Module 12

At first glance Bill Joy’s article in Wired Magazine called “Why the future doesn’t need us,” seemed rather pessimistic about moving forward in the field of technology but, I found the article to be very thought provoking and eye opening. This article has a lot of good points and made me realize that just because we can doesn’t mean we should. Technology is a great and powerful machine that we have learned to harness, but without the right precautions and right people, technology could get out of control. Joy’s article explains the threats that technology could impose. The threat he focuses on the most is GNR. He defines GNR as Genetics, Nanotechnology, and robotics.

Advancements in the field of genetics could help in many areas of science. Joy points out that we have already started using genetics in farming. We have used genetics to produce food with the flavor and size that we want. We have also produced foods that contain a much smaller amount of pesticides, making the food healthier. At the same time, we have to be very cautious about our genetically modified food. If a scientist either accidently or purposely creates a malicious crop through genetic engineering and allows it to corrupt farmers crops we could have a large problem on our hands.

Genetics also brings up the touchy subject of cloning.  As we progress in our ability to clone foods and animals, the thought of cloning humans is a very intriguing possibility. Whether it be to save someone’s life or in Star Wars case to create a clone army that could help save or destroy humanity. Regardless of what the human cloning is for the question of “is this ethical?” arises.

Joy expresses his fears with Nanotechnology by describing nanobots; which are Nano sized robots that have the ability to self-replicate. I think his fear regarding nanobots is very realistic. If we lose control of this technology, I can easily see these robots replicating at a pace at which we have no control and causing massive destruction, especially when the nanobots are in the wrong hands.

 As I was reading this article, I began to wonder as to why we would even want to explore this area of technology, but Nanotechnology has so many constructive and lifesaving implications. Ideally they could be used to locate and destroy cancerous cells. They could also be used to devour oil spills and cleanup large areas of garbage and debris. But if we lose control, these same nanobots that were supposed to clean up oil spills could potentially devour our oil supply itself.

Due to sci-fi, a vast majority of individuals think that robot means a human like machine with similar mental and physical capabilities. We have had robots for a long time some more lifelike then others. Joy feels that in the foreseeable future robots could become a threat.  I can see where he gets his cautious notions, but we are not at a point where such predictions can be made. Many countries have made robots that seem very intelligent and lifelike. All these function are programmed into the robot. Unless the robot is programmed to attack the human race, it will not go rogue and start wiping out the human race. I’m not saying that this is not a possibility further down the road, but with our advancements in robotics up to this point, we are nowhere near creating a robot capable of making significant decision based on emotion and overriding its own programming. Although, I do feel like sometimes my computer has a mind of its own.

Robots help in many aspects of life. In a factory production line robots are used all the time to speed up production and do very dangerous tasks. Some retirement homes in Japan use robots to help care for the elderly. This doesn’t completely rule out the need for nurses, but when a nurse isn’t available the patient can get the help they need. Robots can also be used for entertainment. Toyota has created a robot that can play various violin songs and can even achieve the vibrato technique.

 Technology has the potential to make our lives so much easier and connect us to people in ways we would never have thought possible, but that is only if it is being used for the right purposes. There are enough good hearted people in the world that technology has become a very beneficial part of our lives.  Technology is not something that should be feared. It should be embraced.

 

Module 11

The movie I chose to watch and write about is WarGames. I had never heard of this movie before and I don’t know why, because it was a great movie. This movie was made in 1983 so the Ideas of super computers and artificial intelligence were still relatively new subjects. This movie depicts the roles that computers could inherit in areas like the military and national security. I have grown up with computers my whole life and to me the three and a half inch floppy disks are rather old school. So to see these eight inch floppy disks, dial-up networks, and computers that filled a whole room opened my eyes as to how far we have come in our technological advancements with computers and networks.

To give a brief synopsis of the movie without being a spoiler : David Lightman, a teenage hacker, accidently stumbles upon a military defense computer and starts a simulation for Global Thermonuclear War, thinking that it is just a game. This causes the government to think that the simulation is real and results in a large amount of chaos. The government catches David and interrogates him while not believing that he accidently started the simulation and accusing him of being a terrorist. Because the government thinks he is a soviet terrorist, Lightman has a very hard time trying to tell them that the computer is still playing the simulation. If the computer finishes the simulation, nuclear missiles will launch and World War III would commence.

WarGames encompasses many different functions and uses of computers back in the eighties. This movie manages to show what home computers were like thirty years ago as well as state of the art, military super computers. One of the first computers seen in the movie is called WOPR. This computer fills almost the whole room. Even though the computer is very large, it can only facilitate a small list of games while learning from its own mistakes or the mistakes of others. At the time this was ground breaking technology, but now a computer with the same functionality would be very cheap and could possibly be the size of an individual’s thumb.

The next computer that is shown in this movie is David’s home computer. This computer has a phone attached to it for dial-up and takes eight inch floppy disks for memory. When looking at the monitor, there is no windows or mac operating system with a full user interface. Up until Windows, these computers ran strictly on input in the form of command prompts. To use one of these computers one would almost need to learn a programming language. Now granted command prompt is a lot simpler than writing common programming code like JavaScript or C#, but it was still a lot more complicated than our method today of just simply clicking the right buttons.

This film shows the great care, thought, and testing that is necessary to automate very critical and life changing tasks through the use of computers. The idea of using the WOPR to automate the task of launching nuclear missiles was a good idea in theory. NORAD conducted a test to see if their employees mentally had what it takes to launch the missiles. Around twenty percent of the missiles were not launched. So their solution was to have a computer to do the task. This would eliminate the problem of human emotions, but they failed to realize how poorly secured the computer was and to take note of bugs in the system that would not allow for a system shutdown or a system override.

An issue I could see arising from WarGames is a new found interest and curiosity in the world of hacking. Because after watching this movie, I was very intrigued about hacking and wanted to learn more and maybe try some of it myself. Not to say that all hacking is bad, because there are many people who can make an honest living from ethical hacking and maybe after this movie companies hired some hackers to test how secure their computers actually were. I just wouldn’t be surprised if after this movie came out, more people wanted to pursue an interest in hacking whether it be ethical or completely illegal.