FINAL BLOG POSTING

In order to pass this class one of the main things that is crucial is attending class. If you miss too many classes you will get way too behind in order to pass the class. Also make sure to be on top of all your milestones and stick to what you need to do in class. It easy to get distracted but you need to stay focused. Also make sure you know when everything is due and make a clear schedule of when you will do you work. Because often ENG 101 and ENG 103 can get overwhelming with the due dates.

GOOD LUCK and stay FOCUSED!

Blog Assignment # 8

Through taking this cluster i have learned a lot of new things i was not aware of before. I was not fully educated on the different aspects of things such as human cloning and robots. I feel that through this cluster i have been given the opportunity to know about the advances that are going on around me. I had always know that scientists were always making advances in technology but i did not know it was at the level that it is.
I now have a different view on technology then i did before. Before being in these classes i did not see how bad things such as google were on our minds. I did not know they had such a big effect on how we think, learn, and process information. I was oblivious to the fact that it makes us more lazy and inefficient. I also now see that multitasking and people do not mix. And the fact that people are constantly multitasking is bad for the future of people.
As we learned about these topics we also looked at them in different ways. We not only read about it but also watched videos and films to further explore the topics. Through the use of the visuals we were able to relate visually. With things such as cloning when we watched Never Let Me Go we were able to connect to the moral wrongs of cloning because it was in our face and we were able to empathize.
After taking ENG 101 and ENG 103 i have really improved my writing. I was always a good writing and it seems to come naturally. But through these courses i have been able to bring my writing to a college level. I am now able to write educated sounding essays with the correct format with out trouble. I now have MLA citations and works cited pages down pact. When writing from my own experience it seems to just flow because i know about the topic first hand but when writing on a specific topic it is more difficult because background information is needed in order to write a strong paper.

Blog Assignment # 7

In the book Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro discusses the topic of cloning. He not only discusses colones, but the morals of it. In the book we are faced with a group of school children who live in a boarding school. These children learn and live there. We are not directly aware of what is going on in this school but come to find out they are all clones. They live there and are raised for the harvesting of their vital organs. In the book we see a scene when they have all grown up and went back to go and visit the old head of the school. This is a vital scene it why there organs are harvested from them. The author writes, "your art would reveal what you were like. What you were like inside...We took your away away because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely to prove you had souls at all"(Ishiguro 260). This shows why people took there organs. They didnt believe that these clones were real people. Well in fact they were just as human as anyone else. They were exact clones of someone else. This book challenges the morals of cloning. To me it describes why people should not try and play god and dabble in cloning. 

Blog Assignment # 6

The author states "an artificial intelligent computer will experience nothing and be aware of nothing. It will say "that makes me happy," but it wont feel happy. Still: it will act as if it did" (Gelertner 207). This quote explains a lot of what i feel the mind of a future robot would be like. The future robots will be able to simulate humans consciousness such as emotions, empathy, and culture. They are only able to act a certain way based on how they perceive it through a definition of the way it is suppose to be not through true understanding. They will be able to express things as if they have emotion and will be able to express the appropriate emotion for specific situations but not feel it because they are unable to. They do not think and feel the way we do. 


In the film Blade Runner we see this same negative outlook on the minds of artificial intelligence. In the film they do not allow "andys" to live longer then 4 years because they do not want them to develop too many similar qualities as people. As well as that, they also don't want them walking among people especially because of violent crimes they committed. They have a special turing test to see if they are human or robot. This shows that these robots in the future would become so advanced that they will be able to act just like us. 

Blog Assignment #5

When talking about robots many thoughts come to mind. They can be looked at as an advance in our electronic technology. But when further examining what robots can possibly do can be negative on humans. Firstly, advanced technology has great overall knowledge. It has the ability to be able to solve problems especially problems such as logical or mathematics. These artificial minds are able to solve any problem they are faced with, but do not truly think. Artificial intelligence is strictly programmed the information that it knows. According to Gelernter, artificial intelligence needs to have certain qualities such as free-association, hallucination, inhabit of its thoughts, and creativity in order to think like the human mind (Gelernter 202). These robots may be able to seem as though they grasp the information they are able to share, but they are merely repeating information it knows. The main quality that these robots lack is consciousness. As Gelernter states, "an artificial intelligent computer will experience nothing and be aware of nothing. It will say "that makes me happy," but it wont feel happy. Still: it will act as if it did" (Gelertner 207). Robots will be able to simulate an artificial consciousness and emotion because it was told to not because it truly has these capabilities. "The term “intelligence” is difficult to define and has been the subject of heated debate by philosophers, educators, and psychologists for ages.  Intelligence includes the capacity to learn, maintain a large storehouse of knowledge, utilize commonsense reasoning, apply analytical abilities, discern relationships between facts, communicate ideas to others and understand communications from others, and perceive and make sense of the world around us" (Artificial Intelligence 15). They lack true understanding of the information they share and the world around them.
 

ENG 103 Final Draft Planning

After handing in my preliminary draft, i now see it needs a lot of improvement. Firstly, i need to focus on paraphrasing and missing cites from my paper. It is hard to be able to know what to paraphrase and what not to. I will now need to double check my draft and see what paraphrases i need to fix. I also need to focus on the length of my paper. I was fully aware of the fact that my final paper needs to be longer because my preliminary draft was not finished. I need to build a stronger argument with more examples of my idea. I also need to think of which two scenes of my film that i will focus in on and explain. When I received this draft it really helped me see the little mistakes that i made and the improvements that my final paper still needs.

My ENG 103 Research Plan #1

My thesis for my research paper is:
Based on several sources, I will argue that despite an accurate portrayal of a character with Asperger's Syndrome in Max Mayer's film, Adam, there are some real distortions, especially in the movie's failure to display the social awkwardness people with Asperger's typically face. 

The two sources i really need to find is two movie reviews on "Adam". I have been searching on LexisNexis to try and find these sources that I'm missing. It has been difficult for me to find good sources on a film review because there are thousands of pages and the movie title is a very popular name and doesn't help narrow down the searches that come up.