Module 11

Steve Jobs: One Last Thing

I watched a Steve Jobs documentary called “Steve Jobs: One Last Thing”.  I found it on Netflix and it talked about Steve Jobs’s life and how it impacted not only the computer industry, but also the telephone, the motion picture, and the music industries. Steve jobs left a legend.  His life impacted how we communicate and the technology we use today.

        When Steve was growing up in the Silicon Valley, he lived in a neighborhood that was well-to-do.  There were multiple neighbors whose dads were electrical engineers.  Jobs moved into a new neighborhood and met Bill Fernandez.  Bill then introduced Steve Jobs to a friend named Steve Wozniak.  They all enjoyed building and playing with electrical devices.  Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak became best friends.  It was mentioned that Jobs had the great ideas, and Wozniak had the brains/knowledge to make those ideas a reality.  As they got older, the first of their great ideas was hacking the telephone system.  They made an electronic router kit that could call people around the world through the telephone system for free by making a phone trick the computers into thinking that that phone was a computer.  As they both got older and more experienced with electronics, they decided to build the Apple computer 1.  It wasn’t like a computer we know today.  It didn’t even have a screen.  The Apple Computer 2 was more like a personal computer.  It had a keyboard and screen. The user typed input into the computer and the screen displayed the output of information. Steve’s dream was that the computer would become more personal. He wanted people to be able to not only use the computer for work, but to use it for play.  Jobs really had a dream for computers.  Most computers at that time were huge machines that took up a whole room.  Nobody would have ever thought of putting one in their house.  The Apple 2 was like a box, with a screen, and it was more user-friendly than the first Apple Computer.  

        Wozniak and Jobs built the first apple computer and went to display it in a show. It was a success. They had no clue that their computer would be a big hit, and the idea of selling their computer came to them.  So starting a computer business became their next project. They went to work teaming up with older, more experienced businessmen to help them make a business of their own. Jobs went to speak with Ronald Wayne about a business proposal.  Wayne would have gotten 10% of Apple (which would have been $37 billion dollars today) but, Wayne declined the offer.  Jobs also went to Robert Cringley and he hired him, but when Jobs would only pay Cringley in stock, Cringley declines as well. Looking back today, Cringley and Wayne both missed an opportunity to make a whole ton of money. The Apple Company started off without them, and so it began the empire that we know today.  

        There came a point in the Apple history where Steve Jobs left Apple.  John Sculley demoted him. So Jobs went off and started a new computer business called Next. He also became a part of Pixar -- the motion picture industry.  He did very well for himself there. Pixar grew up and people fell in love with 3-D images on the TV screen. When Apple was on the brink of declaring bankruptcy. Jobs went back and saved the company from running down the toilet.  Bill Gates even helped Apple in it’s time of need.  Now, Apple is a multi-billion dollar company!     

Nobody can pinpoint what made Jobs so successful. Jobs was praised for his style and simplicity, which separates Windows from Apple. The iPad for example, is thin, sleek, stylish and simple.  Will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas said “here comes a device, that comes with no manual and everybody knows how to use it”.  You don’t need a manual to know how to work an iPad.  That is impressive, considering all the complicated functions it can do for the user. But, not only is the iPad a big hit, but the iPod, iPhone, and iMac are also favorites. Jobs lived by a philosophy that went like this, he said “everything around you that you call life was made up by people no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use”. Perhaps his drive was what made him so successful.

        There’s no doubt that Steve Jobs revolutionized technology.  His ideas were genius, and they made him very rich. He lived a unique life, it ended early, when he was only 56 years old. Jobs was diagnosed with cancer. He died October 5, 2011.  Many parts of the world mourned after him. Places like Hong Kong, made signs and shrines with his picture and real apples placed around the sidewalks. Though Jobs is no longer here, technology will keep developing.  The next generation of computer geeks is growing up and who knows what we’ll see in another 20 years.

References:

Steve Jobs: One Last Thing. Dirs. Jonathan Challis, John Coffey and Ian Lynch. Pioneed Productions. 2011. Film.

Module 10 "A Logic Named Joe"

A Logic Named Joe

That was written in 1946? Whoever wrote it really had an imagination about computers.  Especially since computers in the 40’s and 50’s were super different.  Luckily, our society has not gotten to such an extreme point like the one in the story, yet.  Just like in the story, anyone could ask their logics questions they didn’t know the answer to, we too can ask internet search engines questions, and they give us the answers. Unlike Joe’s answers, the answers we get aren’t always true and simple. Search engines just list off websites that have material related to the question. And those websites that pop up are created by people who could or could not be professionals, thus we have to sort through every webpage or website to find what we are really searching for, and when we find it, it’s not a simple step-by-step answer, if we even do find something.

            In this short story it was the computer - Joe - who did most of the thinking.  Joe looked up the information and Joe did the logic to manipulate all the information into a simple answer, even teenagers could understand.  Little kids could counterfeit and find treasure with Joe’s instructions.  Even a drunk could get sober heeding Joe’s solution. Adults wanted to know how to tell if their spouses were faithful to them, and what to do if they weren’t.  Joe could bring up dirt about anybody’s past.  Neighbors could take a peek into the lives of each other and find out each other’s history, the good and the bad.  It’s a small relief to know that our computers definitely cannot think like Joe.  What we can do is Google a person and we might find what social media they use, or even if they have committed some kind of felony and other personal information like phone numbers or addresses.  We analyze the information we get on the internet.  Our computers are just the tool we use to come up with the information.  Besides, not every bit of information on the internet can be analyzed by a human being, that would take days on end.  Joe, on the other hand could look at all the data in the tank and in seconds, come up with a simplified answer, and deliver the message to the user.

Joe was not a bad computer.  Joe did his job the best he could, and he was really good at it too.  In the story, the humans corrupted the system. The problem wasn’t that Joe could get information on anything, the problem was how corrupt the humans got asking Joe to solve their problems. Asking questions on how to rob banks, murder wives, make a ton of money quick, and more!  Like they couldn’t solve their problems on their own.  Maybe they just needed a computer to validate their bad decisions.  Maybe they thought it was OK to do all of those bad things when their Logics told them how to do it.  After all aren’t Logics supposed to help their users and give them the best solutions?  They wanted a quick solution to erase their mistakes, or reward themselves with riches.  Like money could make them happy.  Joe, was actually a miracle!  His abilities were what everyone dreams their computers could be.  Imagine a computer that could do all of that!  If there ever existed a society that was perfectly ethical, Joe could have helped them develop even more and perhaps become the greatest society ever.  But, I don’t know of any society in the history of the world that was ever that ethically good.  Instead, societies use the resources they have for good and bad.  Besides, criminals don’t need a computer to tell them how to commit crimes. They figure it out themselves.  Computers might supply them more ideas or help to create better diabolical plans.  Again, computers are just a tool that could be bad or good. Good and bad have always existed with or without computers.

Another point to be made is the fact that in their story, they couldn’t turn off all the Logics because society had been built on them.  Our society as well, has been built on the foundation of computers.  We can’t just stop using them. That would be like telling a diabetic to stop using insulin. Everything we use daily would stop working-literally.  No more using credit cards at the grocery store, no more going to the doctors and having them bring up your history with a click of a mouse, no more smart phones!  It would be like living on a new planet, where you actually had to write on paper, or go to the library. How inconvenient!  

I see how computers influence each one of us. They are a part of our lives and we take them for granted a lot of the time. Good and bad have come from them, but the computers aren’t the problem, it’s us, the people, who need to check our moral system.

Module 9 Chps. 13-17

We’re finally done reading the Friedman book!  What a relief, I’m stoked to write about something else, other than “The World Is Flat”.  Not that it wasn’t interesting, but there were some pages that I wasn’t exactly thrilled to read.  But in these last chapters of the book, Friedman makes some good points that made me think about the future of the flat world.

To get started with the questions.  How is a Dell Laptop built?  Well, the supply chain is gigantic, and the process is all articulately organized down to minutes.  It starts with the customer’s order.  Dell receives the order and then sends a message to one of its six factories around the world.  The factory, then sends a message to its suppliers of what they need and how much of it they need.  Those suppliers respond and immediately work to fill the order.  The order is filled and sent to a Dell factory where the parts are put together to meet customer’s needs (software and hardware specifications).  When done, the laptop is shipped to the customer. The customer receives the laptop, signs the papers and the process is repeated again with more customers.  Did I mention, that Dell sells 140,000 to 150,000 a day (Friedman 581)?  Making that many computers in a day is no simple feat.  Those laptops have over 30 key components in them and Dell uses multiple suppliers, just in case one a supplier cannot make the count.  Not to mention that those suppliers aren’t always close to each other geographically. Their supply chain is mind-boggling, but it runs like clockwork.

Next question. Does Al-Qaeda have a supply chain?  Friedman argues that it does. He argues that Al-Qaeda advertises and recruits through the internet.  The internet makes it so that even when terrorists are hiding in caves, they can still make a big impact on people through what they choose to post on the internet.  The internet is where they advertise for donations, or recruitments, or just to send a message of fear to others.  They use the flat world technology to destroy the flat world!  Computers, hardware, software, everything in the flat world is just a tool.  And those tools can be used for anything, including making a bunch of money or wreaking world havoc.  I liked a quote from a chapter that said “Democracy is great, but democracy without responsibility is truly frightening” (Friedman 527).  Computers are like our own personal freedom.  We can upload what we’d like.  We all have the same rights to upload what we want, but when we upload irresponsibly, it’s frightening.  Computers can either be a great tool to build good things, or a tool that acts more like a weapon, destroying what others have built up.

Last question.  What is the curse of oil?  Countries who have lots of oil oftentimes struggle to “develop real institutions, property rights, rule of law, independent courts, modern education, foreign trade, foreign investment, freedom of thought, and scientific inquiry to get the most out of their men and women”(Friedman 626).  This is because oil is a big source of money for the government officials in countries such as Venezuela, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.  If these countries aren’t taxing the public, they don’t have to tell the public what they are doing with the money.  And the public doesn’t really benefit from the money either.  On the opposite of the spectrum are countries that aren’t oil rich.  These countries need to tax the working men and women for money.  And when they tax the public, the government needs to explain how that money will be used to benefit the people.  Whether it is used towards education, law, etc.  Since the county can’t rely on oil, it needs to be good at producing other things in a competitive way.  There is more motivation to develop the country, because the money doesn’t come out of the ground, it comes through the educated ideas of self-motivated persons.

In summary, the book opened up ideas to me that I had never thought of before relating to technology, especially computers and the internet. I feel both excited and fearful for the future in technology.  It seems to me that technology can be used for good or bad, and since we the users control what we do with it, we should think about what ways we would like to use computers for good.