Month: April 2023

This class gave me a much better understanding of the progression of information through history, how that affected the creation of different technologies, and how that relates to where we are at today. I think understanding different forms of communication changes the perspective of technology we have today to open up to more possibilities and future creations of new technology to increase information and understanding.

One thing that really stood out to me was the fear surrounding new technology which is something that I think we can see throughout the age of information but it becomes especially apparent with technologies that do not make sense with basic communication abilities such as visual and speech. This was really prevalent with the “telephone scare” and it seems to be really common today as well as new technologies that actually could potentially be harmful are introduced to people’s lives as a way to improve them and increase productivity.

It seems like a lot of our information technologies today are meant to further increase productivity by having quicker access to information. I think this is interesting to see as it is the focus of a lot of the technology throughout history but it is really obvious today. I found it interesting that some of the class felt they could be ok without their phone in today’s world and some did not. I think this is because the smartphone is really a central piece of technology that is often seen as a necessary component to communicating in the world today in areas where there is high useage. It is amazing how people adapt to having technology like this or to not having it. It changes the way that you run your life. We talked about the smartphone as being the ideal piece of technology to have your entire life planned out in and access to all your contacts. It is interesting to think about the different steps that would have to be taken to organize your day and connect with people if the smartphone suddenly did not exist. I really liked how we discovered and discussed many different pieces of technology in this way to better understand their affect on our lives as well as the affect of future technologies.

I found this class to be really fascinating and helpful with understanding the role of information and technology in our lives. I also enjoyed and found it helpful to have the opportunity to use different platforms for various projects throughout the class. This increased my overall confidence with technology and helped me to see how it can be used as well as introduced me to things I had not heard of. Some of these programs include Canva, meme creators, Timeline JS, and AI generators. I could see developing comfortability with using these as highly beneficial for work and business.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11UZIRV5Gz-0lpiIArbvyZM4nRRCLs47zgF__q_wIyG0/edit

For this project I chose the historical figure Hua Mu Lan for the essay generator to write about. I prompted it with just “Hua Mu Lan in Battle” and I was curious to see what kind of information would be generated about the topic. I used PerfectEssayWriter.ai to generate the essay. It did a pretty nice job of summarizing her story and keeping it to what was pretty well known facts. It was also written with a lot of really nice descriptive words that made it interesting to read but maybe some would consider some of these words a bit unnecessary or wordy. The essay did flow nicely, however, and seemed to be pretty in line with what is known about Mu Lan. I did not feel that it was able to get into specifics or argue a certain point very well, it seemed like a lot of general information. I also found that it was a bit passive at times. Some of the sentences sound pretty but it is hard to tell exactly what it means by them. One example of this is “enduring values of Chinese culture”. Chinese culture and history are complex and I am not sure that this is specific enough. I see other issues throughout the essay as well. I think that the flow and then the outline and general information are the strengths of the essay.

I went with the image generator deepdreamgenerator.com because generally I am not a huge fan of AI images and I read that this one tended to be more artistic. I actually kind of liked the image that it generated, it was better than some that I have seen before and I think it at least captured the idea of Mu Lan as a woman warrior.

Overall I think this was a fascinating project that shows what can be done with AI, some of the strengths and weaknesses, and potential uses for AI image and essay generators. I think they could also be a way to get quick information on a topic that could give ideas of portions that could be researched further, especially for a topic that you are unfamiliar with. Of course the same thing can be accomplished with an encyclopedia, more accurately, but perhaps there could be a reason why you it might be helpful to generate some quick general information about a topic you are interested in.

This week we chose which project we wanted to participate in. I chose the AI assignment and we also came up with topic ideas this week. I thought it was interesting beginning to explore the different AI essay generators and image generators to see what would be available for the project. I chose a topic I was already familiar with and I am curious to see if the essay generator will be fairly factual or if it will be missing important pieces of information in the story. I am thinking that an AI essay generator will be more generalized in the information that is available for the essay than that of which an actual person researching could find and put together.