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A Gift of Fire
Third edition

Sara Baase

CHAPTER 1: UNWRAPPING THE

GIFT
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What We Will Cover

 Rapid Pace of Change

 New Developments and Dramatic
Impacts
 Issues and Themes

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Rapid Pace of Change

 1940s: The first computer is built

 1956: First hard-disk drive weighed a ton and stored
five megabytes
 1991: Space shuttle had a one-megahertz computer
 2006: Pocket devices hold a terabyte (one trillion
bytes) of data
 2008: Automobiles can have 100-megahertz
computers
 2014: Artificially intelligent systems are everywhere
 2020: ?

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Rapid Pace of Change:
Discussion Question

 What devices are now computerized that were

not originally?

 Think back 10, 20, 50 years ago.

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Rapid Pace of Change:
Discussion Question

 Automobiles
 TVs
 Clocks and watches
 Phones
 Cash registers
 Cameras
 Ovens
 Etc.

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New Developments

Blogs (Word made up from ‘web log’):

 Began as outlets for amateurs who want to
express ideas or creativity
 Appealing because present personal views,
are funny and creative, and present a quirky
perspective on current events

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New Developments (cont.)

Blogs (cont.):
 Now used as alternatives to mainstream news
and for business public relations
 Popular blogs have 100,000 to 500,000 readers
per day and can peak at several million views
per day

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New Developments (cont.)

Video Sharing:
 Rise of amateur videos on the web
 Boom of websites like ‘YouTube’ , ‘Myspace’ ,
‘Dailymotion’ , ‘Tune’ and many others
 Many videos on the web can infringe copyrights
owned by entertainment companies

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New Developments (cont.)

Cell Phones:
 Can now be used for travel, last minute
planning, taking pictures and downloading
music
 Talking on cell phones while driving is a
problem
 Cell phones can interfere with solitude, quiet
and concentration
 Cameras in cell phones and privacy issues

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New Developments (cont.)

Cell Phones:
 Cellphone makers and service providers developed new
features and services,
 adding cameras, video, Web connections, and location
detection. Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, and phones
got “smart.” People quickly developed hundreds of thousands
of applications and embraced the term app. Consumers
downloaded 10 billion apps from Apple’s App Store.
 Within very few years, people all over the world used phones,
rather than PCs or laptops, as their connection to the Internet.

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New Developments (cont.)

Cell Phones:
 In 2011, there were approximately five billion
cellphone subscriptions worldwide—an
astoundingly fast spread of a new
technology.Writers describe the dramatic changes
with observations such as a person with a
smartphone and Google has access to more
information than the President did 15 years ago”
and “More folks have access to a cellphone than
to a toilet.
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New Developments (cont.)

 Analysisof the data generates valuable information about traffic

congestion, commuting patterns, and the spread of disease. In an
example of the latter, by studying movement and communication
patterns of MIT students, researchers could detect who had the flu,
sometimes before the students knew it themselves.
 Researchers also can determine which people influence the decisions
of others. Advertisers and politicians crave such information.
 Researchers who analyzed time and location data from millions of
calls said that, with enough data, a mathematical model could predict
where someone would be at a particular future time with more than
90% accuracy.
 Who will have access to that information

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New Developments (cont.)

Cell Phones:
 Some states have passed laws prohibiting use of
hand-held devices. Recent studies show hands-free
devices, while freeing up the hands, do not reduce
distractions, particularly among young adult and
teenage drivers who often text message while driving.

 Cameras in cell phones threaten privacy.

Where is the line between capturing news
events and evidence of crimes?
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New Developments (cont.)

Social Networking:
 First online social networking site was
www.classmates.com in 1995
 Myspace, founded in 2003 had roughly 100
million member profiles by 2006
 Facebook was started at Harvard as an online
version of student directories

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Social Networking

Social Networking
 Sites like Second Life (www.secondlife.com)
combine many of the features of social
networking sites with the 3-D aspects of video
games.
 What new problems/benefits arise when a
person can take on a physical persona (an
avatar) that may be completely different from
who they are in real life? Some people with
physical disabilities can interact with others
without revealing their handicap.
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Social Networking

 A person you follow in social media might not be

a person at all. A socialbot is an artificial
intelligence program that simulates a human
being in social media. Researchers tricked
Twitter users into building relationships with
artificial tweeting personalities, some of which
gained large followings. Political activists
launched socialbots to influence voters and
legislators
 Advertising bots are likely to be common.
someone commented (and many repeated) that 04/27/2020
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New Developments (cont.)

Collaboration:
 Wikipedia, the online, collaborative
encyclopedia

 Open Directory Project (ODP)

 Collaboration between scientists in different

states or countries

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New Developments (cont.)

 Wikipedia’s reliability was brought into

question when a major contributor was found
to be a 14 year-old boy instead of a scientist
with a PhD and years of experience. He got
most of his information from other Web
sources.

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New Developments (cont.)

E-commerce and Free Stuff:

 Free stuff on the web: email, books,
newspapers, games, etc.
 www.Amazon.com started in 1994 and 10
years later annual sales reached $8.5 billion
 TV show episodes are available to view on the
Web

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New Developments (cont.)

 It empowers ordinary people to make better

decisions about everything from selecting a
bicycle to selecting medical treatments.
 It empowers us to do things that we used to
rely on experts to do for us. Software tools,
many available for free, help us analyze the
healthiness of our diet or plan a budget.
 We can find references and forms for legal
processes. We can fight back against powerful
institutions by shaming them with videos that
go viral 04/27/2020
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New Developments (cont.)

 Businesses and organizations use “viral

marketing”—that is, relying on large numbers
of people to view and spread marketing
messages in clever videos. We can start our
own Web-based television networ k .
 A college student with a good idea and some
well-implemented software can start a
business that quickly grows to be worth
millions or billions of dollars; several have. The
openness of the Internet enables “innovation
without permission”
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New Developments (cont.)

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics, and

Motion:
 AI suited to narrow, specialized skills
 Robotic devices often special-purpose
devices, and may require AI to function
 Motion sensing devices are used to give
robots the ability to walk, trigger airbags in
a crash and cushion laptops when dropped

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New Developments (cont.)

Tools for Disabled People:

 Restoration of abilities, productivity and
independence
 Screen readers and scanners
 Speech recognition
 motion sensors

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New Developments (cont.)

What’s Next?
 Medical records on chips attached to medical
bracelets

 Biological and computer sciences will combine

new ways to insert micro-processors or
controlled devices in human bodies

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New Developments (cont.)
Discussion Question

 What changes and new developments do you

expect in the next 50 years?

 How will life be different than it is today?

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Issues and Themes

Cyberspace has many of the problems, frustrations, and

controversies of non-cyber life, among them
 Crime
 violent fiction and games
 advertising
 copyright infringement
 Gambling
 Products that do not work right.

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Issues and Themes (cont.)

 Unemployment
 Customer service
 Loss of privacy
 Errors

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Issues and Themes (cont.)

Themes:
 Old problems in a new context: crime, violent
fiction
 Adapting to new technology: thinking in a new
way
 Varied sources of solutions to problems:
natural part of change and life

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Issues and Themes (cont.)

Themes (cont.):
 Global reach of net: ease of communication
with distant countries
 Trade-offs and controversy: increasing security
means reducing convenience

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Differences between 30
personal choices, business
policies, and law

 We can make a personal choice—for example,

about what social networks to join, what apps
to put on our phones, or what ebooks to buy—
according to our individual values and
situation.
 A business bases its policies on many factors,
including the manager’s perception of
consumer preferences, what competitors are
doing, responsibilities to stockholders, the
ethics of the business owners or managers,
and relevant laws 04/27/2020
Differences between 31
personal choices, business
policies, and law

 Laws are fundamentally different from personal

choices and organizational policies because
they impose decisions by force on people who
did not make them. Arguments for passing a
law should be qualitatively different from
reasons for adopting a personal or
organizational policy.
 It is better to base laws on the notion of rights
rather than on personal views about their
benefits or how we want people to behave.
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Conclusion

 Rapid pace of change in society

 New development and dramatic impacts on

human lives

 Issues and themes of IT on society

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