Agency and Technology

After reading the "For the Strength of Youth" pamphlet, I was impressed with the responsibility that we place on our youth, and the responsibility that our Father in Heaven places on us.  We have been given agency, or the ability to act for ourselves.  We can choose to act righteously or choose bad decisions.  It is neat that the Lord has given us prophets and apostles and other church leaders to help us know which decisions are right and wrong.  Following the advice of inspired church leaders will bring peace and joy as never before.  There will still be hard times, but our attitudes may still be bright in these circumstances.  I believe that this also is true for the things the General Authorities tell us regarding technology.  If we follow their counsel and use technology for good, we can make the world a much better place.

Position VLOG

In class this semester, we have been talking about the righteous use of technology. Technology allows the average person to do much more than ever before. We can communicate with others around the world in an instant. We can promote good causes that we previously would never have known about. Our opinions can be heard by hundreds or even thousands of people. Even though there is so much that we can do, I feel that we can do more than we currently are. If we put away the many distractions, there is no end to what we can accomplish. This brings up the question, "How can I contribute?" I think the answer is simply that you start contributing. You may not be the mayor of your city tomorrow, or have thousands of followers by the weekend, but you can begin. The journey of a thousand steps begins with the first step. If you begin sharing inspiring articles, and supporting good causes, you may one day realize that you have a lot of followers, but even if you don’t, at least you are doing something worth-wile and that is the most important thing.

Eliot Jacobsen

Recently, Eliot Jacobsen was a guest speaker in our class. For me this was an excellent class period. He said something that made me question myself and a lot of the things I do. He said that we do not need to be invited to innovate. This made me realize that all too often, I wait until I am asked to innovate before I actually do. Sometimes, I am afraid to stand out and be different, or I am afraid to to have all eyes on me, or I am afraid to have recognition that others do not have. Other times it is simply that I am afraid to offend someone. When I do this, I am allowing someone else the chance of accomplishing great, while I watch them from the bleachers and make sure they do it correctly. The little discussion in class made me realize that I am way too talented to hide in the shadows. I can accomplish too much to sit back and watch. I need to be an active participant in innovation. I need to step outside of my comfort zone and accept that at times I may have the attention of everyone in the room and that that is not a bad thing. I need to not be afraid to stand out and be recognized for the great accomplishments I can do.

Book Post - Here Comes Everybody

Clay Shirky in his book "Here Comes Everybody" explains how a new revolution is unfolding before our eyes. This revolution is not so much because of the technology we have today as it is about the way that we use that technology. We are able to create common interest groups easier than ever. These groups also can have members from every country. The ability to form these groups has given the common person a voice and in my opinion, this is the greatest change the world has ever seen. In the past, only the rich, the prominent, or the powerful could amass the crowds to fight for a righteous purpose. Now, any person can start a page on the internet pushing for a worthy cause. These pages, as we often see in our social media news feeds, gain many followers from many places. They allow politicians can get an idea of what their constituents want by seeing some of the popular hashtags. Business owners can see customer satisfaction based on recent reviews. They can also make strategic decisions regarding the direction of the company based on what consumers post on their news feeds. Beyond the social media sites, group forums and blogs are a huge think tank. Hundreds of years ago, large businesses would try to gather the smartest and most informed people they could to come up with novel and futuristic ideas. Now, it can be as easy as searching the web for forums and blogs with creative posts. I believe that a large reason that technology is advancing so quickly is because of the amount of information that is shared and consumed daily. Ideas spread like wildfire and solutions to world problems are found daily. I agree with Shirky that it is not the social media platforms that have changed all this. It is the way that we are using it. It will be interesting to see where we end up in the next hundred years.

Revolution OS

Linux is an operating system similar to OSX or Windows, except for one big difference: it is free. The designers wanted it to be free to use and free to modify. If I had never heard of it and you told me it existed, I would not believe you. There are too many corporations and too many business people to allow a free competitor to exist in the market, but thanks to a few principled individuals, it exists. Another unbelievable thing about Linux is that it is good. I am used to free toys that break the first time you use them, free hamburgers the size of postage stamps, and free programs that are so buggy you cannot even use them. The fact that Linux is so good, and used by so many people still amazes me. On the other hand, it is also amazing that OSX and Windows still exist. They have found a way to compete with free, and they are still doing well at it.

Women in Computer Science

For the first 21 years of my life, I did not know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I knew I did not want to be a programmer. I thought that if I was a programmer I would have to gain 100 pounds, wear shirts with green sweat stains, grow my hair out long, and play online, fantasy multi-player games. The recent articles in class have suggested that this image of programmers is a large reason women do not enter the field of computer science. While I agree with this, I believe that it extends to men as well. I feel that many people do not join this industry because they do not want to be a "nerd." Programmers however, have the same interests as anyone else. In fact, no one is just a programmer. They are accountants, event planners, artists, or musicians who write programs. I believe that in the future there will be more people who understand this. They will come to realize, as I did, that programming is not about junk food and video games, it is being integrated into everything that we do. So to any non-programmer reading this, choose what you like to do, and figure out how programming enables you to do that. Hopefully this motivates you to investigate how to code up what you like to do. As more people do this, more people will join the computer revolution, including women.

"Free Software"

There is some debate in the computer industry about whether open source software is better than enterprise software. Some argue that because it is free it saves the company a lot of money. Others argue that the time spent searching open source forums and asking others to help fix a bug costs the company more time (and therefore money). To me, it does not matter what type of software I am using, as long as I can do what I need to do. When making the decision to use an enterprise or open source software, I look at the initial cost, previous knowledge on the software, size of support forums, complexity of the task at hand, as well as if someone else in the world is doing something similar to what I have done. Sometimes having someone else who has gone before can make things much easier for me. I have had success and failures with both types of software. So the decision, for me, is not open source or enterprise, it is which technology is the best for what I am doing.