Technology has taken over a large amount of jobs that we as people used to hold, and provide for ourselves. For example things like farming, a century ago most people were farming as a means to survive but, to also grow food for other people to buy. Now two only about two percent of the population can provide food for the whole population who needs it. This just an example of of how the world is changing right before our eyes. Now to some people this is a good thing because they don’t have to pay worker so they could produce products cheaper and to other it may not be so great. So my question is how do we a population go about it do we put our feet down or if we allow it to continue how do we prevent all the wealth from getting concentrated at the top.

Source: forbes.com/…/technology-has-already-taken-over-90-of-the-jobs-humans-used-to-do

In the US, we pay our bills and shopping with mostly credit cards and cash. The most typical example would be a meal check. When people finish their dinner in a fine restaurant, the waitress usually brings a check on the table, the customers leave the cards they want to pay with, the waitress go and collect the card, swipe it and then send the receipt on the table again to get the signs. However, when it comes to the same situation in China, people just scan a QR code on the table, pay the fee with their phones and leave. Instead of asking “cash or card?”, the cashier asks the customers “WeChat or Zhifubao(Alipay)?”—-two major online payment platforms in China.

Without exaggeration, China’s economic networks is an ocean of QR codes based on mobile devices. In 2019, about 90% of payments in China are facilitated via mobile payment platforms and at least 577.4 million Chinese consumers use mobile payment systems. Which means it is not common to use wallet anymore in China since people basically don’t use cash anymore. You can shop grocery by scanning a code, you can rent a public bicycle by scanning a code, you can buy film tickets, train tickets on your phone without type your card number over and over again, you can get rid of public transportation card by scanning a code when entering the underground station. Everything can be done so easy with a simple scan and click on your phones.

So the question is, why people trust the online payment system and willing to connect their e-banks on these platforms? While, the technology of fingerprint and facial recognition is heavily used on these platforms. When the customers try to create a transaction, it usually asks for these information and makes sure the transaction is safe and valid. The other reason about why people love to use WeChat especially to pay is that, this is originally an app designed as social media for people to post pictures and chat with each other, it developed online payment function in around 2014, which means the users can send and receive money to their friends or families while they chat. Except for very large sums, both WeChat and Alipay do not charge users for mobile transactions. Which is a really creative move for an app that designed to chat —-imagine you can send money to your friends on Snapchat.

While online payment has already changed people’s way of living in China, it is a growing trend globally as well; Alipay and WeChat Pay are now accepted in about 40 countries all over the world and it is open to foreign cards like visa right now. Overall, Chinese mobile payment systems are great innovations that incorporate technology into people’s daily life, I hope this technology can be more adopted internationally and create a truly cashless society global wise.

Reference:

View at Medium.com

This past Sunday, a technological innovator by the name of Lawrence Tesler passed away at the age of 74. This article by the New York Times recounts some of his work and influence on modern technology, like the apple mouse and the fact that it only has one button. What he’s probably most known for, however, are his innovations in how we directly interact with computers. He introduced many features standard to any computer, like the ability to copy and paste and even simply opening files by clicking them. His main focus was designing things to be simple and natural for the user.

Reading this article made me wonder: how would we interact with computers today if not for advances like his? These features that we take for granted every day were at one point not even thought of.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/technology/lawrence-tesler-dead.html

As kids we were always taught to refrain from talking to strangers but in today’s society and generation, talking to strangers online is seen as a way for people to build relationships and connections. In class we learned about several characteristics of social media, one including the ability to develop social networks and generate a community of like minded individuals. Several apps exist today that claim to give users the ability to branch out of their existing social circles that are created through face to face interactions instead to form new relationships with people who are similar minded as themselves but complete strangers.

One example of an app that specializes in online communication with strangers is Yubo. Yubo acts as an online streaming service that’s goal is to introduce individuals with similar interests and hobbies to each other.  This apps interface is extremely similar to the dating app tinder, giving users the ability to ‘choose’ whom they’d like to talk to through swiping left or right. The common question is although these appear to be great apps for young adults to chat on, how safe are they actually? These new apps that enable teens to branch out insist that they are applying strong safeguards to protect users through separation of age and by using artificial intelligence for face recognition and age estimation technology to prevent the exposure of unsafe behavior for young adults and potential child abuse. There has already been a case of a man who was able to navigate around these safeguards and proceed to lure a minor. My question is, how reliable will the generation of safeguards and can guardians and parents rely on them to protect their children from online predators? These kinds of apps also are called into question for their lack of face to face communication and if they will ultimately push society toward interpersonal communication.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-talk-to-strangers-these-apps-encourage-it-11582347631

Children are told to stay away from strangers in order to keep them safe. However, some social media platforms encourage strangers to interact. New apps like Yubo and Hoop have recently been designed for teens to meet other teens on the internet. Yubo is not intended to be a dating platform, but rather a place for teens to meet other people around the globe. This app and others similar to it have raised controversy over how necessary this app is too teens. Teens as young as 13 can use the app- with parental permission. Yubo’s primary feature is live-streaming and users can be matched with other users by swiping like on Tinder. Then, users can share similar interests together. Hoop is also designed a lot like Tinder, but is also not intended to be used as a dating platform, but rather a platform for meeting new people. These apps have the benefit of meeting new people, but there are also safety concerns for younger users. As of right now, developers are using facial recognition and age estimation software to protect younger teens from potential threats, but is that enough?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-talk-to-strangers-these-apps-encourage-it-11582347631 

In the past decade, self-driving (or autonomous) vehicles have held the center of attention in automobile news and research. Companies like Tesla, Mercedes-Benz and Uber have been pouring millions and millions of dollars into developing new and improved technologies that can someday be fail-proof and provide a much safer alternative for transportation, but there are some hurdles in the way that MUST be dealt with.

During freshman year of college, my engineering design class group worked on a project involving self-driving car technologies, and I was very intrigued by the idea of the Trolley Problem and how it would apply to autonomous vehicle technologies. It is important to consider that when these vehicles are implemented and function without any (or minimal) human interaction, who is held responsible for the decisions that the vehicle’s systems make, and what moral basis should the software rely on to make certain decisions? For example, using a slightly modified version of the Trolley Problem, if an autonomous vehicle is cruising down the road and senses several threats ahead, with no way of avoiding all of the threats, where does the car steer to? Does it continue its path and hit the car that is barreling towards it in the same lane, does it swerve off the road and onto the sidewalk to hit an innocent pedestrian, or does it veer off into a tree to save the life of all external threats but sacrifice the life of its own passengers? These ethical questions must be answered before a large-scale deployment of these vehicles occurs.

In this article I found by Fast Company, the author argues that the Trolley Problem, when applied to self-driving vehicles, is too binary, and that real-world examples have many more influencing factors and options than the Trolley Problem would be able to successfully explain. I think this view is acceptable, however the question of how the car is going to make those decisions is still unanswered and must be dealt with, in my opinion.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90308968/why-the-trolley-dilemma-is-a-terrible-model-for-trying-to-make-self-driving-cars-safer

In an article from Fox News’s John Brandon, a company in China that produces the iRobot is using this new robot to help stop the spread of this deadly Corona Virus within Wuhan, China. These robots are being used to help bring medicine to patients that have already been diagnosed or are in quarantine. The Chinese government has leaned towards the use of these robots to reduce the number of humans that come into contact with someone who is infected with the virus. Other uses for these robots range from being able to disinfect public areas, to doing tasks that normal humans would find to be repetitive and would reduce the risk for mistake because of fatigue of tedious tasks.

One thing that worries me is that who is programming these robots and what are the chances that someone would be able to hack these machines and use them to spread the virus instead of help quarantine it?

Is there a way to monitor who has access and control to these robots without fully taking a product away from a company and having complete government control of it?

Source: Brandon, J. (2020, February 14). Coronavirus-battling robots deployed to help fight deadly outbreak in China. Retrieved from https://www.foxnews.com/tech/coronavirus-battling-robots-deployed-help-fight-deadly-outbreak-china

As Americans we are pretty accustomed to having full access to technology such as phones and computers on a daily basis. We sometimes take this fact for granted, as most of the world does not have full access to technology like we do. Our lives are surrounded and consumed by our phones, the internet, and our computers; many of us wouldn’t know what to do without technology (in my opinion). My question to you is, are we too dependent on our technology?

An example of this dependency can be seen in how people navigate when traveling. When traveling before the current state of very accessible technology people used to read road maps and ask locals for directions when lost, people such as my parents used this technique when navigating. But it today’s age, folks don’t use road maps and personally neither I or my parents own a road map that we keep in our car. Instead, we use apps on our phones such as Waze or Google Maps, these apps are capable of calculating the quickest route to a destination within seconds and are even able to alert you if there are cops ahead to let you know when to slow down. This technology allows you the possibility to drive at a fast rate,if you so choose, and then when you are about to pass a cop you will receive a notification and be able to effortlessly and mindlessly slow down and avoid a speeding ticket. Also, if you make a wrong turn these apps can quickly recalculate and give you a new route in seconds. As opposed to a road map which you would have to be able to make sense of where you are and here you need to go now that you made a mistake and missed a turn.

This technology is a great help and is used by almost all Americans who drive (at least in my generation). It keeps us safe and assured of where we are going and it does the thinking for us. This brings me back to my question of our dependency on this kind of technology, with my navigation scenario as just one of many examples. If this technology were to fail, or we didn’t charge our phone, or we didn’t have internet service, would we still bee able to get to our intended destination? Would we be able to utilize old methods of doing things, as per my example the road map; would we be able to figure it out on our own, or would we be lost? So what do you think, are there other situations where people of today’s world would struggle if today’s technology weren’t there to help them along the way?

Source of idea:

Are We Too Dependent On Technology?

It’s almost Spring Break, and many of us will be traveling by air. Maybe you will sleep during your flight, or maybe watch a movie. What you will not do is think of all the processes taking place in order for you to depart from State College and land at your destination. Hence, me telling you a bit more about the complexity of airplanes and the importance of technology in this field:

70 years ago, flying was considered extremely dangerous, as pilots navigated with the aid of visual landmarks, could not foresee inclement weather, could not communicate as easily by radio, etc. Nowadays, flying is considered to be the safest way to travel thanks to all the technology that has been implemented to reduce the workload of the pilots monitoring and flying the aircraft. A “Flight Management System” or FMS, is probably the best example of the introduction of advanced technology in this industry. An FMS will manage the flight plan proposed by the pilot with the use of inputs, such as waypoints, takeoff weight and amount of fuel. For example: after a pilot input the information, the FMS will tell which radio frequency to use in each stage of the flight, as well as the velocity required to safely takeoff.

IoT also plays an important role while in-flight, as “pitot” sensors outside the aircraft provide information about “True Airspeed” and “Angle of Attack”, which are basically fancy terms for velocity and pitch. Several emergencies have been prematurely detected due to the information provided by these sensors. However, these are not the only devices using IoT to keep an airplane in the sky. They range from fuel burn monitors to cabin pressure to weather detection. As Business Insider stated in the article “Why every flight you take is obsessively monitored”, IoT devices in planes can even help the National Weather Service “predict climate in a more precise way”, “as airlines like Southwest and UPS provide data directly from their planes”.

Finally, while approaching the destination, the FMS, in addition to other systems, will guide the plane down a safe route by using information from radars installed next to the runway to accurately predict the descent rate and an almost-perfect alignment with the center of the same runway, at which point a pilot will deactivate the auto-pilot and touch down.

Technology has made flying the safest way to travel. While some people might still be afraid to sit in a plane for hours and experience turbulence, there are many sensors monitoring the health of the engines, the cabin, the airspeed, the altitude, etc. In addition to many people constantly monitoring the flight path of the airplanes, making sure a safe distance is maintained and talking directly to the pilots in order to make changes if necessary. So don’t worry, you will definitely fly safely this Spring Break.

Citations:

Bobkoff, Dan (June 16th, 2015), “Why every flight you take is obsessively monitored”, Business Insider. Retrieved on February 23rd, 2020. Link: https://www.businessinsider.com/airplanes-and-big-data-sensors-2015-6

Krisch, Joshua (March 18th, 2014), “What is the Flight Management System? A Pilot Explains”, Popular Mechanics. Retrieved on February 23rd, 2020. Link: https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a10234/what-is-the-flight-management-system-a-pilot-explains-16606556/