Monday, June 2, 2008

Week 12: Electronic Civil Liberties / Creative Commons / Free and Open Source Software

Lecture: Electronic Civil Liberties:

In this week’s lecture, we talked about free software, and then we watched a video called Ted about how we are interacted with the material that we are given. For example there was a shot of parents watching TV or listening to music while their children were creating materials for TV or Music.

Week 11:The Ethics of Peer-to-Peer Filesharing

Lecture: Internet Stealing:

In this week’s lecture we talked about the ethical issues with the stealing that happens with internet and the access that everyone can have to any information. We mostly focused on the peer-to-peer file sharing. We watched a movie on the topic. The film called “steal this film 2” is about copyrighted products being distributed to the public and the action put in place by the society and more particularly the entertainment industry to stop piracy. It talks about the fact that they could never fully stop internet’s pirates and that there are more and more laws created to reinforce the internet’s products security.

Reading: ‘When Pigs Fly: The Death of Oink, the Birth of Dissent, and a Brief History of Record Industry Suicide’ by Demonbaby.

This week’s reading: ‘When Pigs Fly: The Death of Oink, the Birth of Dissent, and a Brief History of Record Industry Suicide’ is written by a blogger working in the entertainment industry. This blog talks about the excessive amount of money the big companies use and are wasting in food, alcohol and amusement. Then it talks about the creation of Napster and how the big industries took it as a threat to their business. The ability of peer-to-peer sharing of folder has been a real menace for these companies. It talks about the evolution of the consumer’s behavior towards the products and material online.

Week 10: Blade Runner

Lecture: Blade Runner

In this week’s lecture we had the showing of the movie “Blade Runner” this film directed by Ridley Scott in 1982 in based on the book “do androids dream of electric sheep” written by Phillip.K.Dick. This movie explores the meaning of being human and the relation between human and machine. It let me think about the evolution of the machine imagining how it would be if they develop feelings and become more human.


Reading: ‘An Exploration of What It Means to be Human’ by T.J LeGrice.

The novel talks about the 1968 novel “do androids dream of electric sheep” written by Phillip.K.Dick which explores the same notion of humanity in the machine, this novel was later called ‘Blade Runner’. As a basis for the movie we watched “Blade Runner”; this week’s reading was about the possible development of feelings by the machine and what it would involve for the human kind. It questions the future differences between humans and machines: could we make a distinction between the two kinds?