Current Event - 12/1/2015

Today's current event relates to our most recent module topic of the LDS Church's use of technology to "hasten the work." This article about the recently reopened Church History museum in Salt Lake City highlights the use of modern technology in some of the reimagined exhibits within the museum. It's a short article, but it's enough to show some of the many uses the Church has for modern technology. We do genealogy work online, we can use smartphones and tablets to share gospel media, and the Church History Museum can more effectively connect us to our church's past with interactive exhibits and more. After all, I think much more can be said about a lot of historical topics than there exists room in a museum exhibit to display on a placard. Technology provides a way to fit more information in a small space and make it interactive at the same time.

In this talk from March 1995, President Howard W. Hunter said "The role of technology in this work has been accelerated by the Lord himself, who has had a guiding hand in its development and will continue to do so. However, we stand only on the threshold of what we can do with these tools. I feel that our most enthusiastic projections can capture only a tiny glimpse of how these tools can help us—and of the eternal consequences of these efforts." I, for one, am very excited to see what continues to come of technological progression and how it changes the operations of the church.

Study Journal 5

This module was about social issues in computing, so here goes!

November 5

• Are women in computer science stunted (for lack of a better word) because of culture and upbringing? This was brought up in talking about differences in opportunities for men and women in STEM fields. I think that more girls would be interested in STEM fields if they grew up with the same sort of environment that boys generally grow up in, but I think that could have a lot of unintended consequences. I'm not against having more women in CS in any way, but I do think it's important that men and women keep their differences and I think a lot of those result from culture and upbringing.
• Some of the women in the class mentioned that their CS degree is their backup plan in case things don't go as planned. I didn't realize until now how good a fit a CS degree provides in that scenario. Developers often have freedom and flexibility with hours and working from home, so it's an ideal career for a divorced or widowed mom and a great fallback if a husband loses a job or can't be the breadwinner for some reason or in the case that the wife with a CS degree can provide a better living than her husband.
• I think hiring quotas are ridiculous and I think the fact that they're pretty much necessary is even more ridiculous. Ideally, there would be enough interested and qualified people from different races and genders that we wouldn't have any problems with how much diversity we find in our portion of industry. Obviously that's not the case and sadly, I don't actually know if it's getting that much better. I wonder, how long will it take for our culture to change enough that we get that diversity naturally and without obstacle?

November 10

• How often do companies hire someone for their diversity who isn't as interested or qualified as another, less-diverse candidate? How often does the most qualified person get passed over because we have to force a more ideal ratio for diversity's sake? I hope it's very infrequent.
• President Samuelson mentioned the "Four Way Test"from Rotary International as a good method to judge what we do and say so that we can be in tune with the Spirit to make good decisions in our life's work:
• First, Is it the Truth?
• Second, Is it fair to all concerned?
• Third, Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
• Fourth, Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
• Should we participate in developing content that promotes ideals contrary to the gospel? Developers working on violent video games are an example of this question. I think we would all agree that violent video games don't lend themselves to spiritual experiences. I have to admit that I enjoy playing first-person shooters, so playing them has always been a gray area or a vice for me, but I think it's even more so for the people making those games. If we have concerns about playing them, how much more should we be concerned about making them so that millions of others play them.

November 12 - Guest speaker Cydni Tetro

• Women can't do anything different or be treated different from their male counterparts if any of this is going to change. Cydni explained that by even pausing to think that women should be treated any differently, we're perpetuating the culture differences that make it harder for women to stay in CS. Women have to be able to participate without a second thought of how they should be treated.
• Culture vs. pipeline - The big question in considering why we don't have more women in CS. Are there not enough women making it into the pipeline and expressing interest or is it the prevailing culture deterring them and not enough positive reinforcement of interest in CS?
• "You wouldn't invite a woman golfing if you had to recruit her" - There are considerations in lots of aspects of everyday life that contribute unintentionally to the divide

November 17

• There are lots of risks of social media in business. Social media has proven very effective in promoting business, but it's not without its pitfalls. Just as it can help market the positives, it can, if used incorrectly, do a lot of damage.
• A class poll on the question "Have you been annoyed with someone for spending too much time online/on gadgets?" was almost perfectly evenly split. This astounds me with the prevalence of technology in our culture. Maybe I'm more aware of it than others or maybe they are more patient than I, but I see people every day glued to a phone and not paying attention to anything around them. It may also be that when everyone has their head in the technological sand, nobody cares if others are doing the same.
• Similarly, when asked "Do you spend too much time online/on gadgets?" our class was almost perfectly split again. Again, either lots of people are in denial or they're a lot better than I am. I can hardly believe the latter because I see perfect examples of the opposite every day, so I'm inclined to believe that most of those who answered in the negative simply have a different gauge of what is "too much" than I do. I fully recognize that I spend a lot of time on the computer and I wish I was better at separating myself from it and I think pretty much everyone in my generation needs to do the same.

Current Event - 11/10/2015

Today's current event has to do with women in the tech world. We started talking about the gender gap in computer-science-related jobs today and had an intriguing discussion, so I looked up some articles about women in tech jobs. It turns out the outlook is even worse than I thought it was. This article from the LA Times talks about how we are not only not really gaining in terms of proportion of female tech workers, we're actually losing some.

According to the article, many women who are interested in tech positions have left or will leave at some point, many due to "hostile work environments". As much as we'd all like to claim that we all believe women are just as qualified as men or more so, it appears to be only lip service. If so many women who are actually motivated to get into these positions are being driven out of them, how many more women will never get into them in the first place because of these prevailing attitudes? I think a lot of affirmative action and equal opportunity programs are silly because they can end up prioritizing a less qualified minority worker over someone who really knows their stuff, but we obviously can't get rid of any of these quotas because the work environment is apparently too toxic for women to remain. The worst part about it is that the environment hasn't changed, despite everything that's been attempted in the recent and less recent past. I can't say that I have any answer to the issue, but I sure hope that someone comes up with one soon.

Study Journal 4

This module focused on business and finance in technology.

October 27

• We watched Dot Con today and talked about the economics surrounding the Dot Com bubble. It's really easy to see that what the banks did with IPO sales was really unethical, but then that's the benefit of hindsight. If it's too good to be true, it's probably either illegal or unethical. I guess either way, there will still be people willing to deal with that to make a lot of money.
• I liked the concept of the "greater fool theory". I've never heard the expression, but I think it sums up the issue very nicely. It plays well with "too good to be true". Anything in which you have to rely on someone being the "greater fool" sounds like a terrible idea to me.
• In the video, they talked about the point of the internet being to bring transparency and a level playing field to the marketplace. I think it has definitely done that in some respects, but I think it's a lot easier for things to get lost in the process now that lots of things are handled primarily through the internet. Today, anyone can make themselves seem like anything they want on the internet and the lack of responsibility inherent in that fact allows for a lot of shades of gray.

October 29

• Trust and reputation are possibly the most important ingredients in successful deals. Without trust, anyone would be a complete fool to close a deal. Reputation isn't completely necessary, but even a slight negative reputation should be a red flag to anyone thinking about any sort of deal.
• Overhead costs are incredibly low in software. In a very general sense, it costs nothing to produce unlimited copies of a product. I'd never thought of that before, that once a program is written, it could potentially be distributed to every single machine capable of running it for practically no extra cost than producing one copy. Realistically, programmer time and advertising are significant overhead costs as well as software maintenance, but it's easy to see why Bill Gates was so successful.
• "Technological change is not additive, it is ecological" - I definitely agree with this point. Technology has completely revolutionized every aspect of human life over the course of just the last hundred years. Just the invention of the automobile, television, airplanes, and computers have brought about drastic difference in the way we do things from one hundred years ago.

November 3

• "Media tend to become mythic" - We take so many things for granted that aren't always given. We went from oral tradition to printed word to broadcast media and now we wouldn't know what to do without texting and email, yet some sort of communications outage would eliminate most of the standard methods of communication we use constantly.
• "Culture always pays a price for technology" - I think this one really depends on what we define as "a price". I think it's certainly true in terms of diversity. As technology reduces the gaps between groups of people, each group becomes more like the other, so we lose our diversity a little at a time. On the other hand, I think pretty much any major technological advancement brings net positive change.
• "Advantages and disadvantages of technology are not evenly distributed. There are always winners and losers" - A lot of technological advancements are widely beneficial, but there are certainly barriers to entry. For one, every technology costs money for someone. Whether it's direct cost to the consumer or if it's subsidized, someone pays for everything. For things like gadgets (smartphones, tablets, etc.) the cost is generally direct, which means that people who do not have the means to obtain them are the losers. In a culture where a large percentage adopt a new technology and it becomes commonplace, those who go without lose out on many benefits that society adapts to.