Blog Assignment 7

The text that I chose was A Number by Caryl Churchill. This imaginative text dramatizes cloning and how nature vs. nurture plays a role. Salter (the father) cloned his own son for his own reasons and purposes. He figured by cloning his son, he would be able to fix the mistakes that he had committed in the past. However, things did not end as well as Salter predicted nor wanted it to end. There were many questions that this play questioned.  Two of the many questions that A Number brings upon are: 1) Is cloning ethical? 2) What are the real benefits of cloning if there are any?
For question number 1 Churchill seems to think cloning is sufficient as well as harmful. The ending of this play is upsetting. Churchill seems to believe that cloning someone without their permission is nothing but disaster. He does (in some ways) leave it up to the readers to decide how to feel about cloning and whether it is ethical or not. It is an intriguing question; there never seems to be a correct answer.
For the second question, Churchill does not really show that there are any benefits of cloning. It almost felt as if he was pessimistic about cloning – especially without the persons’ consent. Churchill seems to view cloning as a danger to society because of the things they are capable of after finding out they are clones. It is not a settling topic to find out that the life you were living was due to an unnatural cause.

Blog Assignment 6

"...machines can readily share their knowledge. As unenhanced humans we do not have the means of sharing the vast patterns of inter-neuronal connections and neurotransmitter-concentration levels that compromise our learning, knowledge, and skills, other than through slow, language-based communication" (Kurzweil 138).

In this quote, Kurzweil is stating that robots are better to have due to their ability of memorizing things. He believes they will help humans in numerous ways and help us with numerous things. Here he is saying that a robots memory will already be programmed and we won’t have to worry about memorizing anything because our memory is faulty anyways. He truly believes that humans have a weak memory since our memory is based on speech while machines are programmed to memorize things, as stated earlier.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clW2ySP_6MA&NR=1

In this video, it is showing how having robots can benefit us. This man had lost his hand and it had been replaced with this robotic like hand. However, it does not fully feel as if though he is even without a real human hand. The robotic hand actually helps the name with things that a human hand can do. It helps him eat, write, cook, grab on to things, etc. It benefited him in a lot of ways. It helps him feel as if though he did not even lose a hand. Maybe robots or machines are a good thing for this world, but then again maybe they are not. It all depends on how you look at it and what you believe.

My ENG 103 Research Plan # 1

My thesis statement is . . .

Based on several sources, I will argue that the portrayed version of John Nash's schizophrenia in A Beautiful Mind is largely accurate in its' protrayal of his symptoms and treatment.

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I really need more cites from articles and I need to use the proper MLA citation. That's pretty much it.

Blog Assignment 5

I am somewhat in the middle when it comes to robots. I mean they can benefit us in many ways but at the same time, they can do more harm than good. The positive attributes of robots is that it can help us in difficult tasks or tasks that most of us humans now-a-days just wish not to do anymore. Pretty much be our cure to our laziness :) However, I am truly terrified that robots will take over man kind one day which is why I am pessimistic about robots. Yeah, I do believe in some of the things that happens in movies - it's crazy.

In The Singularity is Near written by Ray Kurzweil, he is an extreme optimistic person about robots. He feels they'll benefit us in numerous ways. He feels that, " the 21st century will be characterized by three overlapping revolutions -- in Genetics, Nanotechnology, and Robotics" (Kurzweil 115). His main thoughts when it came to robots was how they could benefit us with medicine. It's true; robots would be a great use for biological purposes.

However, not everyone feels that robots are all that great. in Dream-Logic, The Internet and Artificial Thought written by David Gelernter, he believes that robots will do more damage than good. He feels that they are going to take over our mind.

Sample Research Paper Thoughts

I will be careful about using sentences like "I believe..." or "I find..." on my research paper. Pretty much try and stay away from "I" all together. I liked that this research paper was pretty well organized and it was easy to read. Most research papers are usually all over the place because of all the thoughts people come up with. I will try to refrain from going down that path with my research paper. I liked how this research paper carefully used the quotes and explained the quotes using proper terms.

Blog Assignment 4

The Internet has changed the way the world and mind think today. it has evolved to benefit us as well as corrupt us. the Internet alone is not the only product that is evolving; technology is as well. With these two evolutions in our daily lives, our mind is being vastly affected. The Internet is damaging our attention spans and interfering with our ability to think. I agree with this statement because in the article "Is Google Making Us Stupid" by Nicholas Carr, a lot of good points were made to prove this statement to be true. The internet, in this modern time, is distracting us humans and affecting us greatly. The internet seems to  be taking over our ability to think for ourselves. Nicholas Carr states, "I'm not thinking the way I used to think" (19). Here Carr is explaining how different his mind is ever since he began using the internet. However, not every write believed what Carr believes about the Internet "tinkering with his brain" (19). Steven Pinker would disagree with Carr's beliefs that the internet is taking over our mind and affecting the way we think. "The most interesting trend in the development of the internet is not how it is changing people's ways of thinking but by how is it adapting to the way that people think" (Pinker, 31). Basically he is stating that as we humans are evolving and changing, technology is as well in order to "keep up" with our changes. However, Pinker does believe that the internet is changing many aspects of our lives. According to Pinker, "Our physical folders, mail boxes, bookshelves, spread sheets, documents, media players, and so on have been replaced by software equivalents, which has affected our time budgets in countless ways. But to call it an alteration of 'how we think' is I think an exaggeration" (31). He does believe that the internet is changing our world around us, not our mind.