Final Blog Post

I thought I should dedicate my last blog post to the drone strikes. We have gotten advanced with technology these days especially when it comes to aviation. With the addition to drone strikes it has made warfare safer in a sense that military men do not have o present at the site the drone strikes. Drones are more efficient then bombs because the targets are more specific.

Final Blog Post

As I was doing my map project, I was reminded of drones and air warfare. It amazes me how advanced we have gotten when it comes to aviation and anything related to the air. We went from using air planes to drop bombs during World War II to being able to drop bombs with drones and no one has to actually be in combat. Drones have definitely made warfare a little safer for military men. It is true that once you drop a bomb, you don't know who is going to get hurt but that is a fact when it comes to any kind of war. There will always be casualties, but i believe drones have made targets more specific.

Final Blog Post

The drone documentary that we watched in class held a lot of weight to it. The psychological impact that the bunkers had on the operators was astonishing. They were forced to emotionlessly shoot with the drones and obey orders, despite the possibility of not having an accurate shot on the target. Because of this problem, there were many innocent civilians that continued to get killed from the American drones that were in Afghanistan. This issue really made me wonder—is it worth using these drones with less accuracy and killing innocent bystanders if it terminates the lives of dangerous people?

Final blog post

While watching the drone documentary In class I was shocked at how big this production of drones had become. I thought it was crazy how people sit in a room all day and control these drones half way around the world. What really struck me was the thought about how watching and killing people on a screen. I feel like it takes out the emotion from it. Also thought it was interesting how they were trying to find people to operate drones using video games. These people that they find this way might then view these drone attacks as just video games. When you're half way around the world these attacks may just seem virtual to some and this could possibly increase the number of innocent causalities. 

Drones

It wasn't until the middle of 2012 did drone toys become popular. With advancements in technology, such as lighter material, smaller and longer lasting batteries, motors, and GPS causes them to pop up everywhere. They are great for all ages. I remember my brothers getting some for Christmas, and they were excited to take them to our grandma's house. She has a big, open backyard with lots of area for them to explore. But they are also perfect for adults who are looking for a DIY project.

Before this class, when someone mentioned drones, these remote control toys with cameras attached were what I commonly thought of. And i associated them with fun memories of my brothers have fun with their toys. But since taking this class, my idea of what a drone is and who it affects have changed. I really enjoyed watching the drone documentary. I think that it contained a lot of information that it not always understood. One of the quotes that impacted to me was along the lines of "Someone can kill millions of people without ever having touched the ground." This connects the idea that drones combine aerial and remote sensing. It was interesting to listen to perspective of those who fight wars operating the drones. They sit in a dark bunker, lite by the screens that they use, and when they are commanded to shoot they shoot. But as pointed out, this can have psychological affects on them realizing they are killing potentially innocent people. But due to contracts signed, they have to shoot and trust that the person they are killing is the one they wanting to kill.

Final Blog Post

For my final blog post, I want to talk about the beauty of coding.

For the past couple of weeks, I have just been coding for a class - ECS 30 - and it has given me a new viewpoint of maps, and a general perspective of my surroundings. While technology surrounds our daily lives, most of the time we take it for granted. Need to find the nearest Taco Bell? Just turn on your phone and search for it.

The only reason that we have such a convenience in our daily lives is all due to the diligence of engineers and computer scientists around us. What we have achieved today, and what will shape the near future is the collective efforts of engineers all across the world.

What has made communication and maps so accessible. I cannot fathom how the first few digital maps were made. What people have done with digital maps for the map project is so simple compared to how these maps were made - "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

I am just curious how technology will shape the images of America in the future.

Final Blog Post

In the final blog post, I would like to talk about the creation of my map project and the reflections about what I learnt in this course.

For the map project, only after I started working on it than I realise how difficult it is to create a map. It requires a extremely detailed planning and you cannot be wrong about the locations of the map. My map is about bikes which is related to the lives of students in UC Davis, and that is why I tried to make it perfect. Through different methodologies and research works, I still can't make it to be the map I wanted to be. There are quite a lot of barriers, such as impossibility to visit all the bike racks in UC Davis and therefore I am not able to create an extensive map by myself. Yet through the making of this map, I realised how great Google maps or simply technology is as they create such hi-tech maps to benefit different users. Apart from that, from an internet article, I also learnt that Google Maps is actually collecting databases from the users everyday. For example, if you are using Google Maps in navigation on certain highway, Google Maps will collect the real time data together with other users, thus determining whether the highway is crowded or not and show other users the crowdedness of the road. We are utilising technology, at the same time we are also contributing to it.

While for this course, it is actually an eye-opening experience of knowing how Americans interpret the environment around them. For example, the national aerial view can actually be regarded as a way to symbolise democracy and express the idea of American exceptionalism. All these allow me to know more about the rationales behind the images of America.

Militainment in video games

In the drone documentary we watched, I thought it was interesting that the military seemed to be scouting out kids who were good at video games. It was kind of shocking that the military was moving in that direction, especially with such impressionable young kids. However, I don't think that war and military style video games are necessarily desensitizing children to violence and war. There have been plenty of studies proving that violent video games don't really effect children more than other video games, because there is a separation between the player and the game. And although it may make it easier for soldiers to kill using drones, they are not necessarily free from the psychological effects of killing. Just as we saw with the soldier in the video, who was relating his drone stories, physical separation does not effect ones' guilt of killing. So even if a kid is really good at shooter games, doesn't mean they'd be able to become the kind of soldier the military wants.

Final Blog: Simulation or Real?

With the final blog post, I wanted to discuss the drone warfare documentary we saw in class.
This was a very powerful documentary, which had a lot of emotion in it. This video focused on the reality of drone warfare in the military and showed how former drone pilots feel about the experiences they had and the actions they made. When the video showed the screens the pilots used in order to complete their missions, I noticed that it looked very familiar to video games I have played before. The similarities were astonishing. This was shown later in the video when they discussed how the military and entertainment have many connections. I was very interested how the military was getting ideas from entertainment and recruiting people who had specific skills linked to video games. It was also very tough to see the pilots talk about what they did. Pushing a button seems so simple, but the repercussions are so vast. I feel like these pilots have such a hard time dealing with responsibility due to their job.

Final Blog Post

After learning all the different terminologies and definitions of various mapping verbiage, the "maps" app on the iPhone has impressed me. The amount of time and effort it must have taken to configure every avenue and landmark is hard to perceive. Things that seem so small and simple, such as an iPhone app, often have an unknown precedence. This class has allowed me to view things in an alternative manner.

Final blog post

Something that really resonated with me was the video we watched instructing kids on what to do in the case of a nuclear bomb attack (I think it was a commercial during the 60s?). It reminded me of what it was like to be in Israel two summers ago. There was a period of a few months where rockets were fired into cities every day and the sirens were going off all the time (and people had anywhere from 5-30 seconds to get to the nearest bomb shelter or safe area depending on what city they were in). There was also a commercial and a song taught to young kids in school (similar to the commercial we saw in class) that taught them what to do in the case of a "red alarm" or "red siren". It was interesting because to most people, watching that commercial in black and white seemed so crazy and outdated, but in other places in the world it is still a reality today.

Final Post

I would like to discuss the video that we watched recently in class. My freshman year of high school I took an International Relations class with a teacher who was very in-tuned with American foreign policy. In this class I learned about America's questionable military influences across the globe, and I was very surprised that not many Americans knew of this phenomena. Spending more on our military than any other nation, once must speculate where that money is going. I think that the American public should be more aware about our use of drones in the Middle East, but this would entail us having unbiased media coverage on the topic. I don't want to support the bombing of civilians via my tax dollars, or remain ignorant on the subject.

Final Post: The Fugitive

A few weeks ago I watched the movie the Fugitive with Harrison Ford and I found that the movie has some excellent examples of the use of aerial views. In the film Tommy Lee Jones plays a US marshal hunting a falsely convicted murderer played by Harrison Ford. In various instances helicopters are used to search for Harrison Ford which shows the importance of remote sensing discussed in this course. However, the remote sensing proves insufficient to locate the fugitive which is in line with the idea that aerial views do not contain all the information about a given area. In one instance during a foot chase US marshals watch Harrison Ford from a bird's eye view at the top of building and communicate the information to Tommy Lee Jones. I thought this movie had some cool examples of remote sensing and bird's eye views.

Final Blog Post: Killbox by Joseph DeLappe

For my final blog post, I wanted to talk about Killbox, a game collaboratively made by artist/activist Joseph DeLappe, and artists/game developers Malath Abbas, Tom Demajo, and Albert Elwin. The first part of the game is basically a simulation of a drone operator's experience. The player views a landscape and buildings from above, and targets, presented in the form of tiny spheres on the ground, can be selected by pressing "T." The player then presses "M" to fire a missile, and a second screen in the upper right corner of the monitor displays an black-and-white animation from the missile's perspective, presumably in a similar format to what a real drone operator would see. Targets are eliminated and surrounding buildings explode into rubble. This process repeats several times over as emotionless chatter plays out in the background. After a couple rounds of this, the player's perspective then switches from the drone operator's experience to that of the targets on the ground, and the player operates the movements of one of the spheres. You can interact with other spheres on the ground, mimicking real-life social interaction, and the game takes on a more whimsical and personable tone, much like a third-person rpg. Then in chilling turn of events, the missiles start to fall and buildings explode around, forcing the player to run for cover. This game forces the player to empathize with both the drone operator and the drone targets' living experience (of course, only through the lens of a screen), and the sudden shift in perspective prompts both personal connection with drone operators/targets and personal reflection on the use of drones themselves. It's free for download at turbulence.com, accessible by searching "killbox" on the site's search engine.

Final Blog Post: Greek Mythology in CLA30

In my final blog post, I would like to talk about a connection to class that I took note of recently in my Classics 30: Word Roots class. Last week in lecture, we discussed multiple stories of Greek mythology. One story we talked about a map of the Underworld and those who resided there. In the map the multiple "levels" of the underworld was was shown from the point of view of neither planometric or bird's eye view. The point of view of the different levels was shown as elevated and from the side. If anything, it was similar to a bird's eye view. The map was done on a piece of pottery and this was interesting to me because I was working on our final map projects at the time. The contrast between how the different methods of map drawing between the Greeks and in modern times is very interesting. I opted to create my map on a white posterboard paper, the fact that the map of the underworld was done in pottery, which is very involved work, intrigued me. In addition, the map of the underworld was said to scare people in Ancient Greece at the time, so they would not want to end up in the underworld after death. This reminded me of how maps and landscapes years ago would sometimes influence people's decisions to flock to different locations to visit.

Final Blog Post

This past weekend my roommate lost her phone. I immediately helped her use the "Find my iPhone" feature, hoping we'd be able to track the location of her phone. Luckily, it was only at Chipotle where we were able to go pick it up. Mapmaking in relation to technology amazes me; with the power of smartphones we're practically able to track our friends, anywhere, at any time. We're always updated on what our peers are doing. Over five years ago, this idea seemed to be impossible. Modern technology combined with maps is the foundation of the future. As seen in the documentary Drone, we now have the ability to drop bombs from an "autopilot" functioned aircraft from anywhere in the world. This makes me curious as to what will come next. What will the power of mapmaking and modern technology help us accomplish in the future?

The Final Post

I wanted to use this last post to talk about the map project. Although there was a lot of work involved in creating a map, it taught me a lot of lessons. The first is how hard it is to make a map. Going around to every building on campus and surveying it took countless hours but it was well worth it because I'm familiar with nearly every building on campus. This brings me to the idea that map makers really know the layout of what they're drawing when they create a map. It's one thing to look at an area and map it out on a piece of paper, but it's another to know by heart and memorize each and every part of that land and be able to recreate the map at any given time. I'm thankful that I did this project because now I know where the best places to study on campus are and I use this information everyday to my benefit when I'm walking around campus and looking for a place to hang out. This class also taught me that there's more to maps and cultural imagery than what's presented to the audience. We really have to dig deep and figure out what happened in that time period to understand different perspectives and why those people perceive it that way. For example, the World's Fair incorporated many countries into their attractions which could show that the United States is respectful to their nationality and the individual foods / inventions that they bring to the world but at the same time, that country could see how big their building is in comparison to the other countries at the fair and feel like they've been belittled or have not received enough recognition.

Final Blog Post

After taking this class, I realized that maps and some of the ideas we discussed are actually more prevalent in today's society that we actually thought. On the first day of class I though I would probably never need to use a map, But what don't realize is that the use of maps is used in today's media, on our smartphones and all around us. if you go shopping at the mall, there  are maps in the middle of the mall. I have watched several movies or TV shows lately that have related to maps and this class such as Star Wars, The Bachelor, and The Revenant. And of course we use our phones everyday, and even if we are not using google maps directly or some other map, the location services on our phone are mapping or recent locations. Maps are actually all around us, and will never lose their use.

Google Earth

I was exploring the country using Google Earth recently and it is truly mind-blowing how accurate and efficient the maps and landscapes are. Users can simply type in an address or zoom in on certain geographical features and the app simply clarifies the image for the viewer. Remote sensing was utilized in creating this technology. This also remained me the Corona, the first satellite system, since advanced satellite systems were used in creating Google Earth.

Post #3

Tonight I flew home for the weekend and while the sun was setting, the lights from the cities beneath me emerged. I have flown into Los Angeles countless times but this time I noticed the prominence of the grid system. Additionally, I observed the abundance of cars moving between these cities and towns on freeways and busy streets. Upon my arrival I evaluated this vast and urban expanse from above. This evoked feelings of urgency and excitement as I approached home. I now understand and appreciate the emotional quality of Ariel views and I accredit this new found nostalgic awareness to ams 30.