Friday, March 22, 2013

Module 10




This week our assignment was to read a short story called "A Logic Named Joe" while reading this story I could not believe it was written in 1946.The author of it describes how computers could solve our problems just by asking them. In this story Joe is some type of super computer that gets smarter with experience, Joe can connect to other logics and give people answers to any type of question. We can notice in the story how the author can see that not everyone was going to use this "power" as something good, maybe the kids were asking the computers to watch some cannibals shows or how to find a buried treasure, there were no filters to what kids were able to do or look in the computers, and adults were asking how to create weapons, how to get rid of someone or to how steal money from banks.

When Jenkins wrote this story computers were big machines used for bigger tasks. He predicted that we were going to be able to have this at home and use them for simple questions and for a lot more than they were used before.In the story everyone had a logic and they would use it to watch tv, make phone calls or chat and also to get information. Now, almost everyone has a computer at home and we are able to watch tv shows, get all the information we need about something and get a hold of anyone with another computer trough a video call, social networks or chat.

Now, a computer might not be able to do what Joe did in the story but we are very close to that point. They are programmed to save patterns of the way we use them and the things we like. I was a little creep out the first time I notice that right after I visited a popular clothing store website and got out of it, the next page I opened had a add with the same item I was looking at from the same store telling that they were recommending me the particular item. After that I started to research about it and its unbelievable all the information we don’t realize we share or we teach the computer every time we use them. It is a little bit scary. Computers evolve and are getting more powerful, the worst is that we rely on them for almost everything. I cant think of what would happened to the world if all technology was taken out of it.

At the end of the story Joe gets caught or maybe I should say that the human brain beat the machine. So maybe as long as we are smarter than computers they will not overpower humans.

2 comments:

  1. It is scary to think that computers could take over the human race. At the rate they are growing and becoming smarter it almost seems possible. I think though if we only allow them a certain amount of power and thinking ability they could never over power us, I hope. Once we program a machine to do a task it almost seems to be life like and take over without even being asked in some cases. I hear what your saying about the clothing and other stores, they are almost stalking our every move to a point that seems a little scary. Good post!

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