Cover Letter
When I first came to this class, I expected it to be an advanced cybernetics theories class. Little did I know, it was a basiclly remidial compositon class. Though I do feel that this class would be helpfull to those people who lack experiance in using the internet and understanding scince fiction, but, I dont believe that this class helped anybody that had any knowlegde about cyberculture. Being a natural born Sci-Fi nut, and the fact that I have advanced computer skills, made this class worthless to me. I was farmiliar with many of the articles that were assigned as reading and I've used all of the programs that were introduced to me as if I hadn't even heard of them. In 10th grade, I took a class that taught me how to construct a web page. I feel like I did the same thing, except I had to pay for it.
The final progect in this class was to build a web page on a topic that you and your group picked. We chose Virtual Reality because none of us knew much about it and thought it would be a good opurtunity to learn. We were also to make a personal web page as an extention to our group page. On this page we were to put pictures we created and/or manipulated using Photoshop. One of these picutures was suppose to be a pictoral collage portraying our personality. The pictures I chose all relate to my life, I love cats, I love music and play guitar. And yes that is what you think it is. My favorite part of this class was the viewing of The Matrix. This is by far the greatest movie ever made and I was happy to share my opinions about it. I also enjoyed the day when we went over "The Hacker's Manifesto". I had a very similar childhood and gradeschool experiance. I stumbled upon this writing when I was 13 years old while I was getting new hacking software. This was one of the first things that made me feel like I was part of something. From then on, I never used my computer skills to harm or destroy, but instead to gain information that I can use to my advantage. I would most likely be in prison if I had'nt found that writing.
Short Essay
Topic: Virtual Reality and its applications In the beginning days of computers, the interaction between the operator and the machine was very limited. Only very knowledgeable people could even get a computer to add two numbers. As time went on, computers became easier for just about anybody to use. A United States radar operator named Douglas Engelbart was a pioneer of modern day display systems. He thought that if making a digital display for his radar screen was possible, then why not make a similar display for computer systems. This was a turning point in the evolution of Virtual Reality. Simplifying the interaction between computers and their operators is the basic definition of Virtual Reality. VR may seem like a very new, futuristic concept to many people in today's world. However, ever since the end of World War II, the United States government has been spending millions of dollars in the research and development of VR. They realized that training pilots, and other military personnel, on the ground and off the battlefield would be much less costly in finances and human life. Simulators give trainees the complete combat experience without the danger of actually getting hurt. You might ask yourself, how can Virtual Reality be used other than for military purposes. You might be surprised as to the endless applications of VR. I will list a few of the most interesting and plausible. Cosmology - Computer generated simulations could help us determine how the universe was formed, and how it is currently evolving. If we were to know the exact situation of the cosmos in the future, we may be able to predict and avoid a stellar disaster. Also, NASA uses flight simulators, similar to the military's, to train shuttle pilots. In the Apollo 13 mission, utter disaster was averted using virtual reality. A shuttle pilot on Earth was able to run several tests in the simulator to find the best way to get the pilots safely home. Without that simulation, they would have surely died. Weather Forecasting - With VR technology, meteorologists will be able to predict severe weather before it strikes. Being able to know the path of a hurricane will save lives as well as millions of dollars in evacuation expenses. Also, there is no known method to predict a tornado before it is on the ground. Virtual Reality technology is helping scientists remedy this situation, and will also save hundreds of lives. Job Training - As I've discussed before, Virtual Reality technology is used to train military personnel in simulators. This has proven to be significantly less costly. Using similar technology, commercial companies have begun training their employees and have gotten the same positive results. An example of this would be truck drivers. There are a few facilities around the country that shipping companies use to train drivers, using VR, before they are responsible for real cargo. When you think about it, any job that requires training can be done in a simulator implementing Virtual Reality. Medical - Virtual Reality can be used to save lives on the operating table as well. Doctors can simulate an experimental or difficult surgery on a computer before doing it on an actual patient. This would help the medical team to predict possible complications that could come up in doing the actual operation. When this technology becomes more popular, no doctor would be doing a particular operation for the first time, hundreds of lives will be saved. As you can see, Virtual Reality can be implemented in almost any field. Once VR becomes more developed and less costly, everybody will be exposed to it. Training will be done in simulators in every job from fast food to pizza delivery drivers. Lives will be saved on the operation table. Weather will be more easily predicted, also potentially saving thousands of human lives. With Virtual Reality technology, we will be able to basically put the world on slow-motion, making everything much easier to understand and implement in our lives.
PhotoShop Images
Pictoral Collage
Critical Responses
My first responce is going to be on the Matrix. I love this movie for it's intellegent plot and it's special effects. The plot is a truely wonderful thing, it can be interpreted in so many ways. As I discussed in class, it has many religious and social hidden meanings. Many of these clash and contradict eachother, but the average person will only percieve one set of them making it an enjoyable movie for all. The special effects in this movie were cutting edge and some of the most impressive things I have ever seen. The Matrix was the first movie to implement "multi camera motion". This technology was used in the scenes where it apeared that the camera moved totally around a fixed point. All in all, I loved this movie and will for sure watch it many times in my life.
The second response I will do will be on "The Hacker's Manifesto". This was written by a hacker in the 80's shortly after his arrest. It speaks of the injustice bestowed upon hackers everyday. It also sheads light on the fact that society is partly to blame for smart kids turning to crime. I completely agree with this, society can only hold back an intellegent student for so long before he/she breaks free and naturally rebels against his/her former captors. Making smarter students wait for the rest of the class to catch up is the worst thing a school can do. And this is one of the main things that I believe "The Mentor" was saying in his manifesto. As I stated in my cover letter, my life was changed when I read this and understood the feelings that I was having, the feelingls that made me want to rebel against everybody that told me I had to jump through the hoops to succeed.
My third responce is on Blade Runner. This movie is concidered to be one of the greatest science fiction movies of all time, by a purely critical standpoint, it is. But, my personal opinion is that it was pathetic. There was very little familiaritiy between all of the settings of the movie. All of the lighting had a strange blue tint to it. The plot was both confusing and shallow. I personally didnt see to much intentional symbolism in the movie. The "machienes" seemed disturbing. All in all I hated this movie and will never watch it again.
Annotated Links
Yahoo - I used this search engine to find much of the information I have displayed on this site. I like how it breaks everything down into categories making searching much easier.
Google - A fairly new search engine which has proven to be much faster than all or most of the others. It doesnt offer as much other stuff as Yahoo.com, but the speed is a nice thing.
Angelfire - We used this to create our web page. It is a web based editor so we could do it from anywhere. We got lots of space and fast upload speeds, all of this for free.
Hotmail - This is where I have my personal Email account. It has been good for me.
The Matrix - A very impressive site full of Matrix goodies =)
Virtual Realit History - A science fair style Virtual Reality informational site. We used this to find most of the information we used on our site.
Science for the Milenium - This is another informational VR site, we got some information from here, but not nearly as much as we got from the preceeding one.
VR price guide - A listing of lots of VR equiptment that people can buy. Very expensive stuff!
Sarah's personal page - The page that Sarah Created for this class.
Lindsey's personal page - The page that Lindsey created for this class.
Personal Statement of technology I feel that technology is one of the most important things that our society has accomplished. It's what truely seperates us from the apes from whence we came. As we advance in our abilities, we progress as a spiecies. When most people think of technology, they think "computer" and "space shuttle". When some of the most important technologicial adcancemetns happend long before somebody even uttered the word "microprocessor". Things such as the wheel and fire gave humans the tools nessicary to evntually create the wonderful things that we have today.
Some people may argue that we are losing a part of our humanity every time we create a machiene that does a man's job. I feel that this, to a point, is true. For example, In the movie "The Matrix", man created artificial intellegence. But this technology over ran them and took humanity over. Though I do not believe that this will happen anytime soon, I still belive that it could happen. So in conclusion I say this: Technology is wonderful, it has givin us the ablilty to advance our knowledge and understanding of the world we live in and has made our general lives easier. But I do believe that there should be a line drawn at making robots that think for themselves. It would be a dangerous thing if a robot could create another robot, let's stick to programming them, and never have to worry about them programming us.
