Posts
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(on technology and human lives)
A senior of mine resents information technology so much that she thinks human lives are so way better when the world was without them. To keep my description of her fair, I think she is one of the most reasonable people I know. It is just that I think she always delivers her opinions more dramatically that they deserve. I have never succeeded to persuade her in the subject. Maybe I don’t understand her point just as much she doesn’t understand mine.
In the against-too-much-technology, she is not alone in her side of the club. I have read articles after articles arguing that people now inhabits a world of distraction and no longer pay their dues to being “fully in the moment”; that the quality of human communications have degraded; or worse, that we have become organic robots. All thanks to the technologies besieging us. Some of these arguments are rhetorical, some scientific. Most are consistent with what my senior argued, all of which I must admit will not disagree.
However, I think such arguments are partially valid at best. Firstly, only little of of these arguments are comprehensive enough. They are overfocusing on limited aspects of both technological features and behaviors. Secondly, they speak in terms of increase and decrease. I don’t think that because some university have discovered that, for example, texting and social networking abuses have decreased working memory accuracy that we should abandon our smartphones behind. Not that these negative findings are erroneous, but any for-or-against decision on the issue is missing the point. They are missing other changes outside the continuum.
Some of the technology-driven changes that have been taking places, are taking places, and potentially will take place are too valuable for us to even slightly interrupt, let alone terminated. On individual level, simple blogging acts have begun to go epidemic in bringing out the good, if not the best, in us. See sites like PostSecrets, ThingsWeForget, and ICanRead; and if they are not evident enough, see where the links takes you. The all-around take-and-give among users should overwhelm you. Where we were once learn things intensively, people are learning more diversively. This is not the case of better-or-worse. At least, it is premature for us to say so. Just because we call them users, it doesn’t make them less human.
Organizations whose missions are to channel and sync netizens’ acts of goodwill --like CreativeCommons, One.org, Wikipedia (happy birthday, by the way), OpenData, Innocentive, AcademicEarth, TED-- have begun to show promising results and more. They are educating the world, leveraging it to healthier state, and making extreme poverty its history --or at least they’re trying to (and that’s already more than hopeful).
Having said that, I think the negative findings that we encounter would serve better as control signs to keep our multilinear changing civilization in-check. As the world gets more and more connected, learning-by-doing is happening on a global scale. The world is at its most ambiguous, it’s scary, it’s exciting. Though all possibilities of horrors are ever more highlighted, so are the beauties (the Wikileaks case should best illustrate this). And any snap judgment we make about our world, and our humanity, is nothing more than negligence.
(on technology and human lives)
A senior of mine resents information technology so much that she thinks human lives are so way better when the world was without them. To keep my description of her fair, I think she is one of the most reasonable people I know. It is just that I think she always delivers her opinions more dramatically that they deserve. I have never succeeded to persuade her in the subject. Maybe I don’t understand her point just as much she doesn’t understand mine.
In the against-too-much-technology, she is not alone in her side of the club. I have read articles after articles arguing that people now inhabits a world of distraction and no longer pay their dues to being “fully in the moment”; that the quality of human communications have degraded; or worse, that we have become organic robots. All thanks to the technologies besieging us. Some of these arguments are rhetorical, some scientific. Most are consistent with what my senior argued, all of which I must admit will not disagree.
However, I think such arguments are partially valid at best. Firstly, only little of of these arguments are comprehensive enough. They are overfocusing on limited aspects of both technological features and behaviors. Secondly, they speak in terms of increase and decrease. I don’t think that because some university have discovered that, for example, texting and social networking abuses have decreased working memory accuracy that we should abandon our smartphones behind. Not that these negative findings are erroneous, but any for-or-against decision on the issue is missing the point. They are missing other changes outside the continuum.
Some of the technology-driven changes that have been taking places, are taking places, and potentially will take place are too valuable for us to even slightly interrupt, let alone terminated. On individual level, simple blogging acts have begun to go epidemic in bringing out the good, if not the best, in us. See sites like PostSecrets, ThingsWeForget, and ICanRead; and if they are not evident enough, see where the links takes you. The all-around take-and-give among users should overwhelm you. Where we were once learn things intensively, people are learning more diversively. This is not the case of better-or-worse. At least, it is premature for us to say so. Just because we call them users, it doesn’t make them less human.
Organizations whose missions are to channel and sync netizens’ acts of goodwill --like CreativeCommons, One.org, Wikipedia (happy birthday, by the way), OpenData, Innocentive, AcademicEarth, TED-- have begun to show promising results and more. They are educating the world, leveraging it to healthier state, and making extreme poverty its history --or at least they’re trying to (and that’s already more than hopeful).
Having said that, I think the negative findings that we encounter would serve better as control signs to keep our multilinear changing civilization in-check. As the world gets more and more connected, learning-by-doing is happening on a global scale. The world is at its most ambiguous, it’s scary, it’s exciting. Though all possibilities of horrors are ever more highlighted, so are the beauties (the Wikileaks case should best illustrate this). And any snap judgment we make about our world, and our humanity, is nothing more than negligence.
1 comment:
"Human lives are so way better when the world was without technology". Interesting! I wish I know what led her to that conclusion. On the contrary, I'm wondering what would life be without technology. I do believe that technology is intended to make our life better (I'd say easier). I learn how the media and technology is revolutionizing education, and I can conclude that educational media and technology improves student learning. In addition, in an online survey conducted by the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University in North Carolina and the Pew Internet and American Life project, Anderson, director of the Imagining the Internet Center claims that, "Three out of four experts said our use of the Internet enhances and augments human intelligence, and two-thirds said use of the Internet has improved reading, writing and the rendering of knowledge" (as cited in Whitcomb, 2010). Technology also gives people who can not attend traditional classroom a chance to pursue higher education through distance education. Therefore, I'd say that the advantages of having technology in our life outweigh the disadvantages. I admit that I can rarely be seen separated from my gadgets, but they didn't degrade my communication with others, they just perfected it. I know sometimes we spend too much time online but it doesn't mean that technology is bad, right? We just need to manage our time effectively and learn to become smart digital citizens. Technology is just a tool, it depends on how we harness it, right? :)
PS: I wish I had more time to speak my mind, but I don't, lol. Thanks for sharing Dih!
Reference:
Whitcomb, D. (2010). The Internet will make you smarter, say experts. Retrieved from: http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/02/19/us-internet-survey-idUSTRE61I5CW20100219
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