Making Dreams a Reality: 3-D Printing

Stephanie Niemiroski

Did you know that the Nittany Lion Shrine was replicated using a 3-D printer? Did you know that this occurred right here on our very own campus? Co-founded in 2013 by a group of engineering students, the 3-D Printing Club has successfully prototyped a variety of items, including a chess rook, an owl figurine, plastic guitar bobbins and even DIY cookie cutters! The club itself has six 3-D printers, four of which were hand built by the students themselves. The 3-D Printing Club has evolved into a community of about 30 3-D printing hobbyists interested in the hands-on aspects of printing, building and modifying 3-D printers. Among its crowd of engineers, the club also has members from the College of Agricultural Sciences and the Smeal College of Business.

Wesley Hart, a senior studying supply chain management, knew nothing about 3-D printing when he joined the club last spring. At the time, Hart was doing research for his independent study about experimental pickup design for electric guitars. Instead of ordering expensive pre-made bobbins or custom molds, Hart began to use the 3-D printers to create prototypes of plastic bobbins, which are a component of an electric guitar's pickup. Hart believes that the power of 3-D printing today is in prototyping, sharing, “"You can take an idea and test things very quickly and inexpensively and then go back to the drawing board if needed.” This semester, Hart is planning to 3-D print a guitar with an interlocking body design with a conventional neck and strings. Just like a traditionally manufactured guitar, Hart will be able to plug the instrument into an amp and play. With the assistance of the 3-D Printing Club at our very own university, he not only knows how to use the printer, he's hoping 3-D printing, along with his business knowledge, will help him fulfill his career dream to one day manufacture electric guitars.

In addition to the student club, the University offers a 3-D printing class in the College of Engineering and printing services for students studying architecture, information sciences and technology, and mechanical and nuclear engineering, among others!

Today, this additive manufacturing technique is playing a key role in advancing such areas as medicine, food, and the aerospace and automotive industries. Recently, surgeons at a New York hospital have credited 3-D printing with helping to save the life of a 2-week-old baby who required complicated heart surgery. Using MRI scan data, Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital in New York City 3-D printed a copy of the child’s heart, which was both perforated with holes and structured unusually. Normally surgeons see the heart for the first time when the chest is open, but this 3-D printed heart provided the surgeons the opportunity to study the organ and develop a detailed surgery strategy beforehand.

After learning of this superior technology, I still have trouble grasping the concept of this phenomenon. Reading how this technology has the potential to save lives and promote dreams is incredible. Luckily, we, us students, have the opportunity to watch this in action on our very own campus. As Wesley Hart puts it, 3-D printers can make dreams a reality, so go out there and do it!

The 3-D printed plastic heart studied by a surgeon before performing surgery on a 2-week-old baby.

http://news.psu.edu/story/335916/2014/11/24/academics/dreams-reality-club-explores-potential-3-d-printing?utm_source=newswire&utm_medium=email&utm_term=336171_HTML&utm_content=11-24-2014-21-24&utm_campaign=Penn%20State%20Today 

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/3d-printed-heart-saves-babys-life-as-medical-technology-leaps-ahead-9776931.html

3D Printing Controversy

Steve Prongay

             The reason there are two sides to every story is because there are people in this world with different thoughts, beliefs and perceptions on life.  What one person thinks is right; another may think it is wrong.  People are extraordinarily diverse, and because of that there are positives and negatives, pros and cons, advantages and disadvantages and good and bad to every single thing.  Everything said, made and sold is controversial.  Every product was once put on a drawing board where the pros and cons were listed to see if whatever that product may have been should have been produced.  Some products are more controversial to others, no matter how beneficial they may be for this world.  An example of a controversial product is  3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, which we talked about in class just a few weeks ago.

            The 3D printer has potential to transform society for the better, and when it was just an idea in its creator’s head, I bet that was their immediate intention.  However, nobody can ignore the potential negative consequences that exist when something this complex and life changing is produced.   In class, we watched a video on the 3D printer and how it can be used to make weapons, which put in the wrong hands, can be extremely dangerous.  Who is to blame if a gun is 3D printed and used to kill someone?  Who is to blame if a knife is 3D printed and it is used to stab someone?  Is the owner of the printer or the manufacturer of the printer to blame?

            Just like most things, for every positive there is to a specific product, there is a negative to match it.  The invention of the 3D printer has developed many potential problems that the world will now face, even though it will be extremely useful for society.  To begin, the 3D printer, as you can imagine, uses a lot of energy.  3D printers consume about 50 to 100 times more electrical energy than injection molding to make an item of the same weight (techrepublic).  The use of the 3D printers will also let out unhealthy air emissions.  According to researchers at the Illinois Institute of Technology, the emissions from desktop 3D printers are similar to burning a cigarette or cooking on a gas or electric stove.  There are many other possible negative outcomes with the production of 3D printers.  The possibility of 3D printed drugs, the safety of items produced from the 3D printer that come in contact with food and national security risks are among the possible negatives.

            Cheap manufacturing, quick production, less waste and better quality headline the benefits of 3D printing.  3D printing is increasingly being used my large companies such as Converse to replace some of their traditional manufacturing methods with cost savings up to 70% (augmentedtomorrow).  Additive manufacturing is being adopted everyday by big name companies to replace their current prototyping methods and to even play a part in the manufacturing process.  3D printing is no doubt a double-edged sword, having its many advantages and disadvantages.  Additive manufacturing opens up a world of new possibilities for all industries, yet still is a potentially dangerous machine that needs to be studied and worked on extensively to be perfect.  Because of this, 3D printing will always be a controversial product, and knowing the disadvantages of it serves as a benefit to all of its users and the world as a whole.

My take on the 'Dark Side'

There are quite a few aspects that we have talked about in class that can be used to make the internet seem less "safe."  My perspective is people just need to practice common sense as with any situation in life. Issues with child pornography, purchasing illegal goods, and private information are ongoing debates, but some fail to realize that just as in real life, not all things can be monitored. And just as crime in real life does not mean the whole world is 'bad', crime on the web can exist without making the whole existence of the internet 'bad'.  Education will go a long way under both circumstances in my opinion.  Dependency and the false perception of control are the only negatives I can see coming from the internet.

Instantly Googling a solution or fact can, in my opinion, 'weaken the mind' and inhibit problem solving skills. I sometimes wonder how people would react to a situation in which there was no internet for a week.  I realize that most people wouldn't realize how intertwined their lives are with the internet; their communication, their bank accounts, bills, and so on.  However, the flip side is how much more efficient we have become with the assistance of the web, which has done more good than harm. 

In regards to students being punished for conveying their emotions about a teacher,  I think the issue is complicated when it does not have to be.  Facebook and other social media is a place to share your thoughts, however, your thoughts may have a bigger audience then you intended.  This means people should sensor themselves, the same way they would in a public face to face setting.  In my opinion, unless the student posts comments in a school related setting or school related social media page, freedom of ‘speech’, should still apply.  I greatly dislike that schools and future employers have made social media into something that still restricts what people want to say or show.  Furthermore, it’s a major hypocritical behavior that should be mended.  Or is it something that internet users now have to tolerate?  The consequences of internet usage in real life is something that some may not agree with, but when the two are so closely related it is virtually impossible to say “this is ok online but not in real life.”   

To me, 3D printing is no different than the internet, or any other tool really.  It depends on usage, and while we may try to regulate usages, I believe the guy who wanted to open source the gun file has a valid point, what happens when we can’t?  Again I go back to education, educating people on how to use it, and why the ‘bad’ ways to use tools are considered bad.  I’m very interested to see how internet usage and laws pan out within the next decade, the rapid progress in technology should lead to a new wave of legislation that will be highly influential in the more distant future.

3D Printing

Everyone is always afraid of how the next big technological advance is going to affect our society. Take cell phones and pagers for example; we have become more efficient but also more reliant on them. They have had both positive and negative affects, some intended and others unintended. With the cell phone, you get faster, more real time communication, but with advancement, you see a steady trend of people becoming more wired to technology (e.g., walking and talking, becoming disengaged with friends and family, etc.). This is one of those things, as is with the 3D printer, in which you must weigh the pros and cons, and evaluate the impact it will have on society, not just for now, but also as it adapts and changes. At first, we used cell phones just for phone calls. Similar to the first cell phones, 3D printing is not widely used and accepted. Today, we use cell phones for the internet, texting, gaming, and many other things. With that being said, I would be very interested in seeing how the 3D printing of today will change in the future. These are the things we need to be thinking about when producing laws and regulations in new industries. Furthermore, we need to be careful because the production of weapons via 3D printing could affect the way our country regulates the entire system. 

One of the other serious things to consider is the ability to bring something so sophisticated to areas that may not be so advanced. When reading Starr’s article that talks about NASA’s first 3D print in space, I had an idea relating to bringing 3D printing to the International Space Station. It’s such an amazing thing to be able to print out a part needed in a place that’s so far away from any type of civilization (Starr). You can apply the same idea to areas of the world that have little access to highly specialized items. These places could have the ability to print out a commodity that would have otherwise been much too difficult to obtain. I think that the coming months and years will reveal whether or not 3D printing could have such affects on the isolated parts of the world. 

As you can see, 3D printing has many positive and negative affects on society. I personally think that people may be focusing a bit too much on weapon manufacturing, and need to look a little more into all the other positive ways 3D printing could help our communities and other organizations alike. We talked a lot about 3D printing in class, as well as the implications it can have on society, both good and bad. However, there is much more to 3D printing than weapon manufacturing, and I hope I have helped shed some light on the greater possibilities that this technology could bring. Additionally, referring to the video we watched in class, they weren't manufacturing entire weapons, but were producing less significant parts that play no major role in the actual firing of the weapon. With that being said, I believe that they could produce a whole weapon. We need to proceed with caution and reflect on the negative affects most of the newer technologies have had on us. The cell phone and internet have played a major part in wars, radio activated bombs, and propaganda on the web, but the positive effects of these technologies have greatly outweighed their negative counterparts. 3D printing is going to be a huge area of interest in the coming years, and I cannot wait to see what it brings.

Starr, Michelle. "NASA Completes First Successful In-space 3D-printing Project." CNET. N.p., 25 Nov. 2014. Web. 26 Nov. 2014.

http://www.cnet.com/news/nasa-completes-first-successful-in-space-3d-printing-project/

The Darkside of the Internet: The Deepweb and Darknet

With the advent of computer mediated communication there have been people trying to exploit it. Illegal activities on the internet like child pornography, the selling of drugs, and other illicit activities. These things happen on the surface web from time to time on websites like mega upload and pirate bay, but there is a part of the internet that is harder to access, where most illicit things take place, the deep web and Darknet.

The deep web is the space on the internet that has not been indexed by a search engine. To put it simply you cannot find these websites through something like Google or bing. Some companies and people have tried to access them, and/or document all of these websites, but given the size of it (estimated to.be much bigger than the surface web) this has been a fruitless endeavor. Federal agencies see this as a safe haven for crime, which it can be given it's "off the grid" feeling. Some special web browsers have been developed to access the deep web (tor specifically), and I personally know a few people who purchase their drugs from deep web websites.

The Darknet is similar in the sense that it is impossible to monitor, but different in the ways operates fundamentally. The Darknet is a series of private peer to peer connections that make it so people can interact though the internet without ever being on the surface web and the deep web. These private connections are notorious for trading illegally obtained photos usually child pornography. A few years ago the sometimes hactivist group Anonymous, tried to root out as much child pornography as they could with some success. A month or so ago "the fappening" happened, and most of those pictures were likely obtained through the Darknet trading.

The internet has without a doubt revolutionized the way people communicate. The problem, as with any invention is that people will inevitably try to exploit for their own personal gain, illegal or otherwise. Spaces in the internet like the deep web and the Darknet make room for this exploitation. While it was never the intent of the internet to trade things like child pornography, the dark side of computer mediated communications as been shown through these gaps in monitoring.

3-D Printing

Josh Spicer

Imagine a future in which a device that connected to a computer could print a solid object. A future, in which, we can have tangible goods as well as intangible services delivered to our desktops and into our homes via the Internet. A future where the everyday "atomization" of virtual objects into hard reality has turned the mass pre-production and stock-holding of a wide range of goods and spare parts into no more than an historical legacy. Such a future may sound like it is being plucked from the worlds of Star Trek. However, transporter devices that can instantaneously deliver us to remote locations may remain a fantasy, 3D printers capable of outputting physical objects such as plates, clothing, and even guns have been in both development and application for over three decades, and are now starting to present a whole host of new digital manufacturing capabilities. 3D printing may therefore soon do for manufacturing what computers and the Internet have already done for the creation, processing and storage of information.

The emerging process of 3-D printing, which uses computer-created digital models to create real-world objects, has produced everything from toys to jewelry to food.

Soon, however, 3-D printers may be spitting out something far more complex, and controversial: human organs.

For years now, medical researchers have been reproducing human cells in laboratories by hand to create blood vessels, urine tubes, skin tissue and other living body parts. Engineering full organs, with their complicated cell structures, is much more difficult. Enter 3-D printers, which because of their precise process can reproduce the vascular systems required to make such organs viable. Scientists are already using the machines to print tiny strips of organ tissue. While printing whole human organs for surgical transplants is still years away, the technology is rapidly developing. The idea of printing a human kidney or liver in a lab may seem incomprehensible, even creepy, but for many scientists in the field, bioprinting holds great promise. Authentic printed organs could be used for drug or vaccine testing, freeing researchers from less accurate methods such as tests on animals or on synthetic models. There's the hope that 3-D printers could someday produce much-needed organs for transplants. Americans are living longer, and as we get deeper into old age our organs are failing more. Some 18 people die in the United States each day waiting in vain for transplants because of a shortage of donated organs. I found a video that explain 3-D human printing in much more detail and it’s actually really interesting to watch.

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2014/03/20/spc-vital-signs-3d-printing-grandfather.cnn.html

Bioprinting works like this: Scientists harvest human cells from biopsies or stem cells, then allow them to multiply in a petri dish. The resulting mixture, a sort of biological ink, is fed into a 3-D printer, which is programmed to arrange different cell types, along with other materials, into a precise three-dimensional shape. Doctors hope that when placed in the body, these 3-D-printed cells will integrate with existing tissues. The process already is seeing some success. Last year a 2-year-old girl in Illinois, born without a trachea, received a windpipe built with her own stem cells. The U.S. government has funded a university-led "body on a chip" project that prints tissue samples that mimic the functions of the heart, liver, lungs and other organs. The samples are placed on a microchip and connected with a blood substitute to keep the cells alive, allowing doctors to test specific treatments and monitor their effectiveness. This is an exciting new area of medicine. It has the potential for being a very important breakthrough. However, there are some ethical concerns. What happens when complex enhanced organs involving nonhuman cells are made? Who will control the ability to produce them? Who will ensure the quality of the resulting organs?" Bioprinted organs are also likely to be expensive, which could put them out of reach of all but the wealthiest patients. Will only the rich be able to afford it? Are we playing God? Despite all these concerns i think 3-D printing is a huge step in the right direction and i cant wait to see what the future holds.

3D Printing

Wow, it's really hard to believe that 3D printing is actually here. I remember hearing the idea and saying 'Oh yeah that will be cool' not really giving it much thought because it seemed forever and a day away. Well that happened fast.....3D printing is like a dream to me since I have a slight online shopping addiction, however I never really looked at the bad side of it....After watching the video in class last Friday about it I never really realized how dangerous it can actually be, people can start printing their own weapons and everything. It's going to be hard to regulate but I do think it's doable, they can put some sort of history on it like the internet so you can see what they've printed just like you can see what webpages they've been on.

I found this link that I really like about how 3D printing could be regulated and on whether or not government should intervene or not.
http://inlinepolicy.com/2014/3d-printing-regulation-to-intervene-or-not-to-intervene/

I do absolutely think that 3D printing is a great thing, it's going to change the way people shop and use computers so much and it's really going to push us in an innovative direction. I think some sort of regulations will have to be put in place so that it remains safe to use but pretty soon everyone is going to have one in their home so they better get moving with it. I agree with it 100% I think it's going to be an amazing thing that will revolutionize the way we do things

Here's a link that I liked about why people should stop criticizing the idea of 3D printing so much
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-morningside-post/leave-3d-printing-alone_b_4666660.html

While the 3D printing issue has some things to be worked out with how it is going to be regulated and by who it will be regulated by but I think they just need to get over it and figure out the details because it's coming whether we are ready for it or not.

The Dark Side of the Internet: "Swatting"

When you hear the term "swatting" you may picture yourself swatting away a bug on your arm, but in reality swatting has become a very dangerous form of internet trolling. When someone is swatted an internet troll anonymously phones in some type of threat to the police and gives them the address of their victim. Most of the common threats include hostages at gunpoint or a good ole fashioned bomb threat. If the call is convincing enough police often sends a SWAT team, hence the term swatting. This potentially life threatening prank has been around for quite some time, but with the growing popularity of internet streaming sites like twitch.tv police are seeing a rise in the swatting phenomena. Being able to see their pranks unfold on a live feed while sitting at home behind their computer screen with complete anonymity is much more enjoyable for these trolls than just any plain old prank call.

Most of the victims of swatting pranks don’t suffer any consequences after the incident is deemed a hoax, but twitch.tv sensation, Alexander Wachs a.k.a. Whiteboy7thst, wasn’t so lucky. In the middle of one of his normal streams a police officer and a K-9 walk into the room then the stream shuts off. Someone had called in a prank threat to his local police department and when the police did a routine sweep of the house to make sure there was no danger, they found Wachs’ personal marijuana stash and promptly arrested him. Like I said most streamers have been more fortunate than Whiteboy. Jordan “n0thing” Gilbert, a successful Counter-Strike player, and his father were able to defuse the situation and explain to police what was going on. After talking to the police, the 911 response unit placed a marker on their address and if any emergencies were phoned in the family would be called before any emergency personnel would be dispatched. So not only does having the SWAT team show up at their home pose a danger for this family, but now if actual emergency arises the 911 dispatchers have to make sure it is real before they will send help. I find that absolutely ridiculous.

In 2013, the FBI placed the number of swatting incidents at about 400 per year, but many people think that number is low. Also in 2013, Google trends showed an increase in the term “swatting” and it has only gone up since. Not only is it hard to determine when a threat is real or a hoax, but police are also finding it increasingly difficult to track down suspects when most of the perpetrators are wannabe hackers. In all reality it is very easy to make one of these prank phone calls and not get caught. All one really needs is a VPN client and to make the call from Skype’s calling feature. Internet trolls like Lizard Squad are infamous for exposing victims home address, phone numbers, and other sensitive information you wouldn’t want in the wrong hands. The Lizard Squad has taken responsibility for a few swatting incidents. They also like to DDOS websites so that no one is able to access the website. They took down twitch.tv for 4 hours and told people that if they wanted it back up they had to tweet at the hacking groups twitter page pictures of themselves with Lizard Squad written across their foreheads. While CMC has enhanced many things in our lives there are also “Keyboard Warriors” out there that hid behind their computer screens and cause other people grief and harm. 

http://www.dailydot.com/esports/swatting-twitch-trend-prank/

The Potential Dark Side of 3D Printing

The Potential Dark Side of 3D Printing

Just like during the 90's, the era in which electronics, technology and the internet really became more prevalent in society, so is a new wave of technology today. The very concept of 3D printing is genius, and the reality of it is like magic! Technology has really done it this time.

However, just like with any new invention, there are potential pros and cons.

One of the most recent technological inventions of our time was social media. Once we all got a whiff of that, the intially reaction was that this was an awesome creation because of all of the possibilities that it presents; we could communicate with a large group all at once, stay in touch with loved ones over long distances, organize online meetings during our busy schedules, and share thoughts and memories conveniently; the possibilities were endless. But sometimes, a plethora of possibilities could be dangerous.

As we know, there is a dark side of computer mediated communication. In fact, it seems that with every positive element of social media, there is a negative element to match it. Along with the benefits to create, share and mass communication come costs as well; bullies, spam, trolling and other offensive content.

As 3D Printing is just in the beginning stages, I can't state any facts as to the negative outcomes of the invention. However, with the knowledge that with good comes bad, I am worried about the possible dangers of 3D Printing. With the power to make your concepts come to life, instantly, who knows what people will do!

The Dark Side: Trolling

Trolling is a term that I’d heard my brothers talk about but I never really knew what it meant. This week in class we discussed the dark side of communication including trolling, spamming, and flaming. Trolling is defined as posting inappropriate, malicious, or inflammatory messages in an online group with the intention of disrupting the community or causing emotional responses in its members.

This act of online communication has causes issues of bullying and even death. Trolls will attack a tribute site, causing grief and emotional trauma to families. Hannah Smith is a prime example of this. She was bullied relentlessly on ask.fm, a question-and-answer site. Users encouraged her to kill herself and posted comments such as “drink bleach” and “bitch”. The horrible messages and bullying drove Hannah to kill herself. According to the DailyDot, Hannah was the seventh teenager to kill herself after being bullied on this site.

The trolling took on a new level when obscene messages from anonymous users started popping up on Hannah Smith’s Facebook remembrance page. Her page has 47,000 likes and dozens of inappropriate comments. “Stupid attention whoring bitch deserved it anyway...” is an example of a comment on her tribute page. The 4chan imageboard behind it all, /b/, is behind some of the most sadistic pranks on the Internet. Their other pranks include rigging a poll so that Kiim Jong-un won TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year and putting names like “Hitler did nothing wrong” on a flavoring poll for Mountain Dew.

Reading this article, and others about trolling and bullying, has left me astounded at what people do on the internet. Sure, I can understand wanting to poke fun at people and leave silly or inflammatory comments. But posting atrocious, obscene remarks on a page that drives a teenager to kill herself? This I do not understand. Do these people have no remorse? And continuing the comments on her remembrance page is just wrong. A response to “We all miss you princess. Sleep tight.” was “I’m sure she’ll sleep very tightly while Satan is molesting her.” What?! How could someone write that! It is so wrong on so many levels.

I think this is a great example of the dark side of communication. It demonstrates how communicating through a media depersonalizes messages. It makes it easier for people to send nasty messages because there are no consequences. It’s easier to do this when you don’t have to look a person in the eyes and say it to their face.

I wish that these people could be held responsible for their actions. They drove a teenaged girl to suicide. However, it is difficult to determine if their actions were the only cause behind her death. It is also difficult to censor online activity. How do you determine if something is obscene or lewd? There are no real precedents for laws surrounding cyber bullying. Hopefully in the future there will be some control over it so no more teenagers die.

http://www.dailydot.com/news/4chan-hannah-smith-suicide-facebook-trolls/

The dark side of the Internet: Drugs and Weapons

While the Internet has always led the way forward with different innovations leading to increased accessibility of a lot of information, it has also created ways for people to do malicious things. Silk Road is an example of how the Internet has enabled people to acquire illegal things. Silk Road was created in February of 2011 and was an online black market, a website where people could buy and sell anything, legal or illegal. This included drugs of any kind and information, among many other things. Seller accounts were, at first, auctioned off to the highest bidder due to limited accounts. Then, due to the success of Silk Road, they removed the cap on how many seller accounts could be created and seller accounts were just charged a fixed price to be created. When you think about it, how Silk Road did not get shut down within days of its creation is pretty incredible.

Eventually, after about two years of investigation by the FBI, the website was shut down and Ross William Ulbricht, also known as “Dread Prate Roberts,” was charged with being the site’s founder. Several months after Silk Road had been shut down, a new Silk Road 2.0 had been created with a new “Dread Prate Roberts” and assurances were made by the administrators of the new site that it had vastly improved security, however this website was too shut down about a year after it was created. There are many variations of this type of website that are created and shut down.

Another website very close to Silk Road is The Armory. It ran in a fashion similar to Silk Road in the way that it was paid for through bit coins and it allowed you to purchase things that shouldn’t be accessible to all people. The Armory allowed you to purchase pistols, rifles, shotguns, and more without having to do anything besides pay for it. No background checks were run or anything of that nature. That could have possibly allowed for a group of people to arm themselves through this website and, if they so chose, either shoot up a school or a hospital or do something of that nature. Thankfully, The Armory was shut down when Silk Road was shut down, but there are still sites similar to it, the same way there are sites similar to Silk Road.

It is inevitable that sites like Silk Road and The Armory continue to pop up due to the sheer demand for drugs, weapons, and the other things sold, and the lengths that some people will go to acquire these items. Silk Road was only one of these drug websites. There are other sites just like it up and running at this very moment that the FBI are seeking out and hunting down. These sites are only possible through the anonymity that the Internet allows a person to have through different codes and routing numbers.  Massive drug rings and markets on such a scale (totaling over 1.2 billion dollars in about two years) are simply not possible without the Internet providing the wide spread accessibility to said drug markets.

Deception in Relationships

Brushaud Stanislaus 

     I find the main key of the Dark Side of Communication is deception.  The MTV television shows Catfish most definitely. There will always be good outcomes and bad but it seems based on the show that most outcomes are horribly bad. Deception is such a strong issue to the point where 60% of people believe it has a place in a relationship to a tiny 20% who agree one should never lie. Those are depressing facts and play a huge role in the morality of most online communication users who participate on the dark side. Because of these people; trust being an important foundation in relationships, are putting relationships in jeopardy. 

     In season 3 episode 7 all of these factors came into one relationship.  A girl named Solana was in contact with a person on Myspace which developed into an online relationship.  But suddenly the guy disappeared for a few years. Suddenly he shows up back in her life but this time she is already in a relationship.  She contacts the guys of Catfish to help her get to the bottom of her situation because there were too many red flags and she could not decide with who she wanted to take a chance with. In the she did actually meet the guy his name is Elijah but a lot of concerns are brought forward for food for thought.  This girl was in a committed relationship with someone who wanted to take the next step yet she was contemplating a life and relationship with someone online.  Though Elijah was slightly altruistic with her in the beginning because he was afraid to meet there left level of commitment issues faced with both Elijah and her current boyfriend.

     I felt that her current boyfriend had to deal with a lot of demons of this relationship because he actually had the strength to be okay with Solana venturing off to potentially pursue Elijah. Personally I don’t think I would have it in me to be able to let a love one do that. But I guess it matters in the severity of the relationship as well. What Solana could have done was lie about the entire thing but she was honest with him and kept everything upfront and held nothing back. This was great for developing their relationship because there would have been fatal consequences if lying became a part of the relationship.  He would have been hurt, suspicious, and the lack of trust would most certainly diminish to non-existent.  

      Solana did decide to stay with her current boyfriend but she did decide to stay close friends with Elijah and they also received matching tattoos to represent their promise to each other to stay close.   

     There are many faults in this entire relationship which I need not get into for the sake of this blog but my main fact is that deception could bring a relationship to some weird places.  Due to this relationship it caused many issues in the relationship especially with her boyfriend having to trust this will not happen again.  His guard I would say would be up and the closeness of their relationship would diminish. Though they are currently married the tattoo will always be a reminder to both Solona and Danny her now husband what could have been.

Jeremy Cannon- Internet Trolls and Us

          As with all tools, services and commodities, the Internet is no different when it comes to falling to the darker part of human nature. I was no at all surprised about some of the things we talked about in class regarding the issue. I’m sure everyone has had his or her own experiences with many of the flavors that the dark side of the Internet presents itself in. In a way, it is only natural that people will find a way to deceive, corrupt and manipulate each other by using the Internet, just as they did, and still do, face to face. The internet is just another tool that makes it much more easier to accomplish those twisted goal.

            One of the most common instances of the dark side of the internet I have experienced, by far, is trolling. Urban dictionary defines trolling as “Being a prick on the internet because you can. Typically unleashing one or more cynical or sarcastic remarks on an innocent by-stander, because it’s the internet and, hey, you can.” I feel as though that definition hits the nail on head when it comes to Trolls and trolling. Trolls are pricks, only looking to disrupt online communities. In a nutshell, they are annoying.

            The place where I find most of these internet trolls is while either playing online games While gaming, I run into people who will not play fair, kill teammates, yell out racial slurs and just be generally obnoxious. There are ways to deal with people like that, usually through reporting them to administrators or just collectively booting them from the game session, but that doesn't seem to discourage them any.

            But how bad is trolling? An article Emma Cueto sheds a bit of light on this question. It states that Men are much more likely than women to engage in trolling; 30 percent of men have “argued maliciously” with a stranger about an opinion online, while among women the rate is only about 18 percent. Only a slightly smaller percentage (of both men and women) has argued with a stranger about a fact. Teens and young adults were also more likely than older Americans to have been trolls, which also makes a lot of sense. Other findings include: A total of 77 percent of Americans think that anonymity contributes to trolling and 4 percent don’t think that trolls can be fought at all. About half of Americans believe a commenter has crossed the line if they are deliberately trying to upset one or more people (Cueto, 2014).

            Trolling definitely isn’t the worst of the issues conjured up by the dark side of the internet, but it is probably the most common. It’s an issue that effect almost every frequent internet user. I’m not sure if there is anything that can be done about this though. It’s very difficult to make policies against a person’s free speech and in a way, which is what Trolling is. Trolls just use their free speech in offensive and disruptive ways to gain lulz. There will always people who want to create chaos or even just get attention. Unfortunately, there will always be trolls.

           

            

The Affects of 3D Printing

Brittney Mitchell

CAS 283, Section 004

November 11, 2014

3D Printing

            I never really thought about 3D printing until our lab session. With 3D printing beginning to surface within the next ten years, it is going to be really interesting to see how it all unfolds. Just like all new technological advances there will always be negatives and positives to them. I feel that once 3D printers are in mass production and in the hands of everyone, the society we live will never be same. Money will no longer be a source of power because it could be easier produce. The idea of social and economic classes will eventually disappear. On the other hand, the amount of harm that a product of this caliber can do to our society is seriously scary. It begins messing up our government system of what is legally wrong and right.     

            One of the biggest controversies when it comes to 3D printing is the printing of guns and other weapons. The video that we watched in lab was just mind blowing. We have people out there already trying to print parts of guns and probably other dangerous weapons. Once these 3D printers are in mass production and easily accessible to the general public, how are we going to stop these weapons from getting into the wrong hands? The government needs to start thinking now how to implement some type of law or regulation that allows control of the production of certain items. If they wait until something serious to happen, it will obviously be way too late. The guy in the video has already found loop holes in the law, so the next person can do the same thing but in a more tragic way rather than just trying to prove a point.

            CNN has this interesting interactive module that allows you to explore many aspects of 3D printing. They talk how it works, braving the new world, home from home, shifting in the industry and just general things to think about. One thing that intrigued me there is a group of architects in Amsterdam that have created a 3D printer so big, that can print pieces of a canal house. The printer is called the “KamerMaker.” It “prints large Lego-like structures made from recycled plastic, which will form the building blocks of a full-size house”. Clearly, a printer of this magnitude would cost a lot, but I would be so much cheaper than paying someone to build you a house from scratch. One of the potential downside to something like this would be how structurally sound would the house actually be and can it withstand serve storms.

            Another interesting statement was, “in the sign of things to come, engineers from Airbus have announced that by 2050 they hope to print the entire aircraft from the ground up.” By the time we get older, I feel that everything we own within our homes, transportation, and everything else will be created by a 3D printer.  Once this happens the world as we know it will NEVER be the same.

Website: http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/specials/make-create-innovate/3d-printing/

Dark side of communication

Jordan Dickerson

11/11/14

                                                            

 

There are numerous things we can say that is wrong with communicating online. The problem with online communication is that it can have a greater effect on people than they assume it can. For example in the episode of catfish we watched in class. The girl’s best friend pretended to be a guy that she really liked in order to save herself from a major heart ache. However instead of saving her form it, she weakened their friendship and trust in the process.

This happens a lot in online communication. Often time’s people feel a sense of anonymity and therefore are less bound to show who they are in real life and more likely to portray a false image to whomever they choose to communicate with online. Trolling is another example of people abusing their right to online communication. Trolling is someone who constantly disrupts online communities for their own sake. Most of the time these people just want to get an emotional response from the people they target. These troll’s will basically say anything pertaining to religion sex, race and culture to get feedback from whoever they want.

Once again anonymity plays a major role in why online communication is so bad. People feel that since there in no responsibility for what they say or do online then that gives them the right to do anything they want. They feel a lot freer than they would if they were face to face. Online communication should be taken with caution, be aware that the person you may be communicating with might not be real, and also be open to the fact that people can say almost anything they want to you so I would recommend that you not divulged to much information about you or your where about to anyone through CMC, They way I see it is FTF is the best and safest kind of communication.  So the faster you meet in person the better.