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Friday, March 31, 2017

Be Right Back? More Like Stay Where You're At!

Be Right Back sent all types of chills down my spine. Overall, the message was great showing how a person reacted to such advanced technology, even predictable. Let me tell you why:

For starters, the film starts off with Ash being glued to his phone as if it was embedded in his hand. This is exactly what modern society looks like: people on their phones all the time. It showed his phone as sort of an addiction because he could not keep it out of his sight. His cellphone also intervened with his face to face time with his girlfriend. He would nod and agree with anything to say he heard her but in reality, he wasn't listening. It gets predictable when he leaves and doesn't answer her phone calls. I knew it was coming. Besides, she didn't go with him to tell him to put his phone in the "glove box" to keep away the distraction. I'm assuming he was in a car accident because of him using his cellphone while driving (plus it was raining). But that's just an assumption. Then, as the film progress, things get exciting, but then creepy...like super creepy.

I was amazed at the electronic painting canvas. That was a amazing. Even the laptop where she could swipe her hand in front of the screen and make things disappear without even touching the screen. HOW AMAZING IS THAT? But of course, when technology progress to the extreme, that is then where I draw the line like nope. Un uh. I mean I am not opposed to someone talking to an operator with the voice of their deceased loved one. Everyone has their own way of grieving. In fact, Martha depicted all 5 stages of grief throughout the entire film. She showed signs of denial when she agreed to communicate with the software of Ash 2. Isolation came when she would stay at home and not answer her sister's calls. She began to bargain with Ash 2 by telling him what he should do because Ash 1 would do it. She even went beyond the highest level and had intercourse with him. She placed herself in a depression mode after being so angry with trying to replicate Ash 1 until she finally accepted his death and started to keep Ash 2 inside the attic with all the other old memories. I learned a lot in the film but mostly how technology advanced to such levels I never knew could exist. This basically was like a build-a-bear workshop, but instead a build-a-human workshop but not so much. The one thing that makes us all human was what Ash 2 lacked: imperfection. Not being perfect is what makes us human. Since Ash 2 was the "perfect" version of Ash 1, he could not be truly human. Ash 2 may have been Ash 1, but only an electronic version of him. Nothing more, nothing less.💋

What are our priorities really?

When someone thinks of a priority, they think of what comes first in their life. Everyone has priorities, whether they are big or small. We all go through the process of choosing what is most important to us everyday by sorting out a list of priorities when we feel like we are struggling with something difficult. In the episode of Be Right Back we watched this week, from the Netflix series Black Mirror, the main characters showed several examples of what their main priorities were. Martha and Ash, the newly happy married couple, showed that both of their priorities were each other. They also both showed that their priorities are technology, Ash's being different forms of social media, and Martha's being her career with advanced technological art work. Regardless, both of these characters have traits that exhibit the use of priorities in life. So, what happens when one of those main concerns disappears in our lives? Is there ever a replacement that can be just as significant?

At the beginning of the episode we watched, Martha and Ash did everything together. Their love for one another was evident. Yes, both of them had flaws, but they accepted each other for who they were. Suddenly one day, Ash is killed in a car accident. After being completely broken for weeks, Martha decides to go along with her friend's idea of 'getting Ash back.' Through advanced technology, an almost completely identical version of Ash is created from all of his previous emails, social media posts and text messages. Mimicking his phone calls and texts from before, Martha is now able to speak to her dead husband. But wait, it is taken one step further. Ash is delivered in a box at Martha's doorstep. All she has to do is run him a warm bath and anxiously wait. Is this really possible? A complete replica of someone who has died a tragic death?

In my opinion, you cannot recreate any human being. All of us are made similar, but very unique and different in our own ways. For someone to be completely replicated into the same person that is now dead absolutely disturbs and terrifies me, making me feel unimportant. Just as we talked in class, if a dead person were to be recreated from their social media, text messages, emails, etc. after they died, what makes their life so special? How would you be able to cherish the time with that now replicated version of them? You couldn't. Their existence would be a complete lie and the people that had once put that person first in their life, just as Martha did for Ash, would notice all the differences the created specimen would have. So, to recreate another human being, would be a lie to our priorities.

Pick your Poison



When Martha loses Ash, it is extremely sudden and she doesn’t know what to do. But she has friends and family who are there for her, and they help her through the funeral and she is able to resist the temptation offered to ‘help with the pain’. She then goes home and finds out she is pregnant, just another source of pain piled on someone already suffering. Pushed to the edge, she calls her sister for help but receives no answer. So she turns to the earlier offered help, saying, “I only came here to say one thing,” which sounds awfully similar to a new drug user’s, “I’ll only do it once.”
               And it doesn’t go as planned. She continues ‘taking it’ or talking to the AI, but soon it isn’t enough. She gives up even more for an upgrade—the ability to talk to Ash instead of simply emailing. Now that she can talk with him, she doesn’t want to stop. She begins withdrawing from normal life, ignoring phone calls and staying in her house, anything to increase her time with him. Her life begins to circle around him, having to let him experience anything she does, like the baby’s heartbeat, even if it causes inconvenience. She cuts out all the non-essential parts of her life, like friends and social interaction. And when she is deprived of him, due to dropping her phone, she freaks out. She goes from happy to stressed in a heartbeat, only calming down again when she gets him back.
               Then it escalates again. She needs a higher dosage and she gets it by ordering a body for the AI to inhabit. It freaks her out and she doubts her decision for a moment, but the thought that it will help pushes her forward. She activates the body, becoming nervous when her contact is cut off for the time it takes for the process to complete, but it ultimately scared by what she sees. She pushes the fear aside, determined to let this help her get over the pain, and jumps right in. It works for a short time, but then reality breaks in. She realizes that what she is doing is unhealthy and tries to break out of it. In an effort to remove him, her drug, from her life, she tells him to jump. Even though she couldn’t carry through with that path, she does regain her independence and rejoins the world.

On a completely unrelated tangent, anyone think this guy would be perfect for committing a crime? This dude has no fingerprints, can superficially change his appearance at least a little, and is technically dead. And could be trained to do it pretty easily. Just me?

Did Martha Mourn?

In the movie "Be Right Back", Martha the main character loses her husband. This provokes the question of did she morn his death. After her husband's death, she invests in a piece of technology to fill the void of her husband's death. Martha became desperate for someone to depend on when she found out she was pregnant. Even Martha's sister noticed that she seemed to have moved on. She became obsessed with trying to find her husband in the technology. In the beginning of the movie Ash 1 explains that once a person dies their pictures go to the attic. Meaning when a person dies they go to another place. The pictures being moved symbolizes that the owner was ok with them moving on. Towards the middle of the movie Martha had not yet moved the picture of Ash 1 off the mantle. Nearing the end of the movie Martha put Ash 2 into the attic like an old picture. I believe that Ash 2 was a picture. He was frozen in time. Ash 2 the computer only had whatever was on the internet, meaning the computer didn't have feelings or life events to shape the way he feels about things. The internet only had whatever Ash posted online. This caused Martha to have to correct every little thing about Ash 2. She looked for every loop hole to prove to herself that he was not her husband, by saying things like "ash wouldn't have done that, he would have fought back!" Martha became overfilled with emotion and broke down. That is how Ash 2 ended up in the attic. He did not do anything wrong, he was just a replica who did not have any feelings, but could act out feelings. In the end, Martha did Mourn Ash's death. At first it seemed that Martha was in denial of her late husband's death. She did not seem to go through the other 4 stages until she became obsessed with the little details, causing her to become angry. The next two stages are bargaining and depression, they seem to be combined with each other. Bargaining by not destroying the computer and depression by seeming to be upset with the computer not being her husband. Finally, the last step is acceptance. Martha accepted that her husband had moved on.  Only on special occasions would Martha go up to the attic with her daughter. Martha's daughter only new the computer as Ash. 

Monday, March 27, 2017

Welcome to the Class Blog!

Welcome to the blog-home for Dr. J's Contemporary Moral Issues course! For the second half of the semester, we will be turning our attention to contemporary moral problems generated by the increasingly complicated interactions between human life, on the one hand, and the various technologies humans have created to make their/our life "better," on the other hand.  This site will serve as a forum for students to discuss the lectures, readings, and films we cover in class, raise interesting questions we may not have addressed during our regular IRL time together, make connections between our course material and current real-world events, and engage in an ongoing digital conversation with one another, Prior to this point in the semester, your progress and understanding has been assessed through objective quizzes and symposia.  This is your chance to demonstrate that you also can express your ideas and arguments in written form-- which is, of course, the second (and essential) part of our daily mantra "Read more. Write more. Think more. Be more."

First, if you don't know ANYTHING about blogs or blogging, there are (fortunately) lots of tutorials out there to help!  If you have a specific question, you can usually find the answer to it at the Blogger Help Center.  (For a quick YouTube introduction to blogging, I suggest you check out the "Complete List of Blogger Tutorials" available online.)  The two most helpful links you can consult are How to Create, Edit, or Delete a Post and How to Add Images and Video to Your Blogpost.That's the amazing thing about the internet, of course... you can learn to do almost anything with a few clicks!

Students are ultimately responsible for making sure their blogposts "look right," are labelled with the correct section time, and are posted before the deadline.  

You can find a link to your Blogging Assignment Schedule in the sidebar to the right. You will also find a link to the Blog Grading Rubric in the sidebar to the right (also downloadable here), which explains in detail how I will grade your work on this blog.

It's important to know that blog-writing differs from the writing you might do for "traditional" papers in some ways, but not in others. Here are some things to think about as you compose your posts and comments:

WHEN POSTING:
  • Do not wait until the last minute to write your post! Students should think of the blog as a community exercise. In this community, Authors are responsible for generating discussion and Commenters are responsible for continuing and elaborating upon it. In order for the Commenters to be able to provide the best commentary they can, it is necessary that Authors do not wait until the last minute to post entries in any given week. Like traditional papers, it is almost always obvious when a student has elected to write his or her blog-post at the last minute, as it ends up being either overly simple, poorly conceived, or poorly edited. Your contribution to the blog discussion is important, so take care to show the respect to your classmates that you would expect them to show you.
  • Be concise, but also precise. The greatest challenge of blog-writing is to communicate complex ideas in a minimal amount of words. It is important that you keep your posts short, in keeping with the 400-word assignment format, but also that you do not sacrifice the clarity or completeness of your ideas for the sake of brevity.
  • Be focused. If you find that your blog-entry is too long, it is likely because you have chosen too large a topic for one post. (Consider splitting up long entries into two or more posts.) It should be eminently clear, on the first reading, what your blog post is explaining/asking/arguing. 
  • Use the Post Title to clearly state the subject of your entry. DO NOT POST ANYTHING THAT DOES NOT INCLUDE A POST TITLE.
  • Choose a topic that will prompt discussion. The measure of a good blog post is how much commentary it can generate. To that end, do not use your blog posts for simple exegesis or to revisit questions already settled in class. Good discussion-generators often include bold claims about, or original interpretations of, our classroom materials (lectures, texts, films, etc). Connecting the course material to current events or controversies is also a good way to generate discussion. Pay special attention to in-class conversations, as many of the issues that generate discussion in class will also generate discussion on the blog.
  • Proofread. Proofread. PROOFREAD. As a rule, blog-writing is (slightly) less formal than the writing you might do for a paper you hand in to your professor. For example, you may write in the first person, and a more "conversational" style is usually acceptable. However, blog writing with glaring punctuation, spelling or grammatical mistakes not only will be difficult to read and understand, but also will greatly diminish the credibility of its Author. DO NOT "COPY AND PASTE" the text of your post into the blog's "new post" box, as you will inevitably end up with a format that is difficult to read. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the formatting buttons above, and ALWAYS preview your post before publishing it.
  • Make use of the "extras" provided by new technology. When you write a traditional paper for class, you don't have many of the opportunities that blog-writing affords. Take advantage of the technologies available here to insert imagesembed video or employ hyperlinks to other relevant materials.
  • Respond to your commenters. After you write a post, you should stay abreast of all the commentary your post generates. If you are asked for clarification by a commenter, or if one of your claims is challenged, it is the your responsibility to respond.
  • MOST IMPORTANTLY be sure to LABEL your post with the start-time of your class before your click publish.  If you do not do this, your post will not show up on the blog and you will not receive credit!
WHEN COMMENTING ON OTHERS' POSTS:
  • Read carefully BEFORE you comment. The biggest and most frequent error made by commenters is also the most easily avoidable, namely, misreading or misunderstanding the original post. Don't make that error!
  • Simple agreement or disagreement is not sufficient. There is no word-limit for comments, but if you make a comment on another's post, you are required to say something substantive in your comment. Sometimes it will be the case that you fully agree or disagree with an Author's post. However, a comment that simply states "I agree" or "I disagree" will not count for credit. You MUST provide detailed reasons for your agreement or disagreement in your comment.
  • Evidence works both ways. Often, the source of disagreement between a Poster and a Commenter will involve a matter of interpretation. If a Poster makes an objectionable (or false) claim about something that is verifiable-- for example, textual claims, statistical claims, historical claims, claims about current events, or claims about  any other evidentiary matters-- he or she MUST be prepared to provide evidence in support of his or her claims.  The same goes for commenters.  If you want to disagree about a matter of fact, you MUST provide evidence for your disagreement.  Hyperlinks are everyone's friend.
  • NO flaming allowed!:  "Flaming" is defined as "a hostile or insulting interaction between Internet users."  Students should be reminded that disagreement, all by itself, does not constitute disrespect, nor does it count as "flaming" However, threatening, intimidating, belittling, name-calling, or otherwise inappropriate and/or reasonably objectionable language does count as flaming.  Engage your classmates on the blog with the same consideration and respect that you would in class.
Although this blog is viewable by anyone on the Web, participants have been restricted to udents enrolled in PHIL220 only. This means that only students enrolled in PHIL220 this semester at CBU can post or comment on this blog. However, please be aware that anyone can read this blog, so students should take special care to support the claims that they make, to edit their posts and comments judiciously, and to generally represent themselves in conversation here as they would in public.

If you're on Twitter, I encourage you to use the hashtag #TechValuesCBU for your tweets related to this course. I've included a feed to my own Twitter profile in the sidebar to your right.

I am very much looking forward to reading your work here over the next several weeks!

Dr.J

Welcome to the Class Blog!

Welcome to the blog-home for Dr. J's Contemporary Moral Issues course! For the second half of the semester, we will be turning our attention to contemporary moral problems generated by the increasingly complicated interactions between human life, on the one hand, and the various technologies humans have created to make their/our life "better," on the other hand.  This site will serve as a forum for students to discuss the lectures, readings, and films we cover in class, raise interesting questions we may not have addressed during our regular IRL time together, make connections between our course material and current real-world events, and engage in an ongoing digital conversation with one another, Prior to this point in the semester, your progress and understanding has been assessed through objective quizzes and symposia.  This is your chance to demonstrate that you also can express your ideas and arguments in written form-- which is, of course, the second (and essential) part of our daily mantra "Read more. Write more. Think more. Be more."

First, if you don't know ANYTHING about blogs or blogging, there are (fortunately) lots of tutorials out there to help!  If you have a specific question, you can usually find the answer to it at the Blogger Help Center.  (For a quick YouTube introduction to blogging, I suggest you check out the "Complete List of Blogger Tutorials" available online.)  The two most helpful links you can consult are How to Create, Edit, or Delete a Post and How to Add Images and Video to Your Blogpost.That's the amazing thing about the internet, of course... you can learn to do almost anything with a few clicks!

Students are ultimately responsible for making sure their blogposts "look right," are labelled with the correct section time, and are posted before the deadline.  

You can find a link to your Blogging Assignment Schedule in the sidebar to the right. You will also find a link to the Blog Grading Rubric in the sidebar to the right (also downloadable here), which explains in detail how I will grade your work on this blog.

It's important to know that blog-writing differs from the writing you might do for "traditional" papers in some ways, but not in others. Here are some things to think about as you compose your posts and comments:

WHEN POSTING:
  • Do not wait until the last minute to write your post! Students should think of the blog as a community exercise. In this community, Authors are responsible for generating discussion and Commenters are responsible for continuing and elaborating upon it. In order for the Commenters to be able to provide the best commentary they can, it is necessary that Authors do not wait until the last minute to post entries in any given week. Like traditional papers, it is almost always obvious when a student has elected to write his or her blog-post at the last minute, as it ends up being either overly simple, poorly conceived, or poorly edited. Your contribution to the blog discussion is important, so take care to show the respect to your classmates that you would expect them to show you.
  • Be concise, but also precise. The greatest challenge of blog-writing is to communicate complex ideas in a minimal amount of words. It is important that you keep your posts short, in keeping with the 400-word assignment format, but also that you do not sacrifice the clarity or completeness of your ideas for the sake of brevity.
  • Be focused. If you find that your blog-entry is too long, it is likely because you have chosen too large a topic for one post. (Consider splitting up long entries into two or more posts.) It should be eminently clear, on the first reading, what your blog post is explaining/asking/arguing. 
  • Use the Post Title to clearly state the subject of your entry. DO NOT POST ANYTHING THAT DOES NOT INCLUDE A POST TITLE.
  • Choose a topic that will prompt discussion. The measure of a good blog post is how much commentary it can generate. To that end, do not use your blog posts for simple exegesis or to revisit questions already settled in class. Good discussion-generators often include bold claims about, or original interpretations of, our classroom materials (lectures, texts, films, etc). Connecting the course material to current events or controversies is also a good way to generate discussion. Pay special attention to in-class conversations, as many of the issues that generate discussion in class will also generate discussion on the blog.
  • Proofread. Proofread. PROOFREAD. As a rule, blog-writing is (slightly) less formal than the writing you might do for a paper you hand in to your professor. For example, you may write in the first person, and a more "conversational" style is usually acceptable. However, blog writing with glaring punctuation, spelling or grammatical mistakes not only will be difficult to read and understand, but also will greatly diminish the credibility of its Author. DO NOT "COPY AND PASTE" the text of your post into the blog's "new post" box, as you will inevitably end up with a format that is difficult to read. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the formatting buttons above, and ALWAYS preview your post before publishing it.
  • Make use of the "extras" provided by new technology. When you write a traditional paper for class, you don't have many of the opportunities that blog-writing affords. Take advantage of the technologies available here to insert imagesembed video or employ hyperlinks to other relevant materials.
  • Respond to your commenters. After you write a post, you should stay abreast of all the commentary your post generates. If you are asked for clarification by a commenter, or if one of your claims is challenged, it is the your responsibility to respond.
  • MOST IMPORTANTLY be sure to LABEL your post with the start-time of your class before your click publish.  If you do not do this, your post will not show up on the blog and you will not receive credit!
WHEN COMMENTING ON OTHERS' POSTS:
  • Read carefully BEFORE you comment. The biggest and most frequent error made by commenters is also the most easily avoidable, namely, misreading or misunderstanding the original post. Don't make that error!
  • Simple agreement or disagreement is not sufficient. There is no word-limit for comments, but if you make a comment on another's post, you are required to say something substantive in your comment. Sometimes it will be the case that you fully agree or disagree with an Author's post. However, a comment that simply states "I agree" or "I disagree" will not count for credit. You MUST provide detailed reasons for your agreement or disagreement in your comment.
  • Evidence works both ways. Often, the source of disagreement between a Poster and a Commenter will involve a matter of interpretation. If a Poster makes an objectionable (or false) claim about something that is verifiable-- for example, textual claims, statistical claims, historical claims, claims about current events, or claims about  any other evidentiary matters-- he or she MUST be prepared to provide evidence in support of his or her claims.  The same goes for commenters.  If you want to disagree about a matter of fact, you MUST provide evidence for your disagreement.  Hyperlinks are everyone's friend.
  • NO flaming allowed!:  "Flaming" is defined as "a hostile or insulting interaction between Internet users."  Students should be reminded that disagreement, all by itself, does not constitute disrespect, nor does it count as "flaming" However, threatening, intimidating, belittling, name-calling, or otherwise inappropriate and/or reasonably objectionable language does count as flaming.  Engage your classmates on the blog with the same consideration and respect that you would in class.
Although this blog is viewable by anyone on the Web, participants have been restricted to udents enrolled in PHIL220 only. This means that only students enrolled in PHIL220 this semester at CBU can post or comment on this blog. However, please be aware that anyone can read this blog, so students should take special care to support the claims that they make, to edit their posts and comments judiciously, and to generally represent themselves in conversation here as they would in public.

If you're on Twitter, I encourage you to use the hashtag #TechValuesCBU for your tweets related to this course. I've included a feed to my own Twitter profile in the sidebar to your right.

I am very much looking forward to reading your work here over the next several weeks!

Dr.J

Welcome to the Class Blog!

Welcome to the blog-home for Dr. J's Contemporary Moral Issues course! For the second half of the semester, we will be turning our attention to contemporary moral problems generated by the increasingly complicated interactions between human life, on the one hand, and the various technologies humans have created to make their/our life "better," on the other hand.  This site will serve as a forum for students to discuss the lectures, readings, and films we cover in class, raise interesting questions we may not have addressed during our regular IRL time together, make connections between our course material and current real-world events, and engage in an ongoing digital conversation with one another, Prior to this point in the semester, your progress and understanding has been assessed through objective quizzes and symposia.  This is your chance to demonstrate that you also can express your ideas and arguments in written form-- which is, of course, the second (and essential) part of our daily mantra "Read more. Write more. Think more. Be more."

First, if you don't know ANYTHING about blogs or blogging, there are (fortunately) lots of tutorials out there to help!  If you have a specific question, you can usually find the answer to it at the Blogger Help Center.  (For a quick YouTube introduction to blogging, I suggest you check out the "Complete List of Blogger Tutorials" available online.)  The two most helpful links you can consult are How to Create, Edit, or Delete a Post and How to Add Images and Video to Your Blogpost.That's the amazing thing about the internet, of course... you can learn to do almost anything with a few clicks!

Students are ultimately responsible for making sure their blogposts "look right," are labelled with the correct section time, and are posted before the deadline.  

You can find a link to your Blogging Assignment Schedule in the sidebar to the right. You will also find a link to the Blog Grading Rubric in the sidebar to the right (also downloadable here), which explains in detail how I will grade your work on this blog.

It's important to know that blog-writing differs from the writing you might do for "traditional" papers in some ways, but not in others. Here are some things to think about as you compose your posts and comments:

WHEN POSTING:
  • Do not wait until the last minute to write your post! Students should think of the blog as a community exercise. In this community, Authors are responsible for generating discussion and Commenters are responsible for continuing and elaborating upon it. In order for the Commenters to be able to provide the best commentary they can, it is necessary that Authors do not wait until the last minute to post entries in any given week. Like traditional papers, it is almost always obvious when a student has elected to write his or her blog-post at the last minute, as it ends up being either overly simple, poorly conceived, or poorly edited. Your contribution to the blog discussion is important, so take care to show the respect to your classmates that you would expect them to show you.
  • Be concise, but also precise. The greatest challenge of blog-writing is to communicate complex ideas in a minimal amount of words. It is important that you keep your posts short, in keeping with the 400-word assignment format, but also that you do not sacrifice the clarity or completeness of your ideas for the sake of brevity.
  • Be focused. If you find that your blog-entry is too long, it is likely because you have chosen too large a topic for one post. (Consider splitting up long entries into two or more posts.) It should be eminently clear, on the first reading, what your blog post is explaining/asking/arguing. 
  • Use the Post Title to clearly state the subject of your entry. DO NOT POST ANYTHING THAT DOES NOT INCLUDE A POST TITLE.
  • Choose a topic that will prompt discussion. The measure of a good blog post is how much commentary it can generate. To that end, do not use your blog posts for simple exegesis or to revisit questions already settled in class. Good discussion-generators often include bold claims about, or original interpretations of, our classroom materials (lectures, texts, films, etc). Connecting the course material to current events or controversies is also a good way to generate discussion. Pay special attention to in-class conversations, as many of the issues that generate discussion in class will also generate discussion on the blog.
  • Proofread. Proofread. PROOFREAD. As a rule, blog-writing is (slightly) less formal than the writing you might do for a paper you hand in to your professor. For example, you may write in the first person, and a more "conversational" style is usually acceptable. However, blog writing with glaring punctuation, spelling or grammatical mistakes not only will be difficult to read and understand, but also will greatly diminish the credibility of its Author. DO NOT "COPY AND PASTE" the text of your post into the blog's "new post" box, as you will inevitably end up with a format that is difficult to read. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the formatting buttons above, and ALWAYS preview your post before publishing it.
  • Make use of the "extras" provided by new technology. When you write a traditional paper for class, you don't have many of the opportunities that blog-writing affords. Take advantage of the technologies available here to insert imagesembed video or employ hyperlinks to other relevant materials.
  • Respond to your commenters. After you write a post, you should stay abreast of all the commentary your post generates. If you are asked for clarification by a commenter, or if one of your claims is challenged, it is the your responsibility to respond.
  • MOST IMPORTANTLY be sure to LABEL your post with the start-time of your class before your click publish.  If you do not do this, your post will not show up on the blog and you will not receive credit!
WHEN COMMENTING ON OTHERS' POSTS:
  • Read carefully BEFORE you comment. The biggest and most frequent error made by commenters is also the most easily avoidable, namely, misreading or misunderstanding the original post. Don't make that error!
  • Simple agreement or disagreement is not sufficient. There is no word-limit for comments, but if you make a comment on another's post, you are required to say something substantive in your comment. Sometimes it will be the case that you fully agree or disagree with an Author's post. However, a comment that simply states "I agree" or "I disagree" will not count for credit. You MUST provide detailed reasons for your agreement or disagreement in your comment.
  • Evidence works both ways. Often, the source of disagreement between a Poster and a Commenter will involve a matter of interpretation. If a Poster makes an objectionable (or false) claim about something that is verifiable-- for example, textual claims, statistical claims, historical claims, claims about current events, or claims about  any other evidentiary matters-- he or she MUST be prepared to provide evidence in support of his or her claims.  The same goes for commenters.  If you want to disagree about a matter of fact, you MUST provide evidence for your disagreement.  Hyperlinks are everyone's friend.
  • NO flaming allowed!:  "Flaming" is defined as "a hostile or insulting interaction between Internet users."  Students should be reminded that disagreement, all by itself, does not constitute disrespect, nor does it count as "flaming" However, threatening, intimidating, belittling, name-calling, or otherwise inappropriate and/or reasonably objectionable language does count as flaming.  Engage your classmates on the blog with the same consideration and respect that you would in class.
Although this blog is viewable by anyone on the Web, participants have been restricted to udents enrolled in PHIL220 only. This means that only students enrolled in PHIL220 this semester at CBU can post or comment on this blog. However, please be aware that anyone can read this blog, so students should take special care to support the claims that they make, to edit their posts and comments judiciously, and to generally represent themselves in conversation here as they would in public.

If you're on Twitter, I encourage you to use the hashtag #TechValuesCBU for your tweets related to this course. I've included a feed to my own Twitter profile in the sidebar to your right.

I am very much looking forward to reading your work here over the next several weeks!

Dr.J