Online reflections 3

Online reflection 3

The book that I have been reading is Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King. The story is about an retired cop Bill Hodges and the murderer of one of his unsolved cases, Brandy Hartfied  aka Mr. Mercedes.
Brandy looking for the thrill of killing again and Bill on the line to suicidal his is target. But by teasing Bill a new light sparks in him and the cat and mouse game is on.  

In this book we get to see throw the eyes of both sides, and how we all wanting a reason to live and how a normal person can be someone else when we don't look.  
Neither Brandy or Bill are by the outside look suicidal or like they could hurt a fly, but once you get to get inside their heads and think the more you understand them.  Trying to put yourself  in that situation, just what would I do? Could I go this far? To be honest by doing that, it almost felt naturally to take the actions they did sometimes, and when it didn't I couldn't help to think. "It because you never had this experience".  If you read this, ask yourself what would I do if I felt no reason to live? Kill myself?  or kill someone else?
It also made me realize just how twisted a human mind can become. How easy it is for some to break limits you didn't know and how crazy it is to try to catch a killer on your own. (Ex-cop or not).

While this is a big theme in the book, there is another one. Three of the big turning points of the book is made by judge people too early.  Which is shown here and the consequences to, (even if it's on the extreme side in the book).  Obviously we judge someone by one way or another, and this will get some consequences even if we don't think so or even will notice them.  But be unlucky and it will be a butterfly effect. 

Overall I really enjoyed the book, and remember your ice-cream salesman could be a killer.  

Online reflection 2

I have decided to discuss the TED talk "are droids taking our jobs?"  by Andrew McAFees.
http://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_mcafee_are_droids_taking_our_jobs#t-90051

Before I watch this, I thought of course droids and machines are getting better and can therefore replace more and more people. While it's true that someone has to build the robots and maintain them, but that's fewer and more calcified people so jobs are still lost.

The beginning wasn't surprising at all to me, it was just as I thought.  If something did bother me it was the fact that the companies made so much more by simply abandon people.
Moving on to the human vs. "machine" part. I'm still not surprised by these facts but then again I have lived through it, and I'm not that old (22 if you most know). But thinking back on how life was back as a kid, you start to realize exactly what Andrews trying to say; which is something we tend to forget, the technology is evolving faster and faster.

Personally I don't think it's fair to call the human/robot work transition the greatest challenge yet, not with how we treat other people, the environment and animals. That's harder to fix then to simple say; "No we can't allow machines to take over more jobs so companies most hire people (with the right knowledge and skills of course) instead of machines". Unfortunately money rules the world so I don't see anyone even consider this as an option.

From here on we start to disagree more and more, I'm more of a pessimist and say how are we going to have a working economy if on one works and gets money? I would like to hear the solution to this problem.
There is good parts to, like the fishing village in India. The technology helped them improve their life. The problem is if there is too much technology, like we have here. It does improve our life to but it's also taking over more and more of our days. I know I would have a big problem not using a Smartphone or a computer for a full day.  So as long as the machines can help us, there is no problem, but when the start to take over our life (jobs, hobbies etc) then problem starts.

By the end when he says "It's gonna give us more time, and what we are going to do is reduce poverty and drudgery ad misery around the world".
I don't agree with this at all, in fact I believe could get worse. Not that mankind is pure evil but we do have a pretty bad record of treating each other nice. Not to mention that jobs keeps us from boredom, will a person with unlimited time never be bored enough to think, maybe I should do something less good just for fun. If one does it someone is sure to follow or to get revenge on the first guy. Hopefully someone will realize this problem early on and try to stop it.

We ain't seen nothing yet..... and I hope it's not going to be like a sci-fi movie.

Online reflection 1

Can a city really ban cars from its streets? http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140204-can-a-city-really-go-car-free

I personal don't believe it will be possible to stop using cars in the near future. Even with a span of 20 years I find it unlikely that a big city (Hamburg) will be car less. For several reasons (both personal and no-personal) will make this an impossible (or at least a very hard) goal to have. the first thing that comes to my mind is time and money; how much is it possible to invest in whats basically gonna be rebuilding an either city. The article says that parks, playgrounds, sport fields etc will from networks, I don't know if its means that all will be with in walking distance or if its just going to be easier get around everything by walking. Either way it feels like an extremely amount of money is necessary. Not to criticise anyone but fixing a round can take weeks if not months to fix, how long time will be needed to fix the whole city? 
The car has and will be among other things a feeling of freedom, Its hard to think that all people simple just gonna give the up. No its more likely that the people will go against this proposal, and I can't really blame them. Image a oversleeping a morning, if you go by bus, use the bike or walk ever day this is the day you will be using the car just to save those precious minutes. Or if your sick and have to go buying groceries? Take the bus doesn't really sound appealing.
Now lets say we have a city with no cars: how will it work out if someone from another city drove here? Can this person drive in the city or will he/she be forced to leave the car at the city limits? If you want to go from the cars less city to anywhere else, are you obligated to take a bus or train?
Will the public transportation be free of charge, or will the price go up/down. I can imagine that the public transport sector has to expand due to more people will depend on it. But it's feels unfair if the bus tickets will cost e.g twice as much if you have no other choices.
To me it feels like this questions will be a factor in the success (or failure) of this project.

Now I know I been negative about the whole thing, trust me as an student with major in energy and environmental I could not be happier if this was every city's plan. The car is one big environmental
problem. Not to say that ride the bike every day to work would be good for most people and so on. Even if more households don't have cars, it will take a long time before the norm will be not having one.
Hopefully I'm wrong and this will be something the world will use as a standard in two decades.