Living in an (un)moral Society

Morals are often taught to us as we go through school. Yet somehow, the morals of society continue to disintegrate. People lie, steal, and take advantage of each other. As humans, we often get distracted by goals in our lives. While we once might be good people, we slowly distance ourselves from our own morals as small goals contradict them. One exception is followed by hundreds. If we want to maintain our sense of morality, we need each to set up ways to keep ourselves in check with our own personal standards.

Overcoming Digital Addiction

Studies show that the best way to overcome addiction is to replace your habit with some other activity. For example, running every-time you want to smoke. Our brain intentionally sends signals when our bodies need something. Like how we get hungry when we need food. When our brain tells us to partake in our addiction, we can instead do something else. This in turn re-trains our brain over time, eventually eliminating the addiction. Many of us have become addicted to digital activities. The best way to overcome the addiction is to find a suitable activity that will replace our need to consume digital media. For me, it helps to consider what need my addiction is fulfilling and find something in the same category, e.g., social acceptance.

Computer Science should be a core subject

Enjoy the video.

For more information on bringing computer science to schools, please visit code.org
If you would like to learn how to program, here is a great, completely free site. codecademy.com

Released from the Shackles: Media's voice

It was once stated that media controlled the people. The professionals of media would find news to report on. They would report on events they decided, and support the side they believed in. The only way society was able to hear the news, was through this medium, and as such, the media could control the news. With controlled news comes controlled society. It was hard for others to learn anything about the news outside what the media said. Those days are over.

While news is still important and widespread, people reporting the news are no longer professionals. Anyone in the world can share their own voice, and report their own events. Clay Shirky calls this event "Mass Amateurization" in his book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. He states that amateurs now control "the media" and it threatens the old-fashion-news industry. In my opinion, this is a very good thing. Now people can seek out the opinion and events they choose. As a people we are no longer controlled, but asked to think for ourselves. By creating a more transparent world, we understand each-other better and make things right. We are now allowed to make our own conclusions and have the power to act on our decisions.

The male nurse vs the female engineer

Computer science programs, and other engineering type programs, have struggled catering to women. These programs have always been predominantly filled with males. This will always be the case. While it is noble to convince women to join these programs, nature claims it will never happen. As people have studied gender differences, one thing they have learned is that men have a greater capacity for logic and women have a greater capacity for emotion. Women have an inherit nature to choose more emotional and caring career paths, where men gravitate towards more logical and systematic paths. Just as engineering programs lack in females, programs such as nursing and elementary education  lack in males. Engineering and nursing will always be gender skewed, and there is nothing wrong with that.

The Foreseeable Future

Imagine a fully automated McDonalds. You drive up, hit a couple buttons for your order, and your food gets put together by machines. A McDonalds without employees. This could be in our forseeable future. Already, software and technology has started to replace many jobs. Google is even building a fully automated car. Hop in, select your destination, and enjoy the ride. When these cars become popular, we can say goodbye to taxi drivers and chauffeurs. One could argue that technology is destroying jobs. I would argue that technology is simply recycling jobs. Look at the technology job market and you will realize there are thousands of jobs that go unfilled. When agricultural advances came, such as tractors and sprinkler systems, many farm hands found themselves jobless. Most of the population used to work on a farm. As a civilization, we changed, and created more jobs. We can do the same thing. I'm excited to see what new markets and industries come to existence in our future.

The Creativity Pot

Have you ever been in a room pitching your ideas to others, only to have them push better ideas back at you? It is the most incredible feeling in the world. You can come up with some great idea, that no one else can think of. As you tell others about your idea, they tell you ways to change or expand your idea to create something better; something you never thought of. Together in this melting pot of ideas, ideas are tuned into amazing products. Creativity comes from numbers. One person may be creative, but together we can change the world. If we look though history, we can find that the biggest advances happened in times and governments when thinking outside of the box was encouraged. Aristotle built ideas off of Plato, who in turn built off of Socrates. Ideas flourish upon collaboration. One modern evidence of this is the Android OS for mobile phones. Android is an open-source software, where its competitors are not. Android started off as the most lacking, most annoying phone OS out there. To be frank, it was horrible and its competition was incredible. However, through time, Android has become the most popular and most up to date phone OS on the market. Its competitors simply can't keep up with the innovation. The open-source software allows creative ideas to build off of others creative ideas, creating a collage of human creativity. When we work and share our ideas with each-other, truly amazing things can happen.

The costs of justice

I find it frustrating when criminals get away with things for political reasons. In The Cuckoos Egg Clifford Stoll retells his events tracking a hacker. As Cliff continued to chase the hacker, he often went to federal agencies to receive help and collaboration with catching the hacker. For varying reasons, each agency said they couldn't help. There were many times where Cliff was close to finding out more about the hacker, but couldn't quite get there due to bureaucratic reasons, such as not having a warrant in the right state. Just like state police officers do not have authority to write tickets in other states, agencies such as the CIA, do not have permission to do things out of their jurisdiction. While Cliff was dealing with these struggles he made a comment that these jurisdiction rules are intended to protect us. 

It is often the case however, that such laws can also limit justice. How often is justice thrown by the wayside because the crime fits between two separate boundaries? Don't get me wrong, I understand why such boundaries exist. I understand that power corrupts and such laws limit corruption and Tyranny. However, far too often criminals are allowed to walk, or are never even hunted. 

I myself have been a victim of cyber crime. I have found that no matter how much information you are able to collect about the perpetrator, no one is willing to help you bring them to justice. If we want to reduce cyber crime, we need to have a system set up to discourage such crimes. People don't bother robbing banks because they know that banks are highly secured and nearly impossible to get away with. Cyber crime however is encouraged by the law more then discouraged. If jurisdictions and bureaucracy is going to remain how it is, cyber crime will just get worse. We need a more defined law or agency if we are going to keep up with the criminals.

Twitter Feed

Last week I was watching the General Conference for the LDS church. While the conference goes on, many people tweet about it. As I watched the conference, I decided to also watch #LDSConf on Twitter. It was a great experience. As I was watching the feed, I actually learned things and realized things about the talks that I did not originally notice. I would hear something I liked, then go check to see what people tweeted about it. Sometimes, there would be some good tweets that helped my recognize a further explanation upon something that was said. I can truly say that watching twitter helped me enjoy the conference even more. Of course, not all tweets where worthwhile, and there was a lot of "noise", but even with all the noise, it was a worth-while experience. I will be following twitter for all conferences to come.

The Evolution of Technology: From Comical to Miracle

One of my favorite things about the evolution of technology and innovation, is when some cool, yet almost pointless, invention gets built upon to enhance someone's quality of life. When the Xbox Kinect came out it was a cool gaming device, but not incredibly useful. Now, the Kinect sensor powers surgical software. We could even go back to the "primal" days of technology with the ALTAIR 8800. The ALTAIR was claimed to do absolutely nothing, yet, because of it, computers are now such a vital part of our lives. Whenever you see a new technology product that you feel is pointless and perhaps even a joke, such as Google Glasses, don't think about the product itself, think about the next step in the technological evolution. It might just become a life changing miracle for some - and perhaps, all.

Watch the story of the "bionic eye" glasses at CNET: http://cnet.co/1bCBRrO

Dont shame the Game

I often get frustrated with people who instantly assume video games are fruitless idle hobbies. As a child I would often be limited in the amount of time I could play video games. While I understood the logic behind this, I was often upset that my sister's time was never limited in regards to reading books. While it is true that books can make you smarter, not all books do. On the same logic, it is true that some games are violent, profane, and lustful. Some games however, can be good. I have seen people lock themselves in a room for weeks on end - and barely come up for air - in order to read some intriguing series. On the flip side, I have played video games requiring skills such as: puzzle solving, social interaction, integrated reading, organizational skills, progression management, leadership, patience, money management, and trading. One of the biggest things I have learned through games is if you fail, keep trying. Who I am today has a lot to do with some of the games I have played. You wouldn't accept Harry Potter as an evil book simply because some religious guy said it was demonic; you would try to figure it out for yourself. If you want to know if a game is fruitless, don't assume, do some research.

What is Privacy?

Sometimes we forget that the word privacy is subjective. With the recent appearance of The Faces of Facebook some people are concerned about their profile photos being available to anyone and everyone. The designer of the site claims photos have always been public (which is true) and privacy isn't being breached. For others, however, this is a direct violation to their understanding of privacy. It is hard for sites and even governments to defend our privacy when we all have different opinions on where the line should be drawn.


Read about Faces of Facebook from CNET: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57605235-93/see-the-faces-of-all-1.2-billion-facebook-users-including-yours/?amp&Media

Biometric Blunder

People have always wondered why we don't use finger prints for computer security -- after all, it is the ultimate form of proof on crime scenes. The basic answer is that there is no good way to completely secure your fingerprint data and prove its you. As proof of that, just one day after Apple released their own form of fingerprint login, known as touch ID, people were able to bypass the system. The real answer however does not come from how secure it is, but how dangerous it is. When suspicion arises that your email account has been compromised, the first thing to do is change your password. This is not such an easy task when all you have is ten passwords. Passwords can be guessed, can be written down, and can be completely insecure, but once a password is compromised, it can be changed. Fingerprints might have the potential to be completely secure, but once compromised, can never be altered. Were back to insecure practices, every password to every account is the same; say goodbye to your identity.

Cnet - Germans defeat Apple Touch Id

Gene Roddenberry Understood

In Star Trek, the crew of the Enterprise often encounters some primitive culture. One mandate the crew must follow is never to expose or give away technology. This mandate supposedly protects the primitive civilization from advancing too quickly, resulting in unforeseen catastrophes. Technology may be cool and help people achieve menial tasks, but there are also unforeseen negative impacts to technology. Even now as software and technology is being released at an ever increasing pace, we have consequences we have to deal with. As we advance independently, society gets to play the role in accepting a new technology along with its negative impacts, instead of taking the metaphorical blunt hammer, to the face, all at once. Without this, we would not choose to advance. After all, would we have allowed the internet to permeate our lives if we considered the NSA's role and ability before the web was as important as water?

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