass for it! :)

TED Talk-Sir Ken Robinson Speech

Throughout every day there is many things a person thinks of during their day. Most things are ordinary thoughts, whats for dinner, whats left to do at home, how much money is in the bank, and such things. Not usually do thoughts come across a person mind that truly make a person think deeply enough to ponder on it for minutes upon time, since the usual thoughts are there and then gone. When listening to Sir Ken Robinson speaking, people are suddenly brought upon the subject of children's creativity being killed by the education system. This type of subject is one that is out of sight out of mind, so when it comes up as a subject, you must think deeply about it because at the base of it their is a truth behind everything that is brought to your mind. People are easily persuaded to believe a speech when it is given to them by someone that seems to know what they are speaking about, therefore this speech has persuaded me to believe that in more ways than one the education system is killing the creativity of our younger generations.

Sir Ken Robinson made many great points that helped persuade his belief that education systems do kill children's creativity. The main point that struck me was the talk of a child that could not concentrate on anything, but when was faced with a drawing lesson she payed complete attention. I know a child that has ADHD and first had I see how hard it is for her to pay attention for this class or that class, but if you give her one thing that she likes such as a computer game or video game she will be completely attentive. To me, this seems as a child's' creativity within what they like. The problem with this is that, video games and such will not teach a child to learn like a school will, but the fact of the matter is, is that at some point or the next every child can be the same whether they are working on a project, playing a game, or just watching television, something makes a child pay attention and let their imagination run.

Another interesting point that Robinson made is that kids take a chance and are not afraid to be wrong. Too often I feel that we as people are taught that you must do everything right, for when you do things wrong is when you are looked down upon. Children do not take right and wrong into consideration, what they feel is how things will be. Children lose their sense of creativity and their careless feelings to be wrong or right as they grow and learn that being wrong is not an opinion in the modern day.

Robinson mentions that Picasso stated, "All children are born as artist..." I believe this statement is very true. Take a child that is given a chance, see how far they take it while take another child that is never given the chance and see how badly they want the chance. Children are always urning to do something else, whether its buy another toy, read another book, eat another snack, when given the chance children will take it much farther than an adult that has taken their chances throughout life. Once a child is taught that everything they want to do, say, or become is not what is in their life line, they become the models their parents wanted and again their creativity is taken away from them.

In this modern world, education has its way of getting into childrens heads and making them believe, be, and want what is put forth to them. If the horizon was open ahead of them, children could let their imaginations run freely to be as creative as they wanted without restraints.

All About Me

Hey guys..guess you found my blog...so let me tell you a little bit about me. My name is Megan. I am 19 years old and attend Rappahannock Community College (mainly just FLO classes). I work full time at a Medical Billing Group where we bill for over hospitals and doctors offices. I am an Accounts Receivable Coordinator, so I handle all the money that comes into the building and deposit it into the correct checking accounts.

Enough about that horrible place called work, when I was in high school I took many college credit classes to get a head start on my future degree in Business Mangement, whch I am still working towards. I like learning as much as possible about how to navigate and use all the bells and whistles of the internet and computer. I deal with a computer all day long for the Accounts Receivable position and it is very helpful to know the short cuts.

In my spare time, I love to go shopping. I'm attempting to begin scrapbooking, although I've been trying to attempt it for the last year and still have not completely got everything I need to do it the way I want. I love going to Myrtle Beach and Nags Head when I get the time.

Other than that, I'm pretty much a laid back person. I have a beautiful new house that I recently moved into with my wonderful boyfriend, a cute little dog named Gizmo who loves to keep us company, and we stay on the go constantly so theres not much time for anything else!

-Megan