In Algorithms We Trust

Whatever happened to personal choice?  Now a days it seems like every time we get on a computer it starts making decisions for us, tracking every cybermove we make.  Telling us what to buy, what to listen to, and what to look at, and the worst part of all is that we welcome and enjoy this.  Algorithms are systematically taking over our digitized lives.  This can also be seen in education, everything is standardized and formulated.  Even English class can't escape this.  Having gone through the public school system I can easily recall the successful formula for writing a good constructed response.  It goes restate the question, the story title and author, then answer the question using 3 examples from the story, then restate the question again with the title and author, and fit it all within the given space, then do this over and over again with different stories and questions.  How did the class where creativity is supposed to reign fall victim to nothing more than a formula that mind as well be x + y + k = answer?   People need to start relying more on themselves and less on computers to make decisions for them, or else what's the point of even having the ability to choose if we're just going to give it to computers, we mind as well live in the matrix, or be brainwashed by Cris.

Standardized Education

Coming from a public school in Pennsylvania I am familiar with the massive amount of enjoyment one gets from taking standardized tests over the years.  Kids anxiously wait every couple of years for their chance to experience all the PSSAs have to offer.  They get to sit in a room, in silence, 3 hours every morning for a week taking a test that doesn't even count towards their class grades.  They are of course reminded however that if they don't do well and make the school look good then they will get to take remediation courses all the next year, but if they do well they might get a ice cream party or maybe just maybe some pizza.  Standardized testing is slowly ruining our public schools.  We no longer have teachers doing what they love to do, they are shackled by the state standards and preparing kids for these tests instead of preparing them for college or life.  I don't think I've talked to anyone in college that praises all the work they got on constructed responses or T-charts with explanations for solving a math problem.  Schools need to go back to giving kids an education instead of drilling them for tests that are meaningless after they get their diploma.

Climate Catastrophe

Climate change is a blazing fiery volcano of a topic that is burning at the very fabric of our great society.  Everyone is worried about what will happen if the ice caps melt and sea levels rise, and they're right, we should be worried.  Many of America's cities, and the world's for that matter are positioned on or near the coast.  If sea levels rise we can say goodbye to New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Miami, and defiantly New Orleans.  Also cities on the west coast such as the San Francisco bay area would be under water.  What would happen if we were to lose most of the financial and industrial hubs of our nation?  Would we be set back hundreds of years, forced to be a nation of sustenance farmers with no real unity?  Climate change is a serious problem and we should do what we can to not alter the earth's natural cycle.  How you do that is up to you, I'm not here command.  Have a nice day.

Friday's Class

Much of Friday's class was centered around crappy possible futures and human greed.  Some possible outcomes to look forward to are an overcrowded earth where we eat dead people and are made to believe its soy, or we can live an awesome life, die at thirty, and pray that we are reincarnated. (good luck with that)  Then we learned how because of human instincts and the population of the world, there is no hope for a communal, "common good" sense of living and we are all doomed to a life of selfish greed in which we try and steel each others bunnies or land.  However there is a silver lining in all of this, maybe if we're lucky we'll all get to live out our lives before our kids start spoon feeding us processed "other white meat" or we fly into the air like Cirque du Soleil and spontaneously combust when we hit the ceiling.  

BG

Creepy Technology

Anyone who has seen a Sci Fi movie or even searched the web for a little bit has come across some new technology that they find creepy or scary.  The primary reason for this is a lack of understanding or unfamiliarity with the item.  People probably once thought that to be able to instantly talk to someone on the other side of the world was creepy, or to put something inside someone's heart to keep them alive was some kind of witchcraft.  Luckily if you find something too creepy we live in a free country and you can just choose not to use it.


BG

First Blog

Hello my name is Brian Gerney, I am a student at Dickinson College in Carlise, PA.  This blog is part of my first year seminar course and is mandatory.  Although this is not my choosing I'll try and make this as interesting as possible.  Hopefully something eventful will happen on campus, like the Kid Cudi concert, and I will have something to write about.

Have a great day.   BG