One thing I noticed in our clas the other day is the surprising amount of people who watched their "television" online. It made me consider a book I read in highschool, which i wrote a couple of quotes out of
"Advanced technology is itself brainwashing us to believe in technology. For every styep forwards we take with technology, we lose two steps from somewhere else"
Now for the love of Pete I can not remember the name of the book, and I am only slightly sure that it was written by George Hayduke, so please don't quote me on that, but the idea i completely agree with. We are so hooked into believing that new technology is better that we never stop to think about where we would be without it. Nor has many people considered if new computers are actually better, only that they are more accepted. FOr example
A. has anyone considered how few Computer viruses there were in the 90's?
B. everytime a new operating system comes out, how long does it take to get all the bugs out?
c. How many times do computers (which we almost are required to own to stay in school) crash? and how much stress do they cause to get them fixed?
D. How many people own hard copies of all the music they own, and do not have it only on Itunes, where thier use of it is limited?
E. People now would rather google an answer, than figure out the solution for themselves, limiting their creative potential, and taking away most of our generations Tinkers, basic repairmen, and partially defeating the purpose of our "educations".
I can think of other example of advancing technology not being as good as it is cut out to be. Anyone who shoots avidly will tell you that
A. Semiauto and full auto weapons jam.
B. THey are a pain to strip and clean.
C. The more parts a gun has, the easier it is too break.
D. More parts make a gun heavy. replacing the parts with lighter parts makes it easier to carry, but easier to break.
E. People who learn to shoot quickly, don't have to learn to shoot as well as people who don't
If we compare this to another technology that has not advanced all that much we will not find the same problems. Not many technologies haven't changed, but a pockeetknife is a pocketknife and always will be a pocketknife. There is a sharp part you don't grab, and mainanence consists of sharpening occasionally, drying it when its wet, and oiling the hinge. This include jackknives, butterflies, dropblades, and your typical 5$ blade at exxon(which i would never suggest buying)
The funniest thing is, some people don't like us carrying pocketknives anymore.
I just want to challenge anyone who reads this to find someplace where advancing technology hasn't brought its own difficulties.
Technology as a progress narrative
Well, to answer your closing question, I think the millions of people whose lives have been saved with advances in medical technology (vaccines, for example) demonstrate that in most cases the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. If they didn't, we wouldn't call it "advancing" technology anyway.
To respond to your computer analogy as well, there were indeed plenty of computer viruses in the 90s. I might even argue that there are fewer now since the one's we deal with today are strains of or improvements on species that evolved in the 80s and 90s.
And I use Linux on most of my computers, so I never really worry about viruses anyway. Linux, by the way, is a great example where tinkering pays off. I mean, you can use most distros out of the box, but the real power comes when you go under the hood -- after first googling the problem you want to solve.
Which brings me to your next point.
The fact that we can quickly Google (or wikipedia) the answer to many questions is not necessarily a bad thing, and I can say that well aware that many of my colleagues take zero tolerance policies on web-based information. The problem with your argument is that the kind of creative problem solving you describe as the alternative to just googling it is not mutually exclusive of information scarcity. This is something a lot people in my line of work have been thinking about lately. Traditional models of education and of the university rely on assuming a scarcity of information. We, the educated few, gather at centers of learning where that scarce information can be gotten to, and we who have access act as gate keepers to that information and let those we deem worthy have access to that information as well.
Increasingly, we don't actually work that way at all.
The real significance of being able readily answer certain kinds of questions is that we can now spend more time working on and thinking about and answering different questions.
Also, in your discussion, you seem to imagine that the opposite of looking up an answer is figuring it out for yourself. However, isn't the real opposite of looking it up online is just looking it up somewhere else? I personally appreciate the fact that someone else has already figured out the speed of light, so when I need to use that number for some reason, I can just look up the answer. I can get the answer much faster if I ask Wolfram Alpha than if I find an encyclopedia or physics text book somewhere and then try to locate the information I need within all the pages.
Now, in either case, I'm probably better off if I remember the speed of light without having to go look it up at all, so if I were someone who needed to know that on a regular basis, I'd still be better off memorizing it. The scarcity of information, in other words, still is a concept that matters to everyday life and (accordingly) to education.
But it's a mistake to see progress in technological terms. Yes, technology makes things possible that used to be impossible, or it makes things easy that used to be hard, but neither of these are necessary conditions, as you argue -- and I agree. Sometimes the opposite happens.
What really matters is the cultural shift (some might call it a paradigm shift) that sometimes accompanies technological advancements. Digital information might be providing the impetus for one such shift, and this course (specifically the latter part) is premised on the notion that we can take something old (narrative) into something new (whatever comes next). Or, if not, we can understand more about what's at staking in moving across the gap.
For my part, I think narrative is just fine, but creative people will continue to find new ways to use it to express new ideas. And that's pretty exciting.
Play online Free flash games & downloads in your web games zone!
Play online Free flash games and downloads in your web games zone!
if you like play online games & game downloads, there is more flash games in the our web games site, click here to www.clicksgame.com!
Free flash games, Play online games, game downloads, web games, Action, Arcade, Adventure, Board, Card, Casino, Puzzle, Racing, Shooting games
www.clicksgame.com
=====================================================================
Top Games - Play Free Online Games - Funny Games
www.gamesour.com
=====================================================================
Play Free Games, game downloads, Game sites
www.gogamesite.com
=====================================================================
Online flash games, video arcade, game cheats, card games
www.togamesite.com
=====================================================================
Play games, free online Games, flash games, shooting games, card games
www.atplaygame.com
Post new comment