Most Influential Presentations

Top 3 presentations that have opened my eyes

I think the presentation that have opened my eyes the most would have to be the ‘copyright’ ‘Internet of things ‘ and also ‘the Treaty of Waitangi’

The copyright presentation really made me think about who these copyright laws are really protecting, because it’s in most cases not the owner of the work but usually the big corporate organisations. The American laws that the U.S.A are trying to get passed made me worry about the destruction it would bring to people’s privacy, even countries privacy if these laws were permitted. It also made me think about how stupid it is that the law enables the owner of the internet account to be prosecuted for any copyright breaches even if they themselves didn’t commit the copyright breach. I thought how could they monitor who exactly committed the copyright breach? it would be near impossible to do without some sort of personal log-in for each individual person using the internet, maybe that’s what it will come down to if these laws get any worse. I think as I.T. professionals we need to be especially aware of copyrights of products and software that we install or use when fixing businesses computers and when we are creating websites etc…, if not we could get prosecuted with copyright breaches ourselves, which would not look good for an I.T. professional or an I.T. company.

 

The ‘Internet of things’ presentation was interesting. Just imagining how the world will be in the future is exciting and it’s crazy how vital to everyday life the internet will become. Everything being connected to the internet is such a huge concept to us today but people of the future will think nothing of it, it will just become normal for people to press a button on their computer and start their car that’s sitting in the driveway or to look at their fridge and be told how much milk is left, see how much a new bottle of milk will cost at the supermarket then place an order for more milk , all from the front of the fridge . As I.T. professionals we will be the ones keeping all these gadgets going and connected so we will become even more necessary to the everyday running of the modern world. The demand for I.T. work will continue to increase year by year so the job opportunities for I.T. professionals in the future look pretty solid which makes me excited about joining the profession. It is an integral part of being an I.T. professional to keep up with the technological advancements because technology is advancing faster and faster everyday making it easy for us to fall behind if we don’t stay on top of the ball.

 

I think the Treaty presentation had an influence on me because before we had the presentation I never really knew much about the history of our country and the Treaty of Waitangi, it’s quite sad that this is the case for a lot of New Zealanders and I think we probably should have learnt more about it in primary and secondary school because I  believe it’s an important part of being a kiwi, knowing our past. After reading the documents I was surprised by the amount of difference in the actual writing of the two Treaty of Waitangi documents and also the use of quite a bit of western terminology that lead to some misunderstanding between the two cultures. After completing this article I feel better about my understanding of our past and I feel I have a greater understanding of why Maori claim on breaches of the treaty today.

 

The main thing that’s excited me in the last year from the I.T. world is the release of the Playstation 4 gaming console. Finally after 9 years a new console with some decent processing power. The Playstation 3 was a good little console when it was released but in the world of gaming today it’s not enough to run the crazy amount of power needed for new games. The Playstation 4 however has 8 GB of GDDR5 RAM and 1.84 TFLOPS of processing power, making it the most powerful gaming console on the market today. O.k. it’s not as powerful as the new computers that are out today but not bad for $599.  We can look forward to plenty of games with decent graphics arriving in the near future. It will also be interesting to see where the augmented reality part of the PS4 system will go in the future, hopefully we get some awesome innovative and interactive AR games coming out. I’ll definitely be keeping up with the latest to come out on PS4 in the future through the PS4 system itself and using google to search the latest developments.

 

I.T. is supposed to be here to make our lives easier!!!!

This sentence is funny because although Information Technology does make our lives easier overall it also makes parts of our lives more complex and in some ways harder, especially for us I.T. Professionals who will have to deal with fixing all these gadgets and programs. As more gadgets and programs get created to make our lives easier, the more complex those gadgets and programs will become, making it more and more complex and difficult for I.T. professionals to diagnose and fix these gadgets and programs. In conclusion I guess in a way it looks as if I.T. is making other people’s lives easier but the I.T. professionals lives harder.

The Internet of Things

Review of the Two Videos

It’s quite crazy to think that one day almost every object in the world will be connected to the internet in one way or another. The first video made me think about the speed at which technology is advancing. Within the last 20 years the increase in computerised gadgets has exploded, technology is progressing more and more rapidly and the amount of things we are able to do and control through the web increase every day. The second video on ‘The next 5000 days of the web’ was a good watch. Where it’s all heading is impossible to imagine, it’s a lot like when the internet first began, people thought that it was going to be like a better version of t.v. but it turned out to be something much different and much bigger than they ever thought. This is why I don’t think that we could ever accurately predict what will come, all I know is that technology is becoming more and more intertwined in people’s lives every single day. It makes it exciting to know that after studying I.T. at NMIT I’ll be involved in the evolution and creation of such things and also help keep those things working.

The 3D printer

What awesome little machines these 3D printers are. Todd gave us a quick look at just how these little printers work in class. One of the students had their 3d image scanned and uploaded to a program, the 3d printer then printed a figure that resembled the student. The figure was quite low quality but the 3d printer was set to a lower quality so it printed faster otherwise had it been on high quality it would have taken a lot longer than our 2 hour class session.

I can just imagine the usefulness of these little gadgets with creating everyday things, for example if I dropped my phone and broke the rear cover, I wouldn’t have to go and buy a new one from the manufacturer. I could just print off a new phone cover on my own little 3D printer, even choose a different colour for my phone, maybe add some personal touches to the design or redesign the phone altogether. It just opens up a whole new world of creation, there are some amazing creations already being produced, such as in this video in the next section below.

The 3d Printed Gun

A 3D printed gun which all parts can be printed on the 3D printer, apart from the firing pin which is a nail that can be picked up from any hardware store.  The latest that I’ve read up on these guns is that they are more dangerous to the user than they are to the target. Apparently in the testing range on a few of the test guns the entire barrels have blown off,  embedding in the firing range roof, they have also been found to be highly inaccurate and are usually are only capable of firing one shot before being useless. It won’t take long though just like everything it will get refined. The thought that any person could print their own gun out of plastic is crazy not to mention dangerous. They plan to release the data on how to build this gun to the public for free!!!, is this not just going to cause a lot of trouble for everyone?. Just imagine a gun that can’t be detected in a metal detector, how would they detect these plastic guns at airports? how easy would it be for gangs to buy a bunch of 3d printers and just start printing off their own arsenal of weaponry?.  Ok, for now they can only print the gun on the best 3D printers out which are not cheap at all. Eventually though, those high quality 3D printers will be the norm and everybody will have one. I still believe overall that the 3d printer will have more good uses than bad but it may need some sort of regulation or law on designs for weapons.

My Reflection

The web is going to become the most important and powerful tool in the world, connecting everyone and everything to everyone and everything. The amount of data and information travelling around this giant interconnection between everybody is going to be phenomenal. Control over all your everyday items using the web will become normal, which will in turn make the web even more vital to the everyday running of the world. People’s social lives will become merged into the web, you can see this happening already with everyone signed up to facebook , twitter etc. . As everything becomes connected though it will also give hackers more desire to take control of these everyday things. This makes it vital to create more sophisticated security systems in the future that will protect against hacking of people’s gadgets. Let’s hope this monumental shift to internet connectivity and social networking makes our lives better and easier, which is what technology sets out to do in the first place isn’t it?.

 

 

What is real?

1. What do you think is real?

Well I’m glad that the question asks what do I THINK is real as opposed to what IS real. The answer to what do I think is real is an easy one, I would define real as something I can feel, taste, smell, see and hear which is pretty straight forward . Here’s an alternate view that makes you think though; does anybody really knows what IS real?, think of the movie ‘the matrix’ where Neo is not physically but mentally living in a virtual world created by machines. All he had ever known was that virtual world which he himself would have defined as ‘the real world’, little did he know in the real world he was sitting in a pod full of goop with his body rigged with sensors and cables which were harvesting his energy. He thought that world was real because he could feel, taste, smell, see and hear everything around him and that was all he knew. This brings me to a few complex and unanswerable questions; how do we know we are in the ‘real’ world ourselves?  granted in the matrix there were some glitches which could be detected but what if our world is just a perfect, glitch free version of the matrix? maybe in the real world you and I are just human guinea pigs for some research project which was set up for an experiment or to blow your mind even more what if we are actual real guinea pigs?……………maybe that one was a bit far fetched but the possibilities could be endless. This makes answering the question ‘what is real?’ very hard to determine, I can only give an answer to ‘what do I think is real?.

2. What could be 2 great things and 2 negative things about google glass?

Google glass is an interesting technical gadget but I think 2 good things about google glass is that it will make navigating around the world easier for everybody. You would never have an excuse of being lost because google glass could direct you no matter where it is you wish to go. Another good thing about google glass is capturing those picturesque moments when you really want to take a photo but by the time you get your smart phone or camera out the moment has gone. A couple of bad things that I think about google glass is that I believe it will dumb people down, nobody will retain any knowledge on anything anymore because they’ll just ask google glass the answer to everything, although that seems to happen a lot these days with google search anyway, but I think it may just take it a little to far. The other bad thing about google glass is the breach of other people’s privacy, taking pictures or videos of people without them knowing about it seems a bit dodgy to me.

3. Do you think that Facebook’s purchase of the Oculus Rift company is a good thing?

I think that Facebook’s purchase of the Oculus rift could be a good thing as long as they don’t try to turn it into some social media hub type thing. I think if they keep it separate to Facebook, as they say they are going to, It could become a great piece of technology using Facebook’s deep pockets.

4. Post a link to (or embed) an online video that demonstrates the use of either of these technologies and explain briefly what it is and why you have chosen it.

I found this video very interesting because it helps show where augmented reality is heading with these exciting new ideas, I also invite you to look at my augmented reality post where you will find some Playstation 4 augmented reality videos which show some uses of the fun side of AR.