Image of my thinking process for project idea:
In seminar we were to vomit out ideas that came to mind for three minutes about possible topic ideas for our projects. The one’s I highlighted are the three that I chose for this project. This was a clever and very helpful method, that shows you how I got to that topic, and how my mind works out on paper. As I re-read the paper I see I come back to some ideas and how I started to think more deeper within the topic. It is hard to keep track of all the good ideas you have or how you branched off of one idea to another, this method definitely solidifies your thought process and allows you to go back to square 1 or 7.
Three project proposals from seminar:
System/Project Name:
Artificial Intelligence movement, self-driving cars the first step to job takeover
Summary:
The question for the next century is how far will we come to successfully creating an Artificial Intelligence system? There are elements of self-working machines like cars that are already undergo to being released. Google has self-driving cars that work but are not released for the market and are still being tested. The question is, if self-driving cars will one day be open to the public, will this be the start of technology’s massive takeover on people’s jobs? Basically self-driving cars instantly would improve truck delivery due to no human necessities like sleep, food and errors. By eliminating all truck drivers and taxi drivers, that is millions of people left unemployed. If an artificial intelligence system were to be successfully created, all jobs are at risk. Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Why pursue it? How can we not try?
Argument:
Artificial Intelligence is a unique but relevant topic to start researching because technology is exponentially advancing and this impacts everyone, even the highly praised jobs like lawyers and doctors.
If I were to investigate this topic, I would research by trying to find the most recent growth and the stage we are at in AI, what companies are trying to produce self-driving cars, and how they do it. The big question is, who will be or will there be someone to say to what limit we will use the AI if we successfully create it?
System/Project Name:
Public Surveillance System
Summary:
In New York City there is a small public surveillance system on the streets but there are people who want to renovate, expand and enlarge the system throughout the whole city and other states. A public surveillance system is cameras set up on the streets, monitoring people’s actions. A public surveillance system does not have any evidence that it lowers crimes, instead it increases amount of possible danger like footage selling, stalking and organized crimes. If everything was being watched every day, it would create an eerie feeling for the people. Who would be in charge of watching this personal footage? A policeman? A government official? Are any of them trustworthy? Wouldn’t cameras everywhere recording everything you do go against one’s freedom?
Argument:
From telling my peers if they knew about what all the cons to a public surveillance system are, I was shocked to realize that lots of people are first think it’s a good idea. I would like to investigate this idea further to see how big of a possibility it is that it will be implemented or not. I would start by seeing where and how big the PSS are in the city, who controls them, and conduct research on how many people know about this matter.
System/Project Name: Education System
Summary:
How often do the Universities improve and renew they education system? I decided to attend Parsons School of Design because it was one of the only colleges that seem to keep changing its views and curriculum, that fits the teaching ways and topic priorities that are relevant today. Many universities still have the core majors like medicine, law and psychology, but now a day it isn’t enough to do one, why not combine some topics? Why do students graduate core classes in high school to attend university for more core classes for 3 more years? University should allow the students to fully take advantage of the education if they want to, why pay so much money to attend a school if all the classes they are interested in are only for “seniors”. What if the freshman has more knowledge and drive than that senior?
Argument:
The education system should be changed frequently because systems, people, the world changes, how can we have the same topics/ majors and systems that applied 40 years ago? I would start by researching how universities implement change, how often they do it, and the concept of core classes in college if a student already know what they want to study.
Step four:
After the exercise in class, on the 16th, and after a discussion with Shana about my proposals, I realized which topic I am most interested in. As we had to create sketches upon our 3 proposals we thought of in seminar class, and I realized very early on which topic I was able to support with the most creations. My first project proposal about Artificial Intelligence is an area of interest that I would like to focus on and maybe just hone on the self-driving cars concept.
The reason why I would focus on self-driving cars is because it is the first and most advanced area in the A.I. world, and other sectors are very hypothetical and theoretical at this point (too early to know enough). Self-driving cars raise a lot of questions and debate already: will it be safer? will it eliminate all car jobs industries? will it be cheaper? will it take away human freedom? How I got here was through several process between seminar and studio.
The brainstorming in seminar definitely helped because it got me to the more concrete idea of self-driving cars, and now in studio I am thinking which area in the self-driving cars I would like to create a project on. The image below shows the two topics I started sketching on, A.I. and Public Surveillance System. This brief investigation revealed my interest as well as how my brain was able to expand to so many topics. I started from the middle, A.I. in general, and linked it to the few jobs or components it could takeover, and from there I realized that the car industry and A.I. has even more sub-topics because it is the furtherest path to success. Which is how I chose self-driving cars.
The image is separated into two, the first half is A.I. and how I branched it out to all the jobs (i could think of at the moment) it could take over, like a mind map with categories and sub categories. The second half is Public Surveillance System and how one person watches each angle of you where every you go, creating an eerie feeling if the system were to be implemented. After sketching just these two, I realized that I only had one image to draw for PSS and for the A.I. I kept going back and adding more and branching off to more questions and jobs. Clearly signifying me that I am more passionate about A.I. to chose as a long term project.