Global Warming Videos

The two videos we watched seemed to be quite different. The Doomsday Called Off videos do not think that global warming is caused by humans, unlike Al Gore. They say that cities are getting warmer, but not because of greenhouse gases. The cities are getting warmer because of the surroundings. The more buildings around, the more heat kept in the cities. Also, the scientists in the Doomsday videos believe that sea level has gone down, and they present this by showing a tree on the beach that could not possibly still be standing if the sea level was rising. Gore believes that sea levels are rising and one day Manhattan, Florida, and other states and countries will be under water. Gore is not a scientist, how could he possibly know that sea levels are going up? He probably is working with scientists, but the scientists in the Doomsday videos seemed a lot more credible than Gore. The scientists in the Doomsday video also say that Antarctica cannot possibly be melting, unlike Gore who says it is. The scientists say the air is way too cold; if the climate got warmer it would make Antarctica grow because it would just melt and immediately freeze due to the air being so cold.

In my opinion, Al Gore does not seem too credible when he was speaking with Charlie Rose. Gore said that there is no debate from scientists about global warming because it is happening, but that's not the case considering the scientists in the Doomsday video say it's not happening as fast as people think. Gore talked about all of these people he talked to, but they were all "off the record." That seems a little fishy to me. In my opinion, Gore's interview did not impress me too much, and I thought the Doomsday video was very impressive.

Chapter 9

Chapter 9 basically focused on cell phones and e-waste, hence the title of the chapter! Slade talked about how cell phones contribute the most e-waste in the world. Slade noted that in 2001 the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition estimated that the amount of electronic consumer waste entering America's landfills that year would be between 5 to 7 million tons. Slade states that the lack of durability of electronic products grows from a combination of psychological and technological obsolescence. Slade doesn't really talk much about e-waste in the beginning of the chapter because much of his focus is on cell phones and the use of them. Slade presents Colin Campbell, a sociologist of consumerism. Campbell talks about neophilia, which is the love of new things. He presents three varieties of neophiliacs. The first kinda acquires new products and discards older ones in order to sustain a pristine self-image. The second type are people who crave the newest product lines and the very latest technology. The third category are people who are hypersensitive to the latest styles, which creates new wants. These neophiliacs describe much of Americans today. Slade also mentions that cellular phones are taking over landline telephones today, which is very true. Many people like the fact that they can take their phones with them wherever they go and can use them whenever they need to. Landlines cannot be used outside of the home. The last few pages of the chapter talk about what can be done to reduce e-waste. Most countries have the Basel Convention which constricts the flow of toxic e-waste to Asia, but America does not have that yet. It states that America brides the custom agents so that the e-waste can get through customs. Americans need to be informed more about e-waste and its effects in order for anything to change.

I know Slade was trying to get his readers to understand why there is so much e-waste, but I don't think he talked about e-waste enough. He presented e-waste in the last couple pages of the book and that was about it. He should have talked a lot more about e-waste, and presented us with a solution to the problem we have.

Chapters 7 & 8 summary

Chapter 7 starts off talking about personal computer emulation and miniaturization. IBM sales soared and made the competition obsolete. The IBM was faster and they started producing them smaller because the previous computers were extremely large. The PDP-8 minicomputer was the first to have integrated circuits ever used in computers. DEC was the producer of the PDP-8 and it was very successful. After the emulation and miniaturization section, the book gets into talking about the death of the slide rule. In 1935 John Atanasoff began to contemplate a digital computer. Basically the computer took over the slide rule by doing calculations faster and more accurately. Ted Hoff suggested the central processing unit be put on a single chip. After the computer came the hand held calculater which was quite popular in the 70s. At the end of the chapter was video games and the pin ball machine. The video games slowly made the pin ball machine obsolete because they were more action packed and fun to play. Pin ball was very popular when it first came out but video games made it fizzle out. Atari and Nintendo were the new crazes of the video game world.

Chapter 8 talked about the cold war and how the USSR basically stole all of the technology ideas from the USA. The tactic was espionage. One of their satellilites failed because it was equipped with stolen American computer chips. The Soviets were using stolen information and technology from countries in order to survive because they did not have the technology to survive on their own. This chapter was all about how the Soviet Union had stolen technology and information.

Reaction to Dr. Murphy's Presentation

Dr. Murphy's presentation was very informative, and I thought it was a lot better than Dr. Reed's presentation. His presentation was about e-waste and it was tied to obsolescence. We throw so many electronic components away which leads to e-waste. This waste seeps into the soil and makes the soil polluted, which is harmful to humans. If there weren't obsolescence then people would not have as much electronic waste. 

This presentation also tied to oil with the energy that is wasted everyday. Oil is in everything and the electricity we use uses oil to power. 

Dr. Murphy talked about Japan a lot in his presentation and how Japan is trying to manage waste better. He told us that since 2001, TV and appliances must be disassembled and processed. Japanese must recycle their bottles and cans. They no longer allow direct landfills, the trash is either reprocessed or incinerated. They also convert waste to energy. Japan is trying to create a better environment and be self-sustaining on waste.

Dr. Murphy also talked about many laws and policies that Japan has to reduce disposal of toxic waste. One of these laws was Promotion of Effective Utilization of Resources Law. There are many other that he mentioned but I cannot remember what every one of them were. 

With all of the waste disposal that we are creating we face major pollution in the soil, which in turn is in our food that is grown in that soil. The toxic waste that is in the air is harmful to our health and that could lead to major health problems in that future. Another problem that everyone is talking about now is global warming. Some of the metals released in the soil and react with water. When it rains it can cause the metals to explode or catch on fire which releases more toxins in the atmosphere.

Dr. Murphy's presentation was a lot better than Dr. Reed's, and I thought it was very informative, but he talked a lot about Japan and I would have rather have heard what is going on here in America.

Made to Break

Many themes seem to converge in the text of Made to Break. Throughout the chapters that we have read so far there seems to be two very similar advances that stuck out. One was radio. It went from strictly AM broadcasting to FM, which is what everyone uses still today. AM radio did not even compare to FM. AM has a bunch of static and the quality is not good at all. FM is clear and sounds great! AM radio history compared to FM.
Another item that was used over another was nylon. It replaced silk. Nylon was less expensive and was made very durable at first. Wallace Carothers created Fiber 66, also known as nylon. This new innovation made silk not wanted as much. Nylon was cheaper and was "new." People seem to like new items more than the old. If there is a new fashion out there everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon and try it out. This is similar to radio because FM radio was the newer and better invention. People wanted to listen to FM more because it was much better to listen to and comprehend. The whole book is about newer technologies making the older ones obsolete, and these two innovations show that well.
Slade does well talking about the different technologies that were created and replaced, but he uses a lot of unnecessary information. I am more interested what products were replaced, not the history of the people in history. He also talks a lot about different authors and people in history. He references a lot of different authors that wrote about the same thing he is trying to present. I believe that he trys to back up his information too much. It is good that he does it, but he does it a lot and too often. He just needs to focus more on obsolescence and not so much on the people.

Topic for proposal

For my proposal topic I want to focus on Going Green. I want to show how our habits right now are not good for the environment, and that if we don't start doing something that our world will be in a downward spiral. I have sort of a working thesis right now: If people do not start taking care of the environment and realize that they are emitting harmful waste, then the world will deteriorate and the carbon footprint will increase dramatically.
I will show all the bad things we are doing to the environment, and that if we do not start taking action what will happen to our world. I will present actions that we can start taking to improve the quality of our environment and make our world a better place to live.

Sources:

Dwyer, Todd. "Our 15-Day Green Adventure." 23 Oct 2008. ReGeneration. 25 Oct 2008
.

Go Green Initiative. 2007. Go Green Initiative. 25 Oct 2008 org/>.

"Go Green! Monthly Newsletter." 2008. United States Environmental Protection Agency.
25 Oct 2008 .

FGCI

I believe that having FGCI here at the university is going to change a lot of things campus wide. Listening to Dr. Reed speak was quite motivational. He gave us the cold hard facts and showed us what was being done on campus. When he told us that some lights stay on all day and night it floored me. I immediately thought that that is our money being wasted. We the students have to pay for a lot of the energy used here with our tuition money. That makes me mad. Why should we have to pay for someone not turning off a light? Shouldn't something be done about that? The best solution would be to put in motion lights. Then the lights will turn off if there is no one around. It turns the light off and saves a lot more energy than anyone would think. I think the Green Initiative is an excellent idea for the campus and also for our environment. It will get students involved and teach them about the environment and what we can do to make a difference. If we don't start saving energy now, our world will detrioate.
Dr. Reed's speech made me want to get involved in the FGCI. In my cottage I am making my roommates recycle and I have asked them to turn off lights and the TV when they are not in use. Even though we do not have to pay for the electricity, it is still wasting energy and that is not good. I also started saving my water bottles and just filling them up with tap water instead of constantly buying more cases of water. I am trying to do my part in helping the environment, and I hope this speech led others to do the same.
This speech correlates quite a bit with the themes we are studying, especially obsolescence. If we keep throwing items away and not recycling then eventually they will be no more, because wasting energy and electricity makes it harder for manufacturers to create the items. Everything coincides. We could stop wasting so much oil as well. If new, more efficient cars are created then the need for oil will lessen, and we will have more oil to use elsewhere. We can do our part little by little to help the environment and save our world!