Did anything in this story feel familiar? Did anything seem distant or difficult to understand?
- Yes, the lost of human contact and everything being virtual reminds me a lot of the early stages of Covid where we went into a lockdown and were unable to leave our house for two weeks. Eventually, with ZOOM, all our classes and gatherings which use to happen face to face are now happening virtual. In that sense, the story was familiar. The only thing that felt distant was the fact that even family were separated and the fact that the lecturers were living in poor conditions during the end but kept persisting through it and acting like nothing was wrong. I didn't understand why they were worshipping the machine so much.
2. Why do you think we would we read such a story in a computer programming class?
- One reason I think we should read a story like this in a computer programming class is to understand that we shouldn't be too dependent on technology to the point that we lose touch with reality. Especially with phones, I feel like we are going through that. The face to face connection, some people have lost. Additionally, it is to show that no matter how advanced we get into technology, there will be errors and things that will go wrong and things that don't work. Technology can only go as far as the programmer, it doesn't have a brain of its own. Sure, we can create something similar but we cannot predict every environment or situation that technology will be in. Therefore, we can create the most advanced machine but it will not be greater than what a human can do and that we shouldn't delve ourselves so much into the machine/program that we start to lose touch with what is real and what is not. Stories like these can be real eye-opening.