Computer and Society

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Computer and Society

• Olayele Adelakun (Ph.D)
• Assistant Professor CTI
•  
• Office Room 735 CTI 7th Floor
• Phone [phone]
• Fax [phone]
• Email yele_at_cs.depaul.edu
• Web http//facweb.cs.depaul.edu/yele

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Computer and the Information Age

• Assignment 1
• Write one page paper on the topic
• Has computers make our lives easier Yes or No

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Computer and the Information Age

• Ways to see the Social Word
• What is the quality of live
• And what is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good
  need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
• (Robert M Pirsig, 1974.)

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Computer and the Information Age

• Does computer improves our lives quality?
• Objective View Aristotle Philosophy - Realist
• Realist - A thing exists if the world cannot
  function normally without it.
• The realist maintains that the social world
  external to the individual is real and it is made
  up of hard, tangible and relatively immutable
  structures.
• Regardless of our awareness, they exist as
  empirical entities. They are independent of the
  individual appreciation of them.

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Computer and the Information Age

• Does computer improves our lives quality?
• Objective View Aristotle Philosophy - Realist
• The Realist Argument
• Took away fine art. There is no point in hanging
  a painting on a wall when the bare wall looks
  just as good.
• Similarly, other forms of art like comedy and
  drama will follow the same road as painting.
• In sports, ice-hockey will be the first to
  disappear, followed by baseball and all other
  games, and then football (please! no) will also
  disappear.
• Alcohol, tea, coffee and tobacco will have to
  disappear and so on.
• The world cannot function normally without it

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Computer and the Information Age

• Does computer improves our lives quality?
• Subjective View Socrates philosophy
• The measure of all thing is men, but never the
  scientific instruments.
• Socrates was one of the greatest sophists and he
  died for the ideal that truth is relative,
  against those who think that there is an absolute
  truth.
• In Socrates philosophy, quality is what we like
• It is external to the organization and it is
  subjective in the user's mind

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Computer and the Information Age

• Does computer improves our lives quality?
• Dialect View Plato philosophy
• To Plato, the immortal truths consist of ideas,
  which are changeless, and appearance, which
  changes.
• Horse vs. Horse-ness
• Plato uses dialectic as a means of logical
  argumentation. It is a technique of
  cross-examination with which truth is reached.
  Plato believes that dialectic is the sole method
  by which the truth can be arrived at

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Five Things We Need to Know about ITby Nail
Postman

• Like a Faustian bargain
• Technology giveth and technology taketh away.
  Blessed be the name of technology
• I.e For every advantage there is a corresponding
  disadvantage
• Do culture pays a price for technology?

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Five Things We Need to Know about ITby Nail
Postman

• The advantage and disadvantage of new technology
  are never distributed evenly among the
  population.
• Who is benefiting from the development of new
  technology
• Which group
• What type of person
• Most important who will thereby be harmed
• Who are the winners and who are the losers

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Five Things We Need to Know about ITby Nail
Postman

• There are hidden ideas
• There is a philosophy which expresses how new
  technology
• make people use their minds
• In what we do with our body
• How to codify and decode the world
• How we apply our intellectual reasons
• E.g Motorola in China
• Can we say that in the computer age, computer
  person value information, not knowledge,
  certainly not wisdom. In the computer age the
  concept of wisdom may vanish altogether?

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Five Things We Need to Know about ITby Nail
Postman

• Technological change is not additive it is
  ecological.
• E.g. A drop of red dye in clear water
• A new medium does not add something new it
  changes everything
• Fast internet, T1 line, dial up modem
• America and TV political campaign
• Christianity and TV

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Five Things We Need to Know about ITby Nail
Postman

• New technology should be considered as a strange
  intruder
• De factor standard
• God-given myth
• Technology Food nature
• E.g Should all high speed connection be done from
  9pm-6am
• Should the sun go down from 6pm to 5am
• Is technology Gods creation
• On the 8th day may?

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Laws of Technology

• http//www.jimpinto.com/writings/3laws.html.
• Moores LawFormulated by Gordon Moore of Intel
  in the early 1970s The processing power of a
  microchip doubles every 18 months. Corollary
  computers become faster - and the price of a
  given level of computing power halves - every 18
  months.
• Gilders LawProposed by George Gilder, prolific
  author and prophet of the new technology age The
  total bandwidth of communication systems triples
  every 12 months. New developments seem to confirm
  that bandwidth availability will continue to
  expand at a rate that supports Gilders Law.
• Metcalfes LawAttributed to Robert Metcalfe,
  originator of Ethernet and founder of 3COM The
  value of a network is proportional to the square
  of the number of nodes so, as a network grows,
  the value of being connected to it grows
  exponentially, while the cost per user remains
  the same or even reduces.

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Whom to Protect and Howby Blendon, et al.

• The public, The Government and the Internet
• Between 1985 -1999 computers at homes grew from
  30 to 70
• Virtually all American younger than 60 years have
  used computer for various things
• Email, internet, etc.
• Sports, entertainment, travel. Etc.
• Should the government regulate the internet?