After reading through Kranzberg’s six laws, the law that applies the most is the sixth law, which explains that we determine what the technology we create does. How we decide to use technology is a running theme throughout technology itself, so it has also been a running theme in the entirety of this course, like in unit three, where we talked about ethics, which applies to how technology which is created with either good or bad intention, but may serve the opposite purpose when someone else is using it. Next, I believe that the fourth law applies the second most, which explains how technology needs motivation outside of technology to be created, followed by the first law with the third most significance, which states how all technology is both good and bad at the same time, with things like your geographic and cultural context affecting whether things are good or bad. After that, the second law has the third least significance, as it states that technical innovations will not reach their maximum potential until new technical advances are made, and following that up, I believe that the third law applies the second least, as it states that each part of a technological package has requirements and dependencies from the other parts of the same package, which I feel is a weaker and more specific version of the sixth law. Finally, the law I feel applies the least is the fifth law, as it just says that history is more relevant for the history of technology compared to all other forms of history. History was the main focus of Unit one in this course, and we learned a lot about the history of technology through the second section, which was called “Historical Revolutions Lecture,” which went over the largest technological revolutions to date. I feel this is least applicable, as computer science and technology is a rapidly advancing subject, and while it may have an important history, very little of it is useful as better and cheaper options have left these old inventions behind.

After doing a little bit of research, I found a futurist named Jack Uldrich, which I assume is their name based on the name of their blog. Jack Uldrich has even made a post for his most recent predictions on 2019, so I decided I will summarize his thoughts in regards to the upcoming year. The first topic he talks about is a topic I personally believe in which is extending our lives. This is split between two topics, being the increasing split in the longevity gap, and the way genes are being modified to extend the lives of dogs. In terms of the longevity gap, this goes in both directions, as increased suicides, opioid abuse, and obesity has lead to much shorter life spans, where as better medical technology has been continuously increasing life spans. Chinese scientists have already found a way to modify the genes of the pets of very wealthy people. Next, he mentions hoe fake things are starting act even more like the real deal, with things like better synthetic diamonds and artificial meat. Continuing on the terms of food, Lettuce seems to be struggling, while chips seem to be improving, as the outlook seems to be that the e-coli affecting our lettuce may make us need to grow our own lettuce, and chips are going to be available which can help improve your waistline rather than hurt it. On Jack Uldrich’s blog, they go further into technologies like the “smart” toilets, technologies made in order suck Carbon Dioxide out of the environment, and drones which could recharge electric cars. I would urge anyone to take a deeper look into Jack Uldrich’s blog to go into further detail on the things I did and didn’t talk about from his blog, as I personally enjoyed viewing what he has posted so far looking into 2019.

I believe that technology has changed our ethical calculus as a society, as we seem to view and understand things differently when we can instantly receive any information we search for on a computer. This makes it so anyone can see a problem or controversy for the first time through their own means, and causes clashing opinions to form about what can and can’t be talked about online, in private, or in public, when the source doesn’t have any biased information exclusion, or opinion or assumption inclusion in its delivery. On the same note, I believe that technology has altered the manner in which we determine whether things are right or wrong, as more information about a topic is available to us through the use of the internet, than what a couple of people can offer us through what they have been hearing without the internet. We don’t need to deal with any misinterpreted or cherry picked facts that someone is willing to tell us about a topic, and we can do our own research through the use of both biased and unbiased sources, depending on what information we need or want.

Technology, social media, and the internet have made such a huge impact on the landscape that is information. Through new data collection and analysis methods, people are able to offer new information to the public that can alter what people think about certain standards, situations, or events. Likewise, anyone can do a search through trending topics or specific topics that they want to know more information about, so they can form thoughts and opinions that they feel are more suitable. For example, I was not born when the video game crash of 1983 happened, but through my love of video games, and especially Nintendo games for their extremely iconic characters and fun gameplay, I found that I do not like Atari for nearly destroying the medium of entertainment I love more than any other, and without the internet, I would not have any opinion on Atari at all, or possibly even a positive view of Atari, as my stepdad’s original home video game console was an Atari system. From this I can do further research into the bad practices that Atari was promoting leading up to and after the video game crash of 1983, and how Nintendo brought video games back into popularity for the North American audiences using the Nintendo Entertainment System. This personal research which is specific to each person couldn’t be done nearly as efficiently without technology and the internet.

Through the many inventions and innovations that have been presented by the IT revolution, it has managed to cause so much change in the way we live, that it has become the most transformative revolution of all time. To start, the IT revolution has managed to impact political elections and causes, simply based on the way they campaign themselves, and the way they allow others to support their campaign. If a group or organization does it wrong, and offers free and easy ways to support a cause, like considering likes helpful, they could lose potential donations in time or money to slacktivism, while on the other hand, pointing out something like simply giving a like isn’t going to help the cause, can get people to decide to make more time and money donations. The IT revolution seems to be so transformative, that it is able to both break from the demographic molds, and use the demographic molds, as when explaining the IT revolution’s effects on gender, we are able to present ‘gender neutrality’ through social media, which shows how the IT revolution allows people to break from demographic confines, to simply express what they like, but as human beings we are still always in some way part of these demographics, so the IT revolution’s effects on sociological ideas, shows how our demographics are offered certain things based on what people like or why other people have previously bought, like the situation where target found out a fifteen year old girl was pregnant two weeks before her parents did, all because she bought more vitamins than usual and a handbag which was big enough to carry diapers.

The IT revolution has had a drastic effect on our overall psychology as human beings, as the easy access, long distance communication the revolution has brought through the invention of the cell phone is immense, but the convenience has come at somewhat of a cost. People have grown accustomed to the isolated, but connected feel of text messaging, and creating online posts, to the point where they will take it over face to face communication, to avoid the stress that might come with directly speaking with someone else. On the other hand, the geological effect of the IT revolution and the cell phone is so widespread, even majority of the people in countries which suffer from severe poverty, like Haiti, have cell phones to make calls when they need to, and to use when an emergency situation strikes, like the earthquake back in 2010, where the IT revolution really shined for people inside and outside of Haiti at the time. Inside Haiti, people were able to send out distress signals through their cell phones if they needed help, and people outside the country were able to create open source maps for people trying to navigate around the country to use in order to bring help to the people who needed it.

Finally, the historical impact IT revolution, which in this situation, could also be called the ‘big data revolution,’ which is changing the way history is being made. Thanks to the IT revolution, we have been given the ability to much more efficiently create, combine, and use data. An example of this is how a lawyer was able to find that a water plant in Zanesville, Ohio was selectively providing water to white residents, while denying water to non white residents, simply by combining which houses were occupied by white people, and which houses were being provided with water. This caused the water plant to be forced to pay 10.9 million dollars for selectively providing water to only white residents. Overall the IT revolution has had a lot of different impacts on many different parts of our lives, making it the most transformative revolution of all, up to this point.

 

The technology profiled on the online exhibit, “Revolution: the first 2000 years in computing,” that is most revolutionary was the “Birth of the Computer.” To clarify, when I say the word revolutionary, I mean that the results of something leads to a major change. The birth of computers is tied with both the short term changes it caused for their first original purpose during World War II, and the unintended long term after effects the original computers have created through continued advancement up to today.

Before we had computers, there were people called calculation workers, who worked to deal with the alarming amount of repetitive calculations that needed to be done. This was slow and tedious due to the use of punch cards and calculators being the primary ways of handling these calculations, so people were already searching for a better way to do these calculations. The answer to this problem came in the form of the ENIAC, which was the first completely electronic computer, using no mechanical parts, making it do calculations much faster.

After the creation of the ENIAC, other computers were also created for different purposes other than just general basic calculation. With the need for a computer which could be used to break codes that the Nazis were sending to each other, the “Colossus” was created. The Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine, also known as “Baby,” was used to test the ability to execute a program from memory, which created the birth of software. Passed even these three computers, there were still more computers created, each striving to reach their own.

All three of the previously mentioned computers are milestones of the birth of computers, which could be considered revolutionary with how much they change the things around them. The ENIAC was the very first completely digital computer ever made, which is now today’s standard. The “Colossus”  was the first electronic means of encryption and decryption, and it helped to end World War II and begin the age of computing. The Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine created the first way to store programs to execute them later, which would eventually become the birth of software. Overall, it is all thanks to revolution created by the earliest computers, like the previously mentioned three, that we have the advanced computers we do today.

The biggest impact of technology on my life has to be my unbreakable, and nearly relentless love for video games, as it has lead to my desire of becoming a computer programmer, hopefully as a programmer of video games. For almost my entire life so far, video games have played a major factor in nearly all my interests, as I basically picked them up from the very first point I could both hold a controller and understand what was happening in a game just enough to at least try to make my way towards the objective. My first experience with video games was through my dad’s Playstation One and Playstation Two, which acted as both my introduction into gaming, and my introduction to technology. I remember playing games like Crash Bandicoot and Digimon, but not being able to progress very far because I didn’t understand the games well enough to pass certain roadblocks they presented. The idea of owning my own video game console was presented to me all the way back on my fifth birthday, when I got a Nintendo DS Lite, and four DS games along with it. If my mom had not bought four games for me to play, then there is a chance I would not be as interested in technology as much as I am now, as my mom was not a gamer like my dad, so while she got me two very good games, the other two games she got were shovelware. If my mom only wanted to get me one or two games, she would have most likely gotten me the shovelware games, and while one of the games were pretty good, being “Spongebob’s Atlantis Squarepantis”, which I mildly enjoyed back when I first played it, the other game, being “Shrek Smash n’ Crash Racing”, was, in gamer terms, “a literal steaming, flaming, nasty smelling pile of literal garbage.” In English this roughly translates to “horrendous and boring.” I did not like this game, playing it only once, and proceeding to silently push the game to the side forever. If this were the only game I got, it’s likely that I would have grown cold to technology all together, but on the bright side, I got “Sonic Rush Adventures” and “Crash of the Titans,” as what I assume was my mom’s third and fourth choice at the store, which leads me to getting more games, and having a greater continued interest in video games. By this point I had become a gamer, and a chain of different events followed thanks to both the Playstations and my DS, which has lead all the way to current day where I own a Switch, Playstation four, and Laptop all of my own, and I am pursuing to become a programmer, thanks to my passion for video games.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton