MITx

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/mitx-faq-1219.html

• MIT is creating an online version of their courses called MITx.  While it does not hold the same value as an actual degree from MIT, it is hoped that this program will improve education around the world and break down financial barriers to education by offering free high-level programs.
• Stakeholders:
• MIT
• Anyone hoping to get into MIT
• Prospective employers
• Students
• Social and Ethical Issues
• Globalization: this system will be available around the world
• Equality of Access: by making this open source, everyone will have equal opportunity to learn, regardless of financial standing
• People and Machines: this system will be part of a study to determine how students learn best
• Areas of Impact
• Science
• Education
• Business
• Advantages
• Equal access to education for all
• Hopefully raised global standards of education
• More information about how to teach / how people learn
• Disadvantages
• Possible misuse of information
• My opinion
• This is a great idea.  There is a problem in this country and others that the less money you have, the harder it is to get an education.  If you live in the country and do not have much money, you are unlikely to ever get a good education and be successful.  By creating a globalized, highly affordable way for people to learn, MITx should help with this problem.
• Will I use it and will others?
• I would like to take advantage of this, as it is a great opportunity.  Unfortunately, I think it will be underutilized.  A lot of people will never know it exists and many others will think it is too expensive or out of their reach.  I think that creating a whole series of this type of courses, from elementary school up, would be a great advancement and is necessary before a program like this will work all that well.  

Screencast

http://www.screencast.com/t/rJv8so4TksM
link to screen cast

Podcast

Link to the podcast:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B_flMDhGNm86ZGI1NDQxYjgtMjJjMC00NWU5LWE5NTktZDgwZGY2YTFlYzgw

Senate rejects GOP bid to overturn Internet rules

http://www.wtop.com/?nid=256&sid=2627657
Synopsis:  The Republican party has introduced a bill to give the FCC more power in regulation of the Internet.  This bill would remove net neutrality rules under the guise of improving innovation. However, the bill was shot down in the Senate.
Stakeholders: everyone in the United States
Social and Ethical Issues:

• Control: Should the government be able to say what is on the Internet?
• Equality of Access: possibility of government saying that some groups cannot have Internet access
• Privacy and Anonymity: If they can say who and what can be online, they could also see who is online and what they are doing

Areas of Impact: Politics and Government, Arts Entertainment and Leisure, Education
Advantages: theoretically, makes innovation easier and e-commerce cheaper
Disadvantages: Government can control the Internet, no privacy, censorship, small group of people getting to determine what we know
My opinion: What are we, the Soviet Union?  The government has no right to control what we see and hear.  They especially have no right to interfere with the Internet and turn it to their own uses by changing what we perceive and how we talk to each other.  This bill would be another step on the slippery slope leading to dictatorship, fascism, and all the things associated with the government having direct control over every facet of our lives.  It is, frankly, an infringement on our Constitutional rights, especially freedom of expression.
Solutions: The government needs to stop trying to gain control over the Internet.  The entire point is that no one controls it, and it cannot really be controlled.  Instead, they should focus on real problems.

A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-school-in-silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.html?_r=3&hp=&pagewanted=all
The Waldorf School in Silicon Valley, California, teaches their students without any technology in the classrooms.  This is an alternative method of teaching and its presence in Silicon Valley, the heart of the computer industry, highlights the ongoing debate about technology's role in education.
Stakeholders: Parents, students, teachers, the technology industry
Social and Ethical Issues:

• People and Machines: Will they be able to learn tech skills later in life?  Do we need technology to teach?
• Equality of Access: Is this somehow artificially making the students unequal with the rest of society?

Areas of Impact: Government, Education, Science, Employment, Education
My opinion: I am not sure.  While I support alternate views of education and the concept that not all technology must be embraced simply because it is there, I also believe that technology has a place.  A lot of what they are doing teaches life skills that people are perhaps lacking who learn solely on technology, but certain skills that are taught that way are not as relevant as they were when this program began, and we learn skills not related to technology even though we use it.  For example, I can multiply 4 times 5 in my head easily, just as well as they can, despite having grown up with calculators.  I think that judgment on this issue should wait until a few classes have graduated this program and we can see how well they do in college, workplace, and life compared to graduates of more tech-accepting schools.
Do I agree: Kind of.  There is not really a reason to use technology in the classroom in the first few grades, and learning handwriting, mental math, and language skills is important, but I think that once doing these without a computer has been mastered, there is no point in not using one, as it makes the same work faster and easier without detracting from quality.
Some positives and negatives:

• Positives: Easier to write papers, kids learn from young age to use technology, more prepared for business environment, grading and submission of work is easier
• Negatives: Taught early to need technology, become "addicted" to tech stuff when very young, kids do not know how to interact

Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/technology/amazon-rewrites-the-rules-of-book-publishing.html
Synopsis: Amazon.com, which has set itself up as a competitor to bookstores, is now entering the publication business, allowing authors to publish e-books without the need for a publication company.
Stakeholders: writers, publication companies, Amazon corporation
Social and Ethical Issues:

• Intellectual property.  Anyone can publish anything in an e-book, including someone else's work
• People and Machines.  This makes e-book readers more necessary, as more books will be published only on Amazon.

Areas of Impact: Business, Entertainment, Arts, Government
My opinion:  This is a step forward for the writing business.  If anyone can publish their works, it means that you do not have to have connections in the publication industry in order to be a successful writer.  On the other hand, a lot of really bad books will probably be written and published with nothing holding them back, but essentially, this makes the field of writing more capitalist.
Future impacts/changes: More people will get e-readers, publishing companies will start to go under, Amazon will get even more profitable, internet publishing businesses will arise that publicize releases so writers can distinguish their works from the thousands of other publications on Amazon.

Diebold voting machines can be hacked by remote control

http://politics.salon.com/2011/09/27/votinghack/
Summary:
Millions of American voters use electronic voting machines.  A new study indicates that with minimal technical skills and materials, these machines can be untraceably hacked.
Stakeholders: Voters, hackers, the government
Area of Impact: Politics and Government.  This can be used to influence who wins elections and controls the country.
Social/Ethical Issues: Security, Privacy, Reliability, Control, Equality of Access.
If the voting machines are this easy to hack, it compromises security and the privacy of the users.  It also makes them unreliable, as they can be taken offline by anyone, and destroys equality of access, as voters in affected areas do not have equal access to methods of influencing the outcome of a vote.
Why we use them in the first place:
If they work right, electronic voting machines are more private, harder to compromise, and far more efficient than paper ballot voting.
Disadvantages:
As this issue shows, it is relatively simple to hack these systems, allowing one person to change the outcome of an entire election.
Possible Solutions:
Better security around voting booths, redundant systems to make hacking more challenging, signal jammers in voting booth to prevent remote signals from getting to the machines to change what they do.

Web 2.0 Example

One example of a Web 2.0 website: Youtube
www.youtube.com
 Why is it Web 2.0?
It allows many users to post their videos.  Other users see them, respond to them in comments, and post their own videos.
Users: over a billion
Social and Ethical Issues: Equality of Access (everyone has same access to videos), Privacy and Anonymity (people can anonymously post harmful content), Intellectual Property (use of upload/download to pirate movies and music)
Areas of Impact: All of them.  There may be videos on any topic pertaining to one or many different areas.  For example, a science demo like we watched in chemistry last year is Education, Science, and possibly Health ad Entertainment depending on the topic.

Computer Hardware Assignment

Part	Part	HP Cost	Custom Link	Custom Cost
Case	(HP standard)		http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147023	50
Power	250 Watt		http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817103047	150
Motherboard	(HP standard)		http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128515	115
CPU	AMD Phenom X4 2.9 GHz		http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103808	120
RAM	8 GB DDR3-800MHZ		http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313080	67
Hard Drive	750 GB 7200 RPM SATA		http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148764&cm_sp=Cat_Hard_Drives-_-Spotlight-_-22-148-764	55
Graphics Card	1GB DDR3 AMD Radeon 6450		http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102934	70
CD/DVD	SuperMulti DVD		http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106276	18
Keyboard	HP		http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823126197	20
Mouse	HP		http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823126197	0
Total		759.99		665
Link to HP computer page
http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/cto.do#

Microsoft, Comcast try to bridge the Digital Divide

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/faster-forward/post/microsoft-comcast-try-to-bridge-the-digital-divide/2011/09/20/gIQAbfLziK_blog.html

Microsoft and Comcast are beginning attempts to bridge the "digital divide", the gap between people who can afford technology and people who can't, through programs to make technology more affordable and accessible. 
Stakeholders:  low-income households, technology companies, schools
Main social issue is equality of access, which pertains to making sure that everyone has access to the same technology.
Areas of Impact: Education (computers for students), Politics and Government (laws to make more of these programs, support/fight programs)
My opinion:  It is a good thing that companies are making an effort to allow access to technology by everyone.  The position that the government should not interfere because people/nature/social evolution should take its course does not work when there are resources required for success that are denied to a group by outside circumstances.  The government should back these programs by rewarding companies that do these programs and penalizing those that do not.

Did You Know 4.0

1. What 3 things surprise you?    It surprised me that so much of the world had cell phones, how many people visit Facebook, Youtube, and the like each month, and that in 25 years we will have blood-cell sized phones.
2. What questions come to your mind? What else will change?  Will we all have phones in a few years?
3. What do you think the world will be like 5 years from now? 10? 20?  I think that in 5 years, the world will be very much the same except that everyone will have phones.  10 years will not make much of a difference.  20 years, however, and we will probably have computers that can think for themselves and do most of what humans can do.
4. What kind of effects do you think that this will have on people?  Humans will either adapt to the new technology and get better at using it or fall by the wayside.  There is also the small chance that, as the technology of warfare advances, we manage to destroy ourselves utterly, but this is unlikely.