Innovation of Loneliness

http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/loneliness_illustrated_so_beautifully_you_will_need_to_tell_someone/

Before technology evolved into a social tool, communication was limited to rather primitive methods in comparison to today's methods. Consider this chart:

The cell phone wasn't adopted as a innovation until around the year 2000 and Social Media didn't break through until around 2005.

Today, everyone has a tool so powerful that few people that can live without it. However, little has changed about the world around us. Something is still missing. We are still plagued by wars, famine, poverty and in many cases more inequality than ever. 

This past 180 days or so we toyed with two main themes, creativity and technology.
Each of you is an incredibly unique individual and you have more access and power at your fingertips than any generation in history. But, if everyone has access to the same technology and is using the same platforms, how are you going to stand out? 

Code and the Human Genome

The very latest in technology advances are causing quite a stir. Read a bit of the this article and then at the excerpt below from the book Geek Sublime. Then offer your opinions and discuss your feelings on the subject.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-scientists-just-admitted-tweaking-205300657.html

"So the locus of code's dance is not only logic gates or the gleaming fields of random access memory; code also moves within the millions of humans who encounter its effects, not just programmers. Code already shapes the world of non-programmers and embeds itself into their bodies, into their experience of themselves, into lived sensation and therefore the realm of experience and aesthetics. Soon in the near future we will live inside an experience mediated by computers; all those science-fiction fantasies of eye-glasses that can layer data over what you see, of new means of sensing the world through android extensions of our bodies, all of these are already possible, they already exist. 

And this is not all. We will program ourselves and the world we live in. Consider this: the four letters of the genetic alphabet that makes up DNA - A(adenine), C(cytosine), G(guanine), and T(thymine)-are really, quite literally, a programming language. And this language can be represented in binary code, which means that it can be manipulated by a computer. A recent article in the Atlantic lays out the process and the possibilities:

The latest technology - known as synthetic biology, or "synbio"- moves the work of biotechnology from the molecular to the digital. Genetic code is manipulated using teh equivalent of a word processor. With the press of a button, code representing DNA can be cut and pasted, effortlessly imported from one species into another. It can be reused and repurposed. DNA bases can be swapped in and out with precision. And once the code looks right? Simply hit Send. A dozen different DNA print shops can now turn these bits into biology." 

The DNA print shop will send back several vials of "frozen plasmid DNA," which you will then inject into a host bacteria cell, causing this cell to "boot up" using the DNA code you've created. The cell will metabolize, gow and reproduce. Congratulations-you have just created a new form of life."

Geek Sublime, The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty

Vikram Chandra

How to survive the craziness of college admissions

It's that time of year again. Panic begins to set in as you wait to hear about acceptances. Why? So what if you don't get into the college of your choice? Does that mean the end of your future as you know it?

Please read: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-how-to-survive-the-college-admissions-madness.html?_r=0 and discuss for our next post what your experience is like. Are you worried?

Power Pose

https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are#t-212393

Amy Cuddy wasn’t supposed to become a successful scientist. In fact, she wasn’t even supposed to finish her undergraduate degree. Early in her college career, Cuddy suffered a severe head injury in a car accident, and doctors said she would struggle to fully regain her mental capacity and finish her undergraduate degree.

Body language affects how others see us, but it may also change how we see ourselves. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy shows how “power posing” -- standing in a posture of confidence, even when we don’t feel confident -- can affect testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain, and might even have an impact on our chances for success.

What is your impression of "power posing"? Have you found yourself in circumstances where you feel power less? Do you think Power Posing could work for you? Or is it non-sense? 

How will technology affect your future?

Why it is important to learn computer science?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKIu9yen5nc

It is said that the future will contain two types of people. Those that are told what to do by a computer and those that tell the computer what to do. As Drew from Dropbox mentioned everything has been turned upside by software. The question for our post is, how do you see it affecting your future? Think for a moment what discipline you are interested in studying and how has it or how do you see it being affecting by technology in the future?

A Teenager's Point of View

I got an email the other day from a tech colleague about a blog post written by a 19 year old college student named Andrew, about social media use. The post blew up and he's caused quite a stir with his blunt assessments of all the different platforms and how they're used by him and his peers.

https://medium.com/backchannel/a-teenagers-view-on-social-media-1df945c09ac6

Read his post and elaborate on the social media platforms you use. Do you and your peers feel the same way about the apps he discussed?