Cyber Bullying

    Cyber bullying is such a big issue. I am a health and wellness major an we had almost an entire semester devoted to creating a bullying program that could be used to help a school prevent bullying. Cyber bullying is hard to determine unless you physically see the comments or the person being bullied tells you.
     In the one article about the girl Rebecca who commuted suicide, Mrs. Norman said that, "The school should have done more. Officials told her that Rebecca would receive an escort as she switched classes, but that did not happen." I agree that yes, the school should have done more, but the blame can not just fal on them. Technology is constantly emerging and I'm sorry, but that means parents have to step in monitor how there kids are using technology. Not only Rebecca's parents, but the parents of the bullies should be monitoring what their children are posting about their peers. Most people say that's invasion your child's privacy, but at that young of age if it is going to help in their benefit you do it.
    In the other article where the girl was harassed by the three boys at the Labor Day party, the article states that, "The school refused to expel the boys because the alleged assault did not happen at a campus related activity." I found this outrageous they are still your students and they harmed another know matter where at, there should always be repercussions because what is going to stop them from doing it again off campus. I just feel in this case the school really could of done more.
    This is why I feel parents and should need to step in and look at what's going on at home and outside of school. Half the teachers in high school and grade school know when someone is being bullied. They may not physically see it, but all kids talk and most teachers hear what they are saying in the hallways. Even if you just hear about it they should look into it. It's better to be safe then sorry.

Legal and Ethical Issues

For this topic I really do not know how I 100% feel about. I feel that yes, most information should be free, but I also think some should not. The one thing that I feel should be free, at least to students is Defintely research. I have had numerous times where I have found really good information, but could not use it because to read the rest of their findings I had to pay. As for a college students who has to waste a lot of money on books, there is no way I would pay for research. As mentioned in the one article called "Open Access Research Grows in Popularity, William's said, "She prefers open access because it gives people the opportunity to look into different areas of different research, perhaps speaking a future interest." I agree with Williams on this. Like I said before research is one big area that I feel should be free. When it comes to tv, movies, and music I am not really sure where I stan because I have some ideas as to why it should be free, but I also feel there are some reasons is should not be.

The Problem of Privacy and the Internet

When it comes to privacy and the Internet, nothing is private. Everything you put on the Internet or even put in files on your computer can some how be recovered or shared again. For example in the one article by Julia Angwin she mentions that technology is getting smarter. "The Journal found new tools that scan in real time what people are doing on a Web page, then instantly access location, income, shopping interests and even medical conditions." I find this kind of scary because everything you do can turn into something that people can find and look at. Even when it comes to Facebook, when you update a status or comment on someone's post it says your location. Therefore someone can click the city your in and zoom in enough and find what area you are posting from. This is a reason I barely use Facebook anymore. There privacy settings are not good and I believe they just changed a lot of their settings, so you can't make things private. The one article by Rebecca Greenfield regarding the Zuckerberg family, it mentions that even they are confused about the settings on Facebook. They had someone retweet a photo on Facebook that she shared with only two friends. It just shows that anyone can get there hands on anything you post on the Internet. As this article mentions, "Everything can be shared and re-shared these days." This is why when using social networking sites you have to be very careful on what you put out there.

Artifical Intelligence and Robotics

I think robots can do a lot of the same things as humans, but not all. I personally do not like the idea of these new robotic things, for example the robotic care. It is kind of cool that they are working on cars that can drive themselves and according to the article written by Rachelle Dragani these robotic cars could majorly reduce the number of traffic accidents. In a way I could possibly see this because the car would obey street signs and speed limits, but what if it malfunctions. In the article written by Leon Neyfakh he mentions, "What if the car screws up.?' This is a very good point because nothing is 100% reliable. I have a feeling that fully robotic cars would wind up causing more of a problem then good. Neyfakh also mentions in his article that if the robotic car hit someone, who would be responsible the car of driver. It is a very hard question and I feel like this would be a reoccurring problem. I feel they would malfunction and when that happens it would probably cost a fortune to fix. I just do not like the idea of robotic cars.
I think that both robots and humans make errors and either one of them is perfect. Therefore I really do not know who is more likely to make more errors.

Creativity and Social Media

For this assignment, I decided to upload one of my videos from my phone to YouTube. This video is from the Luke Bryan Concert I went to over the summer and although it is not the best video, I took it more for the music. Luke Bryan, Florida Georgia Line, and Cole Swindell, who are all country artists, did a medley of songs to non country music. I just thought it was cool.

For this assignment I downloaded the YouTube capture App. This allows you to upload or take videos and it puts it directly on your YouTube account because that is what it is linked to. After I downloaded the App and plugged in my information, I went to my videos and selected this one. The I went to privacy settings and clicked unlinked, so only people with the web address can view it. Then I hit upload. It took a couple minutes, but then it was uploaded to YouTube. That was about it.

Here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnWedIkywDA

Social Media

I am on two social networking sites, Facebook and Twitter. I prefer Facebook because I know how to use it. I have never really gotten into Twitter. I do not even really do a lot on Facebook, I mainly use it as a way to share pictures with friends or like things to get updates.

Virtual worlds is usually a computer-based simulated environment, through which users can interact with one another. In the one article by Tutton, it talks a lot about using virtual worlds for work meetings. Instead of meeting face to face they can all come together and meet on a network. The article also mentions that they have had, "A whole range of environments, from auditoriums and collaboration pods to social areas where the avatars could pick up a beer around a log fire, or walk around a sculpture park and talk." I think that would be pretty fun and it would probably be more exciting interacting with them in more of a game setting because it is better then sitting in a meeting. People may actually pay attention more.

I also found the article by Nicole Saidi very interesting. She mentions that, ""He was able to use chat rooms and soon realized that people used symbols to express themselves: the smiley signs, the angry signs, hug signs, etc., to enhance the text. He went on to say that subconsciously his brain was learning about communication from these sessions of chat." I think this is a really good tool to help those who do have certain disorders. It is good that technology is helping with that.

I am not really sure what I would like to be in my virtual world.

The World Wide Web

I think that the future of the world wide web is going to be very interesting. In the article, "Google's New Director of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil, is Building your Cybernetic Friend," it mentions that, "Eventually Google will understand why users are searching for information and provide them with answers they didn’t even know they needed." In a way this would be really cool, but I feel as the World Wide Web advances, more and more of our personal information is getting out there as well. As also mentioned in this article, "Ray Kurzweil, wants to build a search engine so sophisticated that it could act like a ‘cybernetic friend,’ who knows users better than they know themselves." I would find it creepy if I did not even have to ask the question to have this cybernetic friend know what I want to ask.

'The Cloud' is used for storing and accessing data and programs over the internet instead of your computer's hard drive. I knew of the cloud, but really did not know what exactly the purpose of it was, but after reading the Cloud Computing article, I have a better understanding. The article states that, "The change will affect all levels of the computational ecosystem, from casual user to software developer, IT manager, even hardware manufacturer." I kind of thought it would really only affect businesses and things like that, but after reading the article I realized it is not.