Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
ENG 111
2/28/2019
Planning
Learning Goals: I hope to explore the idea “What if food is digit” by attending the event.
Expectations: After I see the theme of the event is about how food and technology may
intersect in the future, I expect to learn what kind of technology can be applied.
Vocabulary: I may need to know some vocabulary about agriculture and computer science.
Event
There is a livestreamed discussion mainly about “What IF food was digital?” with Miles O’Brien,
science correspondent for “PBS NewsHour,” and Caleb Harper, principal investigator and
director of the Open Agriculture Initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media
Lab. The event takes place at 6:30 p.m. in Stewart Center’s Fowler Hall on Feb.26.
Concepts
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1. “Revolution”: A sudden, radical, or complete change. Here it refers to the giant change
in food industry.
technology platform that uses robotic systems to control and monitor climate, energy,
www.innovation.wfp.org/project/food-computers)
Reflection
The discussion mainly talked about what is the new digital food revolution, why we need this
The last revolution of agriculture is about the use of chemicals and the use of machines in place
of manual work. But it also brings many problems like environmental issues. Moreover, as the
global population continues to grow up, we need more efficient ways to produce our food.
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In the discussion, Doctor. Harper introduced his research of “Food machine” (as show in the
picture below) and how to control these machines with machine learning and other AI methods.
Basically, it’s a process that use computers to collect data influenced by different variables
(Temperature, humidity, etc.) and then use AI algorithm like deep learning to decode and recode
those data. The eventual goal is that we can use those recoded data to predict results we want
and thus we are able to control nice features appearing on agricultural products.
The most wonderful thing is that this new mode of food production enables personal cultivation
become possible, because the need of lands and climate is not obligate anymore and people can
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However, there are still a lot of researches needed to be conducted. For example, the hard ware
The topic of this event reminds me the idea of technology abundance in American culture. As a
student majors in mechanical engineering technology, I can connect what I have learned and what I
am now learning to a lot of technology applied on this topic. For example, I am doing a little project
of autonomous RC (Radio control) -car based on visual deep learning. I need to apply control system
and deep learning algorithm on my RC-car and I also need to know some mechanical stuff like the
structure of automobile. To some extent, this event helps me expand my view of what I can do in
future. Moreover, it makes me realize that there are still a lot of things we can explore and I my
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After attending this event, I have a lot of new thing to share with members in my academic
community. The interdisciplinary collaboration in the topic involves Agriculture, computer science,
mechanical engineering and etc. Actually, at present a lot of projects in my department also involve
interdisciplinary collaboration, I feel that I can come up with some new ideas of research with my
Selfies
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