AF: Update on Summer Homework

The blog is pretty busy, but not as busy as it should be.  I processed the 90th request this morning, and still, we have just a small handful of people who are actually writing and talking to one another.

I went out to Turnitin to create the Huxley assignment, and noticed that there are only 21 of you signed up there.  That's a big difference!  One person has submitted Postman summaries thus far.  It's early, but I do appreciate being able to read the submission, comment and move on in July.  The workload you kids produce is crushing, so it's easier on me now than it will be later.  Of course, your due date is still August 19, and you have plenty of time.  I'm not pushing you; just saying thanks for being early.

Remember, two things will be submitted at Turnitin:  Three Huxley essays (just create one big document, one essay right after the other, please), and your Postman summaries.



I think I just finished my last "free reading" book of the summer; it's time to start focusing on work.  But the novel I just read was REALLY GOOD; it demanded a lot from me as a reader, which is something I like.

The novel is called Speak by Louisa Hall, (not to be confused with the Laurie Halse Anderson book) and features five (six, really) different narrators talking through history, reaching back into the 17th century and up through the year 2040, where engineer/CS genius Stephen Chinn is writing his memoirs from prison, serving a life sentence for creating robots who are "illegally lifelike".  The New York Times review suggested another title might have been "What We Talk about When we Talk About Computers" (a nod to Japanese writer Haruki Murakami), and it's a fascinating look at artificial  intelligence, an inquiry into what makes us human, and the boundary between the human being and the machine.