"Seeing Through Computers: Education in a Culture of Simulation" by Sherry Turkle November 30, 2002. Article Appears in "The New Media and Learning"

“Seeing Through Computers; Education in a Culture of Simulation” by Sherry Turkle was written at the turn of the century in 2002. It discusses the two definitions of transparency and what they mean to the two generations of computer users in the world. Turkle explains that the older generation, people over 30, sees transparency as an ability to “open the hood” and poke around. In other words to know how a computer does what it is. To the younger generation who grew up with computers, transparency just means being able to use it correctly. Sherry also speaks about organizations such as MassCUE, which consists of computer using educators, which want to teach students the Logo programming language because they believe it’s a very important skill to know. The educators are part of the over 30-age group which can be known as the culture of rules. The students live their lives based on video game simulations, which do not teach them real life scenarios.

Turkle’s argument is an interesting one. She is a professor at MIT and obviously she group up loving numbers and learning how to work new technology, I can see why she would be one of the people who side with the rules. My argument though as a new resident in the generation of simulation is why should I care how my computer works as long as it can work? Do I ever need to fix it or open the hood and poke around? I do not. I can call someone to do that for me and fix it. In today’s society we have experts in those fields who get paid to do that. I can understand hands on people wanting to know and understand the technology they use but for the most part I don’t see a need. We relay on computers now a day, there is no need for me to understand how it does what it does, as long as it makes my life easier.

Simulations are defined as a “representation of the operation or features of one process or system through the use of another.” What do simulations do for us? They make collecting data and figuring out consequences and possible outcomes easy. They are less expensive than doing the real thing, for example a flight simulator. If you crash in a simulation, no harm no foul. If you’re practice on a real plane and crash there are devastating consequences both financially and physically. Why the older generation does not accept these is beyond me? They are programmed to be if not 100% accurate as close as possible. There is no reason people should be in simulation denial. Simulations are not a destructive force but a tool for education. Nowadays we learn from computers if we can’t trust them then we cannot trust most of the computer driven technology is our society.

The Unreal Thing: What's Wrong With The Matrix? by Adam Gopnik: May 19th, 2003 The New Yorker Magazine Article

The title of this piece by Adam Gopnik, which first appeared in the New Yorker, is quite misleading. Upon first reading and seeing the words “A Critic At Large” at the top, I was expecting a movie review of some sort. At first the article begins to show The Matrix as a cult, speaking about the following that it has evoked, but then it begins to talk about the premise of the first movie and what made it so epic. Gopnik describes Neo and Morpheus’ quests and also speaks about the Cathars, a medieval Christian group, and their beliefs that possibly inspired the movie. After all the background knowledge he instills upon the reader he finally gets into the two horrible disgraces that were the sequels. He touches not only how terrible they were, but how they destroyed everything the first created. He wraps everything up with a lot of philosophical information that also too might have helped inspire the Matrix. He ends by saying that the Matrix is ahead of its time due to what has happened in our society over the last couple years, which I agree with.

Why do I find the title of the piece misleading? It is for the mere fact that he doesn’t find anything wrong with The Matrix; his quarrels come with the two sequels. The Matrix was a mind-blowing and brilliant movie that expanded the minds of the millions of people who watched it by allowing them to question their existence. A movie that has the ability to do that will stand the test of time as a classic. In classrooms all across the country, kids and teachers discuss what if this wasn’t real? What if people are just a speck of dust in a computer in this place we call the universe? I love philosophy. I think learning about existentialism, absurdism, and nihilism are things that all people should have to be exposed too, this is probably why I took such a liking to the Matrix. I agree with Gopnik on his points about the sequels. They were awful. They took the fun, the thought, and the complexity out of the movies. They became too commercialized in order to appeal to a wider audience so that they would gross more in the box office. It was also apparent that the Wachowski brothers never intended for a sequel to be made and instead tried to create another epic piece of work to no success.

The second part this article goes into is some of the literature of famous sci-fi writers and philosophers who might have had a hand in creating the dream world that was The Matrix. It also hits on how ahead of its time the movie was. The Matrix was about political freedom and social change in a world that was controlled. Today’s world is the same way. We, the people, are not equal anymore. The government and big business is suppressing what the majority wants in order to profit. The stock market is in shambles, and we have lost control and are now a dependent nation. We need to “free our minds” and start voice our opinions and standing up for what is right.

High-Tech Trash by Chris Carroll: National Geographic Magazine January 2008

I was highly disappointed with this article by Chris Carroll. I am a big National Geographic fan, but I thought this article was not only dull but also poorly written. Maybe I am being a little bias since I read it after seeing Exporting Harm, but it seems to me that it was a less informative version of that movie. The pictures seem to come right out of the movie with the scenes of large warehouses filled with computers and Chinese men and women slaving over hot stoves to gather copper and other valuable metals. The article did not do a good job telling the public about the hazards that are in these e-waste dumps in China. The movie was a lot more informative and hit a nerve with me that the article did not. After the movie I felt for the people of China and other places that this dumping goes on too, but this article did not make me feel the same way. Which is unfortunate since plenty of people might read the article and not see the movie. Carroll’s words are not painting the picture and as a result people might not find the dumping of electronics to be a problem.

I’m no saint, I’m very sure that I have contributed to the cause by not properly recycling and throwing out electronics; now I will be a little more conscious of my acts knowing that they are affecting the less fortunate. I think its terrible that the government will not ratify the Basel Convention due to losing profits. It once again shows me that the propaganda video we first saw is correct. The government is being run by big business and until that changes normal people will not be able to have a fair say. We are lucky though that some people like BAN and Creative Recycling Systems are taking matters into their own hands and trying to make things better overseas. People fighting for a cause is the way that problems like this are shown to the public and eventually become solved.

Lastly, the article’s only really great point that was not in the video was the last paragraph. I didn’t even think that the high levels of lead all over China contribute to the high levels of lead in things like toys that get shipped to the US. It was a fantastic point brought up by Jeffrey Weidenhamer. The crisis we’ve started is coming back to us to bite us in the ass. Hopefully big business will take note of that and clean up their wrongdoings before more toxic imports come back and damage their company’s names.

The Clean Room's Dirty Secret by Susan Q. Stranahan: Article for MotherJones.com March/April 2002

Definitely the most interesting of all the readings we have had to do so far. Instead of focusing so much on the technological side like we did with Levy and Winner, Stranahan brings to the forefront the legal side of our informational society and some of the health consequences that have evolved due to being around theses inventions. Cancer is a very serious disease. My grandmother died of cancer and my dad had a tumor on his kidney, which was successfully removed. It can show up in people with no history in their family at any moment in time and should not be taken lightly, so the fact that these big companies, where workers deaths have statistically shown “an elevated rate in brain tumors” over the last ten years, are not helping to protect their workers is crazy, (Stranahan, 2002). These workers put together the semiconductors in “clean rooms” filled with carcinogens and other toxic and reproductive health altering mixtures. How is that considered clean? Workers basically go into work and slowly die every day by being around these chemicals and the large companies pay their lawyers to try to sweep the statistics about health under the rug in order to save money. They say we live in the greatest country, but as that video in class showed, big business is larger than the government. No longer are the people the most important aspect, the government helps who brings in and makes the most money. People’s health and safety should be seen about profit but its not and I don’t think it ever again will be.

Thankfully these workers are coming out after all these years and suing IBM and other owners of plants for their negligence of not protecting them. While I’m sure both these companies and the government will do all they can to not allow these to go to court, I hope all the victims get their dues and fair compensation.

Lastly, my other problem with big companies and the way they do business is their criteria for calculating on the job injuries. The semiconductors industry is the 6th lowest, but it only entails on the job injuries, not possible chronic diseases that evolved from working. It may be a “Herculean task” to prove that the specific chemicals lead to these diseases, but its reasonable to say they’ve played a part in these fatalities, (Stranahan, 2002). Without these chronic diseases added to on the job injury rates shows another way how big business and government are able to manipulate stats for their advantages. Hopefully someone figures out how to actually make these “clean rooms” clean.

9/3/2008 Mythinformation by Langdon Winner Excerpt from the book "Questioning Technology" 1991

After reading the essay “Mythinformation” by Langdon Winner I immediately went to my computer and searched Webster’s Dictionary for the term “mythinformation” to see if in fact it was a real word and if that was its actual definition. Turns out it’s not. Winner, who is a professor of political science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in order to display the feelings of the era, created the word. In the midst of reading this essay I came across the line, “current dreams of a ‘computer age’ stand out as exaggerated and unrealistic,” (Winner, 1991). At first I was taken back since I believed that we were currently living in a computer age. After a minute of confusion I flipped to the back of the packet in order to see the date in which this was written. 1991 was the beginning of the technological revolution, slowly newer and better technology was being produced in order to make the lives of citizens easier. We now live in an era where everything is as easy as one would want it, yet surely enough even greater technology will be invented to help us out.

Winner speaks of the dangers of the new technology and I completely agree with what he thinks will be long-term consequences. As a science fiction fanatic, I’ve read and seen movies about the dangers of both artificial intelligence and boundaries beyond Earth. With technological revolution and the possible feasibility to monitor our activities, 1984 is the first thing that comes into my head. The government might eventually be able to see and hear all we do and use its power in order to turn our government from democracy into totalitarianism. This is obviously a possible farfetched and extremely pessimistic outlook but eventually boundaries will need to be set on privacy issues as even newer technology is created. Also, through technology like texting and Ichating today’s youth is losing its ability to communicate with other people. Social skills are slowly being lost with people due to their reliance on computers or phones to do everything.

The novel this excerpt came from is called Questioning Technology, seventeen years ago I could understand being apprehensive about the future and its new age wonders. The world we live in currently would not be the same without these new technologies, but as new inventions come into existence, will anybody have the guts to stand up and question them if our freedoms slowly dwindle because of them?

9/1/2008 Steven Levy "Perfect"... Chapter 1 of the book "The Perfect Thing" Published in 2006

Steven Levy is a technological beat writer for Newsweek, who happened to fall in love with one of the very products he had to write about. Apple’s iPod, now a life changing digital music player and my personal favorite gizmo, has come a long way since its release in 2001, but for Steven Levy to call it the “perfect thing,” I must disagree. Though he does state his criteria for perfect, specifically saying that it does not need to be flawless, the mere fact that the iPod has a myriad of flaws, such as battery life and its ease to collect scratches, does not allow me to believe the same way as him. Levy believes perfect can just be “making a dull day suddenly come alive,” (Levy, 2006). I understand in a spiritual sense that listening to your favorite album wherever you want, on a portable device will brighten the day, but so can many other things. His main reason for iPod perfection is the success that came along with its creation. Mac sales went through the roof and a new era of Apple users came into existence thanks to the newest technological craze. Does success imply perfection though? I listened to CDs and saw movies that no one has heard of that I consider to be perfect. Defining something as perfect is all about one’s opinions and viewpoints. I think that the iPod itself was the perfect marketing tool for Apple. It brought them back to the top of the technological world. The iPod’s creation and the hype surrounding it was the main reason for the sudden rise in sales for Apple. Without the creation of the iPod, Apple’s stock does not go up 700%, and sales in Mac do not increase, (Levy, 2006). I also believe that the iPod commercials and the marketing of the iPod itself was genius. The silhouetted people dancing with there white iPods in the foreground will forever be an iconic 21st century image.

Throughout the first chapter in his novel Levy looks to the iPod as one of the main reasons that he and many others got past the tragedy that was 9/11. He states that, “I wasn’t exactly forgetting about 9/11, but I was getting excited…about technology and its power to transform the world,” (Levy, 2006). People’s ability to walk or run with their own digital libraries in their pockets made life simpler. In a time that people all over were scared, it relieved them to see the world was still moving forward. The iPod can be thanked for that. It allowed people everywhere at any time to put in some headphones and listen to all the music that makes them happy and life seem grand. One iconic image, the iPod, momentarily allowed for the other 21st century image, the towers falling, to fade away.