Final Blog!!!

So the class Nanotexts is over and I am very sad! The class was pretty fun, and a break from all my other really hard science class. Although there was a lot of reading and I wouldn’t consider this class easy at all, it was very time consuming! Well I just finished the book Queen City Jazz and it was awesome! I have to say that was quite an incredible book, it had many plots and subplots that made me keep guessing what would happen next! The book was actually about a girl named verity, she was living in a closed off community called The Shakers. They believed men and women shouldn’t have sex, or use technology, and live off the earth. Verity lived in the community with her friend Blaze, her dog Cairo, her friend/elder John, and the elder Russ. These were pretty much the main characters in the beginning of the book. This all takes place way in the future. Verity and Blaze end up using some ancient technology, and John catches Blaze using it and eventually shoots at Blaze and Cairo. Verity knows she much go to Cincinnati to find some way to save Blaze & Cairo. She finds out that Cincinnati is a place of mystery and the people are trapped in some never-ending loop in Cincinnati caused by Durancy, the man who created nanorobots, and who was heartbroken because he lost his love Rose. He created the city and something went terribly wrong when he tried to revive his mother. He got caught in an endless loop and the people in Cincinnati were too! The larger point and picture of this book, is when we use technology for our own gain, at what point does technology control us? The people in Cincinnati were trapped in an endless loop and could not escape. Technology was in control of them and using them as pawns to repeat the same story over and over again. Verity broke the cycle to break the cycle she needed to use another form of technology which was nan-viruses to help get the people out of the city and give them hope and desire to go to New Orleans. In doing this she put them under the control of more technology which just made them want to go to New Orleans. Which brings up another question, how much control should we give technology in our everyday lives? These people were in control of their machines at first, but after awhile everything spun out of control. Luckily Rose had a failsafe to save them all. The people had little insets that fit behind the ears, which made them able to view maps, look at memories, and smell various metapheromonal smells that each person had. The nanobots also made them stronger, faster, and better able to learn things. The benefits were clearly able to be seen, but if this technology got into the wrong hands, or somehow malfunctioned, it would cause horrible problems for humanity, which was exactly what happened in the book. I really like this book, although it was a long read, it was really the brain food I needed!
Well moving on from the book, this week in class was very interesting. We talked about sperm recipes, which is just about the grossest thing I have ever heard of! Although it was funny to see that they had many types of food, drinks and desserts that used sperm in the recipe. I want to know who actually eats this stuff!? I would never touch it! We also did evaluations of the and teacher, and I hope Tony does not get laid off in these budget cuts, so I gave him a good markings. Actually I’ve had some really good teachers in this quarter of western, and hope none of them get laid off in these budget cuts, because a lot of them really believe in what they do and do a very good job in teaching. I’ve had one teacher in my history class who seems to want to make a difference in the world by the students he teaches, making sure they know the good and mostly the bad that went on in America and how we can learn from it. Earlier that week in class we watched a Donald Duck Video about Mathematics, and it talked about Mathematics being the key to the future. Really mathematics is, I also believe chemistry and physics hold a great portion in that future too, without physics, math, or chemistry we would never have created the atomic bomb, and it took the sum of all those parts to create it. Even though it was a deadly weapon we got something good out of it, which was nuclear power, which is a great source of energy being used nowadays. This maybe the future of energy as we become more reliant on power as a world.

Blog for the first week of march!

So this week was a very crappy for me! I have been sick all week and have not been sleeping well so my sleep has been in my classes including this class, and my other classes, so I haven’t been able to take many notes in class, but I do have some. We talked about Post-Singular, and how technology is so integrated in their everyday lives, even more so then us. We rely on technology a lot for everything and its becoming more integrated in our lives. In this book though technology is part of people, people use technology to get high, to learn, and to live. Which is a where our society may be heading if you ask me, but it may be a little closer than we like to believe. We also looked at Shelly’s book, were she had the a word of her book tattooed on people, and it can only be put together if the people got together and pieced the puzzle together. Really her book could never be put together back to its originally format and parts will always remain a mystery, only known to Shelly, because she has the copy. We also looked at how technology affects the body, and had a discussion about that. I thought about it later after class and technology affects the body drastically. Let’s say someone got their arm bitten off by a shark, the surgeon would try and reconstruct the limb to fit into a prosthetic, that prosthetic was created using modern technology. Also we could look at factory emissions and people’s allergies. I am a big allergy sufferer and have to take 2 medicines a day to combat allergies, and even after those medicines I am not allergy free, but they do help. When there is low air quality in the area, or poor air quality I always take a double dose of allergy medicine because I know my allergies will get bad that day, our modern technology like cars and factories has affected my body by amplifying my bad allergies causing me to have bad headaches, red eyes, and affecting my ability to sleep, that in my opinion is one way technology affects our bodies. Also technology affects our bodies in a positive way, I was born with bad astigmatism and I am almost legally blind, to fix this problem I am going to get laser eye surgery this summer, which will remove my dependency on contacts and glasses, which will be amazing! Technology has come a long way, and can actually improve our bodies too. The next day in class we talked about the capitalism model and how companies give things away for free and then charge. This got me thinking about the two big and successful companies that spurted up in my time, Comcast and Verizon. Verizon Wireless I remember came out with the free phone, if you buy a plan and sign a 2 year contract, what they forgot to mention is that phone would become obsolete in 6 months, then you would have to buy a new phone for full retail price with new features, and they neglected to tell you that these new features would cost money to use, great! I believe Verizon has a very smart marketing campaign. Also they provide good customer service and eliminate their competition, then have crappy customer service to cut costs, horrible. Now lets shift our view to Comcast. They get you on this teaser rate for digital cable for only 19.99 a month for 6 months, which is almost free. Then I get a bill in the mail after 6 months for 80 bucks for basic digital cable and I’m like wow, they really got me! This model works very well I’m glad we learned about this in class. Then we also got into the topic of corporate advertisement, and asked would you pay 7-12% less in tuition to see ads everywhere? My answer is yes, I see them everywhere all the time on TV, on the internet, and just ignore them and don’t worry too much about them, it wouldn’t matter too much to me if I saw them all around campus, it would just be another thing for me to ignore, as I already do, and I would pay 7-12% less in tuition, that would be awesome for me I would not car at all. Where I would draw the line though is when a teacher’s curriculum is based on advertisements, and if a teacher assigns a book to read because the book company paid them money too and not because it is a great and meaningful literary novel. Or a curriculum chooses a textbook over another textbook that is written way better because the company paid them to use their textbook, when advertising starts to interfere with the curriculum is where I would draw the line that it is too much.