B's In Three's

Author's Family Member Used With Permission If you are reading this and intend to read it all the way through, then enjoy these next one thousand words. I promise to make it as interesting as possible, so thank you for reading. So it all starts with my experiences, where I have been, what I have done, who I have met, and most importantly, how collaboration ties into all the above. My entire life I have been a tad bit more “tech savvy” I guess you could say. I just think I always had a thing for technology and it became a big part of who I was. When I was younger I had a YouTube channel with my best friends and we always came up with funny dances or skits and posted them. That is basically where the collaboration began. I have always loved working in groups; I come from a very big family so I was raised that way. I also played sports my entire life so collaborating was the only way to get things done. I am very independent, yes, but I truly do work well with others as well. In ...

After reading the lecture in TopHat for class today, there was an example that stood out to me that I wanted to expand on. It was the subject of algorithms and how people compare artificial intelligence, also known as "AI" to humans. It has been an ongoing controversial topic of whether AI's can make conscious decisions. After reading the lecture it is noted that the AI that was sitting in class could only respond to questions that it was taught the answers to. Many people believe that in creating AI's that the way you program them is how they respond. So you could program an AI to answer all these questions correctly, for instance, if you put an AI with a human-sounding voice behind door number one and a human behind door number two, and ask both the same set of questions and both answer with the same answers, you would not be able to distinguish the difference between the human and the AI. Yet, it is believed that since the AI does not actually FEEL or have any sort...

After reading an article in class, it brought some interesting viewpoints to my mind on video games as a whole. Growing up I have seen my brothers play video games on "X-Box Live" for a very long time. They play games like Call of Duty, even games like Madden, that allow you to play with someone "live" and you can interact with players across the world. The amount of cursing, name-calling, and threats you read and hear as they play is unruly. After seeing the company called "Riot" try and find the source of the toxic behavior, it made me sit back and realize that action is being taken to source and extinguish the problem. This company not only is trying to find the roots of toxic behavior, but they are also publicly sharing how they are doing it. As I read in the  article  the goal of the team is to change the way players act. Banning the players is only a temporary fix to a long-term problem. What is remarkable about what they are doing is they are sharin...

After class being online this week, in the textbook, we learned about civil inattention which is social norm that when you are in a public setting and there are plenty of people around you, you may be able to hear the conversation people are having near you, but you know not to bud in and intervene. For instance, at starbucks you can be sitting at a table with a friend having a conversation and the person at the table next to you is having a serious conversation with the person they are sitting with at that table. Although we may be able to hear their conversation, the civil inattention norm leads us to not intervene. Yet, on social media I feel that conversations happen and just about anyone can comment. The norm of civil inattention does not necessary apply to the online world people everyone has the option to comment on one another's posts. Even if you choose not to bud into and comment on "twitter beef" you can still like posts which shows you are intervening in some...

This week in class we did presentations on the five stages of group development and each group picked a topic that they could show each stage of development in. Some picked moves, some picked TV shows, and my group picked the basketball team to do our presentation on. In our group we found that creating this project well prepared us for our presentation. In reality, getting up in front of a class and explaining each stages is easier said than done. One of our group members was injured and was not able to make it to class in time until after we presented. But, I believe our presentation went really well and each person had knowledge on the stage that they were speaking on even though we were missing a member. We all understood the stages that we spoke on and with that understanding came great explanations. Overall, I feel that we had a great presentation and the experience was a great one to have! It prepares us for the types of presentations we are going to have later in life. Here...