Contour Essentials Group Review

   Today's group presentation given by Alison, Kayli, Tara, Brittany, and Lauren was very interesting and enlightening. I will have to say I knew people could collect/recycle trash and certain other things to create cool stuff, but I didn't know that it went out on such a large scale! Newspaper dresses, spoon lamps, sock teddy bears, and ect. All of it sounds just so radical! Honestly after their presentation today, I personally want to begin on a project such as one either talked about in their presentation or one just from on the internet.
   They spoke very audible and well. There was never a moment where I couldn't hear what any of them were saying. The background scheme for their slides weren't to flashy; they had a cool atmosphere to them and weren't really distracting. I thought the group did really well with their information gathering, as far as statistical facts. During the question part of the presentation, I thought they did very well with answering any of the asked questions. They had very detailed and easy to understand replies. Overall the group's presentation was great and I enjoyed it!

Grief Driven

     “Be Right Back” details the life of a woman whose husband tragically ended minutes into the episode. The woman was so engulfed in grief that she found a rather strange method of coping. Initially, she gets this program that texts almost like her husband did. This fueled her to upload all his files into the program so she would be able to further convinced it was like talking to her husband. The program I could virtually be on every piece of technology. She was often caught talking to the program through computer or phone. With the phone it resembled the same voice as the woman. She was offered relief because she felt a little closer to her husband, but she needed more. She invested a hefty amount of money into this “package”. Our later the product came to life. He looked almost like her husband! She became acquainted with the new package until she realized it wasn’t the same as her husband. He had certain habits or details that no one could easily copy. She soon had to rid herself of the product by locking it in the attic. The situation brought to light how far an induvial would go to deal with the pain and grief that they are experiencing. She went to the extreme by basically loving a robot so she couldn’t cope with her situation. If you think about it a lot of people do the same now. Some women can’t handle not being able to not be with a man so they go and buy “toys” that will help relieve them. You learn a valuable lesson in this show. "Grief is inevitable, however, don't allow it to dictate your life."

Man Vs Tech


In the espisode of Black Mirror, it shows how technology is ruling us. It shows how we are so connected to our phones. this century wouldn't know what to do without our phones.  Martha, Ash's her husband who was killed in a car accident. He was texting and driving. That's how most of car accident happened. This woman told her about this texting cite that can talk to the dead. Not literally talk to the dead. Then this program told her about a new this come out it was a robot. The weird thing is it looks like the person that pasted away. So this robot was made to look like Ash.

Close to Being Human?

In class last week we watched the Black Mirror episode called Be Right Back. In this episode, a young woman's husband lost his life in a car accident. She then was introduce to a program where she could "talk" to her dead husband through text and phone calls. This could be accomplished by downloading the app and uploading videos, pictures, and any other social media to the app.
After only a few days, the young lady decides to take her purchase up to the next stage, which was recreating her husband as a robot. This at first seemed to be a great idea because she was depressed and needed someone's affection, but it soon took a whole 360. She began to tell the robot that he wasn't enough; that it wasn't the same as her husband. It looked like him, talked like him, but didn't have the memories or life experiences the husband had.
This raises a question, what does it mean to be human? Is it just having life experiences and having those memories in tact. Because if so, like the robot in the show, it seemed pretty close to that. It was only lacking the memories and life experiences. If the robot had been made to just live it's own life, then maybe it would have been able to develop it's own personality and maybe even feelings towards certain things.

In class we watched a episode called "Be Right Back" this episode poses certain questions about cloning (such as whether or not one can truly clone a person). In the episode a woman named Martha loses her husband. Afterwards, she is informed of a program that would allow her to speak with a clone of her husband. The program does this by recording social media posts, text messages, and etc.  At first, she was reluctant but eventually she chooses to speak with him. As she continues to speak with him she chooses to get a clone of him. In the beginning, everything is great, but problems start to occur. Martha begins to notice the unsettling uncanniness of the clone. While the clone looks and talks like him, the clone lacks personality and emotion. As a result, the clone is unable to truly act like Martha's husband. The clone tries its best to provide a believable version of her husband but he is not able to make responses that are inline with the husbands personality. In this episode, it shows that it is impossible to produce a clone that shares the same memories, hopes, dreams, thoughts, & emotions a person.

We as humans are shown as being no different than the technology we use. We have become slaves to technology, living our lives on our phones and computers. Humans have become more and more like robots. We have become one with our social media filled world. It is both a blessing and a curse. This is because as we keep advancing our world each new innovation makes us more dependent on other technological advances for our everyday life. Our species has slowly become closer to being the robots that scientist try to create. The only real differences is that our emotions come from chemical reactions within the brain, we have to eat, and when we die our bodies decay. However in our daily livelihood we have imprisoned ourselves to routine and all sources of media.

Technology is lonely

How do we separate ourselves from technology? What makes us different from being robots? Humans have emotions, free will, senses etc. We are unique. It's not the one thing, but a combination of things that make us what we are. We are social creatures that thrive when surrounded by others. With todays technological advances, we can always stay connected and up to date on the lives of others. It's amazing and keeps us in contact with loved ones. But does it?

This week we watched an episode of Black Mirror called Be Right Back. A woman loses her partner, who happened to be very active on social media. She was shown a program that can help you talk somewhat to the person you've lost based on their previous social media activity. She eventually puts this program into an identical robot of her late partner. It becomes an obsession almost and a way to try and hold on to the man she loved. She becomes frustrated though because this robot can't behave like her partner would have. At the end she doesn't get rid of the robot but keeps him in the attic.

The idea that really stuck out for me in this episode is that social media does not connect us to people, it doesn't make us feel better. It isolates us and distracts us from what is going on in our lives. Everyday people are walking around with their eyes locked on their smart phones. I have been in situations where a group will be in the same room texting rather than looking up and saying something. Many of us scroll aimlessly through feeds to procrastinate on tasks at hand. Some try to boast a lavish lifestyle. And for what? To make yourself feel better by showing the world how lucky and happy you are? If you were happy would you need to do that? We can message people and post on their walls, but the human interaction is lost this way. We just read words and emojis. We don't get to see the facial expression or hear voice tones or have touch and sounds. We are essentially communicating with robots. And we act like robots by messaging and posting.

The lady in the episode was not able to really feel comforted by the robot because it's just not real contact. We isolate ourselves from the world around us because we have become robots, programed to like, share, tweet and snap.  This online interaction is almost uncanny. It's like you're being social, but never being fully satisfied, and then continue on social media to try and connect with someone. This life is lonely. We need personal interactions, we need those emotions and contact. If we don't have that we may as well be robots.

This article I think in a simple way sums up the kinds of isolation social media can cause.

http://www.activebeat.com/your-health/women/5-ways-social-media-contributes-to-social-isolation/