Blog 21: University of Minnesota class WRIT 3577W

What have I learned in WRIT 3577W? This has been a great experience. While reviewing certain topics, I definitely learned a lot. Topics that were more review for me were in the internet section in the beginning. I previously took history of computing at the University and it covered a lot of what we talked about. It was very interesting to get the facts from a different perspective though. The biggest topic that I learned about was rhetoric. Before taking this class I had always hear the term rhetoric but I do not think that I actually really knew what it meant. I certainly had never learned about rhetoric. I feel like rhetoric should be something taught to us at a younger age. It is a very useful tool that I will take with me throughout the rest of my life. The last topic was the most fascinating to me though when we talked about the Internet of Things. I had known about the different aspects of it but never really put a name to what it was. I feel like this is going to be a huge part of our future going forward. It was interesting to hear the perspective that other people had on the internet of things. It was interesting because that topic came up in a different class for me this semester so I was able to use the knowledge that I had from this class to help learn about it from a different perspective. Thank you for the great semester and I hope others gain as much information from this course as I did.

Blog 20: Virtual and Augmented Reality

I decided that I would like to write a blog post about my final project for WRIT 3577W. I decided to go with talking about virtual (VR) and augmented (AR) reality. I decided to talk about these two topics because of the importance that they will have in the future. First, it is good to recognize that these two topics are not new. For decades we have been predicting that the future may include holograms or some type of alternate reality. It is really cool to see something like this become a reality. Some new discoveries that I had while doing this project was what was in store for the future. The applications of these two technologies is endless. As one of the articles that I read said, the only thing holding us back is our imaginations. This is so true. Think of some of the applications that these technologies have, health, fitness, education, and more. Doctors could use it to help with taking vitals during a checkup. Surgeons could use it to help them while doing surgeries. People in school could use it to help with learning. You could have all of your books or important documents stored in the goggles and it could be projected onto your desk. More importantly, this could really help students that have disabilities. Another interesting application is video games. This is going to be one of the biggest markets in my opinion. Recently video games have become more popular and the applications for this topic are endless. Imagine playing Minecraft with AR or VR. You could literally build your cities around you in a room. The future is looking very exciting for AR and VR and I am excited to see where it takes us.

Picture taken from: https://startvr.co/wp-content/uploads/iStock_000085205875_Double.jpg

Blog 19: Self-tracking in the medical field

The more and more I read Self-Tracking, the more I understand how important some of these devices are going to become in the future. The example brought up in chapter 5 was about health tracking. This seems like a very important area in which to track information about people. Especially people with higher risk for certain diseases. We can also try and become more healthy if we are able to know what is going on in our body. This may also help with taking some burden off of doctors. If you are able to track things such as blood pressure or other vital things about your body, you may be able to get information about what might be wrong from the internet instead of making the trip to the doctor. This might be helpful for non-life threatening conditions that may be discovered. It may also save people money because going to the doctor is not a cheap expense. Being able to understand what some of the numbers mean on these devices will be important as well. I think we are going to need to educate people how to interpret the data they are able to collect from themselves. It is possible because people already do this. For example, people with diabetes keep track of how much insulin they will need to use for each meal that they eat. Knowing how to interpret information that you collect from yourself is going to be very important going forward with self tracking.

Questions:

Are you opposed to being able to track certain things about your body (ie. blood pressure)?

Is it going to be possible to educate everyone of how to interpret their own data and how they should use it?

Picture taken from: http://emberify.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/emberify_qs_medical_health_Cover.png

Neff, G. & Nafus, D. (2016). Self-Tracking. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Chapters 5]

Blog 18: Habit hacking

A lot of interesting topics were brought up in these two chapters. It amazes me the amount of data that you are able to collect on yourself. Before we started studying self tracking, I did not realize the potential that some of this data could have. A long time ago, I used to try and track the food that I ate. As Gina discussed in chapter three, it is very difficult to do this. I myself had a hard time doing this. At most, I may have been able to track the types of food I was eating for a week. It is really hard to do this especially when you have to individually go in and find the food and record it. Gina brought up a good point about how this may discourage people from eating fresh food because processed food is easier to track. If you are able to stick with tracking, you can gain some very valuable information about a specific thing you tracked.

Another thing that was discussed was habit hacking. This was a very interesting topic. Basically, you track things that you do for example eating a cookie everyday and trying to figure out why you ate it. Was it because of boredom or was it because you genuinely wanted to eat a good cookie? Based off of this data, you could correct a habit that you have. To be successful with these things, the book recommend you start out tracking one thing and you track for a small amount of time. It is hard to break habits and these were some of the recommendations on how to track these.

Questions:

Have you ever tried self tracking?

Is habit hacking something that could potentially help people going forward?

Picture taken from: https://adobe99u.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/habits_550_rev.png

Neff, G. & Nafus, D. (2016). Self-Tracking. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Chapters 3]

Blog 16: Technology of the future

After reading this last chapter in Greengard’s book I have become excited. I am excited if any of the technologies that he envisions in the end come true. How cool would it be to wake up everyday and make your morning routine easier. I am not a morning person so anything helps. Walking from room to room without turning lights on or off, having the shower be the exact temperature that you want it to be, and having coffee ready for you right away would be awesome. Thinking about all of these technologies mentioned, it really does not seem like some of that stuff is far off. I know we talked about a coffee machine that will make coffee for you from the internet. It seems like installing sensors in every room may be not the best use of resources but that seems like something that is possible to have lights turn on and off as you walk in and walk out of rooms.

It is amazing to think of how things are connected today. It is even more amazing to try and envision how connected things will be in the future. We are actually giving some thought into the IoT. But in the future I feel like it will be a concept that is not new and it won't amaze some. I am excited to see where the IoT will take us in the future.

Questions:

What technology excites you most about the future?

Do you agree that we are not that far away from what Greengard describes in his last chapter?

Picture taken from: https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/64975/file-15129370-jpg/images/future-city.jpg

Greengard, Samuel. The internet of things. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Chapter 7]

Blog 15: Making a universal remote and how to hack it.

Greengard goes into depth about how the IoT is becoming connected along with its vulnerabilities. It is weird to think of a time where people had to be using the same phone company to talk with each other. With the advancements of technology today, we are able to take this for granted and basically call on any device nowadays. Another example that he talks about which was interesting was how difficult it would be for everyone if we all had a different way to steer a car (steering wheel, joystick, etc.). It is amazing to think about how we were able to advance with technology enough to be able to get these devices to be able to communicate with each other the way they do. The trouble we are having now is trying to get a “universal remote” that would allow you to control everything with just one remote.

While these advancements are very helpful and are the way of the future, we need to remember to be careful with how we implement security. Not only against other people, but against the technology itself. Greengard gave the example of the train that crashed due to a computer malfunction. The person operating the machine was not able to stop the train in time before the crash. We need a way to warn the driver of an impending crash possibly. We also need to make sure we are making these devices hack proof. What if a person decided to hack into these trains and make them crash? While it is nice to have everything connected in the IoT, we need to be protecting ourselves from disasters like these.

Questions:

Who should be in charge of making sure that our devices are hack proof?

How long will it be before we have a “Universal Remote”?

Picture taken from: https://az788150.vo.msecnd.net/assets/0/2147483652/2147483732/2147483733/252/5c6e585b-ead3-438e-a27d-c21a496c606b.png

Greengard, Samuel. The internet of things. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Chapter 5 & 6]

Blog 14: Drowning in data.

The thing that I would like to discuss is about chapter 3. Chapter 3’s big takeaway was data. I do not think it is possible to comprehend the amount of data that is out there. The data that has been collected has been used for good and bad things. People have become so obsessed with data that it has become a currency. Companies want to know what you are buying and they want to predict what you will buy in the future. I wonder if this is for their benefit or if they are trying to assist their customers. The scariest thing to me was how some of these apps can locate you at anytime. This is the kind of data that is bad in my opinion. This is an infringement on privacy to be able to see where someone is anytime of the day.

There were some good applications of data collection though. One they talked about was weather and how to predict it as accurately as possible. Another good one that this chapter talked about was computers analyzing past areas of a city where crime has happened and predicting where it is going to happen next. I do think that this is technology that we should look into but something we need to be cautious using. Going forward, I think we need to be careful about what data we are collecting. I think that there needs to be more transparency on what companies can see and collect from you. Maybe in the future we will have a government agency that will be able to govern this type of collection.

Questions:

Do you think it is a bad idea to be able to predict where crime may take place in the future? Implications of this?

Do you think that companies are collecting too much data from people? Is our privacy being infringed on?

Picture taken from: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Too-much-data-300x150.png

Greengard, Samuel. The internet of things. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Chapter 3]