Technology has always been defined as a very broad topic that encompasses many, many elements. This course has already begun to shift the way I view technology and has given me many things to think about. I had never made the connection of how our brain and the capacity to learn is much like how computers operate. Correlating technology and how we use it to communicate to one another on a daily basis is an underlying topic in all of the readings and even in this class as a whole. It is astonishing how far we have come in the world of technology and this class, being that it is online, says something in itself. Earlier in the week I thought that I was going to struggle mightily in this class, but as the week progressed and thinking analytically about the reading, I am much more comfortable speaking about these topics. One of the biggest topics that I have found interesting from this first week is the fact that the discussion board can have such a wide discrepancy in topics stemming from the same article. This concept does is not discussed in any of the readings, but it does shed light on how the human brain can be so diverse. It also shows how many different learning styles can be evident in one place. One genre that sparked my interest was Artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence was something that I had not given much thought about and the videos this week had shed new light into an unfamiliar topic.
The videos that were assigned from Monday were very informational. One aspect that I found both humorous and interesting was the idea that our machines designed with artificial intelligence have a difficult time handling “common sense” knowledge. The examples were evident throughout the “How the Brain Works” video. The opening scene with the chess playing computer had to be told specifically chess terms in order to move the chess piece. Moving from a simpler robot to WATSON, this idea was present yet again. The designers from IBM are some of the most intelligent computer designers on our planet and it took them much trial and error before perfecting WATSON to play Jeopardy. The most alarming statistic in the video was posted my Michael Hiestand and said “the 6 million common sense facts that the programmers added in were only thought to be 3% of human common sense”. This is a statistic that is hard to even fathom due to the large number of common sense concepts the human brain can program itself to learn. I connected this idea to my experiences within my major of special education and the idea that not all human brains are capable of understanding “common sense”. I can picture all the servers and processors of WATSON, and to think that only 3% of common sense was programmed with all the other fact based knowledge is amazing. Artificial intelligence is growing at a rapid rate, however I am unsure if they will ever be able to artificially create a fully functioning human brain.
In conclusion, the first week of this class has created a new way for me to think about technology, the brain, and the environment that surrounds us. The human brain is very complex and no two brains think exactly the same. Due to this fact, one of the possible topics for my project might be how technology connects to different learning styles. My educational background usually leads me in the direction on how people think and why they may have though the way they did. The discussion board is a prime example of all the different conclusions humans can draw from the same information and how differently words can be interpreted. I am both anxious and curious as to how the rest of this class will evolve as we progress.
