The Last Question

Exerpt from The Last Question by Isaac Asimov

Matter and energy had ended and with it, space and time. Even AC existed only for the sake of the one last question that it had never answered from the time a half-drunken computer ten trillion years before had asked the question of a computer that was to AC far less than was a man to Man.

All other questions had been answered, and until this last question was answered also, AC might not release his consciousness.

All collected data had come to a final end. Nothing was left to be collected.

But all collected data had yet to be completely correlated and put together in all possible relationships.

A timeless interval was spent in doing that.

And it came to pass that AC learned how to reverse the direction of entropy.

But there was now no man to whom AC might give the answer of the last question. No matter. The answer -- by demonstration -- would take care of that, too.

For another timeless interval, AC thought how best to do this. Carefully, AC organized the program.

The consciousness of AC encompassed all of what had once been a Universe and brooded over what was now Chaos. Step by step, it must be done.

And AC said, "LET THERE BE LIGHT!"

And there was light----

An epic story about the evolution of man's creation to answer all questions he may have; the answer to all problems. First appearing in the form of a collasal device and evolving into smaller, more powerful versions while becoming ever so smaller and faster. The device ends up becoming the very living conciousness that the human mind once was. The story predicts the future of our technology today and its advancement through the ages. An excellent story by Asimov and a must read for anyone.

It can be found here at Multivax.com

http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

The Human Evolution

We are all cyborgs now..

This line is Amber Case's main point in her talk on TED.com. She says that as humans become more in tune with the technology we create to help us live our lives, we become more dependent on it. No we're not the cyborgs we see in popular films, not yet anyway. A cyborg is simply defined as "an organism to which exogenous components have been added for the purpose of adapting to new environments." By simply using a computer to complete a task or using a cell phone to communicate with others, for that time we are a cyborg. With the rise of communicative technology, we are becoming more connected in ways never dreamed of 20 years ago. The new environment we are adapting to is a brand new world without the bounds of time and space. Two people can be on opposite ends of the globe and talk to one another without any travelling necessary. This is the most connected we have been in history.

As we become a new type of button-clicking human beings, what it means to be human is inherently changing. Our dynamics are fully changing. We no longer have only our physical self to worry about, but also the maintenance of our digital self. It is just as important since our presence on the Internet will be seen by more people. There is a digital record of what we've been through, our entire electronic history is stored and is on display for the world to see. This is not true in the physical world so it adds a new dynamic to our lives. Self presentation management is active through social websites, blogs, etc.

"It's too bad that everyone who has a solution for everything is at home commenting on the Internet" With society multitasking so much, few stop and focus on tasks as they come.

Here is Amber Case's talk on TED.com http://www.ted.com/talks/amber_case_we_are_all_cyborgs_now.html

Public Whereabouts

A.Woodbury here..

I came across an article in the New York Times today called 'It's tracking your every move and you may not even know'. It's about a guy, Malte Spitz, that took his cellphone company to court in order to find out how exactly much location information the company had about him. The results were astonishing as the company saved his GPS coordinates more than 35,000 times in a six-month period. This is insane to think about since we do an extraordinarily large amount of things within this time period and to think that a company knows exactly what we're up to is a bit scary.

The idea of sharing our location isn't a completely absurd thing to some people as millions of people do it everyday on convenient apps such as Google Latitude, Foursquare, Facebook, etc. A very large amount of people are comfortable with others. Most of these services have the user's whereabouts shared, but with a few perimeters. First off, a person needs to have the corresponding application in order to view your location. Next, often times someone needs to add you as a friend in order to view exactly where you are. Lastly, and above all, it is up to the user to post the location information in the first place.

This news about the cell phone company is especially shocking because it is not up to the owner of the cell phone to share his/her location, that's fully up to the company. "Every seven seconds or so, the phone company of someone with a working cellphone is determining the nearest tower, so as to most efficiently route calls. And for billing reasons, they track where the call is coming from and how long it has lasted" This explains why, but doesn't explain why if you catch my drift.

Knowing our location helps route our calls, but is this the end of privacy as we know it? Some may say this information isn't being shared by the company so it's all good, but how would we know? Would the company really email us when our location has been shared with an outside source? I think not. Welcome to our future.

Shopping!

A&W here...

If you like clothes and great deals then Jack Threads is the place for you. There are many different deals everyday that last for around 3 days. Many of them are about 50% off and greater! And once the offer is over, it is soon replaced with a new one.

Check it out at: JackThreads.com

A membership is required, but guess how much it costs to obtain one.. Free! So give it a shot

April Fools

A. Woodbury here...

It's coming friends, whether we like it or not. It's one of the most anticipated arrivals of all time. What do I refer to? The one and only Apple iPad

Immediately looking at the device, it looks like a giant iPhone. Looks can be deceiving, but not in this case because that is exactly what the iPad is.. a giant iPhone. Looking at its features, nothing jumps out to be extremely innovative or original. It has all been done before with the iPhone and iPod Touch. The layout is the same with both the hardware and software. The abilities are the same. And the feel is the same, except slightly larger. It can get online using AT&T's 3G network, so that has its ups and downs at the same time.

On April 3rd consumers will get their first chance to hold their own iPad. Pre-orders have been skyrocketing for days now. How much is it? Starting at $500 for a 16GB model without wi-fi, is this even worth it? Nearly everything the iPad has to offer, one could do the same with an iPod Touch or iPhone. So what benefits are there paying nearly $200 more for a giant iPod Touch? We will see come April 3rd

ROAD TRIP to the 804(Richmond VA)

just to get a lil background on us and to get an idea of what we look like. i am posting some pics of our trip to richmond va. so we are all from different parts of va, 703(nova), 757(va beach), 804(richmond), 540(the rest of va?) ahaha anyway you get the picture. we all attend bridgewater college which is right next to jmu and because we a crew and love traveling,music,photography, and pretty much anything(cause we do anything and everything :P) we decided to do adventures all over VA so our first stop wassss VA's capital.

thats me :P

belle isle.. or something like that

cleaning the kicks to stay fresh

SSB representing VA

haaaaaaa hope everyone enjoyed. this is just a small part of SSB, we should get a full pic of us soon. but yeah our next trip was 703. which is where im frommm. ill upload later. and summer will hopefully be 757. hollaaaaa~

-Daniel J Lee

Passing By

A.Woodbury here...

You know when two people pass one another on the sidewalk, there is usually an exchange of greetings. One person may say 'hey, what's up'. The other responds with 'hey'. And the exchange is over; both people keep walking and continue on their merry way. This is what I call a 'Passer-by Conversation'.

These conversations do not have very much depth in them. They occur quite often, especially on college campuses. They usually just consist of a few questions that are never answered. Like when someone says 'Hey, how are you?', there is not usually a person to answer the full question, but instead they will respond with a 'Hey'. Since these conversations are so quick, it is my observation that any answer will complete the conversation. For example, someone might say 'hey, how's it going' and the other could respond with 'blue mushrooms' and be perfectly ok. End of story, the conversation is over because it simply does not matter what the response is.

If you find it ridiculous, there's all the reason to go try it. Let me know how it goes though because this is a very unproven theory. It's not even close to a theory, just a thought lol