Letters from Lilongwe

Rivets are a very interesting way to bind metal to metal. While working on this Visual Essay I found pop rivets around the house of Theta Xi. I started to work on the faceplate of my cyborg and one of my initial ideas fell through and I was left with my faceplate missing a chunk out of its head. Then the rivets came in very handy to reposition the forehead on the faceplate. Now my faceplate of a cyborg has a very mechanically replaced forehead. I am still in the process of finding a back story to apply to that aspect of the face. Most all of the aspects that involved in the face can be traced back to our connection with the posthuman. This project has been enjoyable up to this point. It is much funner to rivet than to study for my chem test. All is good in Glenn

After watching the movie tonight and started diving into the background of facebook and its evolution to this day. It is amazing to see the tranformation from an actual 'facebook' or online yearbook to the place that the website has come to be. In its infancy at Harvard Thefacebook was tailored to the college student trying to figure out someones relationship status, class schedule or club involvement. As the website grew from campus to campus, Mark and other members of the organization had ideas to build upon the framework of social networking to keep students coming back. Facebook went from being the 'cool' thing to do, to an actual part of your life. People, including myself can get lost in Facebook for a good 20-30 minutes just looking at photos. This part of Facebook was not an initial aspect of the page, but over time the visionaries have found new ways to keep students glued to the site. Facebook's goal is to keep you on there sight as long as possible

This combination of machine and man has always intrigued me. As we started at birth being monitored by machines to keep track of our health we became low level cyborgs. We were dependent upon technology for out needs. As westerners we depend heavily on technology and as our dependence grows stronger so does our use. Over time we will lose our humanity and converge with machine. The two will be hard to distinguish. This is our transformation from low level cyborg to high level. David Hess said, ”The future, so it is said, promises an deepening relationship with the machine.” This though is soon becoming a reality as we have a relationship with our phones, computers, and other interactive technologies we do become tied physically and mentally to the object. I wrote about this problem in my adventure report and essay because of my relationship with my Iphone. My Iphone was a part of my being because it could replace some of my evolutionary traits. Without my phone I became less

What truly resonated with me while reading this essay is the fact that as our weapons merge man and machine we become detached morally from the death that we bestow. We view the bomb that was dropped from a plane high in the sky though a computer screen, and we can only see the explosion. Losing track of the sounds of the carnage taking plan far below. The screams of women and children being burnt alive in the flaming house. We don't smell the burning flesh or smoldering ruins. As we view this death through a monitor we do not actually feel the emotions that come with experiencing that shock first hand. The members of the Enola Gay felt the impact that there payload created through the heat, sound, and sight of the explosion. The men, to there deaths, were haunted by the murder they had been ordered to deal. In our modernistic world we can deploy "Smart Bombs" from a bunker in Arizona, through a drone over Afghanistan, aimed at some small village to destroy "T

While reading "The Veldt" by Ray Bradbury, it made me think about our dependence on technology. The children in this story had replaced there parents with the machines. The technology that surrounds these kids becomes there parents. They have shoe tiers, food makers, bathing machines, and all of these pieces of technology to make there lives easier. The parents both worked hard to gain this technology and ease in there lives but it allowed there children to lose dependence. This allowed the children to think that they could live without there parents. When the parents decided to shut down the machines Peter and Wendy felt as though there parents(those who take care of them), were being killed. The true parents must be protected, and the machines must not be turned off. At such a young age the children on the home didn't know the source of the machines. The father worked extremely hard to be able to afford such a nice house. This is a common problem in all childre

Coming into college I knew my time was going to be consumed by my main focus, learning. The problem is that the school work load takes away from my overall time to learn. To learn through relationships, opportunities, clubs, fraternities, and church. While my life is still searching for a balance that fosters growth in all fields I find myself diving only into schoolwork, mainly because of tangible outcomes. If you do your homework and practice the processes of learning the material, you can learn the material for school and receive good grades. Grades are a tangible outcome of school that can drive towards motivation. For other parts of college that build a well rounded person its harder to find tangible products. In relationships there is no grade presented for being a good friends or being a supporting shoulder when trouble comes. Therefore in the rat race of college we prioritize our relationships below our schoolwork. This is a sustaining balance because as humans relation

While at church last night a part of the message was given in-regards to our consumption in technology. This relationship makes spending time in our relationship with God more difficult because we never truly detach from our technology. It was amazing to hear some of the same arguments that have been posed in our class about our relationship with technology used towards religion. It works in the same terms as being disconnected from society while using social networking. When as a Christian every waking moment of our days is consumed with the world through our iPhone's, gadgets, and gizmo's we leave no time for our relationships. Relationships with people, God, friends and family, are hindered by the lack of community and connection. He reference his wife and how while out at restaurant she would tell him to put away his cellphone and pay attention to her. Both within religious and outside technology poses the same threats to relationships and community. As people, incl