12/6 Video and Reflection

Link to Cloning Video

          To clone or not to clone is the question that mankind has been asking for a very long time now. Cloning describes the process that can be used to produce genetically identical copies of a living body. The copied thing, has the same genetic makeup as the original and is referred to as a clone. When considering to clone something there is a lot of ethical reasons that prevent people from justifying it’s alright to clone it. Human cloning is the most talked about when considering if its ethical. Most people don’t understand what cloning is or means to scientists. There are three types of cloning, gene, reproductive, and therapeutic cloning. The possibilities are endless but good things always come with a cost.

            I decided to make a video slideshow to inform my target audience. Instead of me trying to convince someone why or why not to clone I thought I could make a more convincing argument through video and music. In my video, I didn’t take any sides when discussing my topic because I didn’t want it to sound biased at all. I think the music does a good job or keeping the viewer focused on the information and gives a sense of importance. Throughout this introduction video to cloning, I discuss different types of cloning, give some advantages and disadvantages, as well as some comedic relief to help keep the viewer’s attention.  I also decided to include slides without information, yet still relative to my topic in order to allow the viewer to process any information they have read in the previous slides. Each of the slides has a transition effect for a smooth switch between each of the slides.

             A fellow classmate commented on my cloning research paper saying she “knew little about the topic and hadn't realized that cloning had different forms and many scientific benefits”. This is exactly how most people are when it comes to cloning. This influenced my writing very little because she was telling me something I already knew from my research and prior knowledge of cloning. In a way it projected me more towards what I already planned on doing. This comment told me that I needed to inform people with the different types of cloning and their upsides and downsides.  That’s why I made the informational introduction video to cloning. My target audience was anyone interested in cloning as well as the people who stand against it. I believe the little bit of information I tell them is enough to sway not all but some of the opinions of cloning whether it be for or against it. As for me, I think we should continue research in cloning as it could become the very thing that saves us from the downfall of mankind. Now one might be thinking, well if we clone more people than we would need more food and we already don’t have enough of that. That’s not exactly what I think cloning should be used for, I think we should allow the use of cloning to continue making genetically modified organisms or animals which we need for food. Cloning could also help with increasing the lifespan of humans through the use of the medical field and by potentially making the future human race less susceptible to diseases.

            The three types of cloning come with there own advantages and disadvantages. A fellow student wrote “reproductive cloning is the most dangerous topic to talk about. On one hand you have the pros that you could clone a family dog that passed away and on the other it could be used in cloning human beings”. Reproductive cloning is when you create an exact copy of a living organism. This type of cloning is frowned upon for ethical reasons. It takes many attempts to create a healthy clone because most of them don’t take. People also believe that the clones life is less valuable because there are now two of the same person, making the copy not unique from everyone. Reproductive cloning can have some great benefits such as bringing back extinct animals or just helping endangered ones survive. It also could be used to bring back people which could be potentially dangerous in the hands of the wrong person. They could make armies of soldiers from one person. Another type of cloning is gene cloning. Gene Cloning is used to create segments of genes in DNA. This is used to eliminate defects in the genetic code of any organism. This could help get rid of any birth defects that may have been passed on from the parent’s genes. It could also be used to help create stronger plants and animals that could survive better or grow in harsh climates. The last type of cloning is therapeutic cloning which produces embryonic stem cells for experiments aimed at creating tissues to replace injured or diseased tissues. The possibility to create parts of the human body such as a heart or liver could help people who need transplants greatly. Cloning could be used to create a new superior human race, one capable of higher feats are less prone to dieses and injuries.

            Scientist Lee Silver said during an interview with NOVA, “95 percent of them said they were against human cloning” referring to a survey he had given. He says people just don’t understand what it means to scientists when you clone something. They see cloning as a way to replicate a human being and it soul. People were scared that scientists had gained control over the human life. This is not how Silver sees human cloning though. To him the only thing that a clone is is an organism that has the same genetic information as another organism. He continues to say that people eat clones all the time. Bananas are all produced by cloning and so are seedless grapes. Cloning happens all the time just not in the way people think when they hear the word clone. “In 1979, researchers produced the first genetically identical mice by splitting mouse embryos in the test tube and then implanting the resulting embryos into the wombs of adult female mice.”  In 1996, researchers succeeded in cloning the first mammal from a mature adult animal. It took 276 attempts but Scottish researchers finally produced Dolly, the lamb from a cell of a 6-year-old sheep. Since then cattle, cat, deer, dog, horse, mule, ox, rabbit and rat have all been successfully cloned. There is also some belief that a human clone named Eve was created back in 1998 but the company Clonaid didn’t provide any information that could prove if she was. It was believed Clonaid also cloned 12 other people after Eve but there was still no information proving this theory. Besides the 13 theoretical human clones, scientists in South Korea claimed to have successfully cloned a human embryo, but the experiment was shut down early due to ethical reasons. South Korea proved that we can clone humans if we eventually get past the ethical boundaries. Another reason human cloning isn’t happening is because of the difficulty in successfully cloning a human. The process is much more complicated because our genetic structure is slightly different from most mammals. A protein known as the spindle protein is located close to our chromosomes in the eggs and when removing the nucleus to replace it with another the proteins are removed which causes the cell to not be able to divide.

            As you can see, there are still many problems with human cloning ethically and technically. While most people continue to believe that cloning is wrong and immoral, scientists continue trying to find better ways to successfully clone humans and other mammals that may have become extinct. Human cloning has a place in our future and I don’t see it going anywhere anytime soon. It holds the solutions to many of our current problems such as cancers and organ failures. It could potentially be used to replace lost limbs of soldiers and people who were born with defects. Cloning is becoming a part of the future reproduction of humans and animals whether people want it to be or not.

Citations

"Cloning - Google Search." Cloning - Google Search. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2016.

Jessa Pamonag, Owner at DUP (Dota University of Philippines) Follow. "Cloning." Share and Discover Knowledge on LinkedIn SlideShare. N.p., 11 July 2013. Web. 05 Dec. 2016.

"Cloning Fact Sheet." National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). NIH, May 2016. Web. 29 Oct. 2016.

By Veronique Greenwood. "Genetically Engineering Babies With Less Disease-and 3 Parents-Seems Safe - 80beats." 80beats. N.p., 21 Apr. 2011. Web. 29 Oct. 2016.

"Human CLoning." PBS. PBS, 2001. Web. 29 Oct. 2016.

11/17 Novel Reflection

Star Wars: The Clone Wars is a good example of how cloning could be used. Clones come in all shapes and sizes and copies of robots are still clones. In the graphic novel I read, they show how clones can be used to make armies of soldiers, human and robot to fight battles for them. I think this shows a good and bad side to cloning but still provides some detail to what cloning can really do. The show you that cloning can be used to create and army of people so we don't have to go to war. They also show you that anyone can make a army of people and just start a war. As you can see, the advantage and disadvantage kind of balance each other out and you can't really take a side on the argument based on this information. Star Wars wasn't written with the intent of arguing for or against cloning yet it does a decent job of showing you what could happen if we started to clone people. It also shows you that the life of a clone is less valuable than the life of someone who wasn't created in a lab. In Star Wars many clones get hurt but no body stops to check if the are alright but when a jedi or a human gets hurt, there is always someone there to help them.

11/10 Review Reflection

A good review describes the goals of the project being reviewed and how it accomplished or didn't accomplish those goals. It gives a personal opinion and tells you why it deserves to be its given rating. I recently read a review that opened with "After watching the trailer, the kids and I agreed that viewing the film would be an hour well-spent–and it was." This is a great way to start the review because it says that the two minute overview was good enough to make an entire family watch a hour plus film. The review then goes on to give some background information of the film by quoting a description of the film. It gives you enough detail to know what the film is about if you didn't want to watch the trailer. "The film artfully captured our attention from the beginning with its juxtaposition of a typical morning routine for two college friends in the U.S." This line tells the reader that the film can be related to by most people which allows people to feel more attached or into the film. They go through explaining the main points of them film and the questions and struggles that the students faced. After talking about the film they explain how they felt and how any support no matter how small still helps people greatly. They then finish there review by recommending the film to a target group of people which in this case was families. 

11/1 Reflection

Human cloning was a very interesting topic for research. I decided to make my target audience for this piece future scientists of America. I feel like if I can get people to continue doing research and show the possibilities from cloning then the people of America and the rest of the world will follow suit. As of now cloning and specifically human cloning is mostly frowned upon by most of society. It seems that only those who are interested in the sciences are the ones who are really for human cloning. A person who doesn’t understand science so well doesn’t see what cloning really means and why it will and should become a more welcomed thing. The articles I based my research off of are from very creditable companies. Discover, NIH, and PBS are three companies which have built a good reputation and are known for writing quality articles. Based on my readings, I do think there is still plenty of research to be done and that regularly cloning humans will not be a thing for a very long time. They need to make the cloning more successful than it currently is or it will never be allowed just because it’s so close to this ethical boundary of who’s right it is to create people or in a sense play god. When talking to a group of future scientists of America and trying to sell my pitch, I didn’t receive the responses I expected. About half of the group said they would have no part of human cloning, but when asked if they knew anything about it they would respond with the typical answer of you just make a copy of someone. While this is for the most part true it’s not the real goal of cloning. This 50% of people didn’t understand why cloning is something that could greatly benefit the human race. The other 50% of people were a of course we should and a depends. The person who responded that we should definitely clone people was the oldest of the group and studying in what I believe to be the most involved form of science, premed. The other a younger biology major who doesn’t quite get what cloning is or could mean for people but they still think it would be beneficial to clone people who deserve to be. After this discussion I had with my fellow future scientists, I came to the conclusions that not enough people know why cloning could be so beneficial to humanity. There just isn’t enough of a voice about cloning and its possibilities to push people to believe that it’s the necessary thing to do. No one was really saying that we need to do this and the reason is because it’s just not ready to be done. No matter how many times you tell someone how great something is they won’t truly believe you until they see it for themselves and this is why cloning will not become a more talked about thing until the science can back up the possibilities. This is why my audience is future scientist of America and not the general population. I believe that we need more research to be done and in order to have that we need more scientists willing to devote their time and potentially lives to making cloning more successful and appealing to the general populous. 

11/1 Research Paper

Cloning describes the process that can be used to produce genetically identical copies of a living body. The copied thing, has the same genetic makeup as the original and is referred to as a clone. When considering to clone something there is a lot of ethical reasons that prevent people from justifying it’s alright to clone it. Human cloning is the most talked about when considering if its ethical. Most people don’t understand what cloning is or means to scientists. The three types of cloning, gene, reproductive, and therapeutic each have there own benefits and draw backs. 

Scientist Lee Silver said during an interview with NOVA, “95 percent of them said they were against human cloning” referring to a survey he had given. He says people just don’t understand what it means to scientists when you clone something. They see cloning as a way to replicate a human being and it soul. People were scared that scientists had gained control over the human life. This is not how Silver sees human cloning though. To him the only thing that a clone is is an organism that has the same genetic information as another organism. He continues to say that people eat clones all the time. Bananas are all produced by cloning and so are seedless grapes. Silver explains that cloning can benefit humans by lowering the risk of birth defects the kids are born with. A UK national health panel found a way to swap chromosomes between eggs so the offspring don’t inherit disease causing mutations from their mother’s mitochondria. This process is considered a type of cloning and is just the first step to making humans less perceptible to many common birth defects. By adding in the genes of a third person who doesn’t have a history of the target birth defect and removing the parent’s gene that does, you can reduce the risk that the child is born with the targeted defect. Some of the dieses that can be prevented are type 2 diabetes, deafness, blindness, and neurological problems. This process of swapping chromosomes is currently being tested on people after being successful in attempts on other animals. But there’s another ethical quandary here, it involves the destruction of the donor egg after it’s been fertilized. Also some people see the egg donor as a third parent which is not completely true. The child may be receiving new mitochondria from a third person but the mitochondria don’t affect the genes of the child which are tested when determining who the parents are. Mitochondria are similar to a battery in some technological device and your genes are the information on the device. When you change the battery, you are not effecting the information stored on the device. This is also true for when swapping the mitochondria in humans. This procedure of swapping mitochondria can make it possible from women with high amounts mitochondrial dieses to have a healthy baby.

Reproductive cloning is what everyone thinks about when they hear the term cloning. While reproductive cloning is a one of the three types of cloning it’s not the only form. The other two types of cloning are called gene and therapeutic cloning. Reproductive cloning produces an exact copy of the whole animal. This type of cloning is used when you want to use only one set of genes instead of splitting two sets which is how babies are formed naturally. Another form of cloning is gene cloning which produces copies of segments of genes in DNA. This type of cloning can’t be used to clone humans and it has not been used to clone any animals as of 2016. It allows scientists to take parts of someone’s DNA and replace it with another person’s DNA to see how that segment effects the specimen’s behavior. The third type of cloning is therapeutic cloning which produces embryonic stem cells for experiments aimed at creating tissues to replace injured or diseased tissues. The possibility to create parts of the human body such as a heart or liver could help people who need transplants greatly. Cloning could be used to create a new superior human race, one capable of higher feats are less prone to dieses and injuries.

 “In 1979, researchers produced the first genetically identical mice by splitting mouse embryos in the test tube and then implanting the resulting embryos into the wombs of adult female mice.”  In 1996, researchers succeeded in cloning the first mammal from a mature adult animal. It took 276 attempts but Scottish researchers finally produced Dolly, the lamb from a cell of a 6-year-old sheep. Since then cattle, cat, deer, dog, horse, mule, ox, rabbit and rat have all been successfully cloned. There is also some belief that a human clone named Eve was created back in 1998 but the company Clonaid didn’t provide any information that could prove if she was. It was believed Clonaid also cloned 12 other people after Eve but there was still no information proving this theory. Besides the 13 theoretical human clones, scientists in South Korea claimed to have successfully cloned a human embryo, but the experiment was shut down early due to ethical reasons. Another reason human cloning isn’t happening is because of the difficulty in successfully cloning a human. The process is much more complicated because our genetic structure is slightly different from most mammals. A protein known as the spindle protein is located close to our chromosomes in the eggs and when removing the nucleus to replace it with another the proteins are removed which causes the cell to not be able to divide.

As you can see, there are still many problems with human cloning ethically and technically. While most people continue to believe that cloning is wrong and immoral, scientists continue trying to find better ways to successfully clone humans and other mammals that may have become extinct. Human cloning has a place in our future and I don’t see it going anywhere anytime soon. It holds the solutions to many of our current problems such as cancers and organ failures. It could potentially be used to replace lost limbs of soldiers and people who were born with defects. Cloning is becoming a part of the future reproduction of humans and animals whether people want it to be or not.

Citations

"Cloning Fact Sheet." National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). NIH, May 2016. Web. 29 Oct. 2016.

By Veronique Greenwood. "Genetically Engineering Babies With Less Disease-and 3 Parents-Seems Safe - 80beats." 80beats. N.p., 21 Apr. 2011. Web. 29 Oct. 2016.

"Human CLoning." PBS. PBS, 2001. Web. 29 Oct. 2016.

10/20 Rough Draft 30%

Cloning describes the process that can be used to produce genetically identical copies of a living body. The copied thing, has the same genetic makeup as the original and is referred to as a clone. When considering to clone something there is a lot of ethical reasons that prevent people from justifying it’s alright to clone it. Human cloning is the most talked about when considering if its ethical. Clones can occur naturally in some specimens such as plants and single celled organisms. There has never been a human clone that occurred naturally, twins which seem to be close to being clone are actually just as far from a clone as we are. A clone is someone who is identical to their parent or person they were created from. There are three types of cloning, the frist called gene cloning which produces copies of genes of segments of DNA. Reproductive cloning produces an exact copy of the whole animal and Therapeutic cloning produces embryonic stem cells which are used to create tissues. When people think of cloning they only consider reproductive cloning, they don’t think about the other two types of cloning which can benefit the human race very significantly. The possibility to create parts of the human body such as a heart or liver could help people who need transplants greatly. Gene cloning could be used to create a new superior human race, one capable of high feats are less prone to dieses and injuries. These are just some of the possibilities from cloning.

A UK national health panel found way to swap chromosomes between eggs so offspring don’t inherit disease causing mutations from their mothers mitochondria. This is just the first step to making humans less perceptible to many common birth defects. By adding in a the genes of a third person who doesn’t have a history of the target birth defect and removing the parents gene that does, you can reduce the risk that the child is born with the targeted defect. Some of the dieses that can be prevented are type 2 diabetes, deafness, blindness, and neurological problems. This process of swapping chromosomes is currently being tested on people after being successful in attempts on other animals. But there’s an ethical quandary here, it involves the destruction of the donor egg after it’s been fertilized. Also some people see the egg donor as a third parent which is not completely true. The child may be receiving new mitochondria from a third person but the mitochondria don’t affect the genes of the child which are tested when determining who the parents are. Mitochondria are similar to a battery in some technological device and your genes are the information on the device. When you change the battery, you are not effecting the information store on the device. This is also true for when swapping the mitochondria in humans. This procedure of swapping mitochondria can make it possible from women with high amounts mitochondrial dieses to have a healthy baby.

10/18 History with the Library

Between page and screen by Amaranth Borsuk

The library is a building or room containing collections of books, periodicals, and sometimes films and recorded music for people to read, borrow, or refer to. I have only been there a few times since coming to college. Even in high school I only went to the library because the class required it. Since I came to Syracuse i have been in the library only three times. All three times were this year, the first being to print out my resume for the engineering career fair. The second time I had to staple one of my homeworks together for one of my classes. The last time i cam to the library I was expected to actually look at books and first one to check out. I didn't even know where to begin, I started by climbing each flight of stairs just to realize there wasn't any signs saying take this book. So I went back to the first floor where i had saw the new books section upon entering. I looked at a few books before seeing this little all red book. It was filled with nothing but pictures and i thought it would be perfect. A assignment in which I taking pictures of a book with only pictures, it just made sense. So after i found my book i had to find a place to check it out. I looked for the nearest desk and it just happened to be the right place. I gave her my book and card, made a joke about how this book was perfect for this assignment, and then put the book in my bag and went home. This was by far the most involved trip i have ever had to the library since i left high school. Even in high school i didn't do much looking around in the library. I asked the librarian where i could find a specific topic and i took the first book related to my research. As you can tell, me and the library are not the best of friends, we rarely ever see each other and when we do, its short and to the point. 

10/13 Pitch

Human cloning, the future of reproduction. Cloning instead of natural reproduction provides us with the ability to prevent any flaws that can occur in our genes. Human cloning doesn’t mean you cloning an entire person either, you can clone parts of people such as a new liver or heart for the person in need. It will allow anyone to have children and to be able to change characteristics and particular traits of them. It also can help prevent some disorders that kids are born with and also premature deaths. Human cloning is more than what people think it is and its possibilities are endless.

My intended audience is future scientists and I sent this pitch out via in person.

10/11 Research Questions

Question 1:

Is human cloning a good or bad idea?

Response 1:

Bad.

Response 2:

Depends who you want to clone.

Response 3:

Human cloning is a bad idea because it is unethical.

Question 2:

What makes people human?

Response 1:

Consciousness, uniqueness, competence, intelligence

Response 2:

If they evolved from another human

Response 3:

A being capable of complex thought and emotions

Question 3:

How does cloning change the value of human life?

Response 1:

If a person is cloned, that takes away a key factor of what makes people human: uniqueness. No two people are exactly the same so if someone is cloned, the individuality in the world is taken away.

Response 2:

It makes one’s original life less significant

Response 3:

The clone is considered a specimen/experiment more than it is considered human. If humans can just be casually “made” then the value of life is decreased.

As you can see, all three interviewees were mostly against human cloning. When asking people my questions I decided to write the question out and let then answer at their own leisure. When answering the first question person two had written depends who you want to clone followed by saying out loud I definitely wouldn’t clone that idiot while pointing to Trump. All of my interviewees were female and majoring in some type of science. Based on the few responses I received it’s safe to say not all people are ok with human cloning. In the end I wasn’t surprise with the answers I got, if everyone was for human cloning then we would be doing more often and it would be on the news more. When looking at the types of questions I asked, question one gave the responder a choice to say good or bad without further explanation. This question was not a good research question because of this. Question two also was quite difficult for my three interviewees. When asked the question of what makes a human human, two of the three started off by saying I can’t really explain it. This question might not be the best research question when looking for a specific answer because there isn’t one. Question three came very easily to the three of them, with them all saying the clone is less unique and the person who was cloned is also less unique. Out of the three question I believe question two was the best though. It’s a question which doesn’t have one correct answer which leaves room for your own input.

9/29 Unit 1 Project

Written Summary 1

Technology, a way to communicate with others and still be alone. Sherry Turkle writes about how people are always alone now that technology allows us to communicate from anywhere to anyone. In the Flight of conversation she explains this while repetitively saying we are all alone. She states how technology is power and it allows us to only listen to the things that interest us. Technology has made it so people don’t have to be in the same area to talk and this has made us forget how to actually hold a conversation with people in person. It’s allowed us to keep people away and present ourselves how we want to. We are able to change the way we look on the internet and to talk people in ways we couldn’t do in person. Turkle says people think being connected to social media is the same as talking to people in person. That you can’t actually know someone through a texting conversation and that real face to face conversation teaches us things we can’t learn through social media. Yet people enjoy talking to computers because there is always someone listening. She thinks we are losing confidence in each other as humans. We rely on machines for answers instead of one and other. We feel the need to always share our thoughts and what we are doing. That we feel less lonely online even when we are alone. She believes people Should have times throughout the day where they are not allowed to use technology. That way people would actually know what’s going on around them.  

Written Summary 2

Facebook has changed the lives of over a billion people around the world, 1.2 billion users in 2014 to be exact. Facebook was created in 2004 and it changed the way people interact with each other drastically. It has allowed us to be able to share anything we want whenever we want to share it. The good part about this is that we are able to pass information to others very quickly from almost anywhere. The bad part about being able to share things so easily is exactly that. People can share whatever they want whenever they want. This causes a lot of drama and problems on social media. Another way social media has changed us is by making it easy to bring up past events. The best part about this is being able to find out information from things that happened a long time ago that people now wouldn’t know without having looked it up. The bad part about it this is if something that should be forgotten is posted on the internet then it will never be forgotten because it is so easy to look up past events. Another good thing that Facebook does for us is make it easy to reunite with people from our past. Almost everyone who has internet has a Facebook profile. Instead of needing to find a phone number to contact someone you only need to know their name. The only bad thing about this is that traditional reunions where you meet your old friends in person are becoming less of a thing. People are becoming less social outside of social media. The last thing Facebook did to change the world is by affecting our privacy. While Facebook provides privacy settings most people do not know how to use them. They have made it insanely easy to figure out almost anything you need to know about people whenever you need to know it. Based on these few things Facebook has accomplished, it still your choice to use social media and what you post on it is your own decision. 

Written Summary 3

Social media has had a significant impact on us. We have become way more public than people have ever been. It all started with sites such as Friendster, Myspace, and eventually Facebook. An outstanding 78% of U.S. citizens have had some type of social media profile. This has changed how people spend their time. We spend so much time looking at social media to see what people are doing instead of going to have a real conversation with them. Social media has made our lives way more open than most people even want to be. There are people who know other people from Facebook even though they never met them in real life. Many people think that you can hide behind your computer when using social media but that’s not completely true. It’s easy to say anything you want but it will eventually catch up to you in real life. Your social media describes you as a person and people are always there to judge it. That can be good for some but many people see others and this make them feel like they are not good enough. They want to become more like these famous people and this causes people to try to change who they are on social media. Many people are starting to become more self-aware of what they post on the internet prior to posting it. This is good because you are less likely to post something you will later regret. Many new users on social media tend to compare themselves to these popular social media users and they try to imitate them or turn their style into their own. Social media has made us more self-conscious of ourselves and this cause people to try to be who they aren’t.

Unwritten Summary

Sources

Summary 1: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/the-flight-from-conversation.html?_r=0

Summary 2: http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/31/tech/social-media/facebook-changes/

Summary 3: http://www.forbes.com/sites/carriekerpen/2016/04/21/how-has-social-media-changed-us/#401957f40f65

Unwritten Summary: http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s20e02-skank-hunt#source=57baee9c-b611-4260-958b-05315479a7fc:879fd28e-c96b-4f9d-a437-e05c1bcf80aa&position=2&sort=!airdate

9/29 Reflection

The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life.  A quote by Andrew Brown which kind of sums up how I view technology. In today’s society almost everyone has access to some sort of social media. It’s our main form of commination now and we abuse it as much as we can. In one of my readings on social media and its effects on society, Sherry Turkle says how people have become so lonely yet they are talking to everyone. The internet has given us this great power to basically do whatever we want and we mainly use it to tell people about our day so we don’t have to do it in person. She says how people don’t even know what’s going on around them anymore. People are completely ignoring others because they are more worried about what the world thinks about them instead of the people right next to them. I feel like people have become too reliant on the internet now. We are constantly on it trying to find something or telling someone something and we will eventually become aware that we won’t be able to survive without it. Turkle makes a good point when she says we should have times where we are not allowed to use our technology so we can actually see what’s going on around us. As an engineer I spend a lot of time on my computer and fully believe what Turkle is saying. If you don’t get out every so often then you will become in out of tune with the rest of the world you won’t be able to keep up with it. When Facebook first launched back it 2004, it changed the way people interacted with each other. As of 2 years ago 1.2 billion people have used Facebook at some point and this number is very scary. That’s 17 percent of the human population and 42 percent of all people with access to the internet. 20 years ago only the richest of the rich could afford a computer with an internet connection. It’s become so readily available now that half the world can get online now. This has enabled people to do almost anything they want. Many crimes today are committed online some of which are anywhere from hacking into someone’s accounts to drug trafficking and prostitution. This is not why I dislike the internet though. These things were expected to happen when the first computer was created. The reason I dislike the internet is because of things like Facebook, Instagram, twitter, and snapchat. Society makes you feel like you need to have an account on each of these so you can be connected with others. There is so little communication outside of social media today compared to 20 years ago. It’s almost like social media has become our lives now and South Park Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone captured this perfectly in their latest episode. It opens with what looks to be a girl about to jump off a bridge and end her life. But she pulls out her phone and writes one last tweet before throwing her phone off the bridge. The next day at school everyone completely ignores her like she isn’t even there anymore. They treat her like she actually ended her life because she got off of twitter. This example shows exactly how social media is today in society. If you’re not on it then you don’t have a life. This should not be the case it should be the exact opposite. People who are on social media all the time should be the people who are considered to not have a life.  

9/20 My 3 Summaries

Source 1 

Technology, a way to communicate with others and still be alone. Sherry Turkle writes about how people are always alone now that technology allows us to communicate from anywhere to anyone. In the Flight of conversation she explains this while repetitively saying we are all alone. She states how technology is power and it allows us to only listen to the things that interest us. Technology has made it so people don’t have to be in the same area to talk and this has made us forget how to actually hold a conversation with people in person. Technology allowed us to keep people away and present ourselves how we want to. We are to change the way we look on the internet and to talk people in ways we couldn’t do in person. Turkle says people think being connected to social media is the same as talking to people in person. That you can’t actually know someone through a texting conversation and that real face to face conversation teaches us things we can’t learn through social media. Yet people enjoy talking to computers because there is always someone listening. She thinks we are losing confidence in each other as humans. We rely on machines for answers instead of one and other. We feel the need to always share our thoughts and what we are doing. That we feel less lonely online even when we are alone. She believes people are times throughout the day where they are not allowed to use technology that way people would actually know what’s going on around them.  

Source 2

Facebook has changed the lives of over a billion people around the world, 1.2 billion users in 2014 to be exact. Face book was created in 2004 and it changed the way people interact with each other drastically. Facebook has allowed us to be able to chare anything we want whenever we want to share it. The good part about this is that we are able to pass information to others very quickly from almost anywhere. The bad part about being able to share things so easily is exactly that. People can share whatever they want whenever they want. This causes a lot of drama and problems on social media. Another was social media has changed us is by making it easy to bring up past events. The best part about this is being to find out information from things that happened a long time ago they people now wouldn’t know without having looked it up. The bad part about it is that if something that should be forgotten is posted on the internet then it will never be forgotten because it is so easy to look up past events. Another good thing that Facebook does for us is make it easy to reunite with people from our past. Almost everyone who has internet has a Facebook profile. Instead of needing to find a phone number to contact someone you only need to know their name. The bad part of this is that traditional reunions where you meet your old friends in person are becoming less of a thing. People are becoming less social outside of social media. The last things Facebook did to change the world is by affecting our privacy. While Facebook provides privacy settings most people do not know how to use them which leads to how this is bad. Facebook has made it insanely easy to figure out almost anything you need to know about people. Based on these few things Facebook has accomplished, it still your choice to use social media and what you post it your own decision. 

Source 3

Social media has had a significant impact on us. We have becoming way more public than people have ever been. It all started with sites such as Friendster, Myspace, and eventually Facebook. 78% of U.S. citizens have had some type of social media profile. This has changed how people spend their time. We spend so much time looking at social media to see what people are doing instead of going to have a real conversation with them. Social media has made our lives way more open than most people even want to be. There are people who know other people from Facebook even though they never met them in real life. Many people think that you can hide behind your computer when using social media but that’s not completely true. It’s easy to say anything you want on social media but it will eventually catch up to you in real life. Your social media describes you as a person and that can be good for some but many people see others and this make them feel like they are not good enough. They want to become more like these famous people and this causes people to try to change who they are on social media. Many people are starting to become more self-aware of what they post on the internet prior to posting it. This is good because you are less likely to post something you will later regret. Many new users on social media tend to compare themselves to these popular social media users and they try to imitate them or turn their style into their own. Social media has made us more self-conscious of ourselves and this cause people to try to be who they aren’t.  

9/15 Food Poll

I took a poll asking how i viewed french food. Each question was a would you rather and gave two choices. Here are some of my results.

Question one

I ansered croissant but the majority picket pain au chocolat

Question two

I picked Eclairs and that was the majority but a small percent

Question three

I picked Fondant au Chocolat and the majority did as well

Question four

I answered Mousse au Chocolat and that was not that majoirty.


According to this survey my taste for french foods is not with the majority. Although the result for each was about 40-60, I was still outside of the majority. Each questions sample size was about ten thousand which isn't terrible for a survey. My first question as if i perfered pain au chocolat or a Croissant. I picked croissant and i was not in the majoirty. Only 40 percent of people picked croissant while 60 percent answered pain au chocolat. My next Question as Macarons or Eclairs and i picked Eclairs. I was in the majority but only but 2 percent. The next question was would i rather want a Fondant au chocolat or a creme brulee and i picked the fondant au chocolat. I answered with the majoirty. My last question was would i rather have a souffle au chocolat or a mousse au chocolat and i answered mousse au chocolat. I again picked outside of the majority. The results from this survey show i picked 2 in the majority and 2 outside the majority. I would still consider my tastes to be against the popular opinion because one of the two i picked correct was basically 50-50. This survey as simple and to the point. The only reason to take it is for self interest or for your writing class.

9/8 What I Wear

What I Wear

I wear many thing but hear are the few outfit I wore today.

Outfit number 1

This is what I woke up in, Its a standard outfit for sleeping. I normally don't have a shirt on unless it is cold out but I decided to for this picture.

Outfit number 2

 

This is what i decided to go to school in. A standard pair of khaki shorts with one of my many shirts in this case a band shirt.

Outfit number3

My work outfit is something to be desired. I am blessed to be able to wear this very fashionable outfit several times a week. 

Outfit number 4

This is a very traditional outfit, it consists of a towel and some flip flops. I normally wear this outfit every day except for the days wear i'm feeling super lazy. I only wear this for a brief amount of time each day so most people will never see me in it. 

Outfit number 5

This outfit is very similar to number 1. It is my relax/get work done outfit. I am currently wearing this as i am writing this blog. Its a pair of basketball shorts and a Syracuse t-shirt. 

Selfies with a Social Conscience

A world without selfies would be unimaginable now-a-days. I personally do not take selfies very often if at all. I believe that pictures of you shouldn't be taken by you. Most of the best pictures are not taken by the people in them. These five pictures i was kind of forced into taking today were very stressful. This class has been on my mind all day and yet it is considered an easy A to most. I will admit it easier to take a picture and write about it than it is to write a code to solve for when a piece of metal will fail under a certain load.Yet this was difficult for me to do. I dont like taking pictures of anything especially me. I do not post things on social media so i have no reason to take pictures of things. The greater portion of people with access to the internet do post things on social media and many of the times it is selfies. People try to portray themselves differently in selfies. They try to skew parts of their bodies to the way society wants them to look. Many selfies people will tend to hide the worst parts of themselves, like they can only take pictures from their "good side". Its hard to believe what your looking at most of the time when seeing a picture that you didn't take. You never know if what you seeing is actually that person, especially with the technology we have now.