Final Assignment Blog #3

I've found a wonderful New york Times article that I will definitely use in my paper. It pretty much confirms my beliefs of how and why people are being "Green" these days. To them, its not about genuinely trying to save the planet; instead it's just another trend that people to choose to follow in order to fit in with others:

HERE’S one popular vision for saving the planet: Roll out from under the sumptuous hemp-fiber sheets on your bed in the morning and pull on a pair of $245 organic cotton Levi’s and an Armani biodegradable knit shirt.
Stroll from the bedroom in your eco-McMansion, with its photovoltaic solar panels, into the kitchen remodeled with reclaimed lumber. Enter the three-car garage lighted by energy-sipping fluorescent bulbs and slip behind the wheel of your $104,000 Lexus hybrid.

Clearly, even when it comes to being green and the whole notion of conserving, people are just trying to buy their way out of it! THe term going green should be changed to green consumerism. With articles that have titles like "55 great ways to look eco-sexy,’ being green is like the owning crocs so that you look cool at school.

As i've posted in my previous blog, it takes a lot of work to actually dedicate yourself to becoming green. Everyone's just jumping on the bandwagon, and doing it on a very superficial level. Of course, there are those that conduct scholarly work on it.

"We turn toward the consumption part because that’s where the money is,” Mr. Hawken said. “We tend not to look at the ‘less’ part. So you get these anomalies like 10,000-foot ‘green’ homes being built by a hedge fund manager in Aspen. Or ‘green’ fashion shows. Fashion is the deliberate inculcation of obsolescence.”

He added: “The fruit at Whole Foods in winter, flown in from Chile on a 747 — it’s a complete joke. The idea that we should have raspberries in January, it doesn’t matter if they’re organic. It’s diabolically stupid.”

I think that sums up how people act and feel about the environmental movement pretty well.

Final Assignment blog # 2

As I am working on this paper, delving into the serious issued of why disposability of products is a way of life for Americans, it hits me that the environmental movement of being Green is just as popular. It makes me wonder, how is it that everyone is so obsessed with being green, when statistic of consumption show otherwise. After sifting through a few articles and websites, I come across this global warming campaign that discusses ways to save energy and be more green.

http://globalwarming-facts.info/50-tips.html

It takes a lot of work to be more green! and this is just the job of one person. How are we supposed to get an entire nation to do this?!

One of the suggestions was to buy used furniture. Who the heck wants to buy used furniture? I mean, i'll buy a used car if I have to because my wallet looks a little sparse, or even taking a hand me down bed from my brother when he moved out to California, but to go out and buy something like a used couch from a stranger...it doesn't really make much sense, and frankly is kind of disgusting.
Obviously these suggestions are not all very practical. They go directly against what most people desire with their accessories: To have the brand spankin new ones before anyone else can get their hand on them.

Final Assignment Blog #1

In first choosing which topic I wanted to tackle, I thought about the social implications that I am more familiar with and would be better able to describe. Choosing Made to Break was an easy choice for me as I am very familiar with the disposable society that surrounds us. For instance, in my town there is a very stupid rule that a household is not allowed to have a clothes line in their backyard since it is not aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Having a clothes line though, would save so much money on the strained energy bill that many families have trouble coping with. Rarely does my family wait for the laundry baket to be filled up to the brim befoe we turn on a the washing machine and consequently the dryer. If we were to have a clothes line, we would save plenty in electricity. This type of narrow thinking is not limited to municipalities of small New Jersey towns. Producers and consumers alike are conditioned to dispose of their products when before they have been fully worn and torn. People love to stay on top of the latest trends and technology actually makes it that much easier to do this. With the advent of the internet, everyone knows the latest trends and fashions. Websites like twitter, for instance, can inform one how cool the new iPhone is and how much better is even though this may not be the case. Someone very impressionable like a child as a result, can beg their parents to get them the new phone, and the parents are forced to toss the old one before its lifespan has been completed.

Facebook Effect Part III

In the final part of the book, Kirkpatrick discusses the integration of platforms into facebook which allowed for users to use applications on the website. This was a part of a growing need for Facebook to generate revenue via external factors. Other companies would pay Facebook to have applications such as games installed on Facebook. More importantly, the use of advertising on facebook allowed other companies to directly target their exact audience. It is not uncommon to for a 20 year old male Facebook user to see an advertisement that read" Are you a 20 year old male looking to become a police officer?" or something to that extent. With the applications, it was a win-win situation for facebook as well as the application companies. "There are more than 500,000 applications operating on Facebook, created by over 1 million registered developers from 180 countries" (pg. 232) The rapid growth of facebook demanded more income streamed into maintaining its servers and advertising was a tremendous source of revenue.
Clearly though, the use of private information by companies to create advertisements can be seen as an invasion of privacy. What can look like a fun game at first glance is actually a data mining technique by corporations. For instance there is this application on FB that lets you determine how much of the world you have traveled to, percentage-wise. This information can be used by tourist, airline, and travel agency companies to lure you into visiting countries that you have not yet visited. Every app on facebook has its purpose in terms of collecting information. The dangerous part is that on the surface, it looks completely innocuous.
Once again a seemingly unresistable offer to buy facebook from Google for $15 Billion was put into place, but Zuckerberg refused. He had bigger goals to tackle. Just as their is no offer that has satisfied Zuckerberg, there seems to be no end to Facebook's growth internationally. Countries with incredibly low GDP's are beginning to sign into facebook.

Facebook Effect Part II

In the second third of the book, Kirkpatrick begins to discuss how "TheFacebook" really begins to pick up, and starts to draw the attention of financial investors. It seems like one of the main things that the investors liked about facebook was how much of the market it had penetrated and how interactive the website was with its users. No social networking platform had allowed for such a great amount of interaction before. It had began to grow to other demographics such as high schools. "Facebook was no longer just a college phenomenon" (pg. 150) I think this was the point at which it had begun the process of "selling out." Others may see it as one step closer to bringing the whole world together on the internet.
The news feed feature was added in the year 2006, which allows users to see their friends' facebook activity with other people. This was a monumental change in the website's interface, because now not only can you communicate with others, but you can also monitor and follow their socialization activity. As Kirkpatrick states, "The News Feed would be a radical change. It's not a new feature, it's a major a product evolution...It would remake Facebook" (pg 180). Slowly but surely, all the information put up on the Facebook was becoming more and more accessible. A great tool for many, but at the cost of privacy.
I think the addition of the news feed feature kind of changed the purpose of facebook. It became a way to peer into your friends lives, and even acquaintances, to see what everybody is up to. Whereas before it was mostly about staying intimately in touch with your close friends instead of having to resort to a phone, email etc. It may have at first been an issue, but now "we are more comfortable sharing our lives and thoughts instantly to thousands of people, close friends and strangers alike. "
I find it interesting that when facebook had begun to make a name for itself, it was stealing highly intellectual employees from corporate giants such as Amazon. I think the hardest part of being a successful company, is not getting there, but maintaining it. Zuckerberg did a good job with working to hire talent that could add substantial growth to the website.

Kirkpatrick's The Facebook Effect; part 1

The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick feels like Kirkpatrick's confession to his love for the social networking giant. In the first half of the book, the author begins to tell the story of facebook from its humble beginnings that began as a website to rate girls. Of course, as we all know, Facebook ran into some legal trouble where Zuckerberg was being sued because he allegedly stole someone's idea. Zuckerberg is painted as an overachiever, who is hard to work with, but is extremely ambitious. Facebook starts out small, first just at Harvard, then Ivy League schools, and then more and more colleges are included. To Zuckerberg, facebook wasn't about making money. After all he did refuse an $10 Million offer for the company.
The book has somewhat of a skewed tone towards facebook, in the sense that Kirkpatrick seems to hail Zuckerberg and his accomplishments, and fails to describe them in an unbiased manner.
From the beginning, Kirkpatrik speak of the creator of Facebook in an extremely positive light. "He was captain and most valuable player on the fencing team...on his application to Harvard, he could barely fit all the honors and awards he won in high school. " (pg.20)
Unfortunately not everybody used facebook in the way the Zuckerberg had intended it to be. Many people, even to this day, use it as a way to accumulate the most amount of friends rather than to communicate and gather useful information.
I think much of Facebook's success has to do with luck. The fact that Mark Zuckerberg was in college,at Harvard no less, where social networks are the densest, definitely helped to position him in a way that made it so lucrative.

The World of Wikipedia- auditing experience

Auditing a wikipedia article has really opened my eyes to the unreliability of online information. In my honest opinion, Wikipedia should not be used as a scholarly source. Though i'm sure that most information on that website is probably true, scholarly sources must be 100% factual base on the most up to date research. Wikipedia is a like a secondary market of scholarly information. It derives its entries from scholarly articles, and also more dangerously, non scholarly ones.

However, there are a few benefits to using wikipedia as a source on its own. From the experience of this project I have found that Wikipedia had the most comprehensive information from any one article on the subject matter (cloning.)Other websites may have gone more into detail about certain aspects of cloning, like ethics, but wikipedia has a better, global presentation of the topic. For this reason, its biggest advantage, is to use it as a jumping off point to research that should extend beyond online encyclopedias. It will give you an idea of what exactly you want to research, especially on popular and controversial topics. Despite this advantage, Wikipedia is still user generated and information that is displayed is never entirely reliable. Even statements that may be presented as quotes, are sometimes a rewording of the orginal sentence.

Because most people acknowledge these strengths and weaknesses, people may be less gullible and willing to believe news and media. There is so much information out there that is blasted at us, and Wikipedia is a big part of this, that we have no choice but to disregard some of it. This is especially true when you have contradicting information. As a society, we may also be more willing to procrastinate our work, because we know that we have so much potential information on our fingertips. Many people will used Wikipedia as a scholarly source, because it is on the surface of any research in terms of search results.

Before this project, I used to think that Wikipedia entries were populated by the elite college professors. I never actually took a look at the source section. In reality, an extremely large portion of the entry is pulled from other websites and books. Wikipedia just brings all of these sources together, edited by the common person. For me, it has taught to dig deeper when it comes to research, and perhaps use wikipedia only as a jumping off point that will lead to more substantial information.

The Social Network

The Social Network is a film about Mark Zuckerberg and his journey through Harvard to eventually creating Facebook. The movie tells its story through a retrospective lens: a legal case where Zuckerberg's best friend and colleagues are suing him, for stealing their idea. It's a bit of a sticky situation becuase the movie does show Zuckerberg meeting with those colleagues (the Winklevoss twins) and discussing a website that can connect all Harvard students and be able to share their information with one another. It's hard to tell who the movie sympathizes with; the makers of facebook or not. Zuckerberg is conveyed as a bit of jerk, condescendingly talking to his girlfriend and only interested in his won accomplishments. But really, what makes him this way is also the driving force of the greatest project of his life, thus far.


One of the things i did not like about the movie is the exaggeration of people's morals and the way that they are portrayed in the movie. For instance, Sean Parker, the creator of Napster from the start was shown as a sleazy guy sleeping with a girl, on a one night stand. his relationship with facebook and Zuckerberg also starts on a rocky foundation. Mark's best friend Eduardo, appointed CFO of the company, didn't like Parker from the start. Eventually Parker pushes Eduardo out of the company by diluting his shares in the company from one third down to less than one tenth of one percent. Towards the end of the movie he gets caught literally with cocaine on his hands. The film accomplishes showing its characters in this negative light. The only good that came from Parker was his advice to drop "The" from "Thefacebook."

Another interesting point I noted was how there seemed to be certain subplots that did not really seem to lead the viewer anywhere. For instance in one scene, Zuckerberg was attending a lecture Bill Gates was speaking at, and afterward outside he had an awkward encounter with several students asking him if he was the creator of facebook. At the moment of the scene, I thought new characters were about to enter the script, but then slowly that tangent faded out. I realized after the movie ended that it actually made sense to have seemingly useless subplots in the movie, because it is based off a true story. A story that's still changing everyday, so it's hard to tell what became of certain events, and the movie did a good job of incorporating that.

Facebook has had a tremendous effect on college life and beyond. What started off as a platform for a few Harvard students to connect with one another became a regular part of life of every college student out there.

Made to Break, Part III

The last third of Slade's made to break extends the idea of obsolescence beyond the physical. By the 1960's, the terms was describing "people's knowledge, training, and skill sets." Cyberspace was the wave of the future. The advent of video games made such a huge impact on our society and culture, that one professor believed that in the future we will be living in a virtual reality. However, even video games themselves were not able to dodge being thrown out like most other things in our society.For instance, the game of pinball is "now a species close to extinction." (pg. 224) Game consoles have gotten superbly advanced over the years and the older arcade games, like pinball, have been left in the dust, only to be picked up by those with a nostalgic longing for the past.
More seriously, Slade described the the obsolescence of weaponization as an American strategy against the Soviets, during the Cold War Era. American Products were sabotaged before they were acquired by the Russians Ie. they were modified to work initirially as expected, but after "a few trust-winning months, it would salt its output with defective chips.." (p.254.)
Slade closed his book by describing the effect of cellphones' short life span and how they are the biggest contributor to e -waste.
I think that what's has happened is that with miniaturization, people are becoming more comfortable tossing their electronic goods out. This, in combination with people's non committal attitudes, provides the perfect storm for ridding themselves of undesirable electronics. Our next big step must be "planned disassembly" as Slade describes it in his last few words of the text; reuse as part of the product cycle. Since we use limited resources in creation and development of electronics, we have no choice but to recylce our e-waste.

Made to Break Part II

In Slade's middle chapters of Made to Break, he discusses certain products that had planned obsolescence installed into them, focusing on the radio. David Sarnoff, a higher up in the RCA, had an AM empire in the early 1900's, when along came Edwin Armstrong who invented FM radio. This invention actually came out of Sarnoff's request to clear static from AM radio. However, the FM radio was not compatible with AM settings, so Sarnoff saw this as a threat to his AM empire. What followed, was a series of lawsuits and bitter feelings, that eventually led to Armstrong's suicide. "Advance capitalism had regularly stifled or swallowed up the individual entrepreneur during those years when the political will to enforce legislation against monopolistic practices was the exception rather than the rule" (pg.97) Even though Saranoff was clearly at an advantage, being part of the RCA, a corporate behemoth, FM radio began getting more and more popular making AM radio somewhat obsolete.
           During this time, TV sets were also making a splash, but the nature of the invention was that they were constantly improving, making older sets obsolete. By the 1950's, "product life spans were no longer left to chance but were created by plan." (pg 113) Electronics were made so that they were generally irreparable if broken, increasing profits for corporations because it forced consumers to go out and buy new ones.
   World War II and the postwar period brought synthetic replacement of silk with the chemical invention nylon, and an intense demand for them was established by 1940.
    Slade continues, with discussing obsolescence in other part of life such as the housing industry. The invention of cheap, affordable housing with self-amortizing mortgages, were built with all nonessentials completely eliminated. Things such as basements become obsolete. Planned obsoloscence continued well into the 50's and 60's and psychological obsolescence had become the norm.
         It is somewhat difficult to deduct what Slade's argument is in this part of the book. It seems like he presents the reader with a sort of time line, that represents America's history and progession of planned obsolescence. This cut across many industries and all types of products. As was seen in Swedin's/Ferro's Computers, the computer is probably a prime example of a type of technology that just constantly kept getting improved because of new demands by the government and businesses. Slade states that the differential analyzer becoming obsolote is really the story of the rise of modern computing. No longer were computations being done mechanically, they were now being performed with energy pulses.
    I think that even if planned obsolescence was never planned, constant upgrades in technological products force the consumer to go out and by the new and improved version, because nobody wants to be left behind. On the other hand, it is important to distinguish between products that are made to break, such as the disposable razor that require the buyer to get another batch of razors, and general re-innovation of a product that deems its precedents as obsolete.  The latter being much harder to forecast. In my opinion, what Slade is attempting to do is lump those two things together, to give an exaggerated picture of the concerns that obsolescence may bring.
  

Solo Current Event Presentation - Google and its not so terrible privacy issues

For my presentation last Monday, I selected an article from the WSJ titled "Google's Privacy Woes extend to Canada." Here is the link for it: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304510704575562560486919780.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEFTTopNews

The article covers recent allegations by Canada's Privacy commission that says Google has violated the privacy of thousands of Canadians when it "inadvertently" collected infortmation from unsecured wireless networks while it was taking pictures of city streets for its Google Maps services.I briefly explained how the process of street view mapping works; Google hires drivers that prop a camera on top of the car that take 360 degree view pictures. In this process though, it somehow picked up personal info such as email addresses, email usernames, passwords, and even certain individuals' medical conditions. This isn't even the first time that Google has run into trouble, not only with privacy, but more specifically the street mapping service. In Germany, there were reports of residential homeowners wanting to opt out of being in Google's street view.  
          What's interesting though, is that Canada's privacy commission did not have an explosive response. The nation's privacy commissioner has simply asked Google to boost privacy training for all its employeees, and to delete any data that has been collected. No compensation fees had to be paid inside or outside a court of law. This relatively minor response, minimal news coverage, and Google's relatively unaffected share price all point to the fact that people are becoming more tolerant of the manner in which Google collects its information for advertisement purposes. After asking the class for thoughts, people mentioned times when their information was unwillingly collected as well. We then continued to discuss how this era of advertisement is becoming more and more personal. It's very feasible that sometime in the future you can walk past a restaurant and receive a text message that can say "Come in and try our special of the day, John!"
        Advertising is Google's #1 source of revenue, so when they grant companies access to personal individual information regarding tastes,  likes etc.  they can achieve a much more efficient effect in terms of reaching out to their target audience. They can avoid people who don't like their product and bombard those that do with coupons, developments and more. Google is a company's direct path in doing so. And Google has been collecting information for so long, with even its CEO admitting that Google is creepy, that people are basically being more confortable with it.

MADE TO BREAK, PART 1

       Slade's  Made To Break discusses the purposeful manufacturing of obsolete products in the US. we have fostered a culture  where  disposable consumer goods are the norm. The thought process of many business owners starting in the early 20 th century, was " How can I manage my business...so that i can be sure of a permanent and growing body of consumers?" The biggest reason for this need of a higher demand was overproduction and manufacturing, and  this problem was  solved simply by selling more. Slade goes on to discuss the different approaches of disposable products for  men and women, such as paper  collars for men. Style and temporary usefulness superseded  long term reliability: " With mechanical quality now more or less a given, people became interested in sophisticated design and presentation..." What began as a mentality of disposability toward physical goods and  products had now began spilling over to ideas, and had become a staple principle of the American people. This new state of mind allowed for tossing away things before their usefulness was completed. In a way, this largely contributed to the market crash in 1929. People were buying more and more goods on credit, even if it was pinching their savings.
      Slade speaks through a relatively neutral tone, and gives a general overview and history of technological obsolescence, but he does bring up a some good points. While our worship of novelty can be viewed as a good thing, the flip side is the tremendous amount of wasted that is created as a result. Most of this waste is is not recycled but just fills landfills.
     While there is a large environmental effect of electronic waste being neglectfully disposed of, Slade notes that is is both manufacturer's marketing  ploys, and American consumers' love of the new that leads to obsolescence. However i don't think it prevents us from having attachments to our possessions. People still love their ipod, even if it breaks after  a few years. The culture of our country is to rave about new features on gadgets being released  next month; whereas  the fact that these gadgets are not so reliable sort of takes the back seat, unless it's blatant. Furthermore, it is more important for us to have a "cool" image with the new iphone as opposed to a paperweight samsung from 1999. Just like the manufacturers package and brand  their products, we too, brand ourselves to everyone around us using these  products.

World and wikipedia Part II

The second half Dalby's book focuses on why we as internet users, love wikipedia. It seems to me that the reason we love it is the same reason that it is unreliable: The fact that anyone can edit any entry. Once an article is saved, it is impossible to do a background check on the credibility of the user. We are hidden behind our monitors and keyboards, so as long as the reuputation of wikipedia remains credible, that will cement the credibility of all their articles online, unless they are obviously flawed. While Wikipedia may have some inconsistincies within it about scholarly topics, such as the structure of an atom, I think Wikipedia has a lot going for it in terms of its culture referincing. For instance, no real encyclopedia will comment about Lonelygirl's fake video blogs and the whole controversy that ensued there. But wikipedia will, and for the most part it will be accurate. It goes beyond the culture that exists in our everyday life and physical history. We have created a virtual culture and the timeline of that will be recorded online, so to rid of wikipedia is to tear out a giant chunk of our online culture. Dalby also speaks about why we don't trust wikipedia. Sometimes what occurs is Wikipedia will reference itself in the footnotes, a kind of circular reference. However it is still a giant in terms of internet traffic. I believe this is largely due to the fact that google posts Wikipedia's articles in the top 5, if not the first or second, of its search results. Internet users trust Google's algorithm enough to insist that the top search results are the best, rendering Wikipedia a great source of information.

The World and Wikipedia Part 1

To me, wikipedia is a truly wonderful tool, both from a learning perspective as well as its general interface. My typical use of the website involves me genuinely trying to find a basic explanation/definiton of an entry, followed by hopping around through links in the website. While this can waste a lot of time, it most certainly feeds an inner hunger for information.
In "The World and Wikipedia," Andrew Dalby takes his readers through a historical timeline of wikipedia, explaining how the website came into existence, through its birth and growth. He compares wikipedia to a traditional encyclopedia, with wikipdia's main difference is that non-expert laymen can freely contribute to any entriy of their choice. The problem arises with reliability, naturally, but also the collaborative project exposes the website to vandalism by contributors who aren't even attempting to sincerely populate an entry. In my opinion though, the former is a bigger issue, because it is much harder to discern between, an ordinary person's real attempt of explanation and that of an expert's, and a shot at humor or strong personal bias and an expert's contribution.
Wikipedia tends to have an emphasis to popular culture. However these inappropriate entries, along with unverified information are usually straightened out over time by other people. Dalby states: "Disproportionate emphasis on popular culture does happen, but that over time substance is added and entries are extended." Basically, as more people began to use the site, the site corrects itself. This concept is a bit like the law of large numbers; if you take a small sample of the population you are unlikely to see a normal curve, but the closer the sample size gets to the population the more the curve looks normal.
While there has been a astronomical rise in articles, Wikipedia has seen a fall in contributors too. This can be blamed on the fact that the website is much more structured now, with rules governing what can or can't be edited. Dalby outside of his book states, "It’s definitely a worrying trend...One question is, is there any new stuff to do on the site? When Wikipedia reaches 3 million articles, how many new articles can there be?" He believes that the main reason wikipedia grew was because of the lack of rules it had in its infant stages. But as its popularity grew, so does its publicity, so that when an article incorrectly claimed that Senator Edward Kennedy had died, the administrators of the website had no choice but to buckle down on editing rules. To Neil Postman, the author of Technopoly, this would be a prime example of how technology can harm us. But once again, I stick to the belief that it is not technology, but technology in the hands of the wrong people (ie. pranksters) that can mislead its users. Wikipedia works on the principle that people want accurate and timely information; of course a few bad apples can fall in there, but one cannot deny that it is a valuable resource.

Technopoly Part 2

Technology has now become not only a part of culture, but also a state  of mind. Anybody who is an expert in the use of technology in preexisting fields, is given "priestly status. " In a way, i can see that there is some truth to this. The really intelligent people from high school, who we viewed as "nerds" were always technologically advanced yet they were also noted as those who will be most successful in life. Clearly, there was a correlation between how good someone is with technology and whether they are successful or not. This does parallel to "Computers" where Bill Gates, the creator of Microsoft, turned out to to be one of the richest men on the planet.
Postman continues to address other aspects of technology like Scientism, which sits on three main ideas: First of all, the methodology of classic science can be adopted and used in the study of human behavior. Second, social science fundamental principles can be utilized to create a productive society. Lastly, and most discerningly, faith in science becomes a comprehensive belief system “that gives meaning to life, as well as a sense of well-being, morality, and even immortality” (147)
Postman's remedy for the takeover  of technology is to try to look at technology with a wary eye. He suggests you “maintain an epistemological and psychic distance from any technology, so that it always appears somewhat strange, never inevitable, never natural” (185) In order for this  to become a reality, Postman wants an idea-centered and coherence-centered education to be in place. Although, I agree that much of technology has a  powerful effect on our live, I don't think that it goes hand-in hand at all with the deterioration of moral in American culture. If anything, today, we live in a country that is more tolerant, has a smaller gap between the rich and the  poor, lower crime rates in cities such as New York and Los Angeles, more than 50% of the population believes in a God, etc. His idea that Technology changes the practice of medicine by redefining what doctors are, redirecting where they focus their attention, and reconceptualizing how they view their patients and illness” (105) is simply ridiculous.
 Doctors always have and will always be Doctors. Their purpose has not  changed. They are there to help patients overcome their illnesses, and  we are on the cusp of a technological revolution in medicine that helps us target and cure diseases almost regularly. There  is nothing wrong with technology. Just like there is nothing wrong with the pen in Hitler's hand used to write Mein Kampf. Technology is all about how it is used, and the general direction we are headed in with technology is to better the man.

Technopoly: Tools-> Technocracy->Technopoly

In Neil Postpam's Technopoly, the author boldly attempts to demonize technology and portray it as the ruiner of art and culture, and high moral ground. He discusses a shift in technology, and the ever growing degree of control it has over our lives. In the beginning, technology simply existed as tools in our hands, helping us carve our sculptures, cook a dinner, or hunt for the deer that will be cooked. In this era, technology was bound by religion or theocracy. "... We may say further that all tool-using cultures from the technologically most primitive to the most sophisticated are theocratic or, if not that, unified by some metaphysical theory. Such a theology or metaphysics provides order and meaning to existence, making it almost impossible for the technics to subordinate people to its own needs." Technology essentially helped man come closer to God.
As time went on, technology didn't stay so culture-friendly, and attempted to actually become culture, creating paradigm shifts among people in areas such as politics and religion. For instance, the telescope destoryed the idea that the Earth is the center of the universe, taking down the moral fiber of people with it. This, Postman coined as Technocracy, an idea that propels itself by allowing man to acquire knowledge of the nature world and consequently opening the stage for constant invention and reinvention for the sake of invention. More than being a simple hunter and gather culture, technocracy starting putting doubts into man's mind; now, not everything that surrounds him is real and the truth. Despite these uncertainties though, society is still somewhat connected to its upbringing of religious goodness and loyalty to its major beliefs.
Lastly, the world has entered a state of technopoly which basically puts "all forms of cultural life to the sovereignty of technique and technology." Whereas human thinking allows for drifting and a general approach to problem solving, technology is now vauled much more, yet its driving forces work for efficiency, precision, and objectivity. Technopoly is kind of like a dictatorship, but even more dangerous because people can sense the evil totalitarianism of politics, but technology is like a good old friend. The computer represents everything that is wrong with technology, because it is simply assumed that computers are smarter than we are.

Swedin & Ferro's "Computers" Part 2

      In the second half of the book, computers are taking the world by storm. From the 1970's on, advancements pushed computer technology to places previously thought impossible. It began to become a machine that no longer had to be operated by academics and electrical engineers. As a quote on pg 107 explains this,"Television, as a mass medium, had not been used up to then [1984] because the market for personal computers has not been a mass consumer product. Now it was." Computers no longer were created by a single scientist in the basement of university building. Different companies specialized in various components that contributed to the making of one machine; intel excelled in making microprocessors. On its own, the market of computers evolved like the concept of an assembly line, where efficiency and quality ruled. Interestingly, the market of computers migrated, or rather expanded, from research use/ military defense to businesses to the individual consumer.
      And, computers no longer served as just a practical tool to to create ledgers and solve complex algebra problems. They were beginning to infiltrate the everyday life, as games such as Pong by Atari were being played in arcades across the country. It was like a new breed of species had joined the American human population (since the book mostly focuses on computers in America). It even created its own language(s), so it really did become a whole other realm in technology: "Computers and electronics have become pervasive in everyday life. What was once high technology is now mundane."
     The evolution of technology works in such a way that it builds upon what has been previously in place. Transportation for instance, didn't jump from a bicycle to an army jet. There is a clear and concise trend of discoveries, that leads one to the other. Which is why I should not have been surprised that the internet did not come from nothing, as I had previously thought. Email and web browsing did not come instantly. In fact, "The first message transmitted between UCLA and SRI  [on the ARPAnet] was "L-O-G"...then the system crashed" which obviously was a far cry from the internet as we know it today. But while advancement occurred sequentially, it did progress quickly, any by 1977 and experiment with a TCP system that successfully transmitted information from San Francisco to London and back. The kind of impact that computers and the internet have and continue to have is tremendous, constantly making our lives more efficient, and even adding a layer of enjoyment to it.

Swedin/Ferro’s Computers pgs 1-83

        It strikes me as rather odd that the calculator application on the PC I'm using right now is considered an "Accessory." In the early days of computers, the main goal seemed to be to perform simple arithmetic calculations, as can be seen with Hollerith's system used for the US Census. The purposes for what a computer was to be used for stayed somewhat consistent through time up until mid the 20th century, when computers became more sophisticated and allowed for rather complex calculations. What I find interesting about the history of computers is that the countries' governments kind of vaulted the development and advancement of the technology, whether it was with a need for a statistical analysis of the country's population or to decode German messages on the radio. It was constantly investing money into the field, even when private sectors were hesitant to do so: "The commercial electronics industry did not initially appreciate the value of integrated circuits, believing them too unreliable and too difficult to manufacture. However both NASA and the American Defense realized the value of the microchips..." (pg. 67) Obviously the military and the electronics industry had different needs, yet the military's needs are the ones that lead to breakthroughs that are most relevant to today's technology ie. integrated circuits are still the core of computer hardware. Of course it wasn't all fun and games where the government just threw money to whoever claimed they could make a better, faster computer. For example, when Charles Babbage redesigned the Difference Engine and applied for additional funding to create it, the British government did not see it as an improvement to the prior version and canceled any future funding in 1842. (pg.16)
         As far as culture being affected by computers, this has not really occured yet in pages 1-83 of "Computers." These machines were mostly being used for clerical work such as banking and clearing checks, insurance companies, governments and other organizations who processed large amounts of data and relied on mechanical calculators, punched cards, and tabulators.The computer has not yet reached the individual consumer, which probably will change the landscape of what computers were being built for. I suspect that the reason for this is Business to Business services and products do not really effect the overall image of the product to the greater population. Slowly but surely this was changing though as computers were started to be used for non commercial matters, such as politics, like the UNIVAC correctly predicting that Eisenhower would win the 1952 election by a landslide.

Tech log and Reaction to technology

I have never blogged before. I guess I just never had much to say to people I dont know. I think it's scary to think that after i post this, it will be somehow accessible to anybody with an internet connection. Luckily though, others are spewing just as much information on the web as I am, and this massive, abundant amount of data prevents you from being especially noticed, unless you are something spectacular. but most of it goes unnoticed. It's like walking through times square during the day. you're there, you're being seen, but the memory of you is being held by others for no longer than 3 seconds. but once again, if you're especially attractive or hideous or eccentric in some way you will stand out for a little longer, until the next beautiful, ugly, weird, cool thing comes along.
So, it turns out I use technology more for satisfying my own curiousity than for academic purposes. Obviously, like everyone else, I use Technology for seeing what everyone is up to, and what people's plans are for the upcoming weekend, and checking out all their facebook pictures. Another thing I noticed about my technology log is the amount of time i spend on youtube looking up various types of music. Music in general, i spend hours a day researching and listening to music, and without technology my range of reach would be so much smaller. Other than the copious number of hours i spend on the interwebs, I also abuse other types of technology like my cellphone for texting (more than calling), my microwave for heating up my ramen noodles, my alarm clock to get me out of bed in the AM, and my speakers to blast dubstep music for everyone on the block to hear. Technology is all around us, and it includes more than just electric appliances. However the biggest technological time eater I use is the #1 social networking site: Facebook. But I know people who use this tool to no end, signing on the moment they wake up and not signing off until the wee hours of the night. Crazy.