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.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
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.
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.
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.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
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.
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.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
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.
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.
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