Behind The Wires

Behind The Wires

No More Crashes in Development

Advancement Through a Lens

Evolution of

Technology Tech of Tomorrow

TABLE OF CONTENTS

08 12 14 18 Evolution of Technology: Bit by Bit

A look into the past, present, and future of technology.

Techno Timeline A timeline of the greatest tech inventions.

No More Crashes in Development

A dive into the current status of technology.

The Road to Improvement

A drive through technology and its improvements.

30 24 20 26 Film Fans: The Raw Data

AI Advancements

Tech of Tomorrow

Learn about the technology in store for the future.

Immerse yourself into AI and its new developments

Advancements Through a Lens

Take a look at new film technology through a lens.

See the people’s view on film and what makes it memorable.

Behind The Wires

Fall 2019

5

Letter From the Editors Ashton Smith - Fact Check Editor and Features Editor

(Photo by Nathan Elias, 2019.)

I’m Ashton Smith, LASA freshie. Most of my free time is spent playing games or watching random tv shows. I love technology, and use it in my everyday life to talk with friends or to take photos of memorable events. Seeing myself be fascinated by how quickly I noticed improved graphics in gaming, I decided I wanted to do a magazine regarding all levels of technology. Specifically for my article, I figured that I wanted to focus on something I had noticed rapid changes in. While I was looking through a collection of vintage cameras, I looked at how vast the quality changes between each generation of camera. The build of each camera was more advanced than the last, and after being able to test a few of them out, my article was official.

Nathan Elias - Photo and Graphics Editor My name is Nathan Elias and I am a freshman at LASA High School. In my free time I enjoy playing basketball, soccer, and football with my friends. I am really passionate about technology, and understanding the mechanics behind it and how they work. It then made the most sense for me to do a magazine regarding technology and its impact on users.

Additionally, as a constant user of technology, I have often wondered how the device I am using came to be. I often ponder what kind of materials were used to make it, or who came up with the idea to make it. This led to me choosing the article topic of the evolution of technology, which would allow me to pursue my interest in learning about the past of technology and how specific inventions came into existence.

(Photo by Eric Haney, 2019.)

6 Behind the Wires

(Photo by Nathan Elias, 2019.)

Eric Haney - Layout Editor My name is Eric Haney, and I am a freshman at LASA High School. I really enjoy hanging out with friends and playing soccer, biking, playing video games, swimming, and skateboarding. My reason for choosing the technology newspaper was because of how I like to make devices out of electronic components, playing video games, and working on making my computer better. To me it was beneficial to work on the technology paper, because it allowed me to understand part of my passion better and understand the changes that helped create it. I was also able to better understand why and how better development would make my hobbies and passions better. Doing the technology newspaper also allowed me to see what people are currently working on, and how that will impact what I like to do.

Carson White Wenner Copy and Content Editor

(Photo by Nathan Elias, 2019.)

My name is Carson Bluejohn White Wenner, and I am (as of writing this) a freshman at LASA high school. Most of my free time is spent either playing games, looking into new technologies, sitting and thinking, or playing baseball.

Along with my group, I enjoy using, fiddling, and learning about new technology, and thus, we all ended up writing a magazine about the past, present, and future of technology (and cameras). Due to my interests in recent and upcoming technologies, and my interest and use of technology in general, I was eventually tasked with writing the “future� section of the magazine.

(Photo by Ashton Smith, 2019.)

Fall 2019

7

Mining rigs are often used to mine for bitcoins, a form of cryptocurrency. With technology rapidly advancing the way it is, bitcoins may be the currency of the future. (Photo by Panumas Mikhomkhai/Pexels, 2019.)

Evolution of Technology: Bit by Bit

By Nathan Elias

8 Behind the Wires

he world has changed, with technology at the forefront of this advancement. With the world growing and advancing the way it is, there seems to be almost no practical solution to this nonstop advancement and expansion of the human race. Or is there? As the human population grows, so does its ingenuity. This can then be used to create methods and tools, or technology, that will help the overall condition of society. These simple inventions can change mankind, driving it to constantly do better and

thrive. But how much has newer and better technology affected society? What benefits has it really brought?

Technology has improved, changing human perception and the course of evolution. For example, the revolutionary light bulb, which was made

by Thomas Edison in 1879, allowed for being social at night, permitted workdays to extend further, and most importantly, allowed people to navigate streets and unknown areas in the dark.

The automobile, created by Karl Benz in 1886, affected the way people traveled,

allowing even the most common of people to travel quickly and efficiently to various locations. Most recently, the creation and launch of the iPhone, thus far one of the most important invention of the 21st century, has completely changed the way smartphones have been manufactured and used. These simple sparks of ingenuity around the world have completely changed humanity and how it functions. These sparks, which have changed technology in various fields and industries are known as evolutions of technology.

“Newer technology has enabled a lot of different potential applications that we’re interested in.”

— Benjamin Keitz Jacob Abraham, a professor and renowned scientist, works in the field of electrical engineering. With a Ph.D. from Stanford, Abraham is an experienced professional in this field. He currently works at the UT Cockrell School of Engineering, where his revolutionary work and ideas are used around the world, especially by major companies like Intel. Abraham is also the Cockrell Family Regents Chair in Engineering #8, a feat difficult to achieve, due to the peak standards and qualifying requirements. Abraham has published many critical research papers, and is among the world’s top scientists. His topics of research include Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) design and test, formal verification, and fault-tolerant computing.

Jacob Abraham is the crucial chief professor at UT’s Engineering and Research Center. His field, electrical engineering, is involved in testing different aspects of chips and designing them. (Photo Courtesy of Jacob Abraham.)

Benjamin Keitz, also a professor, is a well-known and rising chemical engineer. Holding a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology (CalTech), Keitz is a dedicated as well as experienced worker in his field. He currently works at UT Austin’s McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering,

Fall 2019

9

Even though chips may seem to work reliably, they often fail during testing, showing that even technology can make critical mistakes. Keitz added that new technology can make it more difficult to use various chemical engineering operating systems sometimes or there can be a steep learning curve. This reveals the fact that many applications in chemical engineering have different operating systems, showing the lack of a universal system.

But it doesn’t stop there. “People haven’t figured out how to miniaturize quantum computing technologies to the same extent that people can do with silicon microchips,” Potter said. With new and emerging fields in the midst of society, it is important that all users understand how these fields work, and what systems run them.

Benjamin Keitz is a needed professor and active researcher at UT’s Department of Chemical Engineering. Keitz’s field, chemical engineering, is involved in studying biological electron transfer and potential applications of that processs. (Photo Courtesy of Benjamin Keitz.)

where his vital and remarkable work is used among many students and research groups. As a revolutionary worker in the field of chemical engineering, the work of Keitz is both familiar and needed around the world. Keitz’s topics of research and interest include but are not limited to various aspects of synthetic biology and synthetic chemistry.

Andrew Potter, an assistant professor, is a prominent figure of the quantum industry and an emerging quantum physicist. He currently works at the UT College of Natural Sciences, where his pioneering work is appreciated by many quantum users as well as students. Coming with a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Potter is an experienced and wellversed worker in the quantum industry.

With Potter’s work in this futuristic field, many scientists and engineers look to his work for help and guidance. His fields of work include quantum dynamics, quantum computing, quantum

10 Behind the Wires

matter, but extend to much more.

Although technology is always evolving, and may seem that it is changing for the better, it appears that tech does seem to lack in some ways. “If electronic chips

However, even though some features of technology may seem to be missing, there might be a whole other problem that is being missed out on. “It is really impacting the users of technology negatively. Probably because they don’t interact with other people,” Abraham said. “They may not become social and so on. When people are isolated, it is not a good thing for society.” Though

Javascript, a language used in computer science, is growing rapidly around the world. With computers and coding spreading around the globe at a pace never seen before, it is common to have a few computer programming languages up your sleeve. (Photo by Luis Gomes/Pexels, 2019.)

fail they will give you an indication that they failed primarily for autonomous systems and critical applications,” Abraham said.

technology may be evolving capability wise, it begs the question of whether or not these changes are good for society.

Nevertheless, with technology advancing like never before, many features are being added in various fields. “People are always adding features,” Abraham said.

Additionally, to give an example, “Newer technology has enabled a lot of different potential applications that we’re interested in,” Keitz said. “It’s much easier and much cheaper than in the past and so that allows us to spend less resources.”

This explosion of cheap resources and widespread availability has affected many fields throughout the industries.

“People have been able to understand how to build higher quality materials and to manufacture devices,” Potter said.

This evident constant improvement of technology can be seen in various industries and fields.

But why is it important? “Everything that you would do in electronics is based on the invention of the integrated circuit chip,” Abraham said. It can be shown in this example that one single invention can change the entire course of field, or even technology as a whole.

“Technology has definitely benefited the safety of plants and of chemical plants, I should say, and other areas of chemical engineering,” Keitz added.

a few years back. “Imagine going from old timey computers to sort of having the power of your smartphone kind of at your fingertips and how transformative that’s been,” Keitz said.

That same feeling of power and potential in new technology can be seen across many fields and people. “I was still using actual floppy disks and you could store a few kilobytes of information on it. So you couldn’t even put an MP3 on it, let alone a whole library of stuff that you could fill on your iPod. It’s kind of exploded.

You can buy gigabytes of memory super cheap,” Potter added.

This obvious progression of technology is easy to overlook. However, it is hard to imagine life without evolving and new technology. Keitz gives insight on what kind of life this would have been. “You

can imagine the World War Two, postWorld War Two period, kind of before the computer revolution,” Keitz said.

Most would agree that this sort of life is not nearly desired, although it may be where the world is headed.

“That progression which has driven most technological development is kind of coming to an end,” Potter added.

Despite the evident improvement in technology, many scientists and professionals have acknowledged that it is coming to an end. How this era will be revived and continued will be up to the next generations to come. As Abraham said, “How you use technology is up to the next generation of people who are designing things. You should be able to design or implement some clever techniques that help humanity if you can.” 

“That progression which has driven most technological development is kind of coming to an end.” — Andrew Potter

This shows that new and improved technology cannot just help users, but can also help to save lives. Not only that, “Extra computational power can be used to solve problems that would be really hard for a normal computer to solve more efficiently,” Potter said. This constant theme of more efficiency, less resources spent, can be seen throughout various aspects of technology. As long as technology grows and thrives, there will be more structured, less resourceintensive options for society.

Nonetheless, even though technology is always expanding and going forward, it’s important to remember how technology was only

Andrew Potter is a pivotal professor and effective researcher at UT’s College of Natural Sciences.

Potter’s research in the quantum computing revolves around modeling quantum systems and trying to understand the laws that govern them. (Photo Courtesy of Andrew Potter.)

Fall 2019

11

Techno Timeline T Reviving the greatest moments of all technology

1879

1879

1901

Radio

Automobile

Electric Light Thomas Edison created the lightbulb, or electricity after hundreds of attempts.

1901

1885 1885

Karl Benz used a onecylinder engine to power the world’s first automobile

Guglielmo Marconi successfully send a morse code letter across the world, creating the world’s first radio.

2017 2017

2007

2007 iPhone Artificial Intelligence Artifical Intelligence was created after a team behind AlphaGo, an aritifical intelligence program, let the program beat Go’s best player, Lee Sedol.

On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs created history by announcing the world’s first iPhone at the Macworld convention.

By: Nathan Elias 1903 1903

1926 1926

Airplane

Rocketry

The Orville Wright brothers made the first airplane flight of 120 feet, creating the world’s first airplane, and in the process became international heroes.

As a young child, Robert Goddard was inspired to make a rocket. He created the first liquid-fueled rocket as middle aged man, which flew 41 feet in the air.

1927 1927

1937 1937 1974 1974

TV Television

PC and Internet The first personal computer was created as a result of many transistors on a semiconductor.

Later, Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn created the internet.

Computer John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry began building the Atanasoff-Berry Computer, which would represent data as 0s and 1s.

16 year-old Philo T. Farnsworth thought of a way to display images, and created the first TV 5 years later, in the year 1927.

Sources • Gregersen, E. (n.d.). History of Technology Timeline • www.britannica.com • History of Invention: A science and technology timeline.

• www.explainthatstuff.com • Technology Timeline. (2018, March).

• datesandevents.org

Motherboards are essential in the evolution of modern technology as they recieve connections from routers and speed means performance. Photo Courtesy of Pixabay.

No More Crashes in Development

The modernization of old technology and the end of technology bugs

By Eric Haney

he first Macs were slow, chunky machines that struggled to support small tasks.

That wasn’t even 35 years ago, but what was in the tech scene from the era of blocky desktops that could hardly run the web have

14 Behind the Wires

been replaced by fast and reliable connections, but the changes don’t stop here. Many of the devices that were seen as reliable and usable are being replaced every day by technology that is sparking a technological avalanche.

Cupertino, California, 1976 — Two

young men, ages 21 and 26, carefully pieced together the small parts that would become one of the largest businesses in the world.

College dropouts working out of a garage had just build what today is known as the Macintosh. This was the start of something big, something that would generate

nearly 50 billion dollars a year.

Flash forward 40 years, and almost everyone can reach into their pocket and see what those devices have become. That computer, of 400KB storage, morphed shape into a device capable of fitting into pockets, and with hundreds of thousands of times the number of features and millions of times the storage and memory. However, in a matter of months this technology will also become a thing of the past, as day-by-day the ever-changing tech industry is chipping away at major breakthroughs.

This is the change that professor Vikalo experienced firsthand.

Vikalo is a computer engineer at the University of Texas at Austin who helped pioneer these changes, and since the 1990s, has worked to shape the way people use their electronics. These changes come in the form of predictive typing and cloud storage, as well as faster internet connections.

By implementing these changes to modern society, there is a heightened reliability as well as increased speed in how devices operate. His research is allowing many to come up with technological possibilities that seemed near impossible a matter of years ago, such as decoding DNA for a mere thousand dollars, and cars detecting passers-by in different situations as well as differentiating the situations.

RAM chips, which are newer chips, are beginning to get faster performance and more storage as the industry moves forward. Chips like the one above are quickly becomming a thing of the past. Photo

by Eric Haney.

Advancements such as these have helped to pave the way toward revolutionaries such as Mary Haskett and professor Vijay Chidambaram. Haskett is the founder of an Austin technology startup, working on facial

recognition for venues that is shaping the way people are secure in establishments. Her company was founded on the strong base that was provided by the innovations of the modern era, such as machine learning.

Chidambaram is heavily focused on fixing the crashes that have plagued computers in the past and present, as well as improving storage systems to the point that their performance increased 150 fold.

His work is based off the altering of current tech to make it more reliable than the tech in the market even yesterday. Although Haskett, Vikalo and Chidambaram work separately, their research is imperative in further advancements in the future.

Fall 2019

15

allows computers to save thousands of gigabytes in mere seconds rather than hours, and according to Chidambraram, there is a steep rise in the capabilities of hardware.

However, new inventions don’t shine light on the issues that are easily fixable but yet to be solved, and this is where technology like Chidambaram’s CrashMonkey comes into play. When Chidambaram decided to work on the small issues before he tackled the bigger ones, the computer bugs tended to be simple and technology like Crash Monkey could easily fix it, said Chidambaram. These bugs had always been considered small and unnoticeable, but their presence was causing a cease in the modernization of the tech it was affecting.

Routers are finally recieving an upgrade, as they are able to send and recieve data quicker at the disadvantage of having less range, which has led to routers like these that can send and recieve data at multiple speeds from different ranges. Photo by Eric Haney.

Chidambaram’s work is an essential and integral part of modern technology not by creating, but rather by refining. Refinements like these spark more innovations to come in the future, and are the fuel behind what keeps technology living in the past. His projects like CrashMonkey are only the tip of the iceberg, as his work on improving

Regarding hardware aspects of modern technology that are beginning to see changes, users see much better reliability, speed, and generational wireless systems, allowing information to be downloaded faster, and tech such as AR and VR which have been hindered by limitations of the existing wireless systems to receive advancements, said Vikalo. But what he is also hinting at is that with the improvement of these systems, there are changes in other technical fields. This led to the development of better augmented and virtual reality, as well as advancements in other fields such as better storage to cope with the development.

Combined with new innovations such as persistent memory, which

16 Behind the Wires

Hard drives and Solid state drives are reviecing upgrades from the work that Vikalo is doing, as not they can store more and store more information faster Photo Courteousy of Aza Bo.

algorithms can now identify the faces of strangers better than humans can,” Haskett said.

Facial recognition became a relevant example of modern tech that is seen everywhere.

Phones can recognize faces, and technology such as what Haskett’s start up, Blink Identity, offer insight into how the past is beginning to shape the present.

Intel is at the forefront of innovation, as their company is beginning to market software that can download information at thousands of times the speed of old technology, almost to the point that downloading is almost instantaneous. Photo by Eric Haney.

storage systems have also allowed major breakthroughs in that sector.

With the improvements

Chidambaram helped shine light on, the market is finally seeing more reliable systems that are pushing the boundaries of what was historically possible.

Together, the refinements that drive the industry forward and the new technology that serve as a backbone for future innovations create

From the slow Macs that plagued the technology market, better hardware and software spawned.

In less than 40 years, the blocky desktops that could hardly run the basic software they came with have been replaced by changes. Those changes have made the market for electronics more competitive and have led to performance upgrades to be at the top of the market, sparking a new era of consumer electronics.

On Oct. 24, Blink Identity plans to speak at Lonestar Application Security Conference (LASCON X), a yearly Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) convention, where they will talk about facial recognition & privacy and Blink’s contribution for modern facial recognition. In early September 2019, Blink’s CEO, Mary Haskett, was chosen by the magazine “VenueNow” to talk about her start up, and was awarded with an Industry All-Star award. 

possibilities for the thriving tech industry. “In recent years, because of advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence, the technology has gotten much better. It’s now very reliable — most commercial

Fall 2019

17

THE ROAD TO IMPROVEMENT

By Eric Haney

TODAY YOU WILL LEARN THE TRANSFORMATION OF SELF DRIVING CARS OVER THE LAST 100 YEARS AND THE PARTS THAT MAKE UP SELF DRIVING CARS

and The second autonomous car used surroundings

GPS: Vehicle location and navigation

Light Detection and Ranging: Sensor that uses

Ultrasonic sensor: Parking Assistance and warning

distance between obstacles Cameras: Collect image data for interpretation of image data

Prebuilt maps: Have city map built in and give limits of every road Dedicated Short-Range Communication: Vehicle To Vechicle communication is used to recieve data about condition

Internal Navigation system: Determine position, direction, and velocity Radio Detection and Ranging: Sends waves that

Infrared Sensors: Used for lane mark detection between object and sensor

Sources https://www.ucsusa.org https://www.wired.com/ https://www.titlemax.com

A photo of electronics, a vital part of all technologies coverd in this aricle (Photo by Elen/Pexels)

The Tech of Tomorrow The Technology of the upcoming years, and beyond

By Carson White Wenner

20 Behind the Wires

echnology is an amazing thing. In our everyday lives, we often use technology without even realizing it, or we take if for granted instead of the miracle it is. This ranges from all sorts of things, from driving a car, to writing up a document on a computer, and even relaxing to some TV or video games. Now, the technology we have now is all fine and good, but have you ever wondered what technologies might come about in the upcoming years?

Well, today we will learn about three of the biggest technologies whose surfaces have only been scratched at: Quantum computing, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality.

Quantum computing is a complicated subject, so if you were to research

“Quantum computing is a proposal for a new type of computer, a sort of the first type of computer that operates on fundamentally different principles from the ones that Alan Turing made way back in the 1930s.” into it yourself, don’t be sad if you don’t understand it immediately, but in general, there are two categories to the field: the theorists, who “is just someone who tries to use math to

figure out what are the ultimate limits of what you can do with computers in reasonable amounts of time” said Scott Aaronson, and experimentalists who actually design, build, and test quantum computers. Quantum computing “is a proposal for a new type of computer, a sort of the first type of computer that operates on fundamentally different principles from the ones that Alan Turing made way back in the 1930s.”

(Aaronson). Artificial Intelligence on the other and is much more developed, and has been around since the 1960, albeit that the AI back then often took several hours to complete a simple task.

Artificial intelligence is the study to create fully autonomous codes or robots that are able to complete a plethora of tasks through adapting to different

Photo of Scott Aaronson, who teaches quantum computing at UT Austin (Photo by Carson White Wenner)

Fall 2019

21

Robots created by Boston Dynamics, one of the leading companies in AI design (photo courtesy of Boston Dynamics)

situations and learning from patterns.

The final topic that will be discussed today is virtual reality. Virtual reality, or VR (also sometimes called augmented reality) is typically used as a form of entertainment, but has much potential to grow and change to become a helpful tool with any number of applications in the future.

“There are these other cryptocurrencies that are much much more environmentally friendly than Bitcoin.

They need much less energy, but they require a huge source of random bits and everyone has to trust that there were really random. So a protocol like mine might be usable for that. This might be the first application of a quantum

22 Behind the Wires

computer that we’re able to actually realize technologically.” Said Scott Quantum computing has, or atleast can soon have, a real life application of generating a truly random number and being able to prove it. The generating of a truly random number with a computer has a variety of real life application in in of itself, ranging from playing a game with friends, to gambling, to statistical sampling, and even has a big use in cyber security, as it can be used to create a completely unpredictable cryptographical code.

Quantum computing’s biggest real life application however is simulating physics itself. Quantum computers are extremely powerful, and with their

intricate systems are able, or at least soon to be able to generate an accurate simulation of physics and chemical reactions. This would open up near endless possibilities, as it could be used to test the efficiency of things such as a prototype battery, or even to seeing how a new drug would react with a human body meaning that new and better medicines could be created cheaper and of higher quality.

The next upcoming technology, and probably the biggest, is Artificial Intelligence. Artificial intelligence has been around since WW2, where the very first AI was created by Alan Turing.

Artificial intelligence is a self thinking, or learning and adapting robot or code.

Artificial intelligence works mainly through seeing patterns in data, and making the most logical guesses, assumptions, moves, etc (based on what the AI is built to do), and going from there. Many AI are made up of neural networks, most of which are designed specifically to see underlying relationships and patterns in data, and are designed to be adaptive so as to be able to produce a result from a variety of different data, but to do this they must first be trained to recognise patterns in given data.

Artificial intelligence, mainly in recent years, has been developing quite quickly. For example, Google’s voice recognition software can get over 92% accuracy, which may not be impressive until you realise that the software only needs to hear a voice once, and it can then recognise you forever. There are also new technologies such as voice generators, which can (for the most part, nothing is perfect) recreate anybody’s voice speaking any amount of words after being given a voice example of speaking for less than 2 minutes (or in other words, if you speak for 2 minutes, the software can recreate your voice pretty accurately with just about any words or sounds).

AI is progressing rapidly, and with that comes a rapid increase in real life application. Now, and even more so in the future, AI is able to beat a human mind in just about any task if it is trained

Leslie McMillin is a former UX designer who worked with VR for th U.S. military (photo courtesy of Leslie McMillin

to do so properly. A good example of this would be AlphaGo and AlphaZero, which were very well known for being able to triumph over any human opponent, including the world champion,

almost flawlessly at a game called Go. AlphaGo was able to beat the champion 4-1, and AlphaZero, who was trained to play be facing AlphaGo, was unable to be beaten by anyone, and was never tripped up by a “move 37” like ordeal.

Overall, much of AI is progressing this way, and in the future, AI will become a very efficient way of completing almost any daunting task.

The final newest and upcoming technologies are VR and AR. VR, or virtual reality, “replaces the world you see in front of you (reality), immersing you somewhere else, while AR ‘augments’ or adds to the world we live by projecting information on top of what you see” stated former UX design instructor Leslie McMillin.

AR in in of itself has little use outside of entertainment with games such as Pokemon go, but VR on the other hand allows full interaction of a new place to the user, mainly through detecting real life positions and adjusting in game positions to fit accordingly, along with some VR devices allowing additional controls to fit the context. VR is mainly being used as entertainment, most

notably VR headsets like the Oculus Rift, but it does have other real life application such as “the US army developing cultural training projects for soldiers in Afghanistan,” said Leslie.

While the future of VR is hard to predict, it looks as though it may have many useful applications in training, as it can be used to simulate a real world experience without any real world consequences, which provides limitless different experiences and talents to be gained that would otherwise be completely unattainable. 

A photo of a futuristic city. Courtesy of pexels, who provides copyright free images for millions of people.

Fall 2019

23

Advancements in AI

A short look into the most important dates and advancements in AI history

By Carson White Wenner 1943

WW2 brought together many scientists from Turing and Walter Grey, who excahnged ideas, the Turing Test along with the three laws of robotics a year prior.

1973

With millions of dollars being put into AI with little to show, Professor Sir James Lighthill gave a damning report o the state of AI that lead to much of the industry’s funding being cut.

1981

The Ai winter comes to an end as AI is commercially realised, as new AI were far more focused on narrow and easier tasks, which could be used by companies to save money.

2008

Google’s new voice recognition software appeared on the new iPhone.

The device had thousands of neural networks working toghether to see patterns from users, eventually getting 92% accuracy.

1950

Isaac Amisov , the same man who made the three laws of robotics, also publishes “I Robot”, a short series of science fction novels that helps to inspire a generation of scientists and inventors,

1969

AI is progressing slower than many predictions. An AI named “Shakey” was made, with the purpose of navigating a terrain, but even a tiny change to the landscape could take hours to get around.

1990

AI scientist Rodney Brooks became inspired by advances in neuroscience, and argued that the bottom up was better than the top down approach, and revived the idea of neural networks

2005

The US military began to invest in AI, which resulted in the creation of the PackBot, a bomb of packbots have actually been deployed, mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan.

2010

2011

Smaller compuers with more power allowed for better robots, such as NAO humanoid robots preforming synchronised dancing at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.

IBM’s Watson AI greaty outpreformed the previous two best player at Jeopardy, answering many complex riddles and questions, which is far more complex than chess.

???? progresses humans so far that our healthcare and economy allows us to live time, ot the three laws of robotics are not followed, resulting in an apocalypse.

1956

The term AI is coined at Dartmouth University, how to tackle AI is debated.

Some suggest a pre-programmed computer with rules, while others suggest neural networks that learn.

1968

“2001: A Space Odyssey” is created, which captures many fears of public perception of AI while also covering predictions made by scientists that AI could soon rival human intelligence.

1997

The AI supercomputer Deep Blue was able to beat the world chess champion, and is by some called “the brain’s last stand”, and showed the potential of AI.

2002

Rodney Brooks’s smaller company, iRobot, created autonomous robot, which acted as a vaccum and was called the Roomba.

Roombas showed the

2014

An AI chatbot named passed the Turing test.

Self driving cars are in development, and AI is rapidly progressing forward.

????

????

AI greatly imporoves the

Self driving cars become

and industry, and possibly even ends up in the creation of a smart city, a city that is completely autonomous.

prevelent, amking transportation in many areas far quicker and safer to use.

The Future

Fall 2019

25

Advancement Through A Lens

By Ashton Smith Photo Courtesy of Gregg Burger

Perfect Snap – A consumer from Precision Camera, a local camera shop. The cameras are perfect for every occasion

26 Behind the Wires

A

dvancement Through a Lens. In the present day, just about every person uses technology in their daily life. Almost everything we do utilizes technology, from watching a YouTube video to setting a phone alarm for the next day to taking a selfie, to even reading this article.

However, many today do not think about how these precious luxuries came to be or how they’ve evolved.

Those who do look back on the history think back far into the times where Thomas Edison’s light bulb or Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone had just been introduced. Even though these inventions have become essentials for people today, there is one invention that sticks out from the rest.

depended on film cameras, which generated positive images on negative films, to capture moments in time.

Since their various introductions by many inventors, cameras have become essential to preserving memories and capturing virtually any image instantly. Today’s youth depends on brilliant innovators of technology that are constantly becoming capable of more and more. In the age of selfies and a constant desire to document the world around us, improvements in camera technology continue to be demanded by the public. Before the introduction of the digital camera, consumers of the 20th century

As time went on and technology of the 21st century emerged, more surprisingly, new cameras began to produce images with higher quality than our very own eyes. Cameras exist today that can take note of extremely small, seemingly insignificant details that we ourselves do not notice right away

Nowadays, only collectors seek to own these vintage cameras. Once digital cameras were introduced to the public, they proved to be exponentially better than film cameras since images seemed to be captured almost exactly as one sees them through their own eyes — in full color — rather than forcing their users to be satisfied with a black and white replica.

and preserve them in the form of data. This extremely fast and drastic advancement in camera technology has led to the existence of people who have lived through the eras of both film and digital cameras.

“When I was starting out, there was a lot of emphasis by a film professor on understanding chemical properties of film — the bright and dark areas of an image and composing shots breaking down everything into thirds,” Mat Hames recalls, an American independent filmmaker and producer “Despite the fact that it was the 1990s and everyone was moving to digital anyway.

Today just about everything is digital. The tools have changed and gotten cheaper”

“Some companies waited too long to get into digital.

Kodak was the largest camera company in the world, now they don’t even exist in any real term”

Photo Courtesy of Deepak Chetty

Hard Reset – Screen grab from Deepak Chetty’s thesis film “Hard Reset”

reputable companies such as Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Fuji and Panasonic. All these companies can keep adapting to changing consumer demands. Sony, for example, began

The Perfect Camera – Nikon camera, one of the top selling cameras in the United States Photo Courtesy of Gregg Burger

Hames is aware that cameras today are more accessible to consumers and more capable of things that the film cameras he had to learn about were not, but there is one element that has not changed throughout the history of the camera. Hames said that this element was the underlying process for producing beautifful imagery and designing shots. He is glad he learned what he did, and Hames said he hopes people will still learn the underlying reasons to compose a shot.

Today’s professional photographers are able to produce high-quality shots because, like Hames, they are aware of what makes an image breathtaking.

Where an object is placed on the image or how distant the photographer is from the target is, for example, could prove to be the difference between an amateur picture or an award-winning photograph.

In the present day, most who come into a store that sells cameras does not seek to buy a film camera. Today’s photographers instead seek digital cameras produced by well-known,

28 Behind the Wires

largest camera company in the world, now they don’t even exist in any real term,” Gregg Burger, general manager of Precision Camera says of the competitiveness in the camera industry. “You need to keep up with the changes or die.” He also said that the quick adaptation of these companies to consumer demands isn’t the only thing keeping them afloat either — it’s also their need to constantly improve the quality of their cameras.

“They do take a great selfie, good snapshots and a really nice portrait, but when you really want to take a great photo, you will always reach for a real camera.”

producing fullframe mirrorless cameras, which can keep more objects in focus at once, are more compact than DSLR cameras, and record higher-quality videos, before any other company did.

The company’s determination to provide more new camera models for its customers to choose from before its competitors are what led them to become trailblazers of the camera industry. Unlike Sony, companies Nikon and Canon have only recently brought their full-frame mirrorless cameras to the consumers’ attention this year — about five years after Sony did. The camera industry has proved to be an extremely competitive industry even now since many people seek to capture images for use in promoting new goods, showcasing celebrities, or simply capturing a moment in time.

“Some companies waited too long to get into digital. Kodak was the

Companies are continuously cramming more and more pixels into their cameras and upgrading the lenses that they have so that the highest-quality image can be captured. Additionally, producers are making their cameras easier to use, so that even beginner photographers could become attached to their products, whilst making everything significantly more costefficient and accessible. In the end, both amateurs and professionals seek a camera that can be transported easily and produce photos almost instantly and of the highest resolution possible.

The improvement of cameras has allowed for special effects to flourish, giving photographers the ability to enhance their pictures and videos or add elements to them. Deepak Chetty, an assistant professor at the University of Texas’s Radio, Television and Film department, has worked on films such as “Hard Reset” and seen the enhancements in special effect

Hard at Work – Deepak Chetty on set, filming his thesis film “Hard Reset”

Photo Courtesy of Deepak Chetty

The Perfect Camera 2 – Nikon camera, one of the top selling cameras in the United States Photo Courtesy of Gregg Burger

technology over time.

“The main thing that has changed is that visual effects, or VFX, are way cheaper post-production,” he said.

“If I were to make Hard Reset years now, opposed to years ago, the easy of creating the VFX and the cost would be considerably lower.” According to Chetty, it would take less time to render the VFX, allowing for more time to iterate designs and working on shots, and the movie would have looked much better as a result.

What will the future of the camera contain? According to Burger, the future lies in capturing more than

just a single frame. “Video is very popular now,” he says. “Youtubers need content as well as vloggers.”

He knows that there is a rise in people achieving fame on the internet by documenting in video format interesting portions of their luxurious lives as well as their adventures in odd places. Burger also observes that there is an increasing interest in including AI technology in cameras. “Cameras can lock onto the eye of a subject and follow and focus on that eye anywhere in the camera’s frame.” The implementation of AI technologies, according to him, will make taking pictures much easier for amateur photographers.

Finally, Burger said that, despite constant improvement and increasing popularity, phones will never truly replace the camera. “They do take a great selfie, good snapshots and a really nice portrait,” admits Burger, “but when you really want to take a great photo, you will always reach for a real camera.”

did half a century ago. All it takes for someone to begin capturing thousands of moments in time is a great camera. 

Photo Courtesy of Gregg Burger Man of The Shop – Gregg Burger, general manager of Precision Camera, a local Austin camera shop

Nowadays, someone wanting to go into an industry like film doesn’t need to buy a lot of equipment like many

Fall 2019

29

We took a survey to find the most common video genre and video platforms

Survey’s Take

F NET LIX

31.8 %

HULU

OTHE R

4.5% 2.3%

61.49%

BE YOUTU

M AY L P E

20.5% 6.9

47.7% %

11.4%

6.8 %

CO T AC

E

DO DY ME M CU ARY T N

teens social media & technology 2018: http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2018/05/31102617/PI_2018.05.31_TeensTech_FINAL.pdf LASA student survey, conducted September 20 - 27, 2018.

Genres Movie Breakdown: https://m.the-numbers.com/market/genres

GA

4.5% 2.

3%

By: Ashton Smith

OR R R HO ING G G BLO R

E OTH ION

Behind Behind The The Wires Wires

32 Behind the Wires