The Thesis of my blogs...

So, probably like many other people in this class, when I learned that I needed to go and look through my blog posts and figure out what my thesis was, I thought: there isn't one. Everything I wrote was unconnected. every blog had a separate, random topic. However, after a while, I did manage to pick out a common theme in many of my posts. A lot of them tended to be philosophical in nature, which surprised me, because to my knowledge, I'm not philosophical (or at least, I wasn't). Some of my blog posts truly were random and unconnected to my other posts in any way, shape or form, but a lot of them, regardless of whatever issue or topic or event that I was talking about, tended to focus on whether I thought that it was good or bad. It seems that I like to put things sortof in a moral context, deciding that they are either good or bad, and if they're bad, I like to talk about what I think it should be.
  In one post, I talked about whether permanent criminal records are fair, and whether they wind up having a greater negative impact than a positive one. In another post, I talked about how it was good that mankind didn't have ultimate control over the course of their lives, because we would inevitably choose to avoid the pain and hardship that are so necessary for our growth and development.  I also talked about how excessive fear and paranoia can have very large negative impacts on our society, and motivate people to do unfortunate things. I cited the Salem witch trials and the communist scares as examples from history of why we need to be careful not to let our fear of terrorism or other things take us too far. I also liked to talk about economics and technology, and the positive or negative impacts that are occurring due to those things, though I'm certainly not an expert in either economics or technology.
  In short, I like to take basically whatever topic I find interesting, analyze it, and decide whether it's a good or a bad thing. I also like to muse about how it could be made into a good thing if it isn't already, and how it could be better if it is.
  I feel that this is an important viewpoint to take, because sometimes as a society we get so wrapped up in things or the possibilities of things that we fail to step back and think carefully about the real impact that something will have. Something that at first seems to be really exciting, amazing, and full of potential could wind up having a truly negative impact, if we aren't careful. I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to develop new things and progress as a society, or that we should always be afraid of new things. I'm all for progress. Rather, I'm saying that we should take the time to consider more carefully the things we do, and think about whether they really are good or bad. A quote comes to mind from the movie Jurassic Park, where John Hammond and his company successfully brought dinosaurs back to life. Despite it being a truly amazing and exciting feat of science, one of the characters, Ian Malcolm, thinks that dinosaurs are a very bad idea, and says to Hammond: "You were so concerned about whether or not you could, that you never stopped to think about whether or not you should!" As we all remember from the movie, the park was a failure and the dinosaurs wound up eating a lot of people. Definitely not a good thing. So, I guess that's the point of my thesis, that we need to think more about whether or not the things we do as a society will be good or bad. We don't want to create more proverbial people-eating dinosaurs. :P
 

The Digital World Outruns the Physical World?

I had a thought the other day about the progress of technology. It seems to me that although science and technology has made all kinds of progress in the last couple decades, a lot of that progress has been limited to just one area: the digital world. Our world has become incredibly digitized in the last decade or so. Communications technology in particular has improved remarkably in the last few years. Now, if I have a smart phone, I can talk to people around the world instantly anytime, anywhere, or I can access the internet anytime, anywhere, and access incredibly large amounts of information almost instantly, or communicate with people on the other side of the world in real time.
  This is awesome, but it's interesting that physical technology hasn't progressed near as far. By physical technology, I mostly mean things like modes of transportation, such as cars, planes, ships, etc. Way back in the day, it used to be that communications could only go as fast as physical transportation would allow, by word of mouth, or by courier, or whatever, but that changed once the telegram was invented. Since then, communications technology has always been more advanced than physical technology. Today it's only more so.  I can talk with someone on the other side of the world in real time via the internet, but if I want to physically go there, the fastest commercial passenger jet, which flies at about 700 miles an hour (which I admit is actually pretty fast) can only get me there in about 18-20 hours.

  Physical technology has made some significant advances. In 2004, the NASA X-43A broke the world's flight airspeed record, setting the new record at over 7,500 mph, and the space shuttle reaches speeds far greater than that, getting up to 17,500 mph during atmospheric reentry, though I'm not sure if that should count, since it's falling, rather than flying. That's pretty cool, but the X-43 was an unmanned vessel. A human-piloted vessel still has yet to reach those speeds. The fastest cars in the world can reach speeds of up to around 250 mph. The fastest helicopter in the world, the Sikorsky X2, set a record of just under 300 mph in 2010. I'll easily admit that these are actually pretty impressive, but nowhere near the speed of the internet.
 Another thing to keep in mind is that I, an average ordinary common person, can access the internet and talk with someone on the other side of the world practically for free. Going anywhere physically, though, requires money, and the faster and farther you want to go, the more money it costs. For most ordinary people, physically traveling to the other side of the world is a very expensive proposition in and of itself. Doing so at the rapid speeds we're talking about is something only really rich people could afford.
  So, basically, there's a huge gap between the speed of communications and the speed of physical transportation of people or objects. It makes sense when you think about it, considering that with communications you're only sending a few electrical signals instead of an entire physical object. Still, I wonder if we'll someday be able to narrow that gap, with flying cars, or anti-gravitic flight, or even teleportation. Who knows? It's possible. 100 years ago, who would've imagined all of the technological advances that we have now?

What do Witchcraft, Communism, and Terrorism have in common?

What do Witchcraft, Communism, and Terrorism have in common?
  At first glance, nothing, other than that they are all bad things (or at least considered to be). Yet, all three of these things have had an impact on our nation's history, and if we look closely (actually, we don't even have to look closely) at those impacts, we see some striking similarities. Each one of these things sparked mass fear and paranoia that led to the false accusation, imprisonment, and even execution of innocent people.  Let's think about it.
   First, witchcraft. I'm sure most of us have at least heard of the Salem Witch Trials, and a lot of us have probably read Arthur Miller's The Crucible, which is written about those events.  Just to review, though, in 1690's colonial America, most people were firm believers in God, and also in the Devil, and that belief entailed believing that devils and evil spirits were at work across the land. Whenever anything bad happened, it was blamed on devils. Because of this, people also believed in witches, or people who  wrought evil upon others by associating with and borrowing the powers of the devils and evil spirits. Witches were a common cause of fear, both in America and in Europe.
   During the early 1690s, most notably in the town of Salem, MA, but in other nearby towns as well, this fear of witches basically went way out of control. To be brief, some girls exploited this excessive fear by accusing some people they didn't like of being witches, even going so far as to pretend to have seizures and fits when these people were around them, and attributing it to their "witchcraft".  It seems outright silly to us today to think that people actually believed them, but the people were so afraid of witchcraft that they did. The town held trials against these "witches", eventually convicting dozens of people of having committed witchcraft, and about twenty of these "witches" were hanged. This mass hysteria and paranoia of witchcraft was responsible for a lapse in due process of law and the false accusations of many people.

Senator Joseph McCarthy

  We something very similar happening in the 20th century during the cold war, only this time, it was fear of communism that was responsible. During the cold war, there was an understandable paranoia of Russian spies and Communist sympathizers in the US. There was enough paranoia that one man, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, was able to exploit it and cause a remarkably large and long-lasting uproar. He accused many people, particularly government officials who were democrats (McCarthy was a republican) of being communist sympathizers. Fortunately, no one was hanged or executed like in the witch trials, but thousands of people were falsely accused, and despite the lack of any conclusive evidence that they were indeed communists, many of them lost their jobs/careers, their reputations, and many of them were even thrown in jail . There were people who attacked McCarthy for all of his finger-pointing and accusations, but interestingly enough, he simply turned and pointed the finger at them, often accusing his opponents of being "unamerican", and being communist sympathizers themselves. Eventually, though, McCarthy lost credibility and support when he accused members of the US Army of being communist sympathizers, and was censured by the US Senate, which put an end to the issue.
   It's fascinating, though, how McCarthy was able to create such a huge uproar. He had little or no evidence of anyone being a communist sympathizer, and yet, because people were so afraid of communists, he was able to destroy the reputations and careers of thousands of people, and imprison many of them as well.

  In our times, we have another new cause of mass fear and paranoia:  Terrorism. While it's true that the threat of terrorism is real, are we allowing that fear to get out of hand?  What has terrorism motivated us to do? We've already created a whole new branch of our government, Homeland Security, and spent billions of dollars to improve our security and defense. We've even invaded another country (Iraq) to counter the terrorist threat housed there. Also, how many changes to our laws have been caused by our fear of terrorism? And what kind of changes?
  Terrorism is a frightful thing. But what will we let that fear make us do? We have two experiences from the past to learn from. Hopefully we've learned our lesson. We have too many other problems to deal with in our times to waste more time, money, and worry than we have to on this issue. We'll see what happens, I guess.

 

Are Criminal Records Fair?

Brandon Robison posted an article a few days ago about some information about Steve Jobs, revealed from an FBI investigation of him in the early 1990's, and Lynsie Hammond commented on that by asking about Openness, asking how appropriate it was for Jobs' FBI file to be made public knowledge like that. Brandon remarked that there's a fine line about how much information about it's citizens a government should be able to make public. I was just thinking about that, and I agree that it is a fine line. A lot of damage can be done if the wrong information about us is given out.
   One example that comes to mind is criminal records. Once somebody is convicted of a crime, then it goes on his/her permanent record and follows them for life. I understand how important that can be, because if someone's done something bad before they might be likely to do it again, and people should be forewarned, but does that go too far sometimes? It's a lot harder for someone with a criminal record to get a job, even if the crime they committed happened a long time ago, and they did the time for it and everything. Is that fair?
   It's a commonly held belief that many people turn to crime because of lack of an honest means to get what they need. In other words, because they don't have enough honest options to make the money they need, they turn to crime. By putting a permanent mark on somebody's record that will make it very difficult to find an honest job, aren't we doing the same thing?
  I'm not arguing for or against putting marks on somebody's record for crimes that they have committed. I'm just saying that it's something that maybe we should think about. Let's say, for example, that some years ago I was arrested for possession and use of drugs, and a permanent mark was put on my record. Let's also say that I paid the price for my mistakes, and did some time in jail, and that I also realized the error of my ways, managed to completely kick my addiction to drugs, and have never touched them since. I try to lead a good life and make an honest living, but because of that mark on my record that says that I did drugs once, it's really difficult to find employers who are willing to hire me, and also to find creditors who will give me a loan, and other things as well. Because of my one past mistake, and that mark on my record, I'm considered untrustworthy, even though I haven't done anything wrong for a long time, and have been struggling hard and long to do things right.
  Because employers could be held liable if they hire an ex-offender who again breaks the law, most employers are understandably hesitant to do so. Why would they take the risk? Still, is that fair to those ex-offenders who are seriously trying to turn their lives around and do things right?
   I have to wonder how many ex-offenders return to their old law-breaking ways because they can't find an honest way to support themselves. By putting that mark on their record and telling the whole world that they broke the law, are we effectively encouraging them to go back and do it again?
  I found a website (here's the link) that talks some about how ex-offenders can try to rebuild their resumes and find a job, and it does contain some useful information, particularly about how in some cases and in some places, it's possible to take programs that will allow you to have the mark on your record erased. However, the website states again and again how difficult it is for an ex-offender to find a job. "The cards are stacked against you", it says.
   It's a difficult thing, and I don't pretend to have a solution for it. Since it's so difficult to determine if someone truly has realized the error of their ways, turned their life around, and decided to be an honest person, society can't afford to let ex-offenders keep their past misdeeds secret. It's too risky.
    When I try to think of a better way to confront this problem, I can't help but think of God's system of justice. When we've truly repented and tried to correct the misdeeds we've done, those misdeeds are essentially forgotten, and are not held against us in any way, shape, or form. Since we can't know people's thoughts like God can, we can't quite manage a system like that, but it would be cool if we could.

Sociologists and Openness

     So the other day in my Sociological Theory class, we began to talk about a man named Jurgen Habermas. Habermas was a proponent of Critical Theory, which I won't explain here because it would take too long, and you would all fall asleep. However, to give a brief background, Habermas thought that society could, should, and would develop and progress to some eventual stage of universal rationality, or universal truth or understanding. However, it was possible to hinder, delay, or even stop that process, if humanity fell too much under the sway of things like power or influence, basically anything that would unduly influence a person and prevent them from acting as they naturally would. In his opinion, today's world has fallen a bit too far under the influence of things like the power of the state or government, the power of the media and the "consumer society" that we sometimes hear about, and the power of the all-important economy which seems to have a will of it's own, and an obsession with making and having money. In his opinion, these things have taken far too much influence in our individual lives, affecting and controlling everything we do, and are preventing us from being who we naturally should.

 Jurgen Habermas (nice hair, dude)

    There are other theorists and theories which say different things,    but we can certainly see some truth in what Habermas says. It's also interesting to think about what he says because he's actually the first theorist that we've studied who's actually still alive. : p Since his ideas were written in and about and for our times, they're a bit more pertinent than most of the theories we've studied.

  Anyways, I did find one very interesting connection between his theories and what we've been talking about in our digital civilization class. Habermas talks about how in order for humanity to be able to freely and naturally progress towards the eventual goal of universal truth, certain conditions have to be met. One of these conditions was that humanity be given an "Ideal Speech Situation", a situation in which any and all  individuals who care to are able to come together to discuss a problem or question and collaboratively come up with a solution or answer. What makes it ideal is that the individuals would be free from outside influences, such as manipulation from outside parties, ulterior motives, etc. Basically, everyone who is participating is doing so solely out of a genuine interest to find a solution to the problem, and doesn't care if it's their particular idea or insight that solves the problem or if it's someone else's, so long as the problem is solved.  In an ideal speech situation, a solution is decided upon through what we call the force of the better argument, or that we pick a solution because it's the best, and not for any other reason, like who came up with it, etc.

  As I was thinking about this, I realized that while this is highly difficult to do in our modern world, there is a phenomenon in the world that matches this concept:  Open Source.  I imagine that open source isn't flawless, but it does seem to match up pretty well with this ideal speech situation. In an open source environment, anyone is permitted to participate and contribute to the project or software or whatever it is, and is more or less free from outside influences, like politics or money or power. People participate in the project just because they have a desire or interest in seeing it come together and work as well as possible. These things may or may not be true, but we'll say they are for the sake of argument. Also, since everyone's ideas and potential solutions are scrutinized and argued over by everyone else, only the best ones will rise to the top and win out. Thus, it's a system based on merit (or the force of the better argument) and nothing else (ideally, anyways).
   It was pretty cool to be able to draw this parallel between this class and my other class. I think that it's awesome when your classes overlap like this, because it helps you see how the stuff we're learning actually does apply to other things in the world.

Oh so little time...

You know, there is one big difficulty with some of the things we do in this class, like reading each others' blog posts, checking out links that people put up, thinking about and writing blog posts, and even this big final project is that due to the completely unstructured nature of these things they all require a lot of time, especially if we are trying to come up with good stuff. We are all busy college students with many demands on our time, like other classes, work, church, social life, and many other things, and what allows us to successfully manage all of these things is the fact that most of them are structured. Many classes have structured schedules, where we have a certain amount of homework due at certain times, and because we know how much is due when, we can plan it out efficiently. I understand that structured classes have a lot of downsides, and I agree with that, but it does have that big advantage.
   I'm a big fan of creativity. There are few times that I feel more satisfied than when I've come up with something that is good, and is all my own original thought. I also love that in this Digital Civilization class, we are being encouraged to be more creative in our learning and how we go about it, as well as in all of our assignments and presentations, etc. However, being creative requires time. Last year, I took a History of Creativity class (you can see that I like the subject), in which we reviewed civilization's development through the perspective of the progression of creative and innovative ideas in technology, politics, economics, etc. One of the first things that we learned in that class is that for creativity to effectively take place, people need leisure time. By leisure time, I don't mean lots of time spent sitting around doing nothing, but in order for creative ideas to take shape, people need time where they are not otherwise engaged in work or other activities. If we don't get that time, then we can't come up with creative stuff. Look at the dark ages. Peasants had to work hard all day every day, so not much creative stuff was invented during those times.
   I guess my point in this is that we are being asked to come up with original and creative thoughts (about specific topics, no less) and blog about them at the very least a couple of times a week, and that it's hard to do that if you don't have much time to do it in. I don't have very much free time, and though I don't know about other people, I'd imagine that it's the same for a lot of them. I'm not trying to complain (though I'm sure that's what it sounds like), because I actually do enjoy this class quite a bit. It's given me a lot to think about. However, it is difficult for me to come up with good, substantial, and original blog posts in the small amount of free time that I have in my busy schedule. Also the fact that I know in the back of mind that if I don't get a blog post out there on time then I get marked down for it doesn't help. I sometimes feel like that deadline forces me to rush and throw some half-baked and poorly written idea out there, and I don't like doing that, because I know that if I spent more time on that idea it might actually be something good instead of incoherent garbage. I have a number of unfinished blog posts saved as drafts (hopefully I'll be able to finish and publish them today), where that is exactly what's happened. I've held on to them because I haven't been able to think of how to clearly express my thoughts yet, or because I had an idea, I thought about it, I started writing it in a blog, and then because I'm still thinking as I'm writing, partway through I think of something about that idea that I hadn't thought of before, and I realize that what I'm writing is wrong, or needs a lot of adjustment. Though that can be enlightening, it's also a little frustrating sometimes, because it means I have to do my blog post over again. : p
    Anyways, those are the thoughts that are running through my head. For anyone who actually read all the way through this, thank you, and I apologize if any of it didn't make sense. If anyone has any suggestions or comments or anything, please feel free. I definitely try to be open-minded.
  Until later...

Openness is good for the Economy

This post is mostly for my part in my group's presentation on openness, but please feel free to look at it. I've included a couple of links that are interesting and informative.


Brief Outline:    Openness and Economy/Business

   -Economy and Openness:

•     Greater Choice for Consumers
•     Increased competition and Lower Prices
•     Expanded Markets and Customer Bases
•     Global Investment Opportunities
•     Gains from Trade

   -Openness within a Business Structure

• Openness within a business organization allows for more creative and innovative ideas, and collaboration between employees.
• Austin Baughan posted a link on Google+ to the Bettermeans open business structure

  -Open Source and Business

• Link to Opensource.org
• Open Source software and materials are cheaper to obtain(often free), and to produce (it's like outsourcing for free)

• Open Source is like a market economy;  ideas come from the bottom up, and the darwinist nature of the market assures that only the best stuff prevails
• Mature Open Source software is the most reliable there is. It's been scrutinized by everyone and their dog, so it's well-refined, and has already been tested by many of the people who would want to use it. It's "as bulletproof as software can get.".

More Detail:

-Economy and Openness

• Greater Choice for Consumers : In an open economy, the domestic markets are merged with international markets and so the consumers are not limited to consume domestically produced goods and services. They can choose the best from the world market.  

•  Increased competition and Lower Prices:  A related benefit of an open economy is that the consumers have an increasing number of producers or goods and services competing for their business.Competition among producers results in lower prices and improved services. An open economy allows consumers to benefit from the lower labor and operating costs.

•  Expanded markets and Customer bases:  The benefits of an open economy are not limited to consumers. Global interaction allows companies to gain access to customers in other nations. This motivates them to produce world class products, and to expand their business and customer base.

•  Global Investment Opportunities:  For investors, an open economy expands the opportunities for investing capital. Investors large and small can choose to invest in known domestic companies, or they can invest in established industrial giants of other nations.  Investors with an appetite for risk, meanwhile, can invest in the emerging markets of less developed areas of the world, such as Latin America, Africa and southern Asia.  

• Gains from Trade:  One of the key principles of economics is that trade benefits all parties involved. International trade involves interactions with other economies and is therefore possible only among open economies.  Trade allows nations to specialize in producing the goods in which they have comparative advantages and trade with other nations to obtain goods in which those other nations specialize. This in turn provides consumers with a greater array of goods from which to select. Also, free and honest trade also has benefits of increased cultural exchange, and increased creativity and innovation, inspired by the exchange of ideas that occurs during trade.