Class Blog

BONUS BLOG II

I believe that the future is a salvation society rather than one of damnation. I think that if we are able to develop and create technology, then there should be no problem what so ever when it comes to controlling it. A reason for this, is that we will never be able to develop any type of technology fast enough to where we lose all control. Plus as we discussed in class, about knowing nothing concerning the human genome to having it completely mapped in 50 years, this is phenominal. We will be able to possibly correct life threatening diseases before birth just by swapping a few genes in the fetus.

Many people are picturing a future with robots that could potentially kill and/or enslave the human race (oh no!) However I am envisioning our future taking the path of better healthcare and more knowledge. Not so much as using killer T-2000's to fight wars for us.

Critics complain that video games are addictive. An experiment was done in which 973 kids who frequented various video arcades in southern California, were interviewed. The experiment proved that although some of the youths were compelled to play, they were in a minority. The fact is that only half the kids in the arcade were actually playing games. The half that were not playing were socializing. Thus, arcade provided a social gathering place, and was more than just a place for compulsive play.

How expensive are video games? Eighty percent of the kids interviewed spent five dollars or less each time they went to the arcade. That is roughly the price of a movie. In fact because they are better players, children spend less money than most adults. Greater skill is rewarded with longer play time. As skill increases, sometimes people can play a game for a hour and a half on one quarter.

Two in five households with children have a V-chip or other technology to block objectionable programming, and half of those with the devices use them. But awareness of the age and content ratings used in conjunction with the V-chips (such as TV-G, or suitable for all ages) has dropped from 70 percent in 1997 to 50 percent this year. Furthermore, nine out of 10 parents couldn't accurately identify the age ratings for shows their children watched. As for the rule requiring stations to air a minimum amount of educational or informational programming, the studies found that the networks are providing the shows but parents don't know which ones carry educational labels. Part of the blame, the studies said, goes to poor promotional efforts by the networks, which rarely advertise the shows. Many people are not worried about censorship issues because as the v chip has proven, for censorship to work we as citizens must make it work.

BONUS BLOG- I strongly believe that increasing surveillance will affect our civil liberties. The government has gotten nearly everything it has asked for in the fight against terrorism because no one wants to be labeled a sympathizer towards terrorists. However, the government has gone way to far with what they want to do next. According to www.newwartimes.com the Bureau of Prisons wants to pass “regulation allowing the government to listen in on conversations between prison inmates and their legal counsel.” The Attorney General claims that the government will only eavesdrop on “a conversation between an inmate and counsel that has any connection to terrorist activity.” Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU Washington National Office, argues that if the government is allowed to do this then “it threatens to negate the keystone of our system of checks and balances, the right to a competent legal defense.” Privacy between a defendant and their lawyer seems more important of an issue then is the government allowed to look through my library files. If no one is willing to stop the government from eavesdropping on legal advice, then is anyone willing to stop them at all?

Even after the huge problems in Florida with hand counted votes, I am still opposed to electronic voting machines. It is too much of a risk to leave something as important as voting to electronics. The most common concern is that someone could hack the machine and program it to vote for someone else. We all know that it is too easy to make a machine show one thing, do another, and print out something else. At least with the previous methods there was some physical object to count. With electronic systems there is nothing to tally because the machine does it all, so any actual trace of fraud happening would be untrackable and the public would never know.
"A 100% error rate occured in an April, 1998 Orange County, California school board election. Apparently yes and no votes were flip-flopped because of software errors, so every yes vote was recorded as a no and vice versa." (www.newsforge.com) Luckily it wasn't something important that got screwed up, right? For any readers that didn't know, that was supposed to be sarcastic.

The biggest opposition to biometrics is that people are very concerned with their privacy. A major issue relates to the "voluntariness" of capture. Some biometrics, like faces, voices, and fingerprints, are easily "grabbed." Other biometrics, at least under present technology, must be readily "given." It is difficult, for instance, to capture a scan of a person's retina or to gather a hand geometry image without the subject's cooperation. Easily grabbed biometrics are a problem because people can't control when they're being put into the system or when they're being tracked. But even hard-to-grab biometrics involve a trust issue in the biometric capture device and the overall system architecture. Citizens are worried about who will see the information and what they wll or can do with it. Obviously though, the entire system needs vast improvements before it can be implemetned into society on a larger scale.

As future is near biometrics will be a key instrument in our society. With the use of biometrics increasing from day to day and the need to stop fraud, it seems that the future shows hope. Well there be a central database to contain the digital templates from everyone eyes, finger or voices. Will smartcards lead us into the need for the centralized database? Will there be an owner of the database and who will it be? How will the data be kept from the commercial market, the government, and the black market or from criminals? There are many questions that have to be answered and many concerns that the public needs to know about. Will the biometric system turn into the Social Security Number of the future. Even though the Social Security number, was a symbol of our right to work and our responsibility to pay taxes. When Social Security began in 1935, a system was needed to keep track of the earnings, and eventually the benefits, of people who worked in jobs covered under the new program. Because many people use more than one name over a lifetime or share the same name, a numerical identifier was selected. The future of this technology is just starting to bloom. Many issues are arising from this technology and "PRIVACY" is the main concern. Even if we are told that the government will not use the data or release the data to anyone, how can that be proven?