Author Archives: Altan

Week Two Summary

This week we had a few different tasks to complete. We had The Daily Creates, assignment banks, course character, responding to The Techno-Optimist Manifesto, and re-writing the film review.

My daily creates can be found on my Mastadon @altanmurray. I did five this week and they can be found here, here, here, here, and here. Honestly, I found these assignments way more interesting than I had initially thought they would be. I am not an expert with poetry or digital art, but I had a fun time exercising my creative muscles to complete each task! I struggled a bit at times deciding how I wanted to approach it, but I think I figured it out as I went!

The assignments from the assignment bank can be found on my website, but are also linked here, here, and here. I really had to challenge myself to complete these, and used AI to generate an image as well. This was a first for me. I liked the AI component required for at least two of them, which made me think in a different way about each assignment. I found it all super interesting and ended up actually using an AI art generator for some of the subsequent assignments like the course character.

Speaking of – here is mine! This was a very interesting assignment to me, especially since I relied on AI to show me someone to make up a story for. I had never done this before, but I found it enjoyable despite struggling at first to figure out how I wanted to approach the assignment. I let AI sort of lead the way for a little bit before taking over and making the character, Düşünür, my own.

Responding to The Techno-Optimist Manifesto was my favorite assignment of the week. While I was reading it, I knew I had some strong thoughts about it, which can be found here. I did not really struggle with this one, but really liked “discussing” the article with Dr. Oblivion who I had not interacted with very much previously. If you look at any of my article, I would suggest this one!

Talking to Dr. Oblivion about the film review was also exciting since he mentioned things that I had not considered, which is the whole point! Fun to see that work out how I was hoping. I opted to add what he opened my eyes to at the end of the article to show the difference in what he pointed out compared to what I had initially thought. It feels peculiar listening to AI discuss the dangers of AI though…

I interacted with the class by reading through the Daily Creates that people were submitting and looking through a lot of the blogs that were posted. I was relieved to see that other folks were having a similar second week and also stressed about some assignments! It definitely makes me feel better not only about this class, but also the start of a new semester as a whole! I hope to respond more in the coming weeks to my classmates and really enjoy reading the comments left on the work that I do, which is unique to this course!

The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

When I started reading The Techno-Optimist Manifesto, my first reaction was that this was written by AI or a robot to try to convince humans of their practicality. Once I finished reading it, I looked up the firm that published this article, and was not surprised to find that they are a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. That made perfect sense to me why, then, it would sound like someone trying to convince me to keep building technology.

My next thought was that a lot of the sentence structures and arguments read like LSAT questions where you have to point out the issue with the argument. For example:

“The socialist USSR was far worse for the natural environment than the capitalist US. Google the Aral Sea.”

I choose answer A: The argument uses one part to justify a conclusion about the whole.

I quite enjoy reading Malcolm Gladwell books, but the issues with them to me is that they are highly anecdotal and have many cherry picked situations to justify his arguments. This doesn’t take away from my enjoyment of his books, but it does remove some credibility from the conclusions. This article reminds me of that style of writing. It includes many quotes from recognizable names and examples of things to support the arguments, but also makes some heavy assumptions, for example:

“The current gap in per-capita energy use between the smaller developed world and larger developing world is enormous. That gap will close – either by massively expanding energy production, making everyone better off, or by massively reducing energy production, making everyone worse off.”

This is a massive assumption to make! Political scientists, along with many others, have been trying to figure out why there is a development gap and how to close it. To assume that the gap will close without a doubt and this author has cracked the code is ridiculous to me.

The Techno-Optimist Manifesto definitely has a more positive view of technology than a lot of films and television shows. I consider myself to be more optimistic about the future of technology and the possibility of AI helping humans significantly in the future. But, this article is rather radical to me, especially since they have a robo-dog in the technology fight.

So I discussed with Dr. Oblivion!

The doc said to make sure to keep the risks of technology in mind. He also mentions that the claim about the current per-capita energy use gap is dubious, and the author makes it a black and white situation despite a significant grey area. Dr. O also mentions the vested interest in promoting technology from many venture capitalist firms and the importance of analyzing the source of each article.

I think Dr. Oblivion and I might be on the same page. Or at least that’s what he’s telling me…

My Course Character

My character, Düşünür, is a philosopher and author born on leap day in 1988 in Istanbul, Turkey. He moved out of the city and into the country to become closer with nature and continue his writing. He is a tall, skinny, bearded man who often wears a robe and head covering. His favorite possessions are his dogs: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, named after his favorite books by Dante Alighieri. Düşünür’s motto is “Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.”