Final Response

Blog Response
I really liked the setting of this class it was my first online experience and I can strongly say that I really enjoyed it and that I plan on taking more online classes in the future. I learned a lot in this class like how to download cool fonts and make artwork out of them on Microsoft word. I learned how to read and analyze scholarly journals and make a paper out of them. I learned how to make my ideas flow from one paragraph to another. I also enjoyed doing Module I going around my city and taking pictures of the things that are affection our community and showing them to others to come up with a way to solve these issues. What I liked to do the most is commenting on other people’s projects not so much essays I wasn’t a big fan of checking those but I really liked the pictures and the creative ideas of others. If we had more time I would have liked to have online conversations and discussions about the book that we had to read. This way we would have heard the input of others and they would have heard out input as well. Reading the novel at home it was a very lonesome experience and doing the responses was very lonesome as well. I am not sure what I am going to do with my blog after this class, I never really had a blog before this class because I didn’t find much of a good use for it. I haven’t decided if I want to keep it and post other things on it and make it open to my friends and things like that. I also might stop using it and start using it again in the future at some point in time. I enjoyed this class overall the assignments were very organized and thought out, even though we were having difficulty getting our class started through ctool since many were new to the system. In the end everything worked out and we finished the semester in a great way!

Reading Responses

Michelle Gutierrez
Professor Yerks
Comp 106
14 December 2008
Reading Response
2. I think that Coupland is trying to get us to think more in depth about what our technology is really composed of. Like on page 19-20 we are introduced with random symbols Coupland says “real language decomposes into ecryptian code” this is followed by a full page of random symbols and digits. I interpreted this as he wanting us to understand that everything is broken down into smaller components. Coupland did this throughout the whole book; he might want to let us know that it’s not just as easy as sending an e-mail or writing a journal. There are much more complex things in life and people don’t even realize it. They could also be internal expression such as when Dan decided to write random words any that came to his head(44-48 Coupland). This could also be something that happens to all of us subconsciously and w don’t express it because we don’t realize its happening to us. I think this made the book much more interesting for the reader because it gave us many more thing to think about in terms of how we express ourselves and the things that are actually going in our heads. This was a very well used strategy by Coupland that made us analyze the text in depth and with much more critical thinking that we would have used otherwise.
3. The characters throughout the text used phrases such as “Ich bin ein Flatlander” or “four personality-free gray microsoftmobiles” or “two Microsoft works PC inflatable beach cushions” (7 Coupland). I think that these characters express themselves in such ways because that is how much the workplace has overtaken their lives. Now even their everyday normal lives are being somehow related to work related things; even to describe you how or what you will be eating tomorrow it has to become into this much more complex description. I think this somehow relates to everyone because even I do it sometimes things that I would normally do or say at work I would end up doing the same thing when I was out of work. This is something that we do not notice that we do it just happens, and if someone happens to point it out to us is the only time we come to realize that we are doing this. While I was reading the book I had t reread many sentences because I didn’t quite understand what was going on. I had to go back and see if the character was describing a situation at work or at home. I think that this affects others in a way that makes them analyze and pay much more attention to the actual conversation that is taking place. It makes people think more in depth about what the other person is actually saying versus just having a regular conversation without having to put so much thought into it.
5. I think that a better way to explain what Karla means when she talks about Artificial Intelligence is by something that Dan said “what if machines do have a subconscious of their own? What if machines right now are like human babies, which have brains but no way of expressing themselves except screaming (crashing)?” This basically means that eventually machines will have a mind of their own and operate without any human help. We could just give it a command and it will listen without having to do the task ourselves. Computers will take in its own information and learn for themselves and their mistakes becoming more perfect over time. I am not really too sure that computers will have a mind of their own or have subconscious thoughts one day. I don’t know I might be closed minded or that idea just seems to crazy to be true. I think that if something like that were to happen it would be a very scary thought because how would we know that they wouldn’t try to take humans over and try to control us. Ever since early times humankind has controlled machines and the extent to which we build them but what if the tables turned. Like I said in my head an idea like this does not fit because it just seems impossible that something like this would happen.