Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

When I think about robots I always picture the robots in movies that go crazy and want to take over the world. There's always been a huge debate about whether humans or robots are better. Personally I dont think robots can do what humans can. I know alot of growing technology is pushing to make everything more life like and realistic like video games and things like that. It looks like robotics is heading that way too. The big thing that humans have over robots is said to be emotions. Robots dont have feelings, but in the article "The Huggable: A Therapeutic Robotic Companion for Relational, Affective Touch" it looks like they're trying to change that. The huggable isnt neccessarily trying to take place of a human but more so of an animal champion and I think it sounds like an amazing idea. "Lessons learned from the study of the neuroscience and the biology about how the human and animal somatosensory system influenced the design of this “skin.” Thus the “sensitive skin” of the Huggable features the four modalities of human and animal somatic perception – touch, pain, temperature, and kinesthetic information." So instead of a a cold steel heartless robot these little guys are programed to react to your touch, how you hold them, etc. 

I think robotic cars are awesome.When I think of a robotic car it makes me feel like flying cars are not to far away. Personally I feel like a robotic car can do more good than bad. For several reasons like people with disabilities, or the elderly or in cases where you're imapaired like the article "Driverless Cars Get California License" by Rachelle Dragani described. The main reason for these cars is the safety factor, they said a machine can react faster than a human can. "When there is an emergency situation where a driver needs to brake, the reaction speed of the driverless car can be as small as 40 milliseconds, while human beings will take at least 500 milliseconds". Thats a huge difference. 

I dont want to say that humans would make more errors than a robot because I feel like humans are the ones who put a robot together so clearly we're doing something right. Maybe technically speaking a humans might make more mistakes but its just cause that one saying I'm only human of course I'm gonna make mistakes. 

Creativtity and Social Media

So theres this new app out that I think is pretty funny. Its called Bitstrips and you can create your own avatar and make little comic strips of you and your friends doing all types of hilarious things. You can connect in with your facebook account and see all your friends on facebook who have already created an avatar. This is mine:

Social Media

I remember a few years back when I had to actually log onto a computer to go on social media websites. Now everything has gone mobile and I can access everything I want on my smart phone so I use it more often. The only social media website I'm really on is Facebook. I also use Instagram but I really only follow famous people on Instagram, Facebook is for real people I know. I'm not a fan of Twitter at all I feel like it limits your thoughts too much and I don't really like the layout of things. I'm also against hash tags. I like Facebook because its become a lot more user friendly. I was totally against the whole "timeline" layout when it first came out but now I don't mind it anymore its pretty useful actually. 

A virtual world is an online environment where people can meet and have discussions using avatars in place as themselves. Nowadays a lot of companies are starting to use them because it makes things a lot easier for them. In the article by Mark Tutton "Going to the virtual office in Second Life" he explains how IBM has began using this a virtual world for meetings and how beneficial it was for the company. The IBM rep said that  "he recently held a meeting with 12 technical leaders from across Europe and Asia. While that would typically involve flying everyone to a central location, he said the meeting was held using the new Sametime 3D. 'Not only did we save travel time, but because the environment was so engaging, a lot more ideas came through'. Using these virtual worlds companies save a lot of time and money and are able to communicate with coworkers throughout the world. 

Companies aren't the only ones using these virtual worlds, the article by Nicole Saidi "iReport: 'Naughty Auties' battle autism with virtual interaction", discussed how people with autism find this technology quiet useful. Autism in some cases can cause difficulties in their social interactions and communication skills with other people in society. But in the virtual world with lifelike avatars they're more comfortable to be themselves because they're still in their own space. "One benefit is that visitors can practice social interaction and find information about the condition. The graphical representations of real people create a "comfort 

zone" that can coax users out of their shells and get them communicating with others".

If I was in a virtual world I would like to be as much like myself as possible. Unless I can be like some multi millionaire who owned the whole virtual world and I had this big virtual mansion! That might be cool.

World Wide Web

To be honest the future of the world wide web scares me a little. I think its crazy the technology people come up with. To a certain extent its pretty fascinating and amazing but I feel like there are some things that are a little invasive on a persons privacy. Google is talking about trying to make some cyber super best friend that knows us better than we know ourselves. The article "Google's New Director of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil, is Building your 'Cybernetic Friend'" says that pretty soon Google "will understand why users are searching for information and provide them with answers they didn’t even know they needed". It sounds like a pretty cool concept but why do I want Google to tell me answers to things I haven't even began to think about, its kind of creepy. Its kind of like when I go on amazon and it shows me things I might like relating to things I've recently searched and other websites I've been too. Where's the privacy in that? I don't think websites should have access to information you looked at on websites that aren't their own, but the future seems to be going in that direction everything is trying to be linked together to make everything "easier" for you. 

'The Cloud' is where you can store your information, data, programs, things like that and you can access it through cyber space anywhere and anytime because its not saved on an actual device. I used
 to think the cloud was something Apple just had but after reading the article, "Clod Computing: As Software Migrates from local PCs to distant Internet Servers, users and developers alike go along for the ride", I understand its a concept that has been around for awhile and has now found its way in normal family homes with personal computer users rather than just corporate companies, etc. The article states that were seeing a second coming of cloud computing and "the change will affect all levels of the computational ecosystem from casual user to software developer, IT manager, even hardware manufacturer".