Final Essay Analysis (Part III: Writing an Essay)

In the previous post, I discussed how I decided which position I would take in the argument of whether we are becoming a “disposable” society or a “green” society. Although deciding this position was a very crucial step in my process of writing this paper, the next and final step was still just as important. After deciding to support Giles Slade’s argument, the next step was to come up with a couple good supporting topics for this argument. This step involved a lot of critical thinking about what aspects of life really controlled the general state of a society. After thinking about, I cam to the conclusion that there were three main things that guided a society in one direction or another: technological development, economy, and the mindset of the average person. So, I decided to modify these topics a little bit so that they apply to our specific society and then use them for the supporting topics of my argument.

The final step in my process of writing this paper was basically just to actually write, or rather type, the paper up. I had my topics, so now it was time to jus fill in the little details and add explanations. Hammering away at a keyboard isn’t very interesting, but I did find it interesting to think about how America culture is being influenced by these topics. Explaining the three topics I chose in detail really forced me to think about how each one was effecting American culture and driving it in a certain direction. I suppose the thing I was most surprised to find was how complacent most people are with just taking advice from advertisements and the media. It is not too hard to research information and find out the true facts for yourself, so the only logical conclusion that one can come to is that people just don’t even care to try. I suppose I always though this, but writing this paper really brought these thoughts to the forefront of my mind. I suppose it is just a matter of either laziness or foolishness, or maybe both, but either way I feel that it is definitely one of the biggest problems facing American culture today.

Final Essay Analysis (Part II: Finding Sources and Building an Argument)

Continuing the process of writing an essay for the final assignment of my technology and culture in America class, the next step was to decide on a position for my argument. Basically, I could either argue that Giles Slade was correct in his book Made to Break and that we are moving toward a disposable society, or that he is incorrect and that society is moving away from disposability by “going green”. After thinking about it for a bit and looking at some possible online sources, I decided to agree with Giles Slade and argue that our society is becoming disposable. Before I even started looking at sources, I had already decided most likely that I would go with this argument, but reading extra information from outside sources really made me positive that this was the position I wanted to take.

After roughly deciding the position I wanted to take in this essay, finding sources was the next step. Finding sources and seeing the general attitude of sources from both positions was what I used to either prove to myself that this was the position I wanted to take or that I should go with the counter-argument. Although Made to Break by Giles Slade was my primary sources, find some outside sources was not very difficult at all, being that this whole “green” movement is getting bigger and more advertised every day. After reading through sources, I found it quite interesting that most of the sources promoting the “green” and talking about things like global warming really weren’t scientific at all. All of the information I found from actual scientists and experts in their fields basically said the opposite and greatly supported the argument that our society is becoming disposable. Most of the scientific sources even denied the effectiveness of many of the products promoted as “green” movement and even stated they were harmful to the environment. To me, this really confirmed that I should argue in favor of Giles Slade. Also, this really proved to me how strong an influence the media and advertisers have on society. American culture is definitely an impatient one, and other than helping me to confirm which argument I wanted to take, these sources really showed me that more often than not people would rather believe media hype than do research themselves to prove whether something is true or not.

Final Essay Analysis (Part I: Choosing a Topic)

For the final assignment in the class “Technology and Culture in America”, all students were given the task of writing a final essay. There were two topics to choose from: whether or not college campuses are technopolies, as defined by Neil Postman, or whether America is going to become to become a disposable society, as described by Giles Slade, or move towards “going green”. After reading the topics, I considered a couple things before deciding which one I would choose. I considered things such as how valid an argument I could make for each topic, which topic brought up the most ideas when I thought about it, and also which topic would allow me to write an essay that would be interesting to write as well as read.

After thinking about each topic for a bit, I decided that I would make an argument regarding whether our society is becoming disposable or not. This topic seemed to suit me the best. I like to think of myself as a scientific minded person, and I think writing about obsolescence was more scientific. Although there definitely is evidence to support and deny the existence of technopolies in our colleges, it all just seemed more subjective and controversial to me. It just seemed like every argument could be taken in a different manner depending one’s own views, which in my mind reduces the validity of the arguments. I felt that, making an argument about whether our society is becoming disposable would involve more scientific facts and information about the direction in which technology is moving and that felt like a topic that would be more interesting to write as well as read. Also, writing an argument about whether or not our entire society is becoming disposable involves a much more vast social area than just talking about college campuses. This made this topic feel all the more important to me, which really finalized my decision.

The Counter-Productivity of Social Media

I recently read an interesting article on CNN.com, so I thought I would use one of my available free posts to analyze this article. The article, titled “Exploring the Anti-social Side of Social Media”, is essentially about a woman who tries to make people realize that the social media that is supposedly bring people together is actually driving them apart. Going about it in a bit of a peculiar way, Cristin Norine decided to live in glass quarters located on a street corner for 30 days. Except for the bathroom, every room could be seen into by people passing by outside and the only way Norine could communicate with the outside world was thorugh the internet. According to Cristin Norine, the goal of this exhibitionism was to show people how although the internet can be used to connect people from different parts of the world, it is ultimately putting glass walls between us and the people around us.

Reading this article, I find myself having mixed feelings. On the one hand, I agree with Norine’s assessment about social media, but on the other hand I feel as though Norine really did not go about spreading this knowledge in an appropriate way. I have always found it ironic how social media like facebook and twitter are actually creating more and more distance between people rather than bringing them together. Sure, they may allow two people from countries apart to chat with each other, but they are destroying people’s ability to talk to someone who is right in front of them. Instead of meeting someone and having to experience the mystery of finding out information about them through personal contact and experience, things like facebook are essentially turning people into introvert stalkers who just lurk around facebook whenever they want to find out information about someone. In this aspect, I agree with Norine and am glad that not everyone has completely fallen under social media’s spell.

Although I agree with Norine’s perspectives, I really think her exhibitionism just got her attention rather than spreading a message. Many people walking by on the street probably did not even understand why she was doing this. To those people it was basically just a circus act to amuse them for a couple minutes on their way to and from work. Also, even for the people who did understand her reasons for this, I highly doubt that it actually caused any of them to think about how much they use social media and the consequences it is having on their lives. I am sure that doing this got Norine a lot of attention and media recognition, but I doubt it actually helped get her message across. Her intentions were wonderful, but the execution was less than proper.

The article can be read at this link: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/social.media/11/19/social.media.isolation.project/index.html

The Facebook Effect (Part III)

Yesterday it seemed like facebook was just some start up company with couple kids working there, but tomorrow it seems like facebook might rule the world. In the third part of The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick, David discusses how facebook began expanding into much more than just a mere website. He begins by talking about the transformation of facebook into a platform, which according to David had been a goal for Zuckerberg ever since he first made facebook. Turning facebook into a plateform expanded its potential exponentially. It turned facebook into a system off which other software and applications could be run. Also, with the addition of the news feed, after a relatively small protest from users, facebook’s usage began growing even more rapidly. After this expansion of facebook’s abilities, David Kirkpatrick discusses how facebook was turned into a highly profitable enterprise. This was highly due to the acquisition of Sheryl Sandberg, who was hired as the COO of facebook and took charge of facebook’s ad campaign while Zuckerberg was traveling around the world. This new movement in facebook ads led to a serious increase in revenue for the first time. Up until then, although facebook was held at very high standards and valued at a very high worth, it really wasn’t making that much money. After discussing facebook’s road to monetary success, David Kirkpatrick talks about the new direction Zuckerberg began taking facebook in, world expansion. This is where I think David Kirkpatrick makes his main arguments during this part of the book. During this time in facebook’s life, Zuckerberg mainly concentrated on expanding it to the entire world. It had already spread to many parts of the world other than the United States, but it was only used by people who could speak English. Zuckerberg began creating translations of facebook so that it could be used by speakers of other languages. This led to a global expansion of facebook. It is in this expansion that I think the main argument was made by Kirkpatrick. With this great expansion of facebook, users all around the world now held a great deal of power in their hands and could right the wrongs that before they would have to just accept.

Although expanding facebook globally was a arduous task, it allowed facebook to attain a level of power that no other internet company has. It is in this power that I feel David Kirkpatrick makes is main argument. This power facebook users now possessed was the power of common goals. Now that facebook was so large and expansive, all around the world people could virtually come together to protest about any issue they wanted. If anyone wanted to protest about something, they could start a group about the issue and it would be almost certain they would get thousands of members within days that would share their views. According to David Kirkpatrick, it seems like this power is a wonderful thing that allows people around the world to fight injustices that before they could not. A prime example of this is Oscar Morales, who started a group against the FARC. After a short amount of time, the group had 350,000 members and led to a 10 million people march against the FARC (pg. 1-6, 288). Although in this case and admittedly numerous others, facebook gave people the power the fight back against injustices, overall I would still have to disagree with David Kirkpatrick’s argument. Facebook may be a tool that can help many people come together to fight a good cause, but I think by far the larger percentage of users do not use facebook for anything so noble. I think this technology just further supports Neil Postman’s views about technopoly. As with all technology, the potential for it to be used to help humanity and do the world good is always there. But the ease, convenience, and shear quantity of it causes most people to use it for selfish reasons. Facebook has the option of being used to fight causes and injustices, but from my own experiences it is much more often used just to satisfy people’s want for attention and fame.

Informative Websites

www.cramster.com
Cramster is a website that works as a learning tool. It allows people to view detailed step by step solutions to the problems in many science and math related textbooks. Furthermore, it also the users to contest a step in a problem solution if they feel it is wrong. There is also a forum in which people can further discuss textbook solutions or any problem with other users as well as experts.

www.webmd.com
WebMD is a website that allows users to research medical information. Users can use this website to search for symptoms of a certain disease or just search for symptoms and learn about what possible diseases could result from such symptoms. Also, users can use WebMD to chat directly with medical experts.

www.physicsforums.com
Physicsforums, as the link implies, is a forum dedicated to the communal information exchange of all things science. Although the link says physics, really this forum can be used to help someone who needs information about any type of science, whether its physics, mathematics, or even engineering problems. Once signed up, a forum member can ask any question about some type of science in the appropriate forum section and most of the time will promptly be aided by one of the numerous knowledgeable members.

www.autotrader.com
Autotrader is a website that gives everyone one place where they can post their automotive ads for the world to see. Whether you’re looking to sell or buy a car, autotrader will give you more options than any magazine ever could. Autotrader is especially helpful in connecting a buyer and seller who aren’t close to each other. If a person is looking for a specific type of car and is willing to have one shipped from California to New Jersey to get it, than Autotrader will be especially helpful.


www.drifting.com
Drifting is a website that allows everyone who is interested in the motor sport known as drift racing to meet and discuss different aspects of the sport. It allows people who are new to the sport to learn all about it and talk to people who have been interested in drifting for years. Also, it allows people to talk to professional drift racers and ask them questions. Its place where anyone can keep updated with the sport.

Solo Presentation

Although having internet security is more important today than it has ever been, it seems as though people today are neglecting to consider it more than they ever have. Last class, I presented an article about security issues dealing with bank applications that have been made available to smart phones such as the iphone and droid. The idea behind these applications is that with this application on a person’s phone, they are always connected to their bank accounts and can quickly check the status of them at anytime. In this article, Andrew Hoog, chief officer for the company viaForensics, researched and scrutinized seven different banking applications to see if the had any security flaws. All of them except one had security flaws and some of the flaws were pretty serious. One of them actually stored the account holder’s username and password in a text file on the phone. With this flaw, all someone would have to do to gain access to your bank account is either just steal your phone or make a virus that steals the files off your phone. Using these applications seems like a pretty big gamble.

I always thought these types of applications were risky and dangerous to use, but after discussing this article with the class, it seems like most people who actually take the time to think about it would agree with me. I asked the class if it seems like people are giving up security in exchange for convenience when they use applications like this and pretty much everyone seemed to agree that people are doing this. After seeing this response from the class, I have to believe that pretty much anyone with a properly functioning brain would come to the same conclusion. Therefore, it seems that people are actually willing to give up security and safety in exchange for quick and easy access. Really, when you think about it, something can not be secure and easy to access; that is just an oxymoron. A person can either have one or the other or maybe some balance of the two. This culture’s indifference to security or the consequences of its actions are really exemplified with these banking applications. Anytime a new product comes out there is always a time period in which flaws are found and re-calls are made to fix the problems. It should have been obvious when these banking applications first came out that there would be initial flaws in them, but no one cared and tons of these applications were downloaded. All people cared about were how easy the applications made banking. Looking at the path our culture is traveling on right now, when someone looks up the history of our culture someday far in the future, it seems as though the main adjectives that will be used to describe us are words such as foolish, impatient, and indifferent to the consequences of our actions.

The Facebook Effect (Part II)

For better or worse, when you join facebook odds are you are going to show everyone who cares to look who you truly are. In the second part of The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick, David Kirkpatrick continues his history lesson about how Mark Zuckerberg’s creation became an actual business. The second part of this book starts with the acquisition of investments so that Zuckerberg could get some much needed money to buy more servers and keep facebook going. This money came from venture capitalists of which Zuckerberg was reluctant to deal with, but had to in order to get the money he needed. After that, David Kirkpatrick discusses when Sean Parker was pretty much forced to relinquish is role as president as a result of his erratic behavior. As a result of his ever growing success, facebook was sort of being forced into becoming a real professional business. Many new employees were hired to deal with coding and other parts of the company, Mark Zuckerberg decided to stop coding in order to focus on the direction of facebook, and although Zuckerberg hated putting ads on facebook, more ad deals were made. Also, more and more companies, such as Yahoo and MTV, kept approaching Zuckerberg with offers to buy facebook. Zuckerberg quickly refused the offers at first, but when Yahoo began making offers of one billion dollars, Zuckerberg had to take them seriously. After the success of facebooks news feed, although much protested at first, and the opening of facebook to everyone, Zuckerberg decided not to sell facebook. After this, David Kirkpatrick goes into what I feel is a much more interesting aspect of facebook, the issues dealing with privacy and a person’s self-image. In this discussion I feel David Kirkpatrick brings up the main argument of this section of the book. Although facebook allows users to increase privacy settings, for the most part people who have joined facebook have given up most of their privacy.

When a person joins facebook, contrary to what many might think, the privacy settings are initially set to allow pretty much everyone on facebook to view all of your information. Also, the privacy settings can be changed on facebook, but they have been made overly complicated and tend to make people not want to deal with them. I think the biggest argument in this section of the book is that the real goal of facebook is to completely abolish all forms of privacy. It’s what Mark Zuckerberg and his group at facebook call “radical transparency”. I find this ironic though, because although Mark Zuckerberg preaches about facebook making people deal with the consequences of their actions almost as if facebook is some kind of justice system, Mark Zuckerberg himself has no idea what it is like to suffer the repercussions of a bad facebook picture or wall post. Being the creater and CEO of facebook, Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t care if an embarrassing photograph or post appears on facebook. What does it matter to him, he is the CEO and creater of facebook, it’s not like he has a boss that will fire him or anything like that. He has majority control of facebook, so it doesn’t really matter what the board members think of him they can never force him out of the company. As long as the information posted on facebook does not give him any legal troubles than he pretty much never has to deal with the consequences of his actions. David Kirkpatrick gives plenty of examples of people who have had to deal with such consequences like the high school football team members who were suspended after the principal saw facebook pictures of them drinking alcohol (pg. 207) or Kimberly Swan, who was fired from her job after her boss saw a post on her facebook page that her job was boring (pg. 211). Neither of these incidences are really that bad. I am sure the principle knows that high school students go to parties and drink alcohol and the boss of Kimberly Swan’s job must know that parts of any job will be considered boring to anyone, but seeing the information in such a blatant form, especially when it comes to photographs, makes the incidences seem much more serious than they really are. Unless you’re a rich CEO who can pretty much do whatever you want, most people need a multi-faceted life in which certain people only see certain faces. Just because a person goes to a party now and then or maybe drinks more than they should on certain occasions doesn’t make them unreliable or deserving of being fired from their job, but one bad picture on facebook can have this result.

Also though, the problem is as much our own fault as it is facebook’s. Our culture is becoming known for his impatience, narcissism, and indifference. Learning how to properly use and benefit from the privacy settings on facebook seem complex and will take to long, so no one uses them. We want everyone to see what were are doing every minute of the day, as if our lives are somehow unique or interesting enough to elicit some sort of special attention. Since we want people to see these things that we are doing so much, we do not care about the consequences of putting this information on the World Wide Web. Personally, I think Mark Zuckerberg’s idea that facebook will make people have to deal with the consequences of their actions and show their true self is completely back firing, but it is back firing onto all of us. While facebook grows bigger and more prosperous, we are becoming bigger and bigger narcissists who need to show our friends every aspect of our lives and feel that if something isn’t documented on facebook than it never happened. Our need to let the world know what we’re doing is overshadowing any chance we have at learning that we need to deal with the consequences of our actions. Regardless of Mark Zuckerberg’s goals for facebook, I think it is just making American culture make poorer decisions for poorer reasons.

The Facebook Effect (Part I)

The age of social networking has arrived, and in this age Mark Zuckerberg and his creation reign supreme. That is the feeling I get when reading The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick. Saying something like that sounds a little weird, but it feels true when reading through this book. The way David Kirkpatrick speaks of Mark Zuckerberg, it really seems like this kid can do no wrong. Kirkpatrick really seems to put this guy on pedestal and make him out to be more innocent and pure of heart than he probably is. In the first part of this book, David Kirkpatrick starts of by giving the reader a brief idea about the usefulness of facebook, then moves on to tell about the history of how it started. Part way through the facebook history lesson, he takes a break to tell about the other various social network type website that were started before facebook, most of which failed and ended up being shutdown. It is interesting to read through this book, because although David Kirkpatrick seems to make Mark Zuckerberg out to be a genius and brilliant strategist in an almost biased manner, the history he tells of facebook seems to argue that there was quite a large amount of luck in the success of facebook. Although not many arguments were made in the first part of this book, being that it was mostly about this history of facebook and social networking, I think the main argument made is that there has always been a demand for social networking and the facebook just happened to be created when the technology could properly support this demand.

Although facebook was a well designed and interesting website, the biggest key to Mark Zuckerberg’s success with his website was probably just being at the right place at the right time. What Mark Zuckerberg created when he made the facebook website really wasn’t extremely original or unique in anyway, but what was very special was the time in which he did it. Before facebook, there were numerous website created with very similar social network purposes created. Two particular examples are sixdegrees and friendster. Both were website created with intentions very similar to facebook. Both websites came out before facebook, but due to technological limitations such as lack of Ethernet connections and digital photography, neither made the kind of impact facebook did. Still though, it’s clear that people wanted to be able to connect with other people over the internet in this kind of format, because both sixdegree and friendster became very popular and had many users. Sixdegrees was started in the late nineties, so its time was way off and it didn’t have the technology to support a proper social network at all, but it still ended up with 3.5 million users before it was shut down. (pg. 69) Also, friendster came out just a year or so before facebook, and it was extremely popular. Actually it was too popular, people joined so fast that the servers couldn’t handle it and the website became very slow and unstable. (pg. 71) Regardless of the poor ending of these websites, the instant success both of them had, even though they were made approximately five years apart, shows that almost as soon as the internet became public, people were looking for methods to create social networks with other people. When Mark Zuckerberg started the facebook, although Ethernet connections weren’t standard yet, enough people were using them that the facebook website did not get bogged down in loading times and the servers were able to keep up. Also, Mark Zuckerberg did not plan it this way, but since he just began the website as a college based social network, this allowed him time to add more servers before adding more colleges to the website and keep things stable. Ever since the internet became popular, American culture became one that was thriving for social connectivity through that medium; Mark Zuckerberg just happened to be the guy at the right place and time to properly take advantage of it.

Wikipedia Midterm Process Review

These past couple of weeks, I have been acting as a pseudo-auditor for my midterm Wikipedia project. My group and I were in charge of auditing the Wikipedia article “Polygamy in North America.” Overall, I have found the process to be quite interesting. The individual process of combing through the article and disputing all of the facts was honestly a bit dull, but I found the group effort to be very informative. In my group, the process was basically that each of us would read the article, look at the sources, and then meet and exchange our observations. After discussing our findings and coming up with the information we decided to present, we created the power point presentation. What I found most interesting about this auditing process was the different discrepancies that each person found in the article. When I met my group my members I figured that we would have mostly similar results, but I was surprised to find that we all found different problems with the article. It was really interesting to see how each member, and people in general, subconsciously are going to be looking for different things and therefore are prone to noticing certain details more than others when it comes to something like auditing an article. Because of this, each of us found, and missed different problems with the article. Coming together as a group and discussing and pooling our results was really what led to a comprehensive presentation. The whole psychology of this auditing process was really what intrigued me the most and after this midterm I really think that having a team of people audit something is really the best way to have a objective final result.

Furthermore, this midterm has also given me much insight into the true nature of a community powered tool like Wikipedia. Before auditing this article, I may have been somewhat suspicious of certain Wikipedia articles, but usually they would only be articles that were very recently created or about famous people. Before I began auditing “Polygamy in North America”, I really did not think I would find many problems with it since an article about this history and current state of polygamy really shouldn’t merit much subjectivity. I was definitely wrong though, and there were numerous problems found with the article due to both bias as well as negligence. Auditing this article has really made me realize that since Wikipedia articles are created and checked by regular people with unknown skills, every single article on Wikipedia could be subject to the same types of mistakes. I always figured that at least scientific articles would usually be pretty reliable, but now I think that every article on Wikipedia should be suspected to have mistakes until known otherwise. Now granted, I still feel that scientific articles on Wikipedia are fairly reliable and more reliable than any other type of article, but when I read them now I am definitely going to look for oddities more closely than before.

Made to Break (Part III)

Planned obsolescence has been accelerated, weaponized, and as you read this it is attacking everything you own. Reading the third and last part of Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America by Giles Slade, it is clear that planned obsolescence transcended to a whole new level with the advent of the computer. At least, that’s what I think Giles Slade believes. In this third portion of this book, Giles Slade goes into the new level of obsolescence that resulted from the creation of the computer and subsequent miniaturization of computers as well as all technologies. After that, he goes into how obsolescence was affected by the cold war, which drastically changed the generally assumed rules of planned obsolescence. Giles Slade discusses how planned obsolescence was used as a weapon to deter the Soviet Union from stealing the United States’ technology and actually created a new level of planned obsolescence, planned malfunction. Lastly, Giles Slade brings the book to a close by discussing the current state of planned obsolescence and the consequences of it. With the extreme acceleration of planned obsolescence resulting from the invention of the computer and America’s wholehearted willingness to accept this “throw away culture” ideology, this whole planet is going to become a “throw away world” if we don’t realize the consequences of planned obsolescence and take proper actions to rectify this situation.

Continually throughout this book, Giles Slade refers to his overall argument that people need to stop accepting and embracing planned obsolescence, but in this final part of his book he really explains why planned obsolescence needs to be controlled and what the consequences will be if it is not. Planned obsolescence really was not causing that much harm to the world until the computer was invented, but once it was the colossal acceleration of planned obsolescence really began to cause damage. This damage was to both the world and the mentality of the people inhabiting it. The mentality of the people began to become warped and skewed in a way that can only be described as complete indifference to the world. After the computer became popular, the time span that electronics would last shrank more and more as electronics became smaller and more sophisticated. As this happened, people began to think of electronics more and more as disposable items and would just throw them away when they broke or even if they just didn’t seem in style anymore. I’m not sure if people ever truly considered the effects that obsolescence had on the environment, but it seems like after computers and integrated circuits became popular practically no one even gave it a thought. This lack of concern about the consequences of their actions is exemplified during the cold war, when planned obsolescence was used as a weapon against Russian spies that were stealing United States technology. Perhaps the intentions made sense, but it was taken too far when a Trojan horse virus was planted in pipeline software illegally acquired by the Soviet Union. I don’t see much problem with this, but what does not seem right is the fact that the virus was made to cause the pumps and valve to produce pressure far beyond acceptable tolerances of the pipelines and cause a massive explosion that could be seen from space. (pg. 257) Instead just causing the pipeline to shut down or just malfunction it was purposely made to over pressurize the system. This form of planned obsolescent, or planned malfunction, really shows the lack of concern about the world or any consequences as long as the immediate goal was reached.

Furthermore, the negligence of people today might not be as instantly detrimental as an explosion that can be seen from space, but it’s proving to be just as destructive to the world. As Giles Slade discusses, the biggest form of e-waste, as he puts it, today are cell phones. The planned lifespan of cell phones has dropped dramatically and is now only approximately eighteen months. Cell phones have greatly contributed to the throw away culture that America has so willingly embraced. People replace cell phones so fast that they just think of them as disposable products that can just be tossed in a trash can like a paper towel. This mentality has pretty much spread to all electronics too. The problem with this is that the silicon based integrated circuits and cathode ray tubes in monitors and televisions and numerous other parts in most electronic products are extremely harmful to the environment. Either these products are burned, releasing tons of harmful chemicals into the air, or they are just stockpiled in waste plants, because no one knows how to properly dispose of them. Half the cell phones and products found in these stockpiles probably work fine too, but they went out of style or became outdated so they were replaced and thrown away. This book really parallels Technopoly by Neil Postman. These two books make extremely similar arguments about the disposable culture that America has embraced. The only difference is that Neil Postman seems to concentrate more on the effects of this culture on our society, while Giles Slade goes more into the effects on the environment. Whichever way you look at it though, this culture is going to cause disastrous problems for us in the future if we stay on this course. The world is being treated as if it is just another disposable paper towel that can be thrown in the trash once it’s used up, but there isn’t a replacement for this world if it gets used up.

Made to Break (Part II)

If you think that you have a product that is safe from obsolescence, you’re wrong, because every thing you own is subject to obsolescence in one form or another. In the second part of Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America by Giles Slade, he begins to talk about the numerous ways in which obsolescence began to effect America throughout time. Giles Slade starts off with one of the biggest industries, radio. Around this time is when the term “death dating” started to be used and this is when planned obsolescence really started to include actually engineering parts to fail after a certain amount of time. From there, Giles Slade moves on to other industries such as housing, computers, and even production of highways. In the description of these industries I think Slade makes a very important argument, that although obsolescence may seem like it only effects what products people buy, it also affects their ideologies and beliefs.

If you think that obsolescence is only limited to the products you buy, your wrong, because even your beliefs and definitions of the world are subject to becoming obsolete. This is a very important argument that I feel Slade makes, because it really shows how obsolescence affects more than just what we buy. In radio, obsolescence seemed to mainly be concentrated on the “death dating” aspect of planned obsolescence, but even radio made some ideas obsolete. For instance, with the invention of the transistor, many companies began inventing much smaller radios that were meant to be kept in a persons pocket so that they could take it with them wherever they went. In order to market this item, the idea of just sitting down with one’s family and listening to the radio was made obsolete. What took its place was the idea of being able to listen to the radio on the go and do other things simultaneously. Also, a perfect example of ideas becoming obsolete is the front porches and basements of houses. When new housing at the outskirts of cities began to be created, very few of them had a basement or a front porch. The businesses did this to keep costs down, but these houses were advertised in a manner that made the whole idea of having a front porch or basement obsolete. Unbeknownst to the buyer, they would suddenly have their old opinion of having a front porch and basement removed from their mind and replaced with this new one. It was almost a form of mind control. Furthermore, an extremely good example of this kind of obsolescence is in the invention of electronic computers. With the creation of the electronic computer, the definition and value of engineers changed. As Larry Owens says “it marked the obsolescence of the cultural values of early twentieth century engineering in which students honed their problem solving talents with graphical methods and mechanical methods of various kinds.” (pg. 141) Obsolescence may be controlling which products we buy and how often we buy them, but it also seems to be controlling how we think of the world.

Without controlling obsolescence, we will not be able to control our own beliefs and values. This is the real point that I think Slade tries to get across through this argument. When the atomic bomb was created and the power and devastation it created was seen, it was proclaimed that modern man was obsolete. (pg. 146) Fortunately for us, man was not yet obsolete, but just the fact that such a conclusion could be come to shows the kind of power that obsolescence has. American culture needs to keep a tight leash on obsolescence, because without it American culture will simply become a large group of people running around looking for the next advertisement to define their beliefs and opinions.

Made to Break (Part I)

The next time you need to replace your computer or car, don’t think that you got the most you could out of it, because it was designed to last much shorter than it could have. This past week, I have been reading Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America, by Giles Slade. So far, the main goal of this book has been go give the reader a clear understanding of what planned obsolescence is and the history behind its creation. Planned obsolescence is actually a simple idea, but being that it completely goes against the business ideology prior to it, it took some time to really become a widespread method of production. Planned obsolescence is the idea that companies purposely design their products to fail after a certain time period, usually being earlier than normal, in order keep customers coming back to buy more products. This method of conducting business began around the time when General Motors started using an early form of obsolescence in order to compete with Ford. After the success General Motors achieved using obsolescence, this idea quickly spread to all other products. The main argument I think Giles Slade makes in this first part of this book is that the whole idea of planned obsolescence is, in essence, causing people think that instant gratification is best mentality for any buyer.

Although planned obsolescence is often thought of as designing products that fail after a certain time period, there is a whole other side to it that most people don’t even realize. Designing products that fail sooner than they should is only the physical part of obsolescence; there is also the psychological part. As Giles Slade discusses, this psychological part of obsolescence is all about trying to instill the idea in people’s minds that waiting for something to wear out or break before replacing it is pointless and people should buy new things to stay modern. Basically, it’s all about creating a sea of potential buyers that actually want to buy new products just because they are new. Giles Slade really defines what the psychological aspect of obsolescence is all about when he says “If a person has money to purchase the latest items of self-presentation, he or she seems superficially more affluent and therefore presumably more socially successful, more desirable.”(pg. 50) He really says it all right there, the businesses used advertising and marketing to create an environment in which people would actually feel undesirable or even ashamed if they weren’t using the most up to date technology or sporting the newest fashions.

The problem though is that this mentality leads to people constantly acting on impulse and not actually thinking about the consequences of their actions. Such a mentality is supported in Neil Postman’s Technopoly. In Technopoly, Neil Postman discusses how people are willing to blindly adopt new technologies and throw old technologies in the trash without even thinking about what they are giving up, which is a very similar mentality to that of obsolescence. Giles Slade even brings up technocracy as a movement created in order to get out of the great depression, but according to him technocracy was not very successful and for the most part faded away, while Neil Postman seems to argue that it was quite successful and in America it even evolved into technopoly. Personally, I feel that Giles Slade’s argument is very valid and obsolescence definitely causes people to think that they should just buy anything they want right now and never think about what could happen tomorrow. The effects of this mentality can been seen today in the landfills full of scrapped CRT televisions and old computers and other various older technologies that no one knows what to do with. At the rate people are throwing away old products, if a proper method of disposal is not invented, we are going to run out of space for all of the trash in the near future.

The World and Wikipedia (Part II)

In my last post I began by saying “Love it or hate it, Wikipedia is here and it’s definitely not going anywhere”, but after reading the second half of The World of Wikipedia: How we are Editing Reality by Andrew Dalby, it’s pretty obvious that we love it. In the second half of this book, Andrew Dalby really gets into the reasons and theories behind why so many people have come to depend on and love the website known as Wikipedia. Wikipedia may have had a large amount of skeptics and criticizers during its early years, but that group has only grown smaller and smaller as Wikipedia became bigger and bigger. Also, Andrew Dalby discusses why some people do not trust Wikipedia and are hesitant about using it, but ultimately will come to trust Wikipedia and rely on it as Wikipedia becomes a stronger power and force on the internet. Even now Wikipedia is a force to be reckoned with on the internet, but it is still getting bigger and more popular. Wikipedia is becoming more and more commercially and officially popular. By officially, I mean that as Wikipedia becomes bigger, more television news stations and newspapers and factual literature in general are getting information from Wikipedia and citing them one of their sources (sometimes their sole source). In particular I found most interesting the argument that the love of Wikipedia greatly comes from the community based interactions.

The World and Wikipedia (Part I)

Love it or hate it, Wikipedia is here and it’s definitely not going anywhere. This past week I have been reading The World of Wikipedia: How we are Editing Reality, by Andrew Dalby. This book has definitely brought up some interesting points and views about Wikipedia. The book starts of with some prime examples of how Wikipedia is used and how it works. The first page of chapter one gets right into a perfect example of the power of Wikipedia, telling about an article that was written about an earthquake in Italy only an hour or so after it actually occurred. The article was written in Spanish, but by the end of the day there was an English version of the article about the earthquake, and both articles had been edited numerous times. (pg. 1) From there, Andrew Dalby goes on to give a brief history of Wikipedia and encyclopedias in general. He starts from the times of the first known encyclopedia, which was a bit before 100 AD, and moves on to popular encyclopedias like the Britannica. He then tells about how everyone began converting encyclopedias to data format in order to put them on CD's and on the internet, which inexorably led to the creation of Wikipedia. Andrew Dalby then goes on to discuss why numerous people were (and maybe still are) against the use of Wikipedia and why so many people used it over other encyclopedia programs and software. In particular I found the chapter about why many people did not like Wikipedia to be the most interesting. This chapter of the book brought up a very good argument. Although Wikipedia is a vast resource that encompasses almost anything a person might want to know, maybe people put too much faith in its articles when they should be a bit cautious.

Wikipedia is great source for all kinds of information, but it is far from perfect and I think many people don’t realize this. I’m not going to say that Andrew Dalby makes this argument, as he seems to stick to mainly reporting the facts and other people’s views, but many of the people he talks about definitely feel this way. One of my favorite quotes in this book so far is by Ira Matetsky and he says “The best feature of the site is that anyone can edit virtually anything contained on it. The worst feature of the site is that anyone can edit virtually anything on it” (pg. 50). I think this quote very clearly defines the pros and cons of Wikipedia, because in essence they are the same thing. Wikipedia is very much a double edged sword. Since anyone can edit it, information can be edited and improved over and over until nearly perfect, but on the other hand this makes Wikipedia very vulnerable to vandalism and falsifications. When Wikipedia was first started, people were much more suspicious about it, but as it grew and grew in popularity people seemed to become less and less suspicious. Today it is the most popular and most used resource for information, but it is still just as susceptible to vandalism and false facts as it ever was, maybe even more so now since so many people use it. As it was put in Technopoly by Neil Postman, this source of information is very much adding to the information “glut” that is surrounding American culture. Since Wikipedia almost always is the first link you see when you search for information on google and it’s so easy to use, it seems people are choosing easy and quick access to information over quality of information. Not to say that the information on Wikipedia isn’t quality information as I am sure much of it is, but people are not even second guessing it or considering that it might not be. If it’s on Wikipedia it’s correct, that’s the attitude that our culture seems to be embracing. Personally, 99% of the time the only thing I use Wikipedia for is scientific or mathematical type information, because the way I see it, to be able to write detailed information about scientific theories and facts, a person really needs to know what they are talking about so there is good probability that the information is correct. It’s still not 100% probability though, so if something seems strange to me I would still cross reference it with something known to be correct. I rarely use Wikipedia to look up current events or things of that sort, because you could read and article and learn from it, but then read it again an hour later and it could look completely different. Wikipedia was a great idea and it works very well for many sources of information, but not for everything, and people need to keep that in mind when researching information on it.

Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (Part II)

America has not completely forfeited it’s humanity to technology yet, but in the race to get there America is definitely in the lead and running strong. After reading the second half of Neil Postman’s Technopoly, that is one of the main messages that comes to mind. In the second half of this depiction of humanities disintegration into the ocean of technology, Neil Postman discusses the different forms of technological cultures and further develops his arguments about why and how we are losing control of our culture. According to Neil Postman, technology-using cultures can be split up into three groups: tool-using cultures, technocracies, and technopolies. These three groups cover a spectrum that ranges from people who have complete control over their technology and have clear and distinct purposes for it, to technology that has spread like wild fire and has no clear purpose or intent other than the murky idea that more information is always better. Furthermore, he discusses how technology and more specifically technopoly have been able to spread unbeknownst to most people, such as through the medical trade, computers, and even statistics (what Neil Postman calls an “invisible technology”). Through the second half of this book, two very important arguments that I felt Neil Postman made were that technopoly succeeds only through people ignorantly allowing it to become the “master” and also it seems as though America is in the greatest need of salvation from this technological overrun.

Although it is most likely not intended, people’s over confidence and faith in technology is beginning to blur the lines between “tool user” and “tool”. This argument by Neil Postman, which I wholly agree with, basically says that people are just putting too much faith in their technology. That is the second time I used the word “faith” and I meant to do so, because regardless of whether people realize it or not, this technology is actually become the source of a people’s belief systems. In Technopoly, at one point Neil Postman even states “We have devalued the singular human capacity to see things whole in all their psychic, emotional, and moral dimensions, and we have replaced this with faith in the powers of technical calculations.” (pg. 118) Even he uses the word “faith”, because when people begin to put so much devotion and loyalty into something it becomes an ideology, and according to Neil Postman, one of the very important things that a technology needs in order to survive is ideology based around technology. What is happening as a result of this is that creative and original thought are being diminished. Any time someone has a problem or is curious about something they just go straight to the computer to find an answer; people are thinking less and less for themselves and instead allowing their technology to think for them. If changes are not made, computers will become the users of people.

As a result of America’s willingness to unconditionally adopt any and all technology into its life, it seems that America is now ahead of all other countries in terms of technological sovereignty. Although there are other technologically advanced placed around the world, they would still be considered by Neil Postman to be “technocracies.” Those places, such as Japan, Europe, and England all have similar levels of technology relative to America, but the difference is how the people there have adopted it. America is the only place that has actually began to adopt technology as an ideology. Neil Postman even says that one of the “pillars” of technopoly is the “idea that faith in science can serve as a comprehensive belief system that gives meaning to life, as well as a sense of well-being, morality, and even immortality.”(pg. 147) Who knows what the future will hold, but at this point in time, the only culture that has began adopting this idea is American culture. For this reason, American culture is the only technopoly and is the closest to surrendering its culture to technology (as the title states) completely. There is clear support for this argument in Computers: The Life Story of a Technology, by Swedin and Ferro. When electronic computers were first being created, any person who wanted to take advantage of their capabilities in any way needed to have a strong understanding of the inner working and limitations of them. This created a very clear line between man and machine. At the end of the book though, Swedin and Ferro describe the current state of computers, and computers are now so easy to use and so accessible that people rely and depend on them without really knowing anything about them. If a belief system can be defined as something a person puts their faith, reliance, dedication, and secrets into without truly understanding, then computers and technology in general has definitely become a belief system in American culture.

P.S. I have found that I rarely use algorithms in my internet use. Actually, I seem to go to efforts I did not even realize in order to prevent algorithms from being used. Fairly often I will delete my cookies, cache, and other internet preference files in order to prevent websites from keeping track of me and using my information in algorithms.

Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (Part I)

Technology is ruining our lives! I don’t really believe that (at least not entirely), but that’s the thought the keeps popping into my head as I continue to read through the book Technopoly, by Neil Postman. Basically Neil Postman makes a strong effort through this book to enlighten his readers about the imperfections of the new age technology everyone has come to adore so much. Advertisements and magazines and television commercials paint a very one sided picture about technology and in Technopoly Neil Postman just tries to give the readers a good high resolution view of the other side of the picture. In the beginning of the book, Neil Postman tells a fairly historical depiction of the effects of new technology, telling about Plato’s story Phaedrus and moving on to scientists such as Kepler and Copernicus. It seems to me that he does this as a way to convey that the effects of new technology is really nothing new and that it has been happening over and over again even since the time of ancient Egypt. Grand new technologies continue to be invented, and every time there is a great disruption in culture and world views that come with them. At least that is the message that I feel Neil Postman conveys. As I read through this book, it is hard not to feel that Neil Postman seems to have some sort of chip on his shoulder when it comes to technology and even though he tries to defend himself and say he is unbiased, I can’t help but feel that he is paints a rather dark picture on the effects of technology. But, as I said before, the media paints such a perfectly light picture of technology that I feel its good to have someone like Neil Postman tell a darker side of the story so that a person can truly see the two sides of the coin and properly come up with their own personal views on technology.

Although his depiction of technology is a bit one sided, Neil Postman does make extremely valid points and arguments in his accession of the effects of new technology on the world. One of his arguments in particular that caught my attention quite a bit was when he spoke about the war between new and old technologies and their users. Every time a great new technology comes out that could replace some older, but widely accepted, technology, a battle between ideologies takes place. The people who accept, use, and even profit from the older technology will strive to keep it from being replace, because if it is replaced then those people will not have the technological power any more. In Technopoly, Neil Postman communicates this quite well when he says “those who have control over the workings of a particular technology accumulate power and inevitably form a kind of conspiracy against those who have no access to the specialized knowledge made available by this technology.”(pg. 9) This argument I find extremely true, and it is a rather negative effect of technology. What Neil Postman argues here is also well supported in the previous book I read, Computers: The Life Story of a Technology. Reading through that book, it was very surprising how often power shifted to new user groups and how often these technological wars started and ended. Just reading about the software explosion alone; so many companies would be started with some new sort of technology, whether it is a new type of operating system or just some sort of business calculation program. These companies would come out with this technology, make a very large amount of profit from their product and become very well known and powerful, but then be out of business within a couple years. So many companies were coming out with new technologies so fast that very few companies, such as Microsoft and Apple, were actually able to keep up the pace of inventing and improving technologies in order to maintain power. Furthermore, when these new technologies are invented, it is most often the cultures centered around the old technologies that lose the battles and end up forced to learn how to use the new technologies or suffer the consequences. Such consequences could be something minuscule like not being up to date with you peers, or something very important like not getting a job position. It seems that the rapid growth of technology has made the world, and particular America, a very cutthroat place where one must force themselves to keep up or else they will be left behind.

Computers: The Life Story of a Technology (pg. 84-149)

So throughout this week, I have continued to read the book Computers: the Life Story of Technology by Eric G. Sweden and David L. Ferro. I have finished the book and I must say that I am surprised at how much I liked this book. I usually am not very interested in reading stories, but the story of a technology seemed to catch my attention. In the second half of this book, the Sweden and Ferro really make a fast transition into the world of the personal computer. The personal computer seems to really owe its existence to Ted Hoff, who started Intel and created the first microprocessor. This new category of processors allows the size of a computer to be reduced quite dramatically, which led to the idea of people owning their own personal computers. It would be Edward Roberts who actually created the first “personal” size computer though, naming it the Altair 8800. After that, the proverbial cat was out of the bag and soon after many other personal computers began to spring up. One of the biggest affects of the personal computer seems to be the extremely fast expansion of the software industry. The seemed to be largely due to the fact that computer builders wanted to be able to sell computers to people who weren’t extremely knowledge about them, and those people also wanted to be able to take advantage of them too. This quickly led to companies being created to create programs and operating systems that made using these small computers much easier. Out of the many companies that tried and failed to continually produce software for these computers, two companies were started that are known of today as powerhouses in operating system programming: Apple and Microsoft. After the software explosion, the next thing to come along and take computer users by storm was the internet. Beginning with the simple need of increasing connectivity between different computers in the military, what they called ARPANET quickly was expanded upon in the commercial world and turned into numerous networks, which then would ultimately connect to each other to become the “network of networks” known as the internet. In only a matter of about ten years or so, the internet went from a couple military computers connected to each other to the world wide web we all know of today. After this, computer were anywhere and everywhere and, for better or worse, seemed to have become required in order to go about our daily lives.

Throughout this story, the authors continually try to depict how much computers would become integrated into the lives of every single person. Sweden and Ferro show in the first half of this book that the computer began to aid people in numerous ways, but in the second half of this book they really prove that the creation of the microchip has created a world in which we can not go through one day without using a computer. It is even stated in the book, “Even non-computer-oriented people still use watches, stereos, television, automobiles, and other electronic equipment, all equipped with embedded microprocessors.”(pg. 132) This wealth of technology also seems to be creating quite a rift between the people who can afford and the people who can not. While computers and the internet are very good information gathering tools, they are also creating greater and greater divisions among people by dividing groups into the “information rich” and “information poor.” (pg. 132) There are such divisions right in the United States and all of the people who can not afford to access all of this information are being left behind. It is said in this book that computer literacy is beginning to be thought of by some as just important as regular literacy, and it is crucial in being a proper citizen and attaining a good career. (pg. 133) If this rift between the “haves” and “have-nots” in the world of technological information is not dealt with soon, it seem as though it will become permanent.

With the advent of the personal computer and the user friendly operation system, it seems that Sweden and Ferro have suggested a caveat pertaining to the security of such an easy to access computer world. As previously stated, people have become quite dependent on technology, and being so dependent on something can make people very vulnerable to certain attacks. Technology is a wonderful, but people seem to forget that all of the things utilizing current technology are still man made and man made parts will fail at some point. This is illustrated perfectly in this book when the authors describe an event that took place in 1980 involving a failed microchip. A microchip failed causing an alert that a Soviet submarine had just launched two nuclear missiles at the United States. (pg. 143) Thankfully the American commanders realized the alert was false, but before realizing that, numerous American bomber crews were alerted and their own nuclear missiles were armed. We came just an inch away from nuclear war, and it was all because a microchip that costs 46 cents failed. That is an extreme example of how our dependence on technology brings with it inherent risks that need to be considered, but many things could happen that are not that extreme. The microchip controlling a car’s computer could short out and causing an accident. Furthermore, the authors make it clear that with such easy access to computers and the internet, there are a lot of people now that do not intend to use them for proper purposes. Hackers are a big problem now that technology has grown so rapidly. Hackers are making malicious software and programs that are constantly moving about on the internet, and without proper security anyone could acquire some type of virus or worm and create numerous problems for themselves. Computers and technology in general have taken over American culture and now we all act like we need it like oxygen in our lungs. For better or worse, American cultures now strive on technology, are created around technology, and will only grow more dependent on technology as it becomes more advanced.

Computers: The Life Story of a Technology (pg. 1-83)

For the past week or so, I have been reading the book Computers: The Life Story of Technology by Eric G. Swedin and David L. Ferro. It is actually quite an interesting book. Without reiterating the book word for word, so far the story has been mostly concentrating on the creation of the computer and how it came to be what it is today. The book starts before computer existed at all, and illustrates that before computers there was still a need for to be able to numerically count and keep order. Whether it was using an abacus, slide rules, or even notched bones, ever since people existed they seem to have always created ways to calculate and compute numbers. During the 1600’s, mechanical devices began to be invented for computation purposes, such as Napier’s Bones and Pascal’s calculator. The transition from mechanical to electronic computational devices seemed to be one of the largest and most grueling steps towards the computer. Such a great step in technological history would not have occurred without genius minds like that of Charles Babbage. Charles Babbage invented the Difference Engine and was working on his Analytic Engine, which would have been quite similar to the computers of today, when he died. I think Swedin and Ferro purposely told about his death as a way to illustrate how dedicated these scientists and engineers were to creating these instruments. They literally spent their entire lives on them. It would not be until the early 1900’s when the first completely electronic computer was created. After that, the rate at which computer technology progressed began speeding up greatly, moving from vacuum tubes to transistors and then from transistors to integrated circuits and microprocessors. It only took about sixty years for the computer to evolve from vacuum tubes to integrated circuits, which is quite a small amount of time considering it took approximately three hundred years to transition from mechanical to electronic computational instruments. After that, it took very little time for the computer to get smaller and more commercially successful, which very quickly led to the personal computers we all know of today.

The authors, in an effort to explain the story of the computer, seem to very much relate the creation of the computer to the birth and growth of a human being. The authors split the life of a computer up into three generation: vacuum tubes, transistors, and then integrated circuits and microprocessors. These three generations can be related to childhood, teenage, and adulthood years of a human being. Also, considering that the authors make this connection between computers and people, it seems that he believe that the computer might be headed towards a decline in progression. This decline could also be related to the aging and inevitable death of a person. This seemed most prevalent to me when the authors stated that although Moore’s law says that after 1980 the density of components on an integrated circuit will continue to double every two years, “within a decade engineers fear that quantum effects will begin to substantially affect the ability of Moore’s Law to remain true”.(pg. 68) At least in terms of hardware capabilities, it seems that another transition is going have to be made from microprocessors, perhaps bringing computers into the “middle-aged” years of adulthood, or else the rapid progression we see today is going to run into a wall.

Just as the authors relate the life of a computer to the life of a person, he also seems to convey the message that as the computer grows up, so does its connection and grasp on American and worldwide culture. While reading through this book, it became very clear to me that parallel to the rapid progress of computer technology is the rapid progress of people’s dependence on them and their demand for them. When inventions of computational machines first began, their only purpose was to make complex calculations easier. The authors make it very clear that until recently government factions, such as the military, were the driving force behind the progress of the computer. The authors even state that during the 1940’s over half of the programmers in the United States were working on the Semi-automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) system, which was funded by the U.S. Air Force. (pg. 49) Government and business funding was the only way people like John Atanasoff , John Eckert, and John Mauchly had the money to do their experiments and build their computers. Furthermore, the authors tell us that from 1960 to 1970, the amount of computers built worldwide rose from 7,000 to 130,000. (pg. 83) Swedin and Ferro made it a point in this book to show just how integrated into peoples lives computers became even in 1970. Also, at the end of the first half of this book, they imply that the computer will become pivotal in the lives of almost every single person once it becomes small enough to fit in a person's home. Just thinking about the world we all live in today and how rapidly things such as the internet have progressed in just a matter of a few years, I have to wholly agree with the authors and their arguments about our dependence on computers.

Activity Log and Blog

For the past four days or so I have been keeping a detailed log of when I go on the internet and where I go when I am on the internet. I suppose that some people would be surprised by some of the websites they go to without really thinking much about it at the time, but I was not affected very much at all when I read my internet activity log. Before starting the log, I knew what my reasons were for using the internet and the activity log just confirmed them. Whether it’s going on automotive forums, blogs, or watching videos on youtube; I would say that approximately eighty percent of my internet activity is automotive related. The other twenty percent consists of a mixture of learning about and acquiring music, looking up school information, and just looking up information on other subjects that interest me. Even when I look up information on other subjects, usually they have to do with some science or type of mathematics. Also, every now and then a friend will send me some video from youtube or another similar website that is usually funny or ridiculous in some way, but I don’t think I have ever just gone and started searching for them myself. I am sure that my internet activity must seem quite boring relative to many other people’s, but the internet is a tool for gathering information of interest, so that is why I use it.

Although I was not surprised about where I went on the internet, I was actually a bit surprised at how often I used the internet and my computer in general. Usually the first thing I do when I wake up is turn my computer on and the last thing I do before I go to sleep is turn my computer off. Even when I am doing something else, such as school work, I am usually either doing it on my computer, or doing while using my computer. It seems that the computer has become so effortless to use and such a vast resource for information that it can now be included in almost everything people do throughout their day.

Although I spent so much time using my computer, according to my log I never once went to myspace, facebook, twitter, or did any blogging of my own. I am not very interested in learning about people’s personal lives and what they are doing every minute of the day, nor do I very much care to tell people about my personal life. Therefore, things like myspace, facebook, twitter, and blogging never really interested me very much. I mean, I don’t even have a myspace, facebook, or twitter account, and the only blogs I ever go to just show pictures and videos of the latest automotive race or event. In my opinion, all of those things are really just irony at its best. They were all created with the advertised idea of bringing people together and increasing “connectivity”, but really all they are doing is just making relationships between people more and more impersonal and digital. It gets to the point where people would just rather look someone up on facebook too see what they are doing instead of actually picking up a phone to talk to them. Also, just to add a little more irony, nowadays those phones, on which people have become so unwilling to actually talk, are usually the devices that they are using to go on facebook, twitter, and myspace. I am sure many would disagree with me, but that is how I see things.