Of Minds and Machines

"Computerworld - The National Science Foundation has awarded a $25 million grant to Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study how the brain creates intelligence and how that process can be replicated in machines."  Computerworld article

New technology has guided us into an Information Age; this is an age that is less divisive than ever in the past because the tools are so wide-spread that there is no excuse for ignorance. Now, you're either willfully ignorant of the advances around the world or you are being controlled. Technology is both a tool of freedom and a weapon of oppression.

Why spend millions of dollars on studying intelligence from inside a square? Capital now drives progress, and while the dollar is dying we are no longer driven by the urge to explore and discover--we are driven by monetary and limited gains. This hinders progress. I am hopeful, yet wary of the whole thing: I feel they have jumped the gun a bit. Why not first spend more time thinking about the reason and value of being a corporeal individual being vs. a machine or cog in the wheel of capitalistic values.

It excites and terrifies me how so much is invested in ideals that can, seriously, be simplified with a few numbers. People are looking such great things with such narrow lines drawn, and this keeps society away from addressing the problem of consumer technology and the issues of over-consumption, propaganda, and meaning itself. Life loses meaning when it's watered down to a few sensory outputs, which to me is not the point of progress or evolution.

You can't manufacture the future without understanding the present, and our digital footprint is quite immense and valuable-- in an artificial sense, our history has also become a re-run. Every day we are making the same mistakes, and the mistake is choosing to substitute nature for innate ideas, blanket generalizations, and ultimately stepping away from the real world; opposed to some virtual & incredibly value-less reality. From the roots to tops of trees. Our flaw is that we're substituting not only human value for a bunch of $$$$$, but putting it toward more "science and tech" and maybe with a little luck this new project's fund won't be put toward another WMD. (like giant flesh tearing, fear mongering machine soldiers or cyborgs.)

I won't argue with an educated student toying with his robotic theory, while homes are being foreclosed on and families are dying all around the world--because I don't want to waste my time with children who need to grow up and actually do something about the world we live in now and not invent a new one. Even if a self-driving car makes you feel superior, at the root of it all, you're going to eventually have to give up the notion of knowing how to drive in the first place. Embrace the comfortable safety of this isolated hope, that somehow you matter to a machine--because we are becoming the machines we've made in our image.

What do I think? I don't want my future to be run by machines because even if you can replicate the intelligence to some degree of a human being, you'll never replicate the human heart. That's the one small piece of the puzzle that can be easily dismissed--since we thought we understood where intelligence came from and failed to look inward.

NSA Leak Scandal

"Government and industry have betrayed the internet, and us. By subverting the internet at every level to make it a vast, multi-layered and robust surveillance platform, the NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract."

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/05/government-betrayed-internet-nsa-spying

Surfing the internet is a lot like driving down the interstate; information is readily available and the speed at which we receive this data is high. Our government's policing of the information highway has gone far beyond arbitrary ticketing. We are facing a dilemma in our Capitalistic and consumer oriented world, where our U.S. government is becoming almost indistinguishable from a corporation.

In other words, they should be paying us for our information and should not be allowed to steal data from the common citizen. We have a responsibility as information and social media users to know how much of our personal information is available to outsiders, and just who is taking our information and collecting it. We need to know where our information is going and why. Socially conscious users are butting heads with government influenced consumers. Our current President claimed that the NSA was not gathering information on everyone, but without whistleblowers and leaks from individuals invested in Democracy, we wouldn't even know that this was a lie.

In summary, to have a true Democracy and continue to have a collective free society, we have to have laws in place that protect the people from abusers of our constitution and rights to the free flow of information. Without social media laws we will eventually be stripped of what makes us free as individuals, citizens, and we will no longer live without fear of gross manipulations of our right to privacy and safety of our personal data.

Knowing Your Field

Media studies (as an academic field) is essential for landing a job in the media industry. Potential employers will be looking for someone who is familiar with the tools of the trade and who will be dedicated to doing their work ethically. They want to hire someone who knows what their doing, but also who is familiar with the relevance of social media platforms as well as new trends and evolving dynamics. Being versatile in new environments is also key to making an impression on your employer. With knowledge of the different tools and an understanding of media studies, you will likely be on your way to a career. It will take a lot of dedication to get where you want to be.

Having the necessary technical skill and knowledge of media is not only relevant, but essential to working with others in this booming field. It's very important to understand your audience and stay informed of the trends which vary across different cultures. Being able to pin down a common denominator or a cross-cultural trend is essential in advertising and media production. There is also the importance of finding something that you can specialize in; through media studies, you can find what topic ( i.e. politics, sports, health ) suits you best. A solid grasp of the dynamics of mass media is needed for the marketplace and to reach the most potential buyers.