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Roman Cook on Carlton Yuan- Researcher
Roman Cook- Team Leader
Samir Kunwor- Organizer
Sambeg Raj Subedi- Power Point designer
Topic: Better public transportation payment process in NYC
Propose Idea
Collaborate possibilities
Pick best way to move ahead economically and feasibly
Create and propose idea with Power Point
Weijun Huang on Reflection #2
In this project, I enjoyed working on it because it can choose whatever you like, and then to doing the research. This object I picked on this project is mountain bicycle, I explained all the things it need and how does each things work. I think I did well on this project, because I also explained why it is difference with other bicycle. Ride a bicycle in mountain is much harder than road, so the principle of mountain Bicycle is focus on this part. For this project, I will give myself a 90, because what I did on it is the comparison with other bike, and the explain how each part works.
Gabriel Almonte on Gabriel Almonte
I think I have a unique relationship with technology. I believe Older people are too out of touch with technology while the younger the person the more attached to technology they are. I believe people around my age have the best balance. We grew up while most of the advance were being made but we also had a lot of our childhood where certain things were frowned upon. Some people gfot phones in junior high school others received it high school. Being that we were always at the age where we weren’t considered children, but we also weren’t adults that we could make our own decisions our parents tended to take the cautious route with technology, so we have a good balance of being functional without technology. Many young children today are always growing up with so much technology around them, who knows what the future holds with them. I do think that a balance should be kept because you shouldn’t fall behind like many of the older people have. I believe you should always be able to use the latest tech but shouldn’t need it. I try my best to balance my life, I do use technology a lot and I do use it in times I don’t need it just for the convenience, however I’m very functional without it and I don’t miss it when I don’t have it. A lot of technology is based of horror or thriller genres now, but I believe the future leads to technology be used as propaganda. It’s so easy to voice an opinion while using technology and you can reach endless amounts of people as well. People will use technology to get their points across, trying to convince everyone through media to agree with them.
Gabriel Almonte on Gabriel Almonte
After reading the article I realized I use rhetorical analysis often. Every semester I get nervous wondering how my teachers will be. I read reviews on ratemyprofessor.com to try to find teachers that are generally liked. However, everyone has their own preferences with teachers. I was enrolled in a writing for engineers’ class with another teacher and she looked older, wore glasses, and didn’t seem mean but seemed serious. I took notes of these things mentally and I was worried if I would be able to excel in this class. She then assigned a 2-page report on why writing courses are important to STEM majors. This being my first engineering class I dropped the class. I quickly searched for other openings and found the class I’m currently enrolled in. After reading good reviews I decided to take another chance on the course. I arrived to the class nervous because I thought the course would be too difficult but I arrived to an environment I wasn’t expecting. The seating arrangement in the class made me feel like the classwork wouldn’t be too stressful. Then the professor walked in and she was young, had tattoos, and a fresh hairstyle. After that, I was happy, I thought I made the decision in switching to the class I’m currently enrolled in. Shortly after my professor came up to me and explained the assignment at hand and a quick description on how the class was. The conversation supported my initial thoughts, I was satisfied that I took the chance after reading the reviews because a professor like this is what I want in all my classes. I tend to connect younger teachers with being more understanding while they try to make the course about learning what I need rather than making me do unnecessary work to keep me busy. While I tend to connect older teachers with just going by the book and not being open to new methods and ways of teaching. I try to avoid that because I believe that things have changed around the world so teaching methods must change as well.
Reem Malek on 
Gabriel Almonte on Gabriel Almonte
Watching this episode was very weird. I felt the guy who was currently in the relationship with the girl was being very overprotective. The girl did start acting weird when her partner came around, but the situation would make anyone uncomfortable, nobody wants to be in a room with an old partner and their current partner as well. Getting drunk then driving to the other man’s house to attack him verbally and physically was uncalled for. He then forces the old partner to delete all memory of his current wife. I believe a memory system like this where you can go back to every moment you’ve witnessed would be hard to forget things that you regret happened. It also effected how the current partner was able to discover things that he didn’t notice when it happened because he got to rewind and focus on all aspects of it. I connected this to my personal experience with relationships because with everything being recorded when people are out people get caught stepping out of their relationship a lot. With all this video and picture evidence today many need evidence to believe anything, with something like what the people in the show had it would be extremely difficult for people to trust anyone. I had mixed feelings on this episode because I feel the husband should’ve reacted much differently in the situation, he was acting erratic once they got home and was taking mental notes once he got to the get together. He then attacks the man his wife cheated on him with which he didn’t deserve, he wasn’t in a relationship with him. Although I don’t agree with his actions, I do think he should know the truth about what his partner was doing. Honesty is important in a relationship and she wasn’t being honest and the memory system they had implemented behind their ears helped him find the truth.
Gabriel Almonte on Gabriel Almonte
The Black Mirror episode “Nosedive” was interesting, I felt like the episode had a lot of characteristics of today’s society while adding a futuristic part to it. The episode had a rating system, people were graded on their interactions with others and everyone could see other’s ratings. It led to a lot of issues in the episode because people didn’t want to associate with people with lower ratings because they were worried it would be frowned upon. I connected this to my experiences in social media because I see a lot of the same things on social media. People with a higher ratio of followers to following are referred to as “Instagram Famous”. These people often will not follow the people they speak to everyday in school or work on Instagram just because they aren’t “Instagram Famous”. I also noticed in the episode the main character wanted to raise her score and was told high ratings from people with high ratings will boost your score. That’s very common in the real world as well, people hold celebrities and people with authority opinions to a higher standard than others just because of their position. That’s why a lot of companies use familiar faces to brand their products because they know people will listen to them. Recently there has been a lot of controversy with this because celebrities need to get money to feed their family but often are advertising products that can be harmful. I was disappointed with the thought process of the episode, but I wasn’t surprised at all because these ideas are very common in the world today. Personally, I find myself stuck in the middle. I don’t want to pretend to be someone else, but I also don’t want others to look down on me. I will always be myself, but at times I must bring out parts of my personality that are better suited for the situation I’m in. For example, in job interviews people must bring out qualities that will show they are a good candidate for the job while wearing formal attire. On a regular day most people wouldn’t speak like they were in an interview and they wouldn’t dress like it either. I thought the rating system had flaws because some people may be a 5 to me and 1 to another person. People should just always have an open mind because there are a lot of good people and opportunities that are missed out on because of preconceived ideas.
Gabriel Almonte on Gabriel Almonte
The main point of this episode was to challenge the ethical beliefs of technological fields. Data is a robot created by the company. He then creates another robotic being like him, has feelings, and many other human-like characteristics but wasn’t conceived the same ways as humans. Data considered it as his offspring, he wanted the offspring to pick a gender it had four options and chose to be a human female, he named her Lai. Tensions grew as people had disagreements with what to do with Lai. Data already viewed it as a child, so he grew strong loving feelings for it already People in the company were mad that he created Lai without informing anyone, he then argued that it wouldn’t be a problem if a human created an offspring in private. Other people in the company believed that Lai should be taken to a scientific lab to be tested on to see what the possible outcomes are after she is evaluated. Lai is interviewed where she gains a sense of fear because she thinks something bad may happen to her. To me that is enough to not test her and let her live as a human. However, the company still believes she belongs in a scientific facility. Then everyone finds out that Lai left but later comes back because she malfunctioned and is programmed to come back to Data when she does malfunction. They find out that they must work fast, or she will die, then others start to help out data but, in the end, they had no success and Lai died. Data forgave everyone who disagreed because people who didn’t think of her as human helped another parent when he needed help. If a technological being is behaving similar to a human it should be protected as such.
Gabriel Almonte on Gabriel Almonte
The main point of this episode was to discuss ethics in technology. The episode featured a futuristic robot that had many similar characteristics and functions as humans, the robot could think and had feelings as well. From my understanding it seemed like everyone involved was in the same company but people from different positions of power and different branches were all disagreeing with what was fair to the robot and the future of technology. One branch was fighting for the robot to be left alone because he thought of the robot as a person, the robot developed into what it was in front of him, he grew sentimental love for it. A developer from another branch viewed it as a piece of technology. Therefore, he had no problem with the risks that working on the robot caused. He was only worried about the future of technology. I agree with both sides because if developers can’t work on new technology it ill be hard to make the same technological advances that are occurring right now. I also agree with the other side because seeing people develop these new advances, they can feel n attachment to the product that spent so much time on. I also agree that on some point some technology will be considered human because of how similar it is to normal people. There was one character who compared the unethical beliefs of the other branch to racism. I agree because at a certain point these robots can become almost identical to humans the only difference being the way each group is made. The only thing that must be solved is at what point do these robots are considered humans.
Gabriel Almonte on Gabriel Almonte
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/30/business/tesla-factory-musk.html
In “Inside Tesla’s Audacious Push to Reinvent the Way Cars are Made” it uses many visual elements. The article starts off by stating the company’s agenda to speed up the production process as they were 17,000 cars behind their expected production by December 2018. The article then showed a picture of the exterior of the new assembly line in California. It didn’t look very modern, the assembly line looked cheaply made and seemed like it was made with a very small budget. The article was trying to show how them being behind in production made their budget tight. The next picture was of a Tesla worker that looked like he was shining the leather on a seat. They used this picture because it was stated that the robots that were being used to put the seats into the cars were having trouble fulfilling all their tasks. They said the robots were too slow and were very inconsistent, after a while they decided to use the robots to place all the seats in the car and have the workers handle bolts and the handle the electronic connectors. They then used a picture of their robots in the assembly line to show the difference in Tesla’s production compared to other car companies. Usually car companies start off by paying workers to produce the cars, but it cuts into profits so they either move production to a country with cheaper labor or they start using AI’s to make production cheaper. Tesla has done the opposite they started off with the use of robots and then decided to use more workers to increase production numbers.
