Friday (26 June) or Monday (29 June) presentation

Dear Students,
Please decide on the day when you can deliver your presentation.
It should be from  the area of your studies and it should be 15 minutes long.

Friday    (26 June 2015)Room 109

5.30 p.m. Łukasz W.

6.00 p.m.

6.30 p.m.  Monem

7.00 p.m.  Wiktor

7.30 p.m.  Piotr W.

Monday  (29 June 2015)Room 109

5.30 p.m. Michail

6.00 p.m. obastemur

6.30 p.m. Dominika K.

7.00 p.m. Robert M.

7.30 p.m. Albert Ś.

Week 8: Could a Computer Ever be Conscious?

This week, I wanted to ask a question that most (if not all) of us crossed at least once.

"Could a Computer Ever be Conscious?"

Reading: http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1997_08_18_usnewsworldreport.html

I don't know if this question is ever going to be answered. Reading the document, found the sentence below making more sense in my naively human opinion.

"Our [own] consciousness, the most obvious thing there is, may be forever beyond our conceptual grasp." (McGinn, C. 1993.  [Problems in philosophy: The limits of inquiry].)

Some says it's wise to approach consciousness as a partial subject. A machine is capable of sensing (not defining!) 'danger' but not capable of  `love` ? How the -heck- it's even viable ?

Questions: 

1 - If a computer is ever fully conscious, how would you justify our existence ? 

2 - How would you define the limits of a 'robot' not conscious ? 

3 - What is your opinion ? Do you see it's coming ? 

Special thanks to Łukasz Wilczyński for poking me.

Week 7 (01-07.06.2015 ) SUBNETS - The Systems-Based Neurotechnology for Emerging Therapies.

"SUBNETS" is the one of interesting projects developing by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). In official note we can read that project aims veterans and the effects of neuropsychological illness brought on by war, traumatic injuries, and other experiences remain challenging to treat. 

Through SUBNETS, DARPA hopes to generate the knowledge and technology required to deliver relief to patients with otherwise intractable neuropsychological illness. Solution which is under development will pursue the capability to record and model how complex brain regions function in both normal and abnormal conditions. These models will be then adapted onto new type of neural stimulators, which will influence multiple brain regions for therapeutic purposes. The program would create one of the most comprehensive datasets of systems-based brain activity ever recorded.

You can read full DARPA’s announcement here: http://www.darpa.mil/our_work/bto/programs/systems-based_neurotechnology_for_emerging_therapies_subnets.aspx

Please read this note and write your opinion regarding following questions:

1.   What do you think about recording and stimulating activity of neural system? What benefits and what threats can you notice after reading text linked above?

2.    What could be other applications of this upcoming technology can you point out?

3.    Do you think that military agency can have also other intentions regarding this technology and try to hide it under well-sounding subject of helping veterans to overcome their traumas?  

Week 6 (25-31.05.2015) Adaptive Governance for a sustainable Smart City creation

A lot is being said about the role of Smart Cities in the global development towards a more sustainable world. Sustainable world means one that manages its resources in a way that is efficient and leaving no costs for the future generations. Cities are hubs for economical and social growth and soon will become a home for most of the world's population, therefore the way that they are governed play a major role in how the sustainability challenge will be approached.

Smart Cities are a new urban model based on information and knowledge systems (referred to as intelligent systems). It is said that the sustainability of these systems will be achieved once their intelligence is unleashed. Specifically one characteristic of the Smart City seems to be crucial here - it is the extent to which its intelligent system enables Adaptive Governance.

Adaptive Governance is defined as one that creates conditions for the city authorities, inhabitants and other actors to collaborate in a new way - a way that enables real partnership and engagement across the scales and institutional levels of the city system. Such partnership is said to be the key to unleashing the social intelligence, based on consciousness and knowledge, leading to better resource management in the Smart City.


Please read the article at:
http://sustainablecitiescollective.com/david-thorpe/1065166/webinar-round-what-makes-smart-city


and answer the following questions:


1. In your opinion what are the most important characteristics of a Smart City?

2. What is the role of human intelligence in the formation of the information and knowledge systems of a Smart City?

3. Is Adaptive Governance an utopia or is it actually possible to create conditions for city authorities and citizens to collaborate as equal partners?

4. How should an intelligent system for Adaptive Governance be designed or thought of?

Week 6 (25-31.05.2015) NoSQL vs SQL – Which is a Better Option?

To the growing need for performance and availability of services or sites with heavy traffic, a point often is blocking the database. The relational databases quickly reach their limits and add servers does not increase performance enough. Following this, new technologies have emerged such as NoSQL databases, they are radically changing the architecture of the database that we used to see and thus make it possible to increase performance and availability of services, there are of course "but" the answer is no perfect . Thus Google  migrated NoSQL in 2004 with the engine BigTable. He was followed by the giants of the social web to know Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. These companies have migrated all or part of their information system of relational databases to databases like NoSQL.
Also, this technology is relatively new and not yet existing migration processes or formal standards as well as other databases Object, Object relational and hierarchical well known in the scientific community and developers.

https://blog.udemy.com/nosql-vs-sql-2/

Could you please answer  my questions.

1/ Why do we need NoSQL technology?
2/ Why do  main companies use NoSQL not RDBMS in  social media?
3/Do you have any idea how  to develop this technology?

Week 5 (18-24.05.2015) Sugar

Recently, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a new guideline on sugars intake for adults and children. In short, we should not consume more than 50 grams (12 teaspoons) of added sugars a day and should aim for 25 grams a day (6 teaspoons). This could help us avoid diabetes, obesity, heart disease and a variety of other conditions.

When I picture 12 teaspoons of sugar, it seems easy enough - I just won’t add them to my tea. But when we start reading labels on food products, especially on processed foods, suddenly questions begin to emerge. How is it possible that a can of Cola contains more than 8 teaspoons of sugar? The same amount of tea or coffee with this amount of sugar would be undrinkable. What is sugar doing in my bread? And if sugar is so unhealthy, why products stuffed with insane amounts of sugar are advertised to kids?

It is estimated that if Europeans wanted to reach the lower target of 6 teaspoons a day, we would have to cut our average sugar intake by two-thirds. That means no more candy, sweetened drinks (which leaves us with water), yoghurts, cookies, cereal and probably most of processed foods including peanut butter and ketchup.

Please read the following text:
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/sugar-guideline/en/

I would like to invite you to a discussion on the following topics:
1. Do you agree with the statement that we're consuming too much sugar? What do you think of WHO's recommendations?
2. What measures would have to be taken in Europe in order to make it possible for us to meet those targets (6/12 teaspoons)?
3. And finally - who can we blame for this situation?

Week 4 (11-17.05) Google's "crazy" project for providing internet access

Google is currently working on a new project which promises to bring internet access to over 5 billion people that don't live in areas with infrastructure capable of granting it (i.e. remote places, rural areas). The project involves the use of high-altitude balloons sent to float in the stratosphere which would create a wireless network capable of providing internet access through LTE (most recent smartphones are compatible). The name comes from the mixture of words balloon and loony which perfectly describes the project. :)

In my opinion the idea is pretty good. However there are some drawbacks related to this concept, since the balloons are made of materials that aren't easily biodegradable and the project would involve many of such balloons, they might harm the ecosystem.

This video demonstrates what the project involves and presents the current preparations and experiments that Google conducts in order to achieve a full scale launch:


Article link:
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/534986/project-loon/

Official page of the project:
http://www.google.com/loon/

And now for the weekly dose of questions, please answer the following:

1. Do you think that the Loon project is going to revolutionize internet accessibility?

2. Can you think of any alternatives?

3. Are you concerned with the possible repercussions that the failure of these balloons may bring to the environment? How could they be avoided?

4. Have you heard of any interesting technological breakthrough that is coming in the next 1-3 years?