Oh, The Humanities!

Just from this post alone, you might think that I'm crazy. Well, that's never been proven and it's beside the point. What I am really saying is that I just finished a class at Sinclair called "Humanity and the Challenge of Technology."

This type of class is kind of hard to describe. The best way I've been able to explain it in public is that it is a "think outside the box" type of class. The textbook had themes that ranged from Global Warming to Robot Ethics, as well as other controversial topics such as Surveillance v. Privacy and Genetic Engineering that leads to human perfection.

Overall, though, it was quite interesting, as well as a little bit scary, but in the sense of "oh my goodness, is this real or possible?!" and to be quite honest, I was almost expecting that.

The big downside of the class was the complexity of the textbook. I did not use it for most of the semester, but instead I supplemented my learning with various online articles and I feel that was a great boost towards progressing my GPA. The research papers were probably the most fun, however, because I was able to look up websites that further engaged me in the theme I chose for my paper.

One of the assignments we had to do was a "Book Review." Initially for this assignment I chose the book "Final Jeopardy" by Stephen Baker, which was about the Jeopardy-IBM tournament with Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Initially the book was quite interesting, and it even allowed me to skip a chapter in my textbook because the article was an excerpt from the first chapter.

Over time, however, this book proved to be quite difficult to read because of the writing style, and also it was a library book, so I could not keep it forever. I was then offered a suggestion by my brother and his wife (thanks, guys!) of emailing my instructor and choosing a different book instead. Well, naturally, I was smart enough to go for it, and the book I finally ended up with was called 'Console Wars' by Blake Harris.

This book's format was a lot easier to comprehend and quite frankly, It was more interesting overall. Not that Stephen Baker's novel wasn't bad, but let's face it: I had already watched the tournament with my own eyes, and therefore didn't necessarily need a full turn-by-turn recap.

Anyway, Console Wars surprised me a lot. The format was amazing (it read just like a perfectly polished English Paper), It had a lot of detail, but it also had dialogue that moistened the plot and kept my interest. That isn't to say that I just flew right through it (although if I hadn't taken notes for my report, I probably would have!), but it made me feel like I was part of the story, and that I had experienced the events first hand.

Now, that's not to say that this book was an exception to the rule of "there's a downside to everything." The big downers in this book for me were the two chapters about AIDS research in the 1990's. However, by the time I finished the book, I had an itching to go to Walmart and do some holiday shopping, so there was a positive outcome.

In the end, I was able to get an "A" on the assignment, which means that the next person who takes the class will be able to appreciate this masterpiece just as much as I did.

Finally, my two favorite assignments were the Extra Credit papers. For the first one, I had to research a Dayton Inventor/Invention. The first thought that came to my mind was the Pop Tab, because I remember seeing a statue Downtown near River Scape that was in the shape of an early model, plus, most people in America use it every day. The other research assignment was about "personal reflections on technology." This was easier than the Inventor paper because I was able to pull from my experiences in electronically archiving paperwork without giving away any legal secrets.

In short, if you are a Sinclair student, and have to take an "Arts/Humanities" class, then this one is high on my recommendation list. If I can't convince you, however, then perhaps this picture of the textbook cover can: