Chapters 4-7 "Made To Break"

In chapters 4 through 7 in “Made to break it discusses a lot of interesting points. In chapter 4 I took note of quite a few interesting points. The chapter discusses eliminating static on radio communication and our “electronic war” throughout World War 2. On page 91 the book states “…would soon make radio completely obsolete-the two could not co-exist on the airwaves, he thought.” (Pg. 91). I find this quote to be very interesting because it relates so directly to our culture today. This man Sarnoff did not even think it is possible to have radio and T.V at the same time because of the airwaves and yet he was so wrong. If you look at our culture today it is clear that T.V and the radio are still two huge industries for marketing and entertainment. I see this all the time in American culture with new inventions. People are constantly doing things that people never even thought was possible. For example in our culture today that no one ever thought was possible was having the internet on your phone and literally having access to the internet just about every moment no matter where you are. This really makes me question what the limit is on what we can do because there are things that I could think of that I could say would never be possible, but people 100 years ago said the same exact thing to the technology we have today. Another cool point I took from the chapter is the idea of miniaturation which is a cost cutting strategy during the depression. I found this cool because I also see cost cutting strategies all the time in America. Businesses and business owners are constantly trying to cut costs so they can make the most profit from their business.

In chapter 5 the book discusses the silk trade and the use of chemistry in our culture. The chapter also discusses the idea of suburban obsolescence and analog versus digital computing. In this chapter I could help but to take note of an interesting marketing technique that I see all the time in American culture. On page 126 the book states “…marketing campaign emphasizing voluntary silk deprivation, anti Japanese patriotism, and product superiority.” (Pg.126). Patriotism in America has always been a very clever technique in advertising for products in not only technology but in all aspects of buying and selling no matter what it is. For some reason this mentality of being “American” is very important to a lot of people. In our culture we always want to be better than all other cultures and I believe that this is one way that we as a culture attempts to capture this. So when people see products that are marketed in this technique people say I’m going to by the American brand because I want to be a true American. As dumb and stupid as it sounds it is true in so many ways. Take the car industry for example, I see people buying American made cars just because they don’t want to buy cars that are made in other countries and support other economies and cultures, even though the reality of it is foreign made cars may be much better than American made cars.

In chapter 6 it discusses the 50’s and the 60’s and a lot of interesting topics in these 2 decades. It discusses automobile obsolescence after the Korean War and the importance of the automobile industry. It talks about our societies growing lack of tolerance for waist and with planned obsolescence there is bound to be a problem. The point that I took that I found so interesting was on page 161 where it states, “The Waste Makers placed responsibility for waste on the consuming public itself” (Pg. 161). This book that was written during the time period flipped it around and put the issue of waist on the American public for constantly buying. This made me think back to the idea of product addiction. I can absolutely agree with the point that this book is making because the American culture is constantly buying stuff that they don’t really need. For example, my brother has a phone that he didn’t like and he threw it out and bought a blackberry just because he didn’t like it. This is a common trend with Americans because they always want better things. People aren’t satisfied with the 50 inch Televisions they want the 60 inches and so on.  Some people in our culture are literally addicted to buying new technology, I actually believe that people get a natural high when they buy a new product and get to use it for the first time. Just like a drug addict has cravings for drugs, a technology addict has cravings for new technology. My honest opinion is that we are all guilty of being technology addicts; I can’t say I’m innocent because I can say that I always want nice things such as T.V’s and nice cell phones. The part that scares me is where will put all of this waist when it builds up so much that we literally have no more space for it. With technology addicts running around, we as a culture will certainly have to find other strategies for storing the entire waist that we produce.

Chapters 1-3 "Made to Break"

Pg’s 1-81 of the book “Made to Break” written by Giles Slade covers the first 3 chapters of the book. Chapter 1 discusses the idea of repetitive consumption and how this is achieved in American society. There are a lot of brilliant ideas on how it was achieved in the past and how I can see it still being achieved in today’s technological reliant society in America. The first idea that chapter 1 discusses is the idea of branding and packaging both of which are still very apparent in today’s society. Businesses began marking their product with a distinct brand and packing their product in fancy packaging. I know that in today’s society brand for a lot of people means everything along with the nice packing that it will sometimes comes in. This is American’s mentality for always wanting the best. The next idea that was talked about I found to be the most brilliant of the chapter which was the idea of a disposable culture. This forces consumers for products to constantly be throwing their products away and buying new ones. The book quotes on pg. 13 “…demand seemed endless”. This is absolutely true; this creates an endless demand for these products such as disposable razors which they discuss in the book and also repetitive consumption which is the producer’s goal. The part of this idea that is so crazy to me is that when you examine our culture today you can see how far we have come. You look at so many different household things like Clorox wipes, paper towels, disposable razors, and so many more.

In chapter 2 it talks about psychological obsolescence versus technological obsolescence. A really interesting quote that I pulled from chapter 2 goes as follows, “psychological obsolescence was superior to technological obsolescence because it was considerably cheaper to create” (pg. 36). This portrays the American business sense perfectly because this is basically saying that business owners modify products in the cheapest way to renew demand for what is almost the same product. The example that this made me think of in our culture today is I-pods. Apple continues to come out with all of these new I-pods that look different and are more attractive to the eye when in reality they do the exact same things. People are always craving the most up to date products when it comes to technology. The book discusses cars and another quote from chapter 2 states “…as a characteristic of the very best luxury cars of the day” (Pg.43). Car makers are constantly coming out with new luxury editions to basically say to their buyer that their current car is out of date and not as good as what the latest edition is, and this goes with any technology. This brings into play product addiction which chapter 2 also discusses. The definition of addiction is to form a habit and be dependent on something; in this case it is technology. As a culture we have always been addicted to technology because we depend on it. If you look at today’s culture with computers you can see how dependant we have become on it and it is almost scary. There is no doubt in my mind that product addiction is still present today and will always be present, and if anything the addiction will only get stronger.

Chapter 3 discusses briefly the idea of advertising in American culture and also the idea of progressive obsolesce which is continuously buying products for up to datedness’. This chapter is based off ideas that are formed in the great depression. Progressive obsolescence was designed to stimulate the economy. The idea that I found most interesting in this chapter is the idea of adulteration. This is the idea of diluting a product in order to make more money. This was present during the great depression and is not necessarily present today but the mind set is certainly present in today’s culture. This shows that people will literally do anything for money and a lot of people in our culture are extremely greedy. The mentality of making money in our culture overrides just about anything and for a lot of people it is their number one priority. The idea of death dating is also very interesting to me. I pulled a quote from chapter 3 that goes as follows “upon roads that fall into immediate decay, upon motors that must be junked in a few years…” (pg. 78). This quote is basically saying that if we continue to make technology and keep buying new technology because it breaks that we will eventually end up with mass amounts of waist. Death dating is deadly for our country in my opinion and should be illegal. As I try to make out the future I can certainly see America completely destroyed by technology. I believe that people really stray away from the beauty of the earth because of technology. I find it funny that computers and the internet display all of these beautiful pictures of our earth when in reality technology is in the process of destroying all of the beauties of the earth. I believe that in the future we won’t have access to the beautiful physical features of the earth; we will only be able to view them in our virtual worlds.

Social Network

After watching the social network it really made it more clearly to me about the mentalities of Americans when it comes to business and money, and most of all technology. The movie was in my opinion a great movie.  The movie basically in a nut shell goes as follows, a kid named Mark from Harvard got broken up with by his girlfriend and he goes out and creates a web site that matches up undergrad female Harvard students and allows the user to judge the attractiveness of the female. On the blog that he writes he bashes his x-girlfriend. After talking his way out of trouble with the university he then goes on to create face book. This new online world grows rapidly and becomes worth more than anyone ever imagined. Shortly after it begins to blow up his best friend sues him along with two undergrads from Harvard.

                Face book is currently the most successful social networking site out there. After watching this movie it really made it evident to me that online worlds is what is certainly in our future. Mark had several big time investors who faith in this online world called face book. Investors would not invest in this if they did not believe that it would be successful and clearly they were right for investing in it because it is now connecting millions of people all over the world. People in America using face book and online networking sites are starting to become more involved with their online selves than there real selves in the real world. I know a friend who works at an insurance company who says that all he does all day is sit on face book and talk to his co-workers. This is crazy to me because he basically lives in two worlds along with the rest of the people at his work. The part of this that really scares me is thinking that eventually there will be no real world we will all strictly live in online worlds. There are very few things that prevent this from happening which are quite obvious our need to eat, sleep, drink, and have shelter. When you think about it these are the only things that really prevent this kind of thing from happening.  Are technology has advanced so much that it can even satisfy our sexual needs on line through videos. Our technology is moving so fast I believe that we as a society or even the government will have to put a halt on technology eventually. When I look at something like face book that took off so fast and is currently worth billions of dollars and people are suing each other for shares of it makes it so evident to me that eventually technology will have to stop advancing or else the real world will eventually be used to for nothing other than to eat, sleep, and drink water. You look at our currency system and everything is done online for the most part. We never even see the money that we spend for the most part which would make it so easy for our society to live in just online worlds for the most part.

Current Event Blog

                The article that I discussed in class called “The Many Faces of You” was very useful for me and I think it was also useful for the rest of the class in realizing how fast technology is actually moving and also how the norms of our online lives could quite possibly interfere with the norms of actual real life. The topic that I really want to discuss in this blog is the topic of our perception of oneself. Not our real life perception but our online perception. The article discusses a woman who has two face books, one for work and one for her social life. I had to ask myself why she did this and I wanted to break it down. I believe that our online self’s image is becoming more important to a lot of us than our actual real self which is VERY scary to me. I believe this is so because when you look at something like someone who has two face books they clearly are doing it to portray different images of themselves. People are far too worried about being seen in a picture with a beer than actually portraying there real image. So like this woman, people are portraying different images of themselves through the technology that is available to them such as face book in this example.

                The norms of these different online worlds are also beginning to really scare me. The article discussed actually having an online Thanksgiving and the norms of face book. As technology becomes more and more advanced people are going to be more involved with online norms then they are with real life norms. The norms online are definitely going to interfere with those in the real world because people are so caught up in their online worlds that it’s almost impossible to think that they won’t interfere. I also believe that online norms will be much more dominant than those of the real world and begin to shape real word norms because people are continuously becoming more caught up with technology. Especially in today’s world where I see 3^rd graders running around with cell phones and  just the other day I got a friend request on facebook from one of my best friend’s 9 year old brother. The fact of the matter is that technology is advancing so fast that people are becoming so caught up in it that these online worlds are becoming far more important to them than the real world which is absolutely crazy to think about and almost hard to grasp in a lot of ways. The thing that sticks in my mind is what comes next after face book and after all of the online worlds that already exist. There is no doubt in my mind that with the technology savvy people in this country that people are already looking at ways to improve these worlds to do bigger and better things. This also plays into the mindset of our country of how people always want something better and more efficient than what is already out there.

2nd half of "The World and Wikipedia"

In chapter’s 5-8 of “The World and Wikipedia” the author makes more valid arguments in my opinion. In chapter 5 he talks about why our society loves something like Wikipedia so much even though it is not even necessarily accurate. There are a few arguments that the author makes in this chapter, the one that really sparked my attention was when he talks about Wikipedia forming a militia in case some kind of emergency happens then they can keep it running. This refers to the “virtual nation” of Wikipedia. The author states that “Spoke of us as ‘the people’ then corrected himself to ‘the community’.” Pg. (120). This is CRAZY to me that this Wikipedia world could actually have a militia. Our country had militia’s way before real laws and such were formed in the 1800’s and before that. If these virtual worlds are just starting to form militias then I can only imagine how far they are going to come before they actually have armed forces! One argument that I do disagree with that the author makes is that everyone is equal through Wikipedia. If someone is known for posting great articles and is a prime contributor through the site then he will be on a higher status than someone who is writing false information.

                In chapter 6 the book discusses the chaos that Wikipedia can cause. The author discusses that people can have false biographies on Wikipedia. With this can come bad reputations and such. I believe this to be a dumb argument against Wikipedia for many reasons. Any person can put false information out there about you as a person; this is just one of the sites that allow it to happen. This is something that people have to deal with in our culture of technology today. You can’t do anything about it because there is far too many ways to do it. This is just one of the many ways that technology is affecting our culture today. The author states “For some, no doubt, and publicity is good publicity” (Pg. 165). I found this quote to be very true by the author because it is very true. This leads to a huge problem with Wikipedia because people can right about themselves or others with their sole purpose to get publicity.

                Chapter 7 discusses why people do not trust Wikipedia. Mirroring Wikipedia is one of the reason why people don’t trust Wikipedia and the fact that anyone can post just about anything. People can’t cite Wikipedia as a reliable source so it is tough to trust a source that when you say you got it from Wikipedia it is frowned upon by professors and teachers.  The author states “Anonymous and unsourced edits will be made.” (pg. 195). This is the biggest reason why I can say that people don’t trust Wikipedia. This to me is like trusting anyone because if it is unsourced then you might as well have heard it from someone that is completely uncredible. This to me is like gossip and the American culture loves to gossip and Wikipedia makes it very easy to do so in front of a huge audience.

                Chapter 8 goes into discussing why people will trust Wikipedia. The first argument that I found so apparent in our culture today is the ‘no censorship’ rule with Wikipedia. The author states “complained that too much Nazi symbolism was visible” (Pg. 198). With a site like this it does not censor out any details, you are going to get all the blood guts and gore of what happened in a certain situation. This is what our culture loves and this technology allows it to be done even easier.  This also connects back to people craving the most up to date information and if Wikipedia is providing it in the quickest manner then people are going to put some trust in it. I know in my personal experiences with Wikipedia, I follow soccer around the world and the most recent trades are always posted on Wikipedia before they are publicized. I can honestly say that these for the most part are pretty accurate so I have trust they are going to provide me with pretty legit information; clearly this is true with a large portion of other people in our technologically bound country.

Pg's 7-113

In the book “The World and Wikipedia” written by Andrew Dalby it discusses a lot of interesting pg’s 7-113. In chapter one it talks about many different “wikipedians” (people who edit Wikipedia articles) writing about different articles. A quote that I pulled from chapter 1 states as follows “Wikipedia is just like the real world” (pg. 14). I found this quote more interesting as I continued to read the chapter and read about the different rules and regulations of Wikipedia that it discusses that I actually referred to as laws for this “world” of Wikipedia. I find it fascinating that as a culture we are literally creating worlds within our own through technology. Wikipedia is one of the many worlds that we are creating; some other examples could be face book or MySpace.  All of these are run with rules or laws that regulate them and they are their own world.

                In chapter 2 how Wikipedia formed over the years. Encyclopedias started as books and slowly the goal was to eliminate print for a couple reasons. With books came bigger and bigger books which was much more money to produce. Also books made it not time efficient because this required people to flip through thousand page books which was far too time consuming for our time hungry American culture. They also had to revise these books which were difficult because it made it hard to keep facts up to date. As print was eliminated there came CD-ROM encyclopedias that you could by on a disk and slowly arose the idea of Wikipedia in January of 2001. Wikipedia was the idea that anyone could go on and edit a page. The success of Wikipedia skyrocketed and Wikipedia blew up completely. It even started writing articles in all other languages. In chapter 2 the author states “The growth from about 20 languages in late 2002, to 250 by the end of 2006, was perhaps to rapid” (pg. 44). This quote stuck out to me because I found it so interesting that like technology in this country is growing so rapidly that we can barely keep up with it and write laws for it, so is the websites like this that we can barely keep up with the world of Wikipedia. It is almost like our culture is overwhelmed in so many ways with not only technology, but keeping up with Wikipedia advancements and things of this sort.

                Chapter 3 talks about why critics and people of this sort don’t believe Wikipedia to be such a good thing. Reasons such as it has a track record for providing false information to its visitors and the fact that anyone can go on a page and write whatever they want to write. The author states “everyone is an encyclopedist” (pg. 71). Chapter 3 discusses this as one of the issues with this kind of encyclopedia using the idea of collective knowledge. This makes me really worry about the future of technology in this country because if anyone can be an ecyclopedist with absolutely no credentials then who’s to say that we won’t start having engineers and doctors with no credentials start breaking their way into these fields. This is another reason that our rapid development of these worlds within worlds scares me so much.

                Chapter 4 discusses with its readers why we use Wikipedia even if we know that it may not be as accurate as we want. The author makes a very valid argument in my opinion, he states “...Are now fated to click on the Wikipedia link almost every time.” (pg. 86). He is referring to the Google effect. With Google being the most popular search engine in the world it is almost impossible to dodge Wikipedia in any search you decide to go on in a particular topic. I believe that Google putting Wikipedia at the top of every search that someone does has a huge impact as to why people use it. Another argument he makes is that people use it because they want news quicker than it is already provided. The author states “who got the news and put it on Wikipedia so quickly was never clear.” (pg. 96). People are always hungry for the latest news and because Wikipedia can provide them with a brief synopsis of the latest news people are always going to use it. This is the mind set of most people in our country that they want the latest information and gossip as soon as they can get it, and now that this technology can provide it to them they are certainly going to take advantage.

"Technopoly" Pg's 92-199

                In the second half of the book “Technopoly” I found a lot of connections to the American culture and I also found statements from the author that I did not necessarily agree with. In chapter 6 the author discusses the character of American culture, he states “which I have previously discusses as being so congenial to the sovereignty of technology.”(Pg. 95). I found this very interesting because I believe that this statement is very accurate. American culture is without a doubt given royalty to technology and it is very important to many Americans, especially medical technology. Our culture is constantly donating money to cancer charities and other forms of charities to help develop a technology to find a cure for these diseases. The people that donate would not do so if they did not care about it. Another interesting point that stuck out to me in chapter 6 is the idea that ideas breed off other ideas. For example the stethoscope helped develop other medical technologies, the author states “ideas were amplified with each new instrument added to the doctor’s arsenal” (Pg. 100). I find this apparent in American culture all the times with ideas leading to other ideas. An example in our culture is in the car industry; new cars come out every year based on the idea of the car from the previous year.

                In chapter 7 they discuss computer technology and they also talk about a man of importance named Charles Babbage who was discussed in the previous book that we read. I found it interesting because this just shows how important he is to computers because he is talked about in both books when computers are discussed. The main concept I took from this chapter is the metaphor of human as machine and machine as human.  When the author discussed this I could really see where he was coming from, you cannot take the metaphor so literally but humans and machines do have characteristics in common. The book states “computers around the Arpanet network became sluggish” (Pg.113). This is very true, when a computer gets a virus or has something wrong with it becomes slow and is not as efficient, the same goes for humans, when a human become sick or has something wrong with him or her they are not as efficient and they become “sluggish”.  It also discusses that computers can have defective parts, so can humans, and in both cases some of these parts can be replaced. 

                Chapter 8 discusses “Invisible Technologies” that are used in our culture. Many of these technologies that cannot be seen I would have never seen as a technology. I do agree with the author when he says this because like a computer was developed, so was something as simple as language. The funny thing about a technology like language is it probably took much longer to create than a computer, but it is taken for granted in our culture today because it is already developed. Just like computers now a days are taken for granted because they are already developed and there imbedded in our culture. Invisible technologies go through modifications just like technologies like computers and TVs do. For example there are words added to the English dictionary every year because language is constantly changing. We need knew words for new technologies. I did find a statement in Chapter 8 that I did not agree with, the author discusses statistics at one point in the chapter, he states “statistics creates an enormous amount of completely useless information” (Pg. 136). Although the author does go on to say that only some statistics are useless and some are actually very important. I believe that any statistic can useful to somebody, and if it is useful to someone then it is not useless. You never know what an individual could do with a statistic that may seem useless to you.

                In chapter 9 the author discusses social science and how it links into technopoly. The author displays his idea of scientism which I found incredibly interesting, probably the most interesting peace of material I have read for this class. The author almost makes out science to be fantasy without many facts at all. He argues that science is very subjective and is technopolys biggest “illusion”. He states “Technopoly wishes to solve, once and for all, the dilemma of subjectivity.”(Pg. 158). I am certainly on the same page as the author. Technopoly is facts, it is not theories and there is no grey area in technopoly. Social science has too much grey area involved with it. Milgram’s experiment on authority that the author uses was fascinating to me. I have no doubt that authority has influence on weather people do what they are told or not, but there are far too many examples contradicting his experiment. This is not a fact, and this is exactly what technopoly is trying to eliminate. Social science never really proves anything as factual unlike other sciences and that is why it is not necessarily true. Maybe someday science will be able to prove the grey area in social science. Interestingly enough I believe that someday we will be able to answer questions such as, what is life.

                Chapter 10 talks about the deterioration of symbols in our culture. I can honestly say that I agree with what the author is saying in this chapter. I truly believe that over time symbols tend to lose their importance with technology. One example for me is the symbol for murder. When I was young the first time I heard of a murder on the news I was frightened and by the time I heard of several murders the symbol for murder became far less important to me. The quote I found very interesting in this chapter is at the end when the author states “the only symbols left to use will be an f-15 fighter plane guided by an advanced computer system?”(Pg. 180). This quote really triggered a lot of thoughts for me. With the inventions of all these technologies we are almost eliminating the purpose of humans. The example here shows perfectly what I’m talking about, normally you would need someone to fly this plane but with new technologies this is no longer necessary and it’s less risky for humans. I can see robots being invented to do tedious jobs and this could also eliminate jobs for people. This quote really made me feel like we are eliminating our purpose as humans by creating all of this technology.

                The final chapter talks about ways to put a stop to technopoly. The author suggests “going back to the basics” and teaching subjects like religion and the history of technology. I can agree with the author that the technopoly that we grow towards every day in the American culture is a serious problem. He poses a way to put a stop to it but I am not sure that it would be successful. In fact I believe the only way to put a halt to it is to stop production of new technology and quite possibly make some of the current technologies illegal and get them out of our culture somehow.

               

               

Pg's 1-91 "Technopoly"

After reading the first half of “Technopoly” written by Neil Postman, my take on technology really changed. The first half of the book talks about how technology develops in America. It discusses the damages that technology may have on a society in saying that “technology is both a burden and a blessing” (Pg. 5). This quote meaning that with every technology comes pros and cons. This relates to American culture because inventors are constantly inventing new technology replacing and making no use for the old. For example the lap top replaces the desk top. The lap top made a desk top much less useful than it used to be because lap tops are more convenient. The mentality of America has been the same since humans have lived here which is always trying to make technology better. I also took away from the first chapter that technology leads to technology. Meaning that one invention leads to the next, the example they used in the book that I found very interesting was that if they never invented the ship, then man would not have to worry about contacting the ones that they care about that are far away, therefore they would never have to invent the telephone. The main point that I took from chapter 1 is that technology impacts every aspect of our life and it effects what we are interested in, what we think about and how and what we think about it with.  This is still changing in today’s society. The newest technology is still going to affect what we think about and how we do it. A good example of this in the modern day is someone that has a handwriting disability. Someone that has this kind of disability is going to be inclined to use a computer to type so what they are saying is legible.

            I also learned a lot about tool using cultures and how they can interfere with religion in our culture. America is no doubt still a tool using country. We use tools for a lot of the same reasons people used tools in the past. I found it very interesting that tools that they invent can fuse arguments in the religious aspect of our culture. For example the telescope challenges a lot of religions theology hypothesis because with a telescope you actually have facts and not just guesses. I found this interesting because it made me think about how today we have a huge problem with religion and evolution. The more we study evolution the more doubtful people become of the accuracy of their own religions. It’s very scary to me to see people that I have grown up with my whole life become more distant from their religions because of the theory of evolution. 

            Another key concept I stole from the book is the transformation from technocracy to technopoly. The book explains that the reason we made it to technopoly is for several reasons. The abundance of resources and the mentality for efficiency in the United States are some examples of reasons. America was the first technopoly that developed with other nations trailing us. The competitive spirits is what drove the country to efficiency and success. I find it fascinating that the same competitive edge that drove our country in this period is still driving us today. This even ties into the last book we read, when it talks about the different computer companies coming up and different software companies. They were all so competitive that they actually drove each other to success. It almost seems like they would not have been so successful without each other.

One part of chapter 4 that I found fascinating is when it talks about “technopoly is a form of cultural AIDS” (Pg. 63). This stuck out to me the most of all in the whole first half of the book. I could relate this to so many things in our culture today of things just spreading through our culture like AIDS.  There are so many examples of this, such as the I-pod. When the I-pod first came out it was a massive hit. I can just remember it spreading through my highschool like AIDS. Technology spreads like AIDS along with many other things in our culture such as fashion and music. I can also tie this in with Chapter 5 because a lot of the times these kinds of technologies are out far before they are released so the companies are hiding information about new technology. I can only imagine what kind of information is still kept from us. The funny thing is that if a bit of information were to leak it would spread like AIDS.