"This is the end, my friend the end"

All things come to an end. It has been a good semester but all things good or bad have a time limit were they all be over. Reading the book the world is flat has opened my eyes to many things.  The first is the extremes that Wal-Mart has gone thought to create the greatest supply chain that other companies study and copy. The way that people have started their own small companies that compete with the giants with the Internet to be able to connect to millions that was not available before. That one man was able to start his own news blog that had thousands of reads with a small voice recorder and his cell phone camera. The book also shows how little companies need to act big, with the service that they can offer or the way they offer them. At the same time it explains how big companies need to act small and provide the customer support and service that you would come to expect from a little guy try to keep all the customers. Another major point that I personally found interesting is how other countries are taking huge advantage over this small flat world we live in today. India’s college student working overnight at call centers and taking class during the day. Iceland restructuring it self completely in order to be the home of Intel, making it easier to hire and fire works and improving the populations education. Something I think that our government needs to do, our public school system is lacking and other countries are producing better graduates. Graduates that are willing to work for less than the average American with the same degree.  Overall the book bring to light many things that were right there in front of us but no one really gives any thought to or care to even think about as long as it didn’t effect them.

The future doesn’t need us is an interesting article to read from Wired Magazine is a good read and I'm sure its something that has crossed many if not everyone’s mind at least once. The rate of computer advancement is a bit alarming. If they continue at the current rate we will build the first wave of micro or nano machines that would be able to self reeducate. While this currently happens now on computer systems with files, the only damage done is the computer or the network goes down and has to be wiped clean and restarted. But these new micro machines could create so many that they could use up all resources and become a problem for the whole world. If that wasn’t bad enough, programing is also getting better to the point that sooner or later computers will be able to think for themselves and see the flaws that humans may have put in or propose or from human error/oversight. So each generation would be better than the next. They would end up taking over, either by force like in the Matrix, or people wanting to live the life of leisure and let the machines do everything. One way or another the world will change and when it does there will be no going back. The gears have been in motion for to long now to stop.  The only real question left to ask is when this great change is going to happen and if enough of humanity is able to come together and realize the danger of what is happening before its to late to be able to up a fight worth fighting for. The birth of AI would be a crowning moment in world history that would be great to experience, at the same time it could be the beginning of the down fall. A moment that would be a double edge sword to experience.   

Follow the white rabbit

For this week I choose assignment I decided to re-watch the Matrix. It’s a good movie that makes you think about how powerful computer have got and what their potential could be. With that its still a science fiction movie. The idea of connect our brains to a computer seams to be the direction that we are moving to. The idea of controlling and being able to enhance our learning with a chip in our head. To be able to have this chip in our head and connect and learn things as fast as downloading a program to a computer. We could advance society by having a smarter population. But before I get to far off track this is what is happening in the movie, Neo gets unplugged from the Matrix and about the ship he learns Kun-fu in seconds. Then continues to go on for hours. Then learns that the matrix is like a computer game that some rules can be broken while others only bent. Also that “the one” has admin rights and can rewrite all the rulers. As shown in the end when he flies away. The part of the movie that also seems real is the way we as a society continue to integrated computers in our daily lives as they advance and get smaller and smaller. This integration comes at a cost though, the more we interact with computers, tablets, smart phones the more we depend on them for even the simplest tasks that may have only taken a minute for us to do. We are moving to make life easier for humans by making computer do more and more for us. Its only a matter of time before someone can figure out how to make a computer think on its own and learn new things. Once that happens humans will no longer be the supior spices. While computer wouldn’t be living things they will be able to out think us and create machines that could do anything better than the human body can. This tough process is the bases for the movie. Computers learn to think and they start a battle between them and us. They plug us in and use us as slaves without us even knowing. They lead us to think that we are living our lives and have control of what is happening. But they have networked us into a system like we have done with them for so long now with the internet.