Chicago Humanities Fest https://www.chicagohumanities.org/ The annual Fall Festival will take place at venues across Chicago from October 26–November 10. Students must attend a talk from a list we provide in mid to late September. CS Dept. will cover entry cost. Use your CTA U-Pass to get there.
I attended the Merchants of Truth talk. Prior to the event, I wasn’t fully sure of what to expect, assuming it would be more of a presentation. However, the talk was more of a conversation between panelists. The talk covered various aspects of the reliability of news sources, addressing the issues that face how we as a society consume information, specifically addressing how our current president plays into this. Panelist Jim Warren discussed his anti-fake news company NewsGuard and the fact that a large portion of news sources on the internet, 29% are not credible, 37% of which are health sites that have more of an audience than Mayo Clinic. Getting health related information from unreliable news sources can be detrimental to people’s health, especially with Warren’s example that a health news source stated that apricot pits were a viable cure for cancer. Overall, it is increasingly more important that people take a step back to determine whether or not the sources they get news from are trustworthy, especially with Facebook and the launch of Facebook News when Mark Zuckerberg has blatantly refused to remove lies and fake news from the website. With tools such as Warren’s NewsGuard, the field of computer science can be used to combat the flood of fake news on the internet as fewer people get their news from reliable news sources in a move from print news to digital news. I would attend an event such as this one again as I was able to consider aspects of society that I wouldn’t normally think about.
I attended the “We are the Weather” talk by Jonathan Safran Foer. Even though it is not directly a computer science related talk, I feel like, as a CS major, it is the talk among all the others in the Humanities Festival that I could relate more to. Computer Science is basically about problem solving, and in my opinion, Climate Change is the biggest problem on earth right now.
Foer talks lot about statements he made in his books about consuming animal products. For instance, when he mentions Veganism, saying that “the world does not require that everyone goes vegan, but that we should consume way less animal products”. He puts a lot of emphasis on how people today talk a lot about climate change but choose not to do anything anyway.
I feel like have learned just through the way he talks. He says that he went vegetarian at the age of 9 and he still likes the taste of meat, so it is a struggle for him. This shows that he really is a relatable figure for people who want to have a more environmental-friendly lifestyle, compared to many activists who sometimes sound like extremists.
In addition, he gives valuable facts on how to change your habits: fly less, drive less, eat less meat, have less children and vote. He compares accessibility of vegetarian food from when he started writing the book to when he actually published the book, and then says that at some point instead of asking someone: “Why do you not eat meat?”, people will ask: “ Why do you eat meat?”.
I would not necessarily attend an event like this again, because I feel like it would be more effective to have workshops where people from different backgrounds and believes can interchange their opinions.
I attended the session: We Are the Weather featuring Jonathan Safran Foer.
Before the activity I was interested in the topic of climate change and the environment. I knew that there is a climate crisis going on and I did small things like try to reduce my waste by not using plastic water bottles, recycling and reducing my meat consumption. I feel that this wasn’t a big sacrifice and it was very easy for me to do. I was curious to see what Jonathan Safran Foer would suggest to become environmentally conscious.
Something new I learned at the activity is that it sounds like a big deal to say for example to reduce fossil fuel consumption by 60% in 10 years. On the other hand it sounds feasible to reduce fossil fuel consumption by 6% every year for 10 years. The interesting thing is that both of these equal the same percent of change overall. It’s just that our mindset shifts. I think that we make environmental consciousness a bigger deal than it really is. It is not that hard and it this change needs to happen before climate change is irreversible.
I would attend this activity again because it made me realize why we need to improve the environment and why I should support this cause. The speaker was not boring and I was drawn into the conversation he had with Monica Eng.
On Sunday 10/27/2019 I, Victor Samsonov, attended the 204, Jonathan Safran Foer: We Are the Weather Talk.
Before attending the activity, I was uncertain about what to expect. I had previously attended talks that were related to raising awareness about a certain issue, however, this was the first time I was doing this by myself. I did think that this would have something to do with Global Warming until a certain point, which it did, but both the spokesman (Jonathan Safran) and the spokeswoman (Monica Eng) went in much deeper into this subject than I could have imagined in a short time period
(1 hour).
I learned that In order to stop the current situation of our planet, we do not need to completely stop doing the “wrong things” (using cars, airplanes, eating meat, etc.) but it is enough to simply reduce these types of activities over time until we get used to it, which will minimize the consequences for the future generations.
I would definitely attend again a similar event since I feel like it is a good thing to expand one’s knowledge about something that is still yet to be decided, as the future of our planet in this case, or other related subjects.
I attended to the Merchants of Truth event. Before attending this event I did not know what to expect, but was intrigued by the speaker Jill Abramson. Additionally, I was somewhat excited since this was going to be my first Chicago Humanities talk.
Unfortunately, at the event we were told that Jill Abramson would not be able to join us. However, speakers Jim Warren and Lynn Sweet were still continuing with the conversation. The gist of the talk was about social media sites such as Facebook being responsible for the dissemination of fake news to most Americans, and how the President plays a role in this situation. Sweet and Warren brought up interesting points about the role of social media sites regulating the differences between factual and fictional information. Warren mentioned an important statistic about how since the past 10 years about 28,000 newsroom jobs have been lost. This could be due to the fact that most people obtained their news from various websites for free that are not 100% fact checked.
This talk has helped me understand more about the role of computer scientists in the verification of information and the critical influence of tools such as Warren’s NewsGuard site. Also, the role of media literacy being emphasize among all group ages, especially among younger kids.
I would definitely consider attending another talk in the future. The topic presented by the speakers at the event was interesting to say the least. I learned a substantial amount of information about the spreading of fake news through social media sites and some of the possible solutions we can contribute. The event definitely had an impact on me of the importance that each individual has to verify information on social media before spreading it.
Over the weekend I attended Jill Abramson’s Merchant of Truth and I didn’t know what to expect at all. I was originally disappointed that this didn’t seem to have to with computer science but after watching I could see some implications or connections. I thought it was going to be an entrepreneur like presentation on Abramsons ideas and where this wasn’t entirely false, I have found myself far more interested than I expected. It caught my attention when she brought president Trump into their conversation of a mixed up, crazed media. I found it interesting when it was discussed how news outlets will attack an idea like wild dogs and blow it up or change it slightly for more clicks or to influence the reader. I would attend an activity like this again because I found it interesting to see other viewpoints or see the entire situation from a bids eye view. I’ve always known that news outlets were scummy, but I never knew hoe uncontrolled they were. I agree with Coby in the fact that the panelist of speakers made it far more interesting and interactive, it also supports with what I mentioned earlier about listening to more perspectives. This presentation will forever change how I look at or trust news or media outlets.
After reading the book that Jill Abramson published over how journalism is rapidly losing the spark that made the industry what it was. I was very interested to see how this would tie in to what we have learned over the ethics of computing and data manipulation. Even though she wasn’t at the talk it was very interesting to hear different points of views of the panalists. Based off what the panelists were saying, most journalist related jobs have gone down because of how media and journalism has shifted to social media and the internet. I would say that this talk really isn’t about Computer Science but more about the consequences that can rise from those who can understand and mold information into what they want to show. I would highly recommend others to attend these type of events and I know for sure that I will be attending more.
Similar to what Andres and Sean have commented, most of what the panelists said and mentioned help show that the media industry wants to create business for themselves and that leads them to do some really shady things. So this talk really helped me put into perspective the different motives that these companies have.
In attending the Merchant of Truth lecture that occurred in this past week, my understanding and general cynicism towards typical media were increased. However, it also arrested my interest in the fact that a majority of the talk was dedicated to the selection of finding reliable information and news within our internet age. This was exasperated by the two panelists in attendance, Lynn Sweet and Jim Warren, who were and still are entrenched in print news media venues. They were able to break down the flaws in these new avenues of reporting news and made the fantastic distinction that the venue of news itself doesn’t matter as long as the source of the information is trustworthy. This was a fantastic point as the crowd of mostly ageing baby-boomers, that are common along the northside of Chicago, seemed shocked at the revelation that social media can be used for actual, reliable reporting of news if the source is trustworthy. This was then used to turn into a key discussion over how obtaining news from social media allows for information that is false or fraudulent to spread like wildfire over our society or pockets within it moreover. This parsing of information by evaluating sources made me more cynical towards the news industry as it intrinsically admits that news sources could and have reported incorrect or misleading information with poor sources before. The most interesting part of this lecture for me was the panellist Jim Warren talking about his most recent development in the production of NewsGuard, which is a browser extension he made with several partners. This extension automatically grades the news pulled up on the browser and tells the user the validity of its source. This showed me how technology can be innovated and the potential of new tools that can fix growing problems in our internet age. This also showed me how we as a society are adapting to our new age of information and the intrinsic unknowns that come with this new freedom information.
Today I attended the talk “Caitlin Zaloom on Student Debt.” Before going to the talk, I had already known about the massive amount of student loans many Americans had to take. However, I wasn’t aware of one of the reasons being due to the shift of education from a public good to a private asset. As a private asset, individuals are given more responsibility for affording their own college degree.
Computer Science is one of the many degrees that people go to college for, but may encounter student debt as a major obstacle. Many degrees are expensive without aid, and are still with it, but currently available resources aren’t properly able to assist many in need of help. Zaloom’s book talks about how the Department of Education, more or less, works like a loan company and forces parents to make hard decisions to maintain good credit. She also critiques FAFSA applications for being difficult on separated families since it may need information from both parents. Due to shifts in education to the individual’s responsibility, many public education institutions don’t receive enough funding. Community colleges aren’t seen as viable anymore and some universities are accepting more out-of-state and foreign students who can pay their high tuition, outing many interested students. The odds seem to be stacked against many college hopefuls.
I would attend a talk like this again. The speakers had a great discussion and were clearly passionate about their topic. I believe it is important to have talks like this so we can raise awareness about issues and hopefully come up with a solution.
I attended the ‘Ghost Work’ session on November 2 at the University of Chicago. Before going to this event, I, obviously had no idea what to expect, However, I assumed that they would talk to use regarding something that we, humans could do in order to conceal ourselves, in actions like hacking and operating on used programs or modifying.
I have never visited any talks that included details regarding technologies and software. I was really anxious to know what the talk was going to be about. When the talk started, to my surprise, I was not so far in my assumption to what was going to happen. The talk was from Mrs. Mary Gray, regarding her thoughts and persuasions, whether technologies are depending on humans completely, such as internet content moderation from time to time. She then later specified that in her talk with Natalie, stating that Ghost work is ‘invisible people’ trying to monitor programs on the internet. Following this talk, there was a small question and answer session, where many persons were allowed to het their relevant questions get answered.
I would definitely attend one of these festivals again, as I thought these could help me improve my knowledge in computer science, in how to use it economically.
I attended the “Ghost Work” talk.
Before I attended the talk, I was always interested in if AI is going to take our jobs or not. I think that AI will take most of our jobs eventually because they do not need a salary, food and do not feel tired, so replacing humans with AI is brainless. After hearing this talk, however, I do not think every single job is at risk of being taken over by AI. A great example Mary L. Gary made was how Uber now uses photo verification for their drivers. This job cannot be handled by AI because Artifical Intelligence cannot see pictures, they can only read metadata. As a result, you need a human on the other side to help distinguish if the drivers look identical. Even if the job is simple to a human, AI cannot tell the difference between the two. I also learned from the talk that if you are trying to program something and you do not know if an answer to the program is a clear yes or no, then the AI will definitely not know either. Artificial Intelligence cannot adapt, they are very linear. I would attend these types of talks again because I want to broaden my knowledge of new things and see ideas from a different viewpoint than before. I initially thought that AI would take over the world, but after the talk, I realized I was being a bit overdramatic.
I attended the session called “Ghost Work” featuring Mary L. Gray and Natalie Foster.
Before attending the activity, I did not know what to expect at all. I did familiarize myself with who the speaker was and the discussion will be dedicated on their book. I had the impression that the topic will somehow be about cybersecurity since the word ghost is commonly associated with network security (i.e. CyberGhost VPN, Ghost Security Group, etc).
That did not end up being the case at all. I learned about the growing economy of the “ghost work”, the invisible human labor force behind big companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Uber. The speaker, Mary L. Gray, explained that there is a clear misconception of AI taking over jobs. AI today continues to have a limit in its working capacity. Though the ongoing AI advancements continue to replace basic and redundant work, it can never outperform the brevity and creativity of a human as well as identify emotion.
This talk made me understand how computers will always have a limit. Per say, AI’s have limits because there is only so much data you can store for proper functionality. Furthermore, it’s a reassurance to a huge misunderstanding of how society perceives AI. If more people recognized the “ghost work” and the computer scientists, engineers, and many more occupations that would grow due to the implementation of AI in companies and businesses, then this notion of robots and computers taking over jobs would not continue to surface.
I would attend another activity like this again because it provided with a sophisticated and interesting outlook in complex topics in computer science. Earlier in this course, we had a debate about this topic, but being able to have further insight by a professional was quite intriguing. Her examples, research, and economic comprehension of the topic enriched Gray’s talk.
I attended the talk on student debt with Caitlin Zaloom. Before the event, I wasn’t sure what to expect because I hadn’t attended a talk similar to this style before. At the event I learned about many problems with the current student debt problems such as malfunctioning programs like the 529 and how community college attendance has also been decreasing since most parents feel they are gambling’s their students success by sending them to a more prestigious college while accepting the large amount of debt that comes with it. There was a story about a mother who was too ashamed about her financial status to share with her daughter so she could fill out the FAFSA, revealing how much pressure financial aid puts on families. Which they then talked about how the FAFSA helps “normal families” which is one in which there are two parents and both are working full-time jobs which in reality does not apply to the majority of families. The talk also explained why we have many highly skilled doctors while society is lacking on “lower” skill doctors such as pediatricians because building up the debt for that higher paying job is everyone’s best chance. I would not say the activity helped me understand more about computer science really because it was not related. I may attend another activity like this potentially but maybe on another topic related to computer science.
I attended Caitlin Zaloom’s talk titled “Student Debt”. Before going into the talk, I believed the way students and their families go about receiving college education and the way banks prey on this phenomena is broken. I am passionate about this subject, because I think students who are not given all the information without knowing whats best are sold an experience and told that thousands of dollars of student debt is okay. They are blatantly wronged. So, I thought this talk would be fun to attend. Considering it was only an hour, I knew not a lot of information is going to be covered. And once it started, I felt like this was more like an advertisement for Caitlin Zaloom’s book that she published regarding this topic. It felt like watching a trailer for an upcoming movie. The journalist, Jerome McDonnell, and Caitlin were providing snippets of some good parts of her book, to entice us to buy it. At least that’s how I felt. I have to give her credit that it was not all greed. She did talk about how FAFSA is designed, its complexity and asking for tax information that students do not understand or how parents feel uncomfortable to share this information with their kids. 529 investments which are basically only used by the wealthiest, top 5%. The struggles of African Americans compared to other people. How families cannot possibly save enough for college costs. The predatory behavior of banks. Her proposed solution was moving towards free public universities education for all. Because she is by background an Anthropologist, and just posted her research, she had a few things wrong. She talked about how Obama administration ended plus loans, loans that have even higher interest rates than private loans used as last resort usually, which were mainly used by African Americans was bad. I talked a lady after who is working in this field dealing with families loans situations, and told me that it’s mostly poor families borrowing plus loans, and they end up in a worse financial situation they started with. Which is why it was good for these people to not have such a high interest option. Also, she said how it’s practically impossible to get a job without a bachelor’s degree. And that is just not true. Yes a bachelor’s degree helps, but I personally know over 10 people who don’t have one and are earning over $100k. At the end it comes to your experience, if you know how to do the job then it is irrelevant whether you have a degree or not for most jobs. She also said that certificates are temporary and not career lasting, while in reality certificates are a great bonus to have on your resume, especially in the hiring process. Also, they are a lot more specific and helpful in your careers than a bachelor’s degree. I felt like it wasn’t as intellectually stimulating like they cracked it to be before the talk started because it was an audience listening to two people where some of it was facts but the rest was their opinions, designed to partially promote her book. I found the Q/A section, which was only 5-10 minutes, tremendously more interesting because it was inclusive of more backgrounds and ideas.
I would not want to go another talk like this because I would rather sit in a discussion inclusive of various backgrounds and experiences more informational and, as they put it, intellectually stimulating, unlike listening to a half promotional book ad.
I attended the session titled “Ghost Work”, which was lead by Mary L. Gray and Natalie Foster.
Going into the session I knew that the discussion would highlight the term “Ghost work”, a term that encapsulates invisible labor that powers our technology platforms, however both Mary and Natalie dug further into this topic to shed light on other correlated issues, and to form more connections.
At the activity I learned that there are alarming issues in the technological and broad workforce that require social reform rather than market solutions. Mary made it clear that AI does not overtake human work. Humans are essential in the work behind AI and it is this misconception of them not being necessary that powers “Ghost work” and this growing hidden under class of tech workers. For example, building artificial intelligence requires people to manage and clean up data to feed to training algorithms. When Mary asked engineers, computer scientists, etc who are the people that they pay to do tasks which include: labeling images, classifying things and cleaning up databases, many didnt know and many didn’t want to know for fear of finding unsavory working conditions. Mary allowed me to understand that there is an alarming issue in the workforce that needs attention and she is spreading her message and the urgency of this problem through her book and informational sessions.
This session allowed me to understand in regard to computer science, that computers and AI will never be fully functional alone. AI, no matter how complex and intelligent, will always require human supervision and intervention. And even though this growing underclass of “ghost workers” furthers the misconception that AI is independent (since humans building it are not acknowledged), it is important to spread the notion that this is not the case.
I would undoubtedly attend another activity of this sort because it is important to listen to people who have an important message to spread about relevant and urgent issues. If we all collectively attend activities like these, the awareness of these issues would grow and efforts to prevent them would increase. Overall, the session offered an intellectual and informed presentation of the issue that really changed my perspective of what truly occurs in the field of computer science.
Before attending the Chicago Humanities Festival, honestly, I thought it will be a boring presentation. However, the talk was really intriguing. I attended “Ghost Work” which was led by Mary L. Gray and Natalie Foster. The event was focussed on how many individuals believe AI and automation will crowd out humans from the workplace. However, service industries, especially those which deliver customer service, are difficult to automate through AI. There exist cases in which AI will fall short, one example of this would be cultural differences. And not just individuals, but even companies end up not being thankful to employees, especially those whose work can not be a mechanical or computational process. Something I learned at this activity was that robots are not behind our jobs. There are tasks that automation can not perform which Gray refers to as “ghost work”. These include content moderation and customer assistance. There exists a bunch of employees who are “hidden” that work with artificial intelligence to make sure everything is working on the user interface of all the popular websites like Facebook or apps like Uber.
I would attend an event like this again because it was something I was interested in and the speakers involved the audience during the talk. This talk was related to my field of interest as well, so it was a great learning experience overall.
I attended the We are the Weather talk by Jonathan Safran on October 27th. I felt excited and was looking forward to hear the talk because it was a topic I was very interested in. Especially with feeling like the world is slowly ending from environmental issues, I found this as a guide on how to do one’s part to help this issue. I was expecting the talk to be more interactive with the audience but the speaker, Jonathan Safran, talked about the ways of change to save the environment and answered some questions from the audience that were asked before the show. There was a booking signing after the talk but not much one-on-one talk with the speaker (I underestimated the size of the event). This activity didn’t have much to do with computer science or machine learning but rather it allows a person to see a different perspective on how to use computer science with today’s issues. A person shouldn’t lock themselves up and just code but rather look at issues people have and try to fix them with cs. Using machines to help with issues such as climate change and pollution. I would definitely attend this activity again. I liked the topic of the talk because I’ve been considering a lot of the things he talked about such as going vegan or making a plan for the future.
Last week i attend a talk of Jill Abramson at North Western University. I had never attend such talk before so i was excited for the event. When i reached there, i was 10 min late. so i just went inside and saw the event was already started. After getting in there, I came to know that Jill Abramson was no longer part of the event. However, the event was still continuing and hosting by two panelists, Lynn Sweet, the Washington Bureau Chief for the chicago sun times, and Jim Warren, the executive editor of NewsGuard,and former managing editor of the Chicago tribune. The talk was about crucial role of the media like Facebook, in today’s political climate. In today’s time, how such platform are being used to spread fake news, which has bad impact and effect on people. They also talked about the decreasing number of job in Chicago from 114,000 to 86,000 and the number is still decreasing due to media. There are very few things we can cover because people are dealing with fake news and defending news is a part of journalist, Jim added. As we know Facebook, google, and amazon are the main source of news. And they allow everyone to keep their words. So Free speech allow Facebook continue to spread fake news and we are supposed to believe because it has become the easiest platform for everyone to see the news. Though i was late for the event, i enjoyed the talk, and i would like to attend such event in future.
I went to the “We are the Weather” hosted by Jonathan Safran. I was really kind of bored and tired and didn’t want to have to attend the lecture in the first place. I didn’t think he could say much that I haven’t heard somewhere else before; especially about climate change. But that quickly changed I felt engaged and found my self really feel interested in the issue he proposed. The way he poised the issue that there is nothing that we should not be doing in order to save our planet. I enjoyed hearing him speak on what the individual can do to solve the bigger problem. Although he wasn’t sitting there teaching us how to hack the weather. He was teaching us how to use the technologies that we have. Along with the sciences behind them to grow and elevate the impact an individual can make. For those in this class, we have always looked at CS as the best was to accomplish those goals. I’m proud to say that I would want to lend my skills to Climate change If that’s a field I can tap into. Next year I intend to go to many more talks by the Chicago Humanities Festival I want to educate myself more on the other topics that were being hosted.
The last weekend on November 2nd, I attended “Ghost Work” by Mary Gray at University of Chicago. This was my first time attending a talk by a famous author so I came nervous but ready to learn. Apparently, she was the author of the book Ghost Work and the talk came with a book sign afterward. In the talk, she brought up a perspective in which proclaims that technology completely relies on humans. Normally, people would think that everyone relies on technology nowadays. That’s true but Mary Gray gave out a counter-argument that totally convinced me. She explained that without humans functioning the machines, technology would not dictate our lives and we are the ones who maintain it. Unfortunately, I haven’t read the book so I didn’t give any questions for the author at the end. On the other hand, the talk was astonishing and I gained a lot of knowledge from the session. I would love to attend a talk like this again in the future.
Prior to attending the ‘Ghost Works’ talk at the Chicago Humanities Fest, I was always really fascinated by the prominent tech hub, Silicon Valley. I am among millions of ambition and dream of working at one of many giant tech companies upon graduation. I am really looking forward to meeting and listening to a Microsoft researcher who will present the ‘Ghost Work’ talk to the audience. I just feel a sense of curiosity and reward when I meet a person who is affiliated with a prominent source that I follow. In the presentation given by the Microsoft researcher, Mary, she gave the audience insight into the dark side of Silicon Valley. The dark side of companies like Facebook who continues to hire people around the world to moderate content before the post is on the internet. These people are subject to moderating extreme content which can mentally affect these people who may not have healthcare which employers usually offer. I learned that the automation of images and text is not fully developed in these tech giants. Although these huge corporations of Silicon Valley have massive funds and assets, it’s not the problem. The problem is developing an algorithm and artificial intelligence to replace content moderators which is very difficult because humans have a sense of judgment which autonomous software cannot comprehend. In the meantime, Mary suggests that if a content moderator works full time in that particular job, they should be classified as employed and receive benefits like health care. From all this, the ‘Ghost Work’ presentation gave me insight that although Silicon Valley may be a huge tech hub with almost infinite funds in there software and technology, yet, there are problems that are much more difficult to solve even if there is an abundance of resources.
I attended the talk on Student Debt with Caitlin Zaloom. I knew student debt was a big issue for students who want to get a degree but had to take out substantial loans to do so. Zaloom explained that she herself was an anthropologist, however, after she saw one of her students about to graduate in tears she knew that this was an issue she had to tackle. It was an issue that affected her students greatly: the student in tears had been struggling with student loans and her parents had been as well.
Zaloom had also spoke about the FAFSA document that surely all college students looking for aid has filled out. It is a document that students need to fill out, but need mostly information from their parents to complete. She critiques that the FAFSA is suited for nuclear families where both parents are working, however, this is not the case for many students. Often, the FAFSA does not provide the aid that families really need, because the FAFSA assumes ideal conditions that should not be assumed. Zaloom had also stated that public universities often are severely underfunded. She had stated that the University of California had only received 7% of their funding from the Department of Education. How does this qualify as a public university?
There was also a Q/A session where many people from the audience were eager to participate. One had stated that they regretted going to UChicago and asked what realistic advice should he give to his younger siblings to avoid the mess of student loans. Others had mentioned why community colleges/certification programs are a viable option and the stigma around them.
I would attend a talk like this again since it was an important topic that I could personally relate to. It is a talk that needs to happen if we want to enable success for future generations.
Before attending the humanities fest talk, Ghost Work, I didn’t have any expectations of how it was going to turn out or what exactly it was going to be about. But on attending it I did learn a lot more than I had expected to learn. Our speaker was Mary L. Gray is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research and fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. She is the co-author, with Siddharth Suri, of Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass.
Before coming to this seminar, I believed that automation in the industries was going to mean a very large decrease in job opportunities for humans in the future. As technology is taking over some of these jobs. However, after the seminar, Gray made us understand that there are a lot of invisible, piecemeal tasks that have to exist to keep the internet running including content moderation, image classification, and customer assistance. This changed my perspective on the effect of automation on job availability for individuals in the later future.
I would definitely like to attend other events like this, to further broaden my mind on these aspects of computer science that may not be necessarily taught in the school syllabus.
I went to the Ghost Work talk by Mary L. Gray and Natalie Foster. It was very interesting, and tied in a lot with what I’ve been learning in my Politics of Science and Technology class, with how the structures of how our society and laws work haven’t kept up with tech. I had assumed that the talk would be about the people who work behind the scenes to keep the internet running, like server admins and stuff. It was instead about how there are a lot of people who work in things like content moderation, doing things that most people assume are done by algorithms. One of the major points of the talk was that these jobs, especially since they are often done “whenever you want to” in a similar model to Uber and Lyft, are not valued appropriately by society. This is important, because these are the jobs that are going to replace the ones that automation takes. We are shifting to an economy filled with this particular type of service job as the main type of employment for a huge portion of the population, and we need to adapt our society norms and laws to account for this. Our current labor laws assume a 40 hour work week in a factory job, and we need to adjust that for the fact that working a set number of hours per week in a single job is becoming less common in place of working multiple jobs for a similar number of hours. I found this talk very engaging and would very much be willing to attend something similar in the future.
Last Saturday, I attended the “Ghost work” talk from the Chicago Humanities Fest which was given by Mary Gray, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research, and the co-author of her book “Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass,” Natalie Foster. Before the talk, I was excited because of the interesting topic of the talk, the credentials of the speakers, and the fact that I got to go to the University of Chicago. Many people nowadays believe that the advance in technology and AI can lead to unemployment. We did have a debate on such a topic in one of our labs, so listening to what people with the experience and credentials in the field like the speakers talk about it is very interesting. The idea of the talk was that technology still relies on human beings with works in content moderation, image classification, and other works in service and healthcare still depend on human judgment, decision-making, and human contacts. The speakers also expanded on how what seems to be contemporary works like content moderators are compared with conventional jobs considering the wages and benefits like healthcare. The talk is certainly an eye-opening one for me as I further learn how technology relates and possibly change society, in this case, the workforce, and that developing new technologies require understandings of the social and ethical aspects, not just knowing the algorithms. I would attend another talk like this in the future.
I attended the ‘Ghost Work’ talk by Mary Gray. If I’m completely honest, before going I was not looking forward to it. I wasn’t entirely sure what it was going to be about, and I figured I’d be pretty bored the whole time. But to my surprise, it was actually kind of interesting. She talked about how as the economy is changing, the types of jobs people have will be different in a rather fundamental way. As I understood it, the system where most people will work at a single company for 40+ years and then retire with a pension is on its way out. Many, if not most, of the jobs being created now operate where the employee is not really personally known, by the company or the consumer, which is where the term ‘ghost work’ comes from. These new jobs have employees working ‘at will’ without a hard 9-5 schedule, and they’re working in the background. An example given was Uber/Lyft drivers. No higher-ups at the company know the drivers personally, and the consumers only see/interact with them during a single ride. The drivers also make their own schedules for the most part, and more importantly, they don’t really get any benefits. With more and more jobs having all these combined aspects, the existing 9-5, 40+ years, pension system doesn’t work so well as the default view of jobs in the economy. Thus, lots of things need to be restructured.
She talked about more, but I like economics a lot so that’s what stuck out to me the most. Overall I enjoyed the talk and would be interested in attending more like it.
Last weekend, I attended the Chicago Humanities Fest to hear Caitlin Zaloom speak on student debt. I was very excited to attend this talk since student debt has become such an important discussion in our education system and in politics. I was hoping to gain a new insight into the situation and get an understanding of proposed solutions to the debt crisis.
It was an extremely educational experience as I came to understand that one core causes of student debt was that our loan system reinforced social constructs and acted as a form of discrimination. For instance, college debt compounds inequalities already faced by people. Many lower income families will try everything they can to earn a college degree, even if it means putting both the family and student in debt. However, a common result of this is that the degree-owning student will now be in greater financial strain by the time his or her children want to attend college. It overall becomes harder to attend college for future generations.
In addition, free college tuition is not a radical thought as many believe. There are already many programs that accomplish this for teachers, nurses, and doctors because we recognize that we need college educated people for democracy-needed jobs. The problem is that people now view college as an individual’s improvement, and therefore everyone should pay for it individually, when college is actually improvement for the entire community.
Overall, going to the Humanities Fest made me much more aware of our debt crisis and its impacts. I most likely will attend future talks to learn more about current issues our society faces.
Last Saturday I attended the talk Ghost Work by Mary Gray. Before the talk I didn’t really know what it was about but looked forward to it mostly because of it’s name which I found to be quite interesting. But after actually attending the lecture I found it to be very informational. She explained Ghost Works as the jobs done that consumers cannot necessarily see. The people who do these jobs are actually overlooked, they are not considered full-time workers but the work they do is tedious and of utmost importance. As examples she told the story of content moderators. The work they do is difficult and they are not given any job security. She also talked about how the economy is changing and how people that take on projects like these are much more in number but how they are completely overlooked. She also mentioned that these jobs are largely created due to innovation in AI. While there are a lot of innovation in AI it does not lead to unemployment but creates such background-jobs. It does not matter how much AI develops there are some things that only humans can do and thus such jobs are created. This helps understand the effect of AI and the platforms created that has on the economy and people. It was a very interesting talk and I learnt a lot from it.
I attended the talk on ” Student Debt” with Caitlin Zaloom, She mentioned that right now the public universities are not getting enough funding from the state government. For example, the University of California which is a public school is only getting 7% of their entire expense from the state government and the rest of it is from student tuition and funding from the outside. Which indirectly putting more burden on the side of the students.
In addition, I think it is very unethical that How much funds that students get from FASFA are decided by the US Department of Education where it doesn’t take into a count the other problems that families have to deal with.
For example a separated family the mom wouldn’t tell the daughter that much of her information. Which causes the delay in the process of submitting her application. She was stressed in school and sooner drop out the college.
We had a great session, where both the Speaker and the audience are very passionate regards to the topic, at the end of the talk, we had a Q&A section where a lady who is currently studying in med school are carrying over half-million dollars of debt on her right now. Even after she graduated from school, and founded a very promising job, this debt will still remain there in a very long term, which is gonna be stressful to deal with. Overall the talk enlighted me, to take debt into consideration if I’m gonna pursuit higher degrees in my field.
Today, I attended the War in the Cyber Age humanities talk by David E. Sanger at the Field Museum. Before attending it, I felt a sense of preparedness and excitement. I read the event description on the Chicago Humanities website prior to leaving for the event in order to get a basic idea of what the talk would be focused on which was the rise of cyber conflict, geopolitics, and foreign policy hotspots. My excitement came from the fact that I had never been to a humanities talk before and would be trying out something new. The event was made up of David E. Sanger having a conversation with Christopher Bury on the topics I previously mentioned. Something new I learned at the activity was that 98% of Internet traffic is private and that the Post-Stuxnet world consisted of Saudi Aramco and “Dark Seoul”. I would attend another activity like this again if one thing was different from this experience. This would be being more open/inclusive of younger generations as the humanities talk was geared towards a much older audience and thus that made me feel like I didn’t completely belong there. However, I liked how quick the check in process was for tickets and that the seats in the James Simpson Theatre were clean and comfortable.
Today I visited the field museum to attend the war on cybersecurity. The discussion focused heavily on the concept of cyber conflict rather than cyberwar. And discussed the complexities of what a war could be like. Cyber-attacks have become the primary way that states except use power without creating a war. The main focus being as we continue to develop in tech we need to learn how to adapt and deal with the conflict much like terrorism and climate change. For the last six years, cyber-attacks have been identified as the biggest threat to the world. Taking into consideration the potential threats such as espionage for destructive and manipulative purposes. Giving multiple examples of how we have been slowly becoming a society that fights cyber as well as in real life. Coming into the talks I wasn’t sure what to expect, however, after seeing what Sanger has to say and the ramifications of the misuse of technology and the new potential implementations it could have for warfare in the future and the way it had been manipulated to be a vessel of war being an interesting perspective to the table. How will we look forward to combat the rise in cyberattacks and will we ever be able to control the number that pass our security.
I attended the talk, “War in the Cyber Age,” by David E. Sanger. Before attending this talk I didn’t know what to expect. I thought that the speech would be very interesting, so I was generally excited to attend. I originally thought that the talk would go into detail on cyber conflict and foreign policy but didn’t know how much detail due to the fact that the talk was only one hour long.
Something new that I learned at this talk was about Russian interference on social media sights. I knew of Russian interference on social media sights, but I didn’t realize how widespread it was, especially how widespread it was on facebook.
The activity helped me understand more about computer science due to the fact that the speech was based on cyber-security. I was able to learn about hacking, the ability of hackers, and the effect that hacking has had on worldwide governments and the world in general. I also learned how important cyber-security is nowadays and how cyber-security is becoming a greater issue than ever before.
I would definitely attend an activity like this again. I found the entire experience to be interesting. Next year, I would love to attend more humanities fest talks on important issues in society and politics and attend talks that just generally look interesting.
Yesterday, I went to the Chicago Humanities Fest talk on cyber-war. I wasn’t really sure what to expect going on because I saw cyber-war as such a broad topic. I thought it was interesting how the speakers talked about how cyber-war isn’t a real threat yet and that it’s really just “cyber conflicts”. They talked about how cyber attacks were kind of like nuclear bombs and that deterrence is the main combatant to cyber-attacks. I also found it interesting how common cyber-attacks were. I didn’t really understand that they have been used in war before and that I just haven’t heard of them happening before. From this talk, it helped widen my view about how important computer science is and just how broad of a reach it is in every field. I think that I would attend another event like this again. The speakers were obviously educated on the subject and they described in a way that anybody could understand without making me feel like an idiot. This talk also made me want to look more into the topic of cyber-security and cyber-war/cyber-conflicts specifically which has led me to learn a lot more about these subjects that I didn’t know much about before attending this lecture.
I went to the Chicago Humanities Fest for Jane Elliott’s “The Anatomy of Prejudice”. During this talk Jane discussed how prejudices developed in the United States. From as early as birth and through our education system. She told us straight that prejudice and racism is an issue that is so ingrained into the United States (both culturally and systematically) that we can stop if we start now. She reminded us that this issue divides us and holds us back from fixing a lot of other problems. I’ve heard it before, but here I really learned that race is something that is socially constructed. How can we move on if we identify and divide people based on the melanin in their skin?
Before the event, I was unsure about whether or not I would be engaged/interested in what Jane Elliott had to say, or that I wouldn’t learn anything. Even in the first few seconds of the event, I was captivated. Jane Elliott is a great speaker and addressed the issue of prejudice head on. She told us about how people need to stop dividing on race, without dropping our heritage or ignoring our characteristics, in order to move forward. Providing equal opportunity goes beyond that, and treating people with respect should be the highest priority for our educators. Jane pushed for the idea that this should change in people of course, but especially within how we educate children. Overall, this talk was very insightful and I’m glad I went!
I went to the David Sanger, War in the Cyber Age presentation and talk hosted at the Field Museum. Going into it, I had very little to expect because I knew ill about cyber technology and its power to strengthen wars. I didn’t even really know David Sanger until I google searched his name during the presentation and found out he is the chief correspondent for the New York Times. Although I came in with a small amount of information, I enjoyed the talk a whole lot. In my opinion, his discussion was more political based more than technical but he discussed in depth about how cyberwar is shaping to become the biggest weapon since the airplane, Sony hacked by a North Korean spy, and what the future may look like in the years to come. This helps me understand computer science a bit more on the stance of how important our jobs will be in the future. Computer Science has the potential to be the most destructive piece of equipment known to man. It took the spy from North Korea 2 minutes to wipe off 70% of Sony’s records and files. That is mindboggling to think about. Talks similar to these interest me because it sort of has a philosophical take on it with facts and evidence on topics that can change the world and is definitely something I am interested in going to again.
Jane Elliot is a public lecturer on racial relations and is wildly acclaimed for her Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise she performed with her third-grade class in 1968. The exercise was designed to teach participants how it felt to be discriminated against based on arbitrary physical characteristics. Elliot was the closing speaker at the Chicago Humanities Fest 30th Anniversary.
I had seen her films before attending her talk. The Eye of the Storm and Blue Eyed are documentaries showcasing the effects of Elliot’s blue eye brown eye exercise. Watching her talk demonstrated that even at 86 years old she continues to carry the same passion for public education that she had when she was a 36-year-old elementary teacher.
Her lecture began by discussing the historic racial oppression that people of color have and still encounter in the United States. She argues that racism is culturally learned and – because of this – it can be unlearned.
Her presentation had little to do with computer science, but it was a refreshing awakening of the hardships that people of color regularly encounter. It taught me how I should view race and – more importantly – how I shouldn’t view race. I would very much enjoy sitting in another of Jane Elliot’s presentation.
I attended a talk by David E. Sanger at the Chicago Humanities Festival on the topic “War in The Cyber Age”. David Sanger is a renowned author who wrote many books relating to cybercrime and political affairs. He has been writing for the Times for over 30 years now. One of his most famous works is ‘The Perfect Weapon”.
In his talk, he discussed how the hacking parameters have evolved and political interventions which led to each major cybercrime breach. One of the most important factors that he discussed was how the communication technology, and thus privacy breaches, have changed since the Russian attacks on American servers.
David E. Sanger emphasized that in the modern world, the Internet has changed how “wars” are fought. He discussed how President Obama dealt with cybercrime issues during his time as the US President.
Most of his talk was political which turned out to be quite boring. I was hoping that he would want to keep it a lot more technical. The Chicago Humanities Festival was basically a political conversation platform. People (mostly senior citizens showed up) discussed politics with the hosts who were famous writers/critics.
I felt really hyped up before going to this event as I am pretty much interested in security fundamentals, etc but the talk was “dry” and had very less content about actual cybercrime technicalities. I would not really attend another CHF.
I attended the last Chicago Humanities Fest talk, which was by Jane Elliot. Going into it I didn’t think too much of it. I usually find lecturers about humanities topics, especially political ones like this one (racism), very boring. They tend to either exaggerate facts to laughable absurdity just to entertain or give a very dry academic lecture I could fall asleep to. This one was certainly a breath of fresh air. Jane Elliot made her talk funny, inspiring, and most importantly, gave me perspective about racism in America. She had no hesitation saying what was the truth, even when it seemed offensive and obscene to say, which I found interesting, as this is usually a complement given to conservatives, not outspoken liberals like her.
If humanities talks were as entertaining and inspiring as hers, I would definitely attend more.
As part of her talk, she insisted that she was an educator, and not a teacher. She described the difference as that a teacher tells people concepts in hopes that they learn it, while an educator “guides people out of ignorance.” After hearing that, I realized that this applies to computer science. Anyone can be a teacher and show someone every statement in a coding language to teach someone. Only an educator can use the coding language to teach a profoundly new way of thinking. For example, any teacher can teach the limited number of statements in MySQL, but it takes a good educator to teach database programming.
The “War in the Cyber Age” presentation was described as a talk focusing on how the landscape of war has changed in our current geopolitical and technologically centered world. David Sanger, who has been following this subject intensely, lent his view concerning the situation, including showing Russia’s efforts to polarize the US, such as through social media, and breaking into the Democratic National Committee by hacking. However, he also commented that Russia will likely not replicate these efforts for the 2020 election, instead opting for perception attacks, or attacks that target the perceived security of the American people. There were two ways in which cyber attacks could take form: stealing data and manipulating systems that controlled physical systems, each of which could have deadly results.
While I regrettably consider myself very minimally informed in current politics, I believe Sanger succinctly outlined the current threats to our political and economical stability, especially knowing its potential insidiousness. I learned not only how necessary it is to keep up to date with politics, but also in being aware of potential propaganda by unfavorable agents. Given a chance, I would attend another of David Sanger’s talks, as it proved to be both informative and entertaining.
(11/10/19)
Before I attended the War in the Cyber Age by David Sanger, I was expecting the format of the humanities talk to be a presentation with slides. I was thinking that the talk would be boring, for humanities has always been uninteresting to me. However, the talk was anything but what I was expecting. Sanger talked about how countries can wage war through cyberattacks because cyberattacks have become pervasive, meaning that countries can exercise their power without triggering war. They use these cyberattacks to siphon information from other countries, or to affect the physical hardware of certain systems. I was mind blown, for I never thought that cyberattacks could affect the physical world. However, stuxnet, the example Sanger brought up, proved otherwise. Stuxnet caused reactors in Iran to speed up and slow down to a point where it made the reactors explode. While I don’t pay attention to politics between countries that much, this caught, Sanger exposed how threatening cyberattacks can be, for they can capitalize on critical physical hardwares, which if damaged, could topple political and economic stability. I learned while computer science can be used for good and to improve lives, it can be harmful to the same magnitude where it can negatively impact lives as well. If I could go to another of Sanger’s talks, I would definitely would attend it because he proves to be very enlightening and informative, teaching the audience how computer science impacts the real world.
I attended David Sanger’s “War in the Cyber Age” talk. Before the talk, I was expecting Sanger to discuss something interesting in a boring manner, like with powerpoint slides. However, I was surprised that while he did use slides, they were only as supplements to what he’s talking about, making it a lot more interesting.
His comparisons of cyber and airplanes and how they are used in wars today was not predicted when they were first proposed. It really made me think about how computer science can be used in malicious ways to digitally or physically attack others, which I would not have thought about because I’ve thought of computer science as a way to help people. Sanger also talked about how cyber attacks are dangerous because of the amount of private data the hacker now has access to, and if the hack is on a system that can operate something physical, it can result into something physical.
This talk was very political, which is something I’m not up to date on or super interested in. However, the way Sanger talked about how politics is an important key in cyber attacks has made me realize that I should put more effort in recognizing parties that may have malicious intent toward our politics or economy. Overall, this talk kept me awake because of how interesting Sanger incorporated politics and computer science, so I would attend another talk from him.
Prior to attending the Chicago Humanities Fest: “War in the Cyber Age: Democracy, Security, and the Cyber Battlefield,” I expected to be learning more about the historical aspect of how cyber security developed and emerged as a significant field in America, rather than the destructive nature of cyber security and how it became a huge part of the technological field during the war. It was shocking to me that cyber attacks led to numerous accounts of terrorist acts, threats, crimes, and other forms of illegal activities.
David Sanger, graduate from Harvard University, spoke about the role of cyber security in the past and the present world today. He discussed about the cyberattacks of Sony Pictures, which U.S. government officials believed was tied to the North Korean government. He explained that one day, Sony employees tried to log into their computers when a graphic of a neon red skeleton featuring the words “#Hacked by #GOP” appeared on their screens. It was later found that GOP was an acronym short for “Guardians of Peace” and that the graphic was created from a text-sharing site called PasteBin, which was commonly used by hacktivist groups. This abrupt outbreak resulted in the public being exposed to large amounts of confidential data from Sony’s internal networks in addition to some code that caused Sony employees from accessing their old computers. When I learned about this unfortunate incident, I felt a combination of shock and vulnerability as I realized just how destructive and terrorizing cyberattacks could get in such a short span of time.
If given the chance, I would attend an activity like this again. It was a very impactful experience for me and made me realize how critical computer science is in today’s society.
This past weekend I attended a talk on War in the Cyber Age at the Chicago Humanities Fest. Before going, I wasn’t sure what exactly the topic meant. I figured it had to do with actual war or just the hacking war for data and computers in general. David Sanger was the speaker, who typically works with the New York Times and recently published a new book.
The talk focused on actual warfare and how it will change with the emergence of new technologies. He spoke about things such as the Sony hack, when all of Sony’s computers displayed an odd message meant to distract employees from unplugging the computers while the hackers were in the system. He also touched on the difficulty in keeping our data safe from worldwide enemy hackers. I thought it was interesting that he briefly touched on the lack of technological education in the US compared to other countries and how detrimental that could be in our country’s strength. Overall, I enjoyed the talk and felt more informed than before I attended.
I would definitely attend a talk like this again because it was quick and informative. I enjoy learning new things, and I especially enjoy being able to learn in an environment outside of the classroom.
I attended the War in the Cyber Age talk by David E. Sanger.
Before going to the talk, I was already interested in cybersecurity, knowing that in today’s age, cyber-attacks are becoming more frequent and dangerous. In addition, I first thought that this talk was going to be about cyber-attacks on individuals; however, the talk was more than that. During the event, I found out how these attacks have become more devastating as the speaker describes events such as how 70% of Sony’s computers were hacked with the appearance of a single individual from North Korea and how wars can be ended without having sent a single soldier. After hearing about these events and possibilities, I became even more aware of the significance of cyber-security. With a large portion of the world being enveloped by the internet, it is important to understand the dangers of it and find ways to prevent them from happening. After attending this talk, I feel more aware of the situation and believe that this field of work may be worth pursuing in order to protect innocent people who are exposed to these dangers. In the future, I would definitely attend another talk like this as it brings awareness of the dangers that lurk in our society.
I participated in this humanities activity, the theme of which is the war in the Internet era. I am still vague about this word, and I don’t know how the Internet is connected with the war. Then I went to the lecture with doubt. I thought it would be boring, but they are two people who show us these things in conversation. In their lectures, I learned a lot about the war in the Internet age. For example, between countries, they can start wars through the Internet. They use hackers to hack into other countries’ information bases to steal secrets. This has enormous political implications because it can disrupt and disrupt a country’s networks. In this era of network development, the use of the network is everywhere, if the network once invaded, information and data from all walks of life will be threatened. I use the Internet every day to accomplish all kinds of things, I never thought the Internet will be a war place, it is terrible. Now I know that the Internet can not only help society and make many things easy and convenient, but it is also dangerous, because there are always some hackers who may attack it in the dark, so we should also be prepared to have some precautions against it. If there is such kind of activity, I should continue to participate in it, because it does let me learn some new knowledge, which is around us, and also very useful.
This past weekend I attended the War in the Cyber Age presentation by David Sanger at the Field Museum. Before the event, I was curious about the theme of this presentation and I realized it was definitely an important one due to the number of people who were already there. I was honestly amazed by this presentation as he gave various points about Cyber War and the challenges that continues to grow within international oppositions over security and societal factors hence the upcoming Election in 2020. His entire discussion focused on our growing use of technology as well as political figures and events happening throughout time. This can also connect to his “Four ways Nations us Cyber” which he claims are for espionage, to manipulate data , for destructive purposes and for achieving political goals. I like how Sanger has looked at past events and compares it to our present. He claims that any cyber attack done by another nation will not repeat that same move twice. There are many weaknesses in our security and that’ one of his main points, and to give an example is the North Korean Spy who took over Sony computers. The presentation was great as so were the people, however I didn’t really understand some of the jokes but it seemed really funny to others so I laughed along. I really enjoyed this presentation as it focuses a lot on similar debates that we’ve had on security/ authority in the computer science field. I would definitely go to another event like this.
I attended the Chicago Humanities Festival: “War in Cyber Age” talk by David Sanger. Before the talk, I was very excited because I had always been interested in topics related to cybersecurity. The talk was about some massive cyber-attacks in the history and how they had been causing numerous crimes, threat, terrorism, and they might lead to war between nations in the future.
At the beginning of the speech, Sanger discussed about the history of cybersecurity. I like how he referred cyber-attack as the airplane. Before the World War I, when the first airplane was created by the Wright brothers, they would fly the airplane around the Army Camp. At first, the Army didn’t see that airplane as a weapon, but rather a surveillance tool. But over the time, until World War II, the airplane was developed to be a high-tech weapon and joined the war. Nowadays, people view cyber-attack as their surveillance tools to sneak in other countries’ system, as David Sanger mentioned about the attacks in Sony system that believed to be done by North Korean, or the hack in Stuxnet that helped the US scientists to have a look into Iran’s nuclear reactors and control them easily, which they can speed up or slow down the reactors to make them explode at any moments. That information had made me shocked since I have never thought about how destructive and dangerous a cyber-attack could be.
The other half of the talk was mainly about political subject and because I don’t have much knowledge in this field in US, I could understand a few things and most of them were very confused (especially some political jokes). But this talk had helped to understand more about the dark side of cyber-attacks and made me realize that I still have a lot of things to study, not only subjects on the class, but also the politics and economics of US and other countries. This talk overall is really great and it leaves me a lot of impactful information about what is happening right now. 10/10, would go again and recommend others to attend the talk by David Sanger, too.
Technology advances every year, which comes with both advantages as well as disadvantages. We all already know this, but I wanted to get a deeper understanding of the current issue so I decided to attend “War in the Cyber Age” with David E. Sanger. Before attending the event, I didn’t realize how unprepared the United States was for a cyber attack. I had heard about how the Russian government hacked into facebook to post about the 2016 US election and know it was likely the biggest social media attack between countries, but it’s interesting to me how the US didn’t see it coming. It could possibly have to do with the conspiracy that Trump is working with the Russians or it could be because presidents come from an older generation that don’t understand the power of technology. (No offense) I had no idea about the ransomware attacks that happened in Texas this past August. Although I’m not surprised, the US was again unprepared; you would think that after the 2016 election incident they would have things more under control. I also learned more than half of adults receive their information from Facebook and other social media. It appears the internet really has taken over the world. Attending this talk helped me understand the importance of cybersecurity. Depending on who you ask, you’ll hear that hacking is either really cool or simply disrespectful, but it tends to be seen on a lighter note. We need to work on building better firewalls to protect everyone so that we can be sure our information is 100% safe. I would definitely go to an event like this again because I feel it’s important to be up to date on current events.
I love the humanities festival and especially the talk “War in the Cyber Age” by David Sangar was an eye-opening experience. Honestly, I wasn’t as surprised by the numerous amount of cyber attacks that happen every year. However, something new that I learned about is the Sony invasion system attacks. I have watched the Interview film produced by Sony and I knew bits and pieces of why they released later than planned. Sangar actually explained the whole thing in depth on what has really happened. First thing, Sony has never seen the attacks coming, they know they had threats but they shrugged thinking it was no big deal. Nonetheless, North Korea took 3 months figuring how their system was connected to emails, servers, etc. After those 3 months, North Korea hacked their systems and when editors came back to see their scenes, they got an image made by North Korea and couldn’t take off the image at all. This activity helped me understand more about computer science in terms of cybersecurity because now the government views cyberattacks as a problem that can be compared to terrorism and climate change. I wanted to take a job in cybersecurity and this helped me understand the ethics of cybersecurity within Computer Science. I would love to attend the Humanities festival because it provides information that we as a society needs to be aware of our actions and provide a new perspective
Just last weekend, I attended the David Sanger’s War in the Cyber Age presentation at the Field Museum. I’ve always been interested in cyber security and current world issues that are computer science or security related. I was really excited to attend this presentation purely for this reason. I knew that various countries faced threats and cyber attacks, but I didn’t realize the amount of consequences that countries can face if they are unprepared for cyber attacks. Sanger’s presentation made me think of the multiple applications that computer science has in our society. Computer science is a means to a country’s vulnerability to cyber-attacks. The more well-versed a country is in computer science and cybersecurity, the harder it is for terrorists to take classified information. The world is ever evolving and right now, computer science is leading the way to a new cyber age. Sanger’s presentation presented consequences and real-world events that could happen if countries don’t strengthen their security. I love listening to speakers who point out political and economic issues and weave in technology to solve them. After attending David Sanger’s War in the Cyber Age talk, I would definitely attend another one of his presentations or another talk at the Chicago Humanities Fest.
Before the event, I did not know what to expect from the presentation. I have never heard of the name, but I read the title, “War in the Cyber Age” and thought it would be interesting. Cyber warfare has been huge for years and listening to someone with insider knowledge on the situations just made it all the better. Although interesting, I knew very little about Cyber warfare and learned a lot during the presentation. One fact that really stood out to me would be that Cyber Attacks are the main exercise countries use that do not trigger actual war, and these cyber attacks are the number one threat to national security. One example, the attacks on Sony, were very interesting to learn about. I knew that North Korea did not want the movie to be shown in theaters in the United States however I did not know how far they went in attempt to stop its progress. The hacking of the offices, bricking hundreds of computers, threats, exposure of many Sony executives, and many other cyber attacks that were thrown at Sony. The most interesting part of the Sony hack is how Sony did almost nothing for the a portion of the time and the situation got worse. Then current President Obama named this attack as an act of vandalism and did label it as an attack of war, which to me seems like a lot more than just some vandalism. A couple hours after Obama said this, North Korea somehow lost its connection to the internet and although the US stated it had nothing to do with it, may believe it was the United States’ work. The event was very informational and was not like most boring conferences where a speaker gets on stage and goes through a slideshow presentation and just reading off the slides. I would attend an event like this again, if it is another David Sanger presentation or a Chicago Humanities Fest speaker.
I attended the War in the Cyber Age talk by David E. Sanger.
Before attending, I believe they were going to talk about more of a cyberwar of the future rather than previous examples of cyberwar. I was interested in this talk because it seems like we are going to have a cyberwar with not just foreign countries but also companies collecting our data and selling it off. This talk was very disappointing to me because it was quite the opposite of my beliefs. It mostly focused on the speaker’s book at talked a lot about past events that I didn’t think were really “cyber” or just really old. Whereas I though a cyberwar would be one on computers where hackers breach their enemy’s networks, however, this speech talked about Watergate and their bugging of the room to find out the democrat’s secrets. One thing I did find interesting was that Sony was hacked by North Korea and had 70% of their computers destroyed. After this talk, I realized how much more careful we need to be online and the decisions we make. We also need to ensure we have firewalls and other barriers in place to prevent these attacks from happening. Overall I was disappointed with this speech but became more interest in cybersecurity.
The War in the Cyber Age talk by David E. Sanger at the Field Museum. I assumed that they would mainly focus on AI in the military but instead, it was more about cybersecurity and the imminent cyberwar with other foreign countries. He brought up the Sony and North Korea hacking scandal and what I found out was that it destroyed more than 50% of Sony’s computers as well as exposing their executives in the process. I had heard about said scandal on the news but not the exact implications and that these cyber-attacks are not exercised to trigger actual war but it is still a massive threat to national security. Our security as a leading world power could be at stake if we don’t keep up with the technological advances. What this talk left to think me to think about two things. How important, as well as dangerous, technology is becoming and whatever the country improves the internet the most have the potential to control over the internet.
While this was just a part of my assignment, I wouldn’t mind attending another one of these talks and further learning about the pros and cons of cyber uses in an interesting and informative way.
‘The War in the Cyber Age’ talk/presentation given by David E. Sanger began as he introduced himself as the National Security Correspondent of the New York Times. Prior to attending this talk, I remember one of the CS100 lecture given by Professor Kevin Jin and how Ukraine’s power was shut down by DDOS. A lot of hackers send packets that overload the Ukraine power system which caused a power outage for nearly 80,000 people for 6 hours. This example of the world in cybersecurity really heightened my curiosity about the field of encryption practice. Another example of a cybersecurity threat similar to Ukraine goes dark incident in which a group called “Guardians of Peace” comprised of the North Koreans who hacked into Sony’s data to threatened the upcoming release of ‘The Interview’. ‘The Interview’ is a movie that mocked Kim Jong Un’s actions and his political stand view in a satirical fashion. This example of an attack helped me understand more about Computer Science in how this field of study is still relatively new and still growing every second. Encryptions are getting much better while hacking and types of decryptions or malware are becoming developed and fortified. That is why security must be updated and newer security systems must be developed as soon as possible to prevent any flaw in the system to be overturned into something fatal. Especially at a national level like Ukraine’s and Sony’s experience of having a flaw in their security system.
On November 9, I went to the field museum to attend the “War in The Cyber Age” talk. Before going, I was very excited for this talk. The swift advancements in the computer science field are greatly affecting the world in many ways, including war. I was hoping that the speaker, Mr. Sanger will talk about the advancements in AI and the “arms race” for better and faster technology, but sadly, he barely went over that. It started off very interesting, but quickly devolved into a talk about politics, which frankly, was boring. I did learn a couple of things that made me think. One of those is the fact that cyber-attacks are actually making the world less violent. This sounds counter-intuitive at first, but Mr. Sanger explained it greatly. He said that if a country like Russia or China sent spies to the USA, or vice versa, that would be no different than a declaration of war. However, cyber-spies and drones don’t put any lives at risk, so it is more off a minor dispute, than full out war. Furthermore, he compared a nation’s cyber abilities to the amount of nuclear weapons they hold. This is because cyber force is an equalizer. Almost any country, big or small can get a hold of it. I would gladly go to a similar talk , if they stayed away from politics and focuses more on computer science itself and different ways it could be used in war rather than a generic “spies and drones.” Otherwise, it was an interesting talk.
On November 10th, I attended Jane Austen’s talk about racism in the modern world. It was not a CS related topic (but it was on the list), so I didn’t expect it to initially capture much of my attention. I can say with pleasure that I was greatly surprised. I was preparing for my snooze when Ms. Austen stepped out on stage. Instantly she captured the entire audience’s attention with her amazing stage presence and captivating speeches. I learned a lot from her – and she really did have a lot to share from her experiences. Ms. Austen showed me that we should not pretend to be blind to our differences. When we see someone is of a different skin color, we should not pretend that there are no differences between us, but rather acknowledge the slight differences in appearance and realize they do not define or demean the people we are speaking to, but add to them. She showed us that racism is not a product of differences in humans, but rather just a product of simple discrimination and societal backlash. Humans aren’t made inherently hating each other – they are taught to by societal norms and underlying meanings. In order to fix humanity, we have to start at the new generation, and with our own fundamentals of thinking.