Buddy's Blog

This week, we delved into the ever increasing presence of AI technologies. More specifically, we discussed the professions that we think are at risk because of AI’s capabilities. We spend lots of time talking about its potential influence on transportation, fashion and even accounting. I, though, brought up the idea of the use of technology in the world of professional sports… more specifically, officiating. In the game of baseball, it is commonly known that one cannot argue calls regarding balls and strikes. To eliminate this problem, many individuals have argued for an automated system (as seen by many of the major sport networks) that can track where the ball crosses home plate. This seems like a great idea for outsiders, but as someone who is so close to the game, I can say that I am not in favor of the implementation of this new technology. Fortunately for me, there are no current plans to expand the game’s technology in this respect. Baseball and other sports, though, have implemented reviewable plays (balls and strikes do not qualify). This allows important plays in the game to be evaluated correctly. I think this is a great step forward in the world of sports, without taking away from the true nature of the game (with officials).

Some of the readings really had me thinking over the weekend, more specifically To Do With the Price of Fish and $1 Billion for Dollar Shave Club. I was beyond surprise to learn of the monumental role that the institution of a phone played on the fishing economy in India. The phone allowed the fishermen to decipher which markets were more suitable to sell to in order to maximize profit without wasting any of the product. If a telephone can make such a stark impact on this industry, are there any inventions that can influence our economy in the same way? Only time will tell… also, the release of a video can completely revolutionize the razor industry. Even a jocular video such as the one presented from Dollar Shave Club gets the company’s name out there, and allowed the company to take over the industry.

I am excited to read and discuss more about the role that technology plays on our society and others… stay tuned, to be continued…

This week, we finished up the discussion of the history of the internet and its creation. I found the readings and conversations about the evolution of the original ARPAnet to be quite interesting; however, I am more intrigued about the current uses of the internet and how it can be used to progress society. With that being said, I am greatly looking forward to the coming discussions.

Someone brought up the decline of Uber in the conversation this week; I had heard of this recently, but I was excited to learn the reasons why the seemingly successful company is failing. If you did not watch the news or was around anyone that does, I don’t think that you would realize that Uber is losing money at a rapid rate.

I was also interested to learn about top-level domains. TLDs are the end of any given URL. For example, in www.harvard.edu, .edu would be the top-level domain. I had always wondered why the .(insert TLD here) protocol was a thing. I also have had experiences where I was asked to go to a particular website, and I inputted the incorrect TLD, leading me to a completely unrelated website. The example given in class, about www.whitehouse.gov, has a completely weird agenda. I can imagine the reactions of those who inputted the incorrect TLD, when trying to look up some information about the White House.

In the first few weeks of class, I have learned a great deal about computers and how primitive networks were established. I have been reflecting on these things, and wonder what the future of computer science holds. I am beyond excited to start delving into the everyday uses of the internet that most of us probably take for granted… to be continued!

It has been a crazy week in the life of Buddy Hayward… mainly because of the ever looming Hurricane Irma. I was thinking of my hometown, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, all week, as it was initially projected to be right in the heart of the ‘destruction zone’. Despite all the panic, South Florida remained relatively intact. I found it interesting how Jim followed the storm by viewing the live streams online, only when the power was up and running. I was simply on Facetime with my mom, watching the events unfold. It is funny that I say simply, because that is definitely not the right term considering what I’ve learned in the past couple of weeks. After the readings and this week’s discussion, I am amazed that the technology that we take for granted even exists. It took so much time and effort just to develop a system in which two giant computers could transmit information from each other. Now, I can just pick up my iPhone and see what is going 1,473 miles away in my hometown… truly crazy!

Another concept that jumped out at me was the use of the “Finger” technology. This allowed a user to see when any particular user was on the network recently… talk about a lack of privacy! In today’s world, we have new technologies that serve a similar purpose. Apple has its own feature called “Find my Friends” which allows the user to request a mutual sharing of location with any individual. This makes it much less invasive than the finger technology, since you have to accept the request to actually start sharing your location… it is interesting to see, though, that this sort of technology has been around since the early days of the ARPAnet. Even though I use this technology frequently, after our discussion, I’ve been thinking that it might not be such a great thing to have… I have to 100% trust those whom I am sharing my location with.

Week 2 of Seminar 50N is in the books. I have learned a great deal, and I’m excited to move on to some of the Internet’s purposes in a few weeks.

I look forward to next week’s meeting… to be continued!

My first day attending “What is the Internet, and what will it become?” really opened my eyes to some new and intriguing ideas. The seminar opened with a discussion about the team-up of Cortana and Alexa, from Microsoft and Amazon, respectively. When I first heard this, I remember thinking that it would be a quite unusual pairing, as both Alexa and Cortana serve a similar purpose. However, after hearing what others had to say, and reflecting after class, I am now thinking that Microsoft and Amazon joined forces in this area to both improve the technology and potentially overtake the more popular AI systems, such as Apple’s Siri and Google Home. Just like most technologies, some devices handle certain things better than others… same goes for Cortana and Alexa. The integration of both technologies will allow the user to utilize the strengths of both devices, without having to do any extra work.

Over the course of the meeting, we also discussed the history and evolution of the internet. It was very interesting to learn of its initial purpose and how it was developed. It is crazy to think about how much time and effort it took to assemble a machine that produced 3 functions per second… now we have devices that can spit out billions per second. This really got me thinking… if all this progress can be made in a little over a half of a century, what is in store for the future? Devices that can read our minds and surf the web based on our thoughts? Only time will tell.

I left the first meeting a little overwhelmed by the complexity of some of the topics, but I can clearly see the importance of the Internet in our lives today. I am excited to learn more and to make my contribution next week… to be continued.

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