SCI 410 Final Exam
Instructions: Answer the first question, which is required. Then choose 2 more questions and answer them. Each answer should be at least one page long. You may use any non-living source of information. Answers must be in your own words, with information sources credited—no copying of websites!
You must answer this question:
It is the year 2020. You wake up in the hospital with no recollection of how you got there, but you do know that you hurt everywhere down to your waist. Below that, you can’t feel anything—a bad sign!
“What happened??” you ask.
The nurse will not tell you, but goes and gets the doctor.
The doctor comes in and says, “I have some bad news for you. It seems that you fell down an elevator shaft, causing you to break your back in 12 places and you to be paralyzed from the waist down. You also suffered from a punctured lung and your heart was damaged. You were rushed to the hospital, where you received a blood transfusion—but due to a mistake, you received a transfusion from blood contaminated with two types of hepatitis virus. Basically, you have about 48 hours to live.”
“But,” the doctor continues, “We have some good news for you. Since part of this is our fault, we have a possible solution for your problem. We can try to “upload,” or transfer your consciousness to a robot body, and we will pay for it.”
You ask: “Will it be me? Or will it just be a simulation of me?”
Answer: “This is a problem for philosophers. We have done it several times before, and the patients say that it seems to them that they wake up in the robot body with no memory of the transfer, and the person’s former body is dead.”
You ask: “What will it be like to have a robot body?”
Answer: “You will have a few new abilities—like being able to see in the dark. Your will look sort of like Commander Data, the android off Star Trek: The Next Generation, so you should not frighten small children. You can even probably hold down a job. Beyond that it is hard to say, because different people report different experiences after transfer. Oh, and while we don’t know how long you will “live,” and there is another interesting aspect to this: you may be eligible for hardware upgrades later on. But you have to let us know within 24 hours what your decision will be…much longer than that, and you will be dead from internal bleeding, spinal damage, heart damage, the punctured lung, and the hepatitis infection. Also, you should know that no matter what you choose, your spouse and two children will be okay in terms of money because of your life insurance—it pays the full amount if you die, or if you lose the natural use of both legs, which you have.”
So which would you choose? Would you choose to try living as a robot? Or not? How do you think your spouse and children would respond? Would you feel lonely, and try to meet some of the other "robotified" humans? Explain the reason for your answer. Also, you may assume that if you are a woman, they will have a female robot body available for you to use.
Choose two of the following four questions and answer them:
1. Explain the scientific, social, and economic importance of antibiotics. Trace the development of at least THREE well-known antibiotics. Be sure to show an awareness of the development of chemotherapeutic and antibiotic technology over time.
2. Explain how the personal computer has evolved over time. What social, personal, and economic factors have caused the IBM/Wintel platform to become dominant? Why did other platforms end up either extinct or small niche players? Do you think that the Linux or Apple operating systems have any chance of becoming major forces (rather than very small niche players) in the home PC, small business, or educational environments? Why or why not? Be sure to justify your answer in terms of historic technological, social, and economic trends. Be careful to justify your statements with facts and information from reputable sources, not Microsoft, Linux, or Apple propaganda!
3. How can one tell the difference between an idea that is nutty and one that is promising, but simply ahead of its time? About 70 years ago, in 1935, would travel to the moon seemed nutty or just not yet possible? Why? What about fifty years ago, in 1955? Do you think cryonics is nutty or ahead of its time? Why do you think this?
4. In 2004, the president of the United States, George W. Bush, proposed a national space plan that appears to de-emphasize unmanned space probes and devote more funding to the manned space program. Do you think that this is a good idea or not? Why or why not? For more information about this, see:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/01/14/bush.space/
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0401/14spacepolicy/
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3950099/
You may also refer to other reputable information sources for more in-depth information.