BLOG ASSIGNMENT #8

To many of us this was our first semester at LaGuardia Community College. Our cluster topic for this semester was about our Brains, Mind, and Consciousness. This was incorporated in all of our classes which were ENG 101, EN1G103, SSY101, HUP101, and were all brought together by LIB110. When this semester started I had no idea of what to expect from these cluster classes. I didn’t even know I was going to be part of it until I began school, and it was explained to me throughout the first day of college by my teachers. Nonetheless I was very motivated to learn about everything it had to offer me. I was also very curious about the different ideas each class had and how they saw and explained things from their perspective. Thinking about sciences like human cloning, robotics, and other types of technology was something I never really thought about or paid attention to. However in ENG101 Professor Dragan made sure to make us aware of all these topics and helped us explore all the negative effects as well as their positive. Throughout this semester I’ve learned to appreciate science and technology a lot more than before. In addition I’ve learned how to become a better writer when it comes to using sources like books, movie, articles, encyclopedias, and etc. Although at some point throughout the semester I did struggle a lot with writing essays and my research paper because I wasn’t use to writing continuously and specially putting my words down into a paper. So in conclusion it was a great experience for me because I benefited a lot from ENG101/103 because now I don’t struggle as much to write papers and I’m more fluent when it comes to writing.

PLANNING FOR YOUR FINAL DRAFT

For my final draft i got a B and im a little bit upset but the feedback that Proff. Dragan gave back to me was really helpful. For my final draft i have to cite my sources much better because that seemed to be the main problem. Another problem that he was pointed out was how i used the cititions, i guess i have to connected better to my paper.

BLOG ASSIGNMENT # 7

The imaginative text I’ve chosen for this blog post is the play A Number by Caryl Churhill. This play to me doesn’t necessarily give you facts or legit information on how cloning could affect humans and how cloning could really be like if it were to happen. However it does portray a different scenario that could be shocking and scary if you come to think of it. In the play a there is three characters Salter, Bernard 1, and Bernard 2. This play tells a story of a man that wanted to fix the past that he himself created. Bernard had many regrets because of the life style he put his son Bernard 1 through. He was raised in a bad environment due to abuse by his father and at a young age he became corrupted. As for Bernard2 he was the opposite of everything B1 was because Salter realized what he did to his first son and refused to let it happen again and created a second chance by creating clones. Nevertheless the plan Salter planned ended with a terrible tragedy that took the life of his first son as well as the clone that he learned to love. In the end Churchill’s play does leave the reader asking questions like could it really be like this if cloning were to happen?, could people become this immoral and insensitive towards other human beings, but it also tells you how cloning couldn’t be a problem by showing you how one of the clones Michael has such a successful life. Furthermore Churchill doesn’t really take a side on cloning she argues that nurture is more important than nature. Perspectives from movie I believe are very interesting to watch because it shows you certain possibilities that things can lead to and that could help us progress in the future.

BLOG ASSIGNMENT #6

As we all know Ray Kurzweil is very optimistic about the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how it will affect us in the future. In his book The Singularity Is Near he expresses his thought of what human are capable of doing and how we can better from machines rather than thinking negatively about them. The author says “Human skills are able to develop only in ways that have been evolutionary encouraged. Those skills, which are primarily based on massively parallel patterns recognition, provide proficiency for certain task, such as distinguishing face, identifying objects, and recognizing language sounds. But they’re not suited for many others, such as determining patterns in financial data. Once we fully master pattern-recognition paradigms, machines methods can apply these techniques to any type of patter” (Kurzweil 139). What this quote is stating is that once we figure out how create machines that are able to have human skills it will benefit us more in the future. We as humans have many advantages because we are able to have patterns of recognition which is something machines are go good at, but once we discover away to apply this to machines there will be a very positive outcome.  I believe AI in machines will grow and one day it’ll have a great amount of intelligence but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will hurt us, but help us a lot in the long run. In response to Ray Kurzweil, David Gelernter a computer pioneer expresses his point of views and its limitations of the way machines will one day operate in Dream-Logic, The Internet and Artificial Thought. He expresses his views in more if a realist way of thinking for example “as far as we know, there is no way to achieve consciousness on a computer or any collection of computers…..the computer would have no inner mental world; would in fact be unconscious” (Gelernter 207). Here he explains his views and states that although machine could have all the intelligence programed in them, they will never be like humans because they will never have consciousness, which the main thing that differs us from machines in general.

BLOG # 5 !!

In our ENG 101 course packet an article The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (excerpt) by Ray Kurzweil explains all the optimistic views on robotics. After reading this passage and from my prior ideas on technology I agree with Ray Kurzweil. I think I’m a very optimistic person when it comes to technology and how much it has improved. I believe that technology is what gotten us this far in science and different type of inventions are what helped us evolve and make our world better. The author says “it says "people want better medical drugs; relief for humans from the need to perform boring and dangerous jobs" (Kurzweil 137) in this quote we see how technology is such an important aspect of our lives because it also helps us advances in medicine. For people with disabilities and some that might be disabled technology have helped us create robotic hands and legs that make the people’s lives a lot easier. In this Article Kurzweil explains all the helpful aspect to technology and he makes a lot of valid points. Technology should be something were afraid of because it helps us in ways that humans can’t. An example would be war there are many machines made for things human cannot do. I think of robots more as our friends than our enemy, some people think they’re going to take away jobs but what I believe it will be jobs that we can’t do. Technology is what has basically gotten us all of our electronic now and days and that’s something people nowadays can’t live without.

ENG 103 Research Plan #1

My topic for this research paper is portrying Temple Grandin's mind through film, i will argue that the film Temple Grandin portrays her mind in the movie very well. Despite all her problems and getting through life with autism as well as having problems showing emotion and other things that might affect her life socially. Temple Grandin was very unfortunate she made the best of it and we can all see her accomplishments through her inventions. She also had the ability to think visually which gave her more opportunities throughout her carreer.

BLOG POST #4

In the present day people have their own opinions on how technology has affected our mind. To be more specific the internet has become a huge problem because of the way it’s taking over our attention spans and reading habits. Instead of looking for way to legitimately search for information people tend to use the internet because it’s a faster more convenient way. Moreover what the internet has basically done is replace the idea of doing research through books and actually reading instead of skimming through text. I believe that the internet is damaging our attention spans and reading habits by making everything easier to find. What it really causes us to do is loose interest in actually picking up a book and reading it. Due to the internet having everything already summed up. I believe that the internet has a great impacted on how we currently see the world. Although the internet is faster way to go about things its consequences   are negative. Nicholas Carr says “Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article use to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. My concentration often starts to drift after two or three page” (19). The negative effect that we all now experience is being able to read long book without any difficulties. In conclusion I believe that the internet has affected our attention spans and reading habits due to technology over powering sources that once you to be more valuable.