HungerWatch PowerPoint

https://docs.google.com/a/cbu.edu/presentation/d/10Ev_MBdOqPC8b0kl9996HWrD_IZC3UfEVzYyHDVpiqk/edit?usp=sharing

Cultural Appropriation

I found the issue of cultural appropriation to be a little odd the first time I heard of it. Being an immigrant myself, with an entirely different culture from language to food to dress, I sought out to share my experiences and way of living with many Americans. Imitation is the ultimate form of flattery; however, it is very disrespectful when the imitation is regarded as fashionable and trendy while the original is looked down on and seen as inferior. When sharing cultures, the most important trait to have is respect. Respect can only come with understanding which is why the application presented seems useful. The app would explain an element of someone's culture to the user to help them make informed decisions on whether or not something is appropriate. Though appropriateness is all subjective to each user, certain things can be universally regarded as offensive, such as wearing a sacred or religious dress as a casual costume. Many of these things can be looked up on google, but having all the data easily accessible is a cool way to investigate many topics at once and learn the answers to questions one would have not even thought to ask.

White Bear

The American prison system has been under criticism from ex-prisoners, human rights activists, experts in criminal psychology, and the U.S Congress  for failing in the rehabilitation of criminals. The prison system is like a revolving door, with a multitude of obstacles in the outside world for past offenders in terms of job opportunities, places of residence, and even constitutional rights such as voting and the right to bear arms despite having non-violent charges. In White Bear, rehabilitation is completely thrown out of the window as the prisoner has no memory of even committing the crime. Torture and manipulation are marketed as entertainment to form a facility in which a profit is made by allowing the public to inflict and observe harm onto people that deserve it, in this case a woman who recorded and helped kidnap/kill a little girl. Fear and punishment have been discarded as forms of rehabilitation in Swedish prisons. Swedish prisons have college and technical classes at the facilities, concentrating on discipline, learning, and growth for the prisoners to benefit them and society as a whole. It is ultimately cheaper to rehabilitate a prisoner fully with academic and emotional counseling, creating a better person, than having multiple trials for the same repeat offender who ends up spending a majority of his or her life in the system. State and local spending on incarceration has grown three times as much as spending on public education since 1980 ( US Department of Education ), meaning that your community somehow  spends more to inefficiently maintain criminals fed and clothed than the daily education, transportation, technology and food that  all the children between the ages of 5 and 18 receive apart from the teacher and staff salaries. White Bear to me is one of the least likely concepts to be implemented into reality in my opinion, partly because most prisons in America are run by the for-profit private corporations, CCA and GEO group. These two companies are responsible for making the USA the country with the most prisoners IN THE WORLD AND IN ALL OF HISTORY, and second most per capita prisoners. Prisoners are essentially 21st century slaves, manufacturing many retail products and cooking/preparing most of our country's fast food for cents a day. What do you think of this system? Is it actually not that bad considering these people did commit crimes and are essential in the economy of our country due to their cheap, consistent, and forced labor?

San Junipero: A Literal Capitalist Heaven

San Junipero is fascinating and opens up questions of consciousness, religion, and capitalism. A fully interactive digital world is in our hands by 2045 according to Ray Kurzweil, the director of engineering at a little company called Google. According to Kurzweil, our "bodies will be replaced by machines within 90 years and we will be able to upload our entire minds into computers within 30." San Junipero in the episode cost by the hour/week, it is interesting to wonder what the price would be in real life if Google were to offer what humanity seeks in television, film, music, and most art forms; an escape. With a movie ticket costing $10-$15 for 2 hours of entertainment, would a digital world with unlimited night clubs, sandy beaches, fast cars, and social interaction without any of the physical risks or inconveniences be only accessible to the wealthiest? Technology follows a trend of dropping in price dramatically a year or two after its release, but would the wealthy and powerful see this year as a chance to write up the rules for the world in which we will all subsequently live in? Certainly if we were to upload our minds into computers, the people running, making, and owning the computers would have extraordinary control over our actions, thoughts, and emotions; especially if one entity is responsible for all. This would most likely be the case as we run Google android software on Google phones to run applications from the Google Play Store and Google search things on Google Chrome. A digital world with no repercussions or limits would however provide extremely poor or disabled people with a much higher standard of life; theoretically, one could fit in a drawer in a big cabinet of unconscious humans, tube fed for life and costing the real world minimal resources as one lives lavishly in the digital life. The purpose, security, and control of "singularity" or this digital combination of consciousness and interactivity are things that must be figured out before the mechanics and execution of it.

San Junipero: More than a Story About Lesbians

I suppose guys were making the joke about the show being about lesbians to be funny? However if that's all that was gathered (shaking my head), that's sad. Anyway... I'd like to think of San Junipero has a movie that questions "faith". In the movie, people were given the option to die and maybe go to heaven or suffer in hell, to just die, or to be uploaded and live forever. It came down to either have a certain or leave things up to chance. At the end, there were millions of people who chose to be uploaded to the cloud; I guess you can say that people prefer certainties over possibilities.


I can imagine that a lot of Christians objected strongly to the creation of such a thing, accusing the creator of playing God. In contrary, there were those who were Christians and choose to see it as God allowing them all to live forever in a paradise. Another belief or question I have is aren't they still dead? The movie seems to imply that it is the mind that keeps the body alive and that people can survive without a body. Which is interesting! I think my mind makes me than as much of a human if not more than my biology. However, if people are still people well humans regardless as long as they have a mind, how does the Quagmire even exist? Ideally, people should still have feelings and experience many aspects of humanity with just their mind, right? To me, the people are still dead because there is no living connection between the thought and the actions. They are like "ghosts" and eventually they become soulless.

Armando, Sebastian, and Jacob's new technology invention, Hunger Watch, to solve a moral, political, or social problem was very interesting.  The invention was a kind of watch like object with a beeper that alerts homeless people about leftover meals from fast food restaurants within a 2 mile radius.  The restaurant employees will have beepers too.  When it is closing time, and there is food leftover from the working day, the workers will box up the food, and will alert the near homeless people about meals for them.  The homeless people would then show up at the fast food restaurant and show the worker their beeper, and then get a warm meal in return.  This invention is potentially a great one because homeless people will be able to get a meal and fast food restaurants will not throw out perfectly good food and good resources.  However, this could still promote certain issues and circumstances.  For example, how are these beepers going to be distributed to homeless people?  And how are the fast food employees going to be sure that the homeless are not dangerous? I also do not think that the price of these beepers were mentioned.  Will they have a price or will they be free? Other than those few issues, I think that this proposal of a new invention for homeless people and the recycling of good food about to go to waste is a good idea, but it just needs a little bit more thought put into it. 

Pillow Talk

This was interesting. I like the radar the best; I think that's a very good way to prevent rapes; informing potential victims, can help them know which areas to avoid. I didn't really understand Daniel's point. I'm presuming he was getting at that people will be encouraged to report their rapists. I think rape is a serious issue that needs resolving and those who are guilty need to be brought to justice. The statistics were shocking! Also the number of people who raised their hands to Ashley's question was jaw dropping; it was 100% (I meant to raise mine, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to). Also, I think that the app or device needs to be quickly and more easily accessible. Maybe a rape whistle..? It'll be silent like a dog whistle and trigger police system and a locator so that help can arrive.

Hunger Watch

I really enjoyed the presentation. I think that it would have been better if Sabastian's part would have happened at the beginning. Time is of the essence; it's very important to be on time especially for your own presentation. I don't know if the doughnuts were a purposeful thing, but it was a great added effect. Would have been a great opener; those doughnuts you are enjoying were about to be thrown away, then go on to say facts about food usage, recycling. I think some things to take into consideration are who would ensure that the people who are in need are getting good quality food, and who would pay those people for their work? If people are getting rid of food, even if there's an incentive, they may not necessarily give the best quality when a profit isn't directly given.

"Pillow Talk"

Rape has been a consistent problem all across the world for a very long time. The idea of the "Pillow Talk" app is to help combat this problem. This app is supposed to be a very discreet way for rape victims to alert authorities that they are being or are potentially about to be sexually assaulted. The app has three different buttons, but the one that is most prominent is the button that alerts authorities, In order for this button to work, the user must hold down the button for a certain amount of time before it actually sends out an alert. Following this alert being received by police, the police will wait a certain amount of time, and if there is no follow up message sent to let them know that the situation is not threatening, police will be sent out to the location that the warning was sent from.

"Pillow Talk" is a very creative idea, and though it may not stop all rapes from happening, it is a good way to make women feel more safe. The main flaw that I see in the app is that the main goal of making an app like this is to make it popular among women. We can't make something popular among women since women are commonly the people who are being raped. However, we can't make this app popular among women and not expect men or rapists in general to know about it. Even though the app is supposed to be discreet, it cannot be discreet if everyone knows what it looks like. Therefore when a rape victim goes to reach for the app, the rapist will already know what they are trying to do. I do think that this is a better method than having to actually call the police because it would be a much more quick method, but I don't think that we could make an app this popular "discreet".

pillow talk

Pillow talk was an app created by Daniel Asshcraft and his group. The app was meant to help people who are ever attacked and their is no one in the area to help them out. All the person would have to do is open the app from their phone and the app would contact the police, if the person were to mis click the button for whatever reason they had a short time frame to tell the cops that they were fine, if not cops would arrive to the location of the phone. Also a cool feature of the phone was that it showed you were past rappers lived in the area.

I personally thought that that specific feature was really neat. since people could open their phone and just see if they are in a good area or not. That feature could help avoid problems or situations for people. Overall I think that this app could really help people also the best thing about the app is that it is free for people to download.