Today's lesson is on ICT and world change.
We started off with a video again - Project Natal - Milo.
I think starting off with a video is a really good way of starting the class as it grabs everyone's attention and sparks off interest for the class.
okay so the video is about artificial intelligence where a virtual character is able to recognize people, recognize emotions, display emotions and able to communicate with you. This is quite a breakthrough and in the future if this artificial intelligence is implanted in robots, it'll be a quite a revolutionary change.
As from Reading 6, there is a lot of ideas how thing technology can be implemented.
Some examples are companionship for single child or for lonely elderly people, or a virtual assistant that helps you record whatever you want to say rendering the use of keyboard useless.
Another example i think is it could be a 24/7 security system where it can identify people, records them and makes a din if it recognize a break-in or something.
There are unlimited possibilities as said in the blog - We are limited only by our imagination.
However, I feel that it may lead to more people living in the virtual world and kids might grow up being introverted and live in their own world. Hence caution must be taken with regards to this.
We were introduced to some areas of ICT such as mass media, internet, gaming, wireless technologies, interactive telecommunication, information systems, cloud computing and knowledge management. We talked about what these forms of ICT are and the past, present and future.
For example, mass media. Mass media means information for the mass(people).
In the past, information is passed through the word of mouth or is passed down from one generation to another generation. Mass media evolves with the introduction of newer technology such as radio, newspaper, television. In the current context, we're moving to using smartphones, e-books and the internet. Mass media has come to a stage where one is able to know about something that had happened at the other side of the world in matters of seconds.
Another interesting example is cloud computing. This is a more subtle ICT that many people are using it yet do not know the name for it. Examples are facebook and google.
Cloud computing is an application where anybody can use but at the same time, is able to customize to their own needs. Basically, cloud computing is the idea of an internet databank where everyone can put in their ideas.
We also discussed about the potential risks and danger with ICT. Examples are security concerns where people can hack into the system, espionage where important informations are stolen, invasion of privacy and exposure to corrupting influences. This is becoming increasingly important issue as people are increasing becoming dependent on ICT. It is evident in the recent case where hackers stole credit card information by hacking into Sony's network and resulted in severe problems for Sony and for the people whose credit card information were stolen. This is a good example on the severity of the dangers with ICT.
Reflection on my presentation for today. My presentation topic was on e-learning.
I realized I stammered quite a bit and keep pausing quite a bit at a loss for words. I was feeling pretty nervous as this was the first presentation I'm giving since JC time. I felt that I should have been more prepared as it would give me more confidence and perform better.
On the other hand, I was pretty glad my topic generated quite a bit of discussion in the class.
The reason I chose e-learning is because I like topics where people can easily relate to but have not enough in-depth knowledge about it, which is why the topic on Electronic Smoking some time back had quite some discussions going as well.
Although this topic was what i researched on, I learnt some new things in class as prof shared some ideas with us as well and perspective from different angles. An example is about Khan academy (http://www.khanacademy.org/) where it offers a comprehensive syllabus ranging from arithmetic to physics, biology, chemistry, history or even cosmology and astrology. Not only it teaches you but also offers you practice questions and test preparations. It was quite an eye-opening for me.
Overall, I rate this lesson 8/10. I feel that ICT and world change is too big a topic to be covered in one lesson hence we can only target certain areas to focus on. There are many other areas, scopes and analysis that we can discuss on. However, I still benefited a whole lot from this lesson. :)
I would like to end this post with a quote from the slides which i find interesting and liked a lot which is:
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
- Arthur C. Clarke
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