Week 4 Comment #2

Emily Overstreet
Wow. I have taken many computer science classes and never thought about the fact that NASA had less than me to begin with. It really puts everything into perspective. It makes you realize that with goals and a vision, life is achievable.



Original Post by Dan Kuchera(I had to reformat it)
Wk4 Reading: Art of Possibility, Ch 11
Art of Possibility chapter 11

I often relate a story to students when I teach
Computer Science in high school.   Students.  There is more computing power in one computer that sits in front of you than all that NASA had for the Apollo program some forty years ago.  As this computer science course begins, think about where you want to be by the end of the class. Will yours be the vision that takes the technology you have in front of you far beyond the moon?

Historically, I’m old enough to have lived when John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. did.  They each managed to lead change by adopting unique perspectives that people could rally around.  In Kennedy’s case, the Soviet Union of the 1950’s was far ahead of the U.S. in developing working intercontinental ballistic missiles.  So it was quite shocking at the time when Kennedy called from the Rice University microphone to, “commit to putting a man on the moon within the decade”. But by choosing a space-related goal that the U.S.S.R. had not been pursuing, Kennedy reframed the issue causing the Russian to lose the advantage of their technological ‘head-start’.  In much the same way, King reframed the dialog directing it away from, “What is best for Black OR White?” to “What is best for People?”