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Chapter 1 Unwrapping The Gift - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Cellphone makers and service providers developed new features and services, adding cameras, video, Web connections, and location detection.
      - Within very few years, people all over the world used phones, rather than PCs or laptops, as their connection to the Internet.
      - These examples suggest the number and variety of unanticipated applications of this one, relatively new “connection” device.
      - Rudeness is an issue with cellphones. People use them in inappropriate places, disturbing others.
      - In many areas of life, people take more risk when technology increases safety.
    - - Now, the operating systems for smartphones, tablets, and some computers (e.g., Windows) have kill switches.
      - Kill switches could remove content that infringes copyrights. They could remove content that a company or government deems offensive.
    - - Social networks are enormously popular with hundreds of millions of people because of the ease with which they can share so many aspects of their lives and activities with family, friends, co-workers, and the public.
      - Social networking brought us more threats to privacy and a steady stream of updates on the trivial details of people’s lives.
      - Gradually, social network companies developed sophisticated privacy controls and feedback systems to reduce problems, though they certainly have not eliminated them.
      - Overall, to most people, the benefits outweigh the problems, and social networking has become the new way of communicating.
      - Researchers find that people use social networks mostly to keep in touch with friends and family and that the easy, frequent contact enhances relationships, empathy, and a sense of community.
    - - The Web gives us access to information and access to audiences unimaginable a generation ago.
      - It empowers us to do things that we used to rely on experts to do for us.
      - The openness of the Internet enables “innovation without permission,” in the words of Vinton Cerf, one of the key people who has worked on Internet development since it began.
      - But more, it illustrates how the Internet facilitates and encourages creativity and the quick creation and distribution of culture artifacts and entertainment, with the contribution of ideas, modifications, variations, improvements, and new works from thousands of people.
      - The impact of the connections provided by the Web and cellphones is more dramatic in remote or less developed areas of the world, many of which do not have landline telephones.
      - Telemedicine, or long-distance medicine, refers to remote performance of medical exams, analyses, and procedures using specialized equipment and computer networks.
  - - - The Web enabled a peer-to-peer economy with websites where ordinary people sell or trade their skills, make small loans, and trade their homes for vacations.
      - Encryption and secure servers also made payments safer.!
    - - Libraries have provided free access to books, newspapers, and journals for generations, and radio and television provided free news and entertainment before the Internet.
      - But there is so much more free stuff now—a truly astounding amount—conveniently available on the Web.
      - That keeps the site free to everyone else and free of other paid ads. Businesses provide some free information and services for good public relations and as a marketing tool.
  - - - Artificial intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science that makes computers perform tasks we normally (or used to) think of as requiring human intelligence.
      - AI also includes tasks performed automatically by the human brain and nervous system for example, vision (the capture and interpretation of images by cameras and software).
      - Learning is a characteristic of many AI programs. That is, the output of the program improves over time as it “learns” by evaluating results of its decisions on the inputs it encounters.
      - Many AI applications involve pattern recognition, that is, recognizing similarities among different things.
      - Philosopher John Searle argues that computers are not and cannot be intelligent.
      - They do not think; they manipulate symbols. They do so at very high speed, and they can store (or access) and manipulate a huge quantity of data, but they are not conscious. They do not understand; they simulate understanding.
      - Whether we characterize machines as intelligent, or use the word metaphorically, or say that machines simulate intelligence, advances in AI are continuing at a very fast pace.
    - - Robots are mechanical devices that perform physical tasks traditionally done by humans or tasks that we think of as human-like activities.
      - They work faster and more accurately than people can. Computer software with artificial intelligence controls most robotic devices now.
      - Most robotic devices are specialpurpose devices with a relatively limited set of operations.
    - - Tiny motion-sensing and gravity-sensing devices collect status data. Complex software interprets the data and determines the necessary motions, and then sends signals to motors.