The Internet

The internet can be very useful. You can get things cheaper and find things a lot easier. But I think the internet is mostly used to fill time. I know people that just sit on the internet not really doing anything. You go on the internet and try to google something what you were looking for doesn't show up, you get a bunch of things that are useless.

The internet makes life easier. When you are writing a paper you can quickly look up something that you need and use. The internet puts everything in one place for you to find it.

Mostly I think that the internet is used to fill time. It has its benefits, but I don't know if the benefits are more than some of the problems with it.

Borgmann part 1

After reading the first few sections of Borgmann's book, I see a lot of his points in the real world. People are becoming more and more dependent of technology. They also have no idea what background effects it is having on them. However, there are some counter-measures being taken. Some people are conscious enough to take breaks from their digital lives and go do something more social and real. Some gaming consoles, such as the Wii, include occasional messages that encourage people to stop for a little while.
The responses on the Edge website also enlightens the class material. While most of the answers conclude that the effect of technology is positive, many add a caveat: you must be wary of the potential negative effects, or else they could consume you, and hurt you in the real world.

Blog #2: The Internet and an Engendered Passivity…

The focus of one of our recent class discussions regarded the internet and how it affects how we take up with the world around us, especially in a cognitive sense. After perusing through the myriad of online reflections upon the subject I would like to work out some reflections of my own as they relate to the internet. To me, the internet is still somewhat mysterious…

When I think of the internet, I usually envision it as a massive conglomeration of tangled and twisted wiring. I’m not really sure why I think of the internet in this way, but I do. As I sift (in my thoughts of course) amongst the excessively intertwined mess of cords and cables which provide transit to the stream of ceaselessly pulsing information, I wonder to exactly what fixture is this entire system grounded. Have you ever wondered that? It might help elucidate what exactly I’m talking about if I offer an example. Let’s, for instance, take a house. A house has many rooms and doors and hallways, all spaces through which one may travel when passing through one’s own home. These passages and spaces are fixed in place and provided their grounding from the structure upon which they are established. The firmament and edifice upon which these features are established provide the very foundation for their existence. Let’s apply this same scenario, in an analogous way, to the internet. Upon what do these cords and cables lie? Now I know that there aren’t really cords and cables which compose the “internet” per say (in reality there are actually some cords and cables involved; although culturally, we are increasingly moving in a wireless direction, but that’s another topic), but the illustration helps I think. Anyway, the internet is a streaming compilation of information and data shunted to and fro across our modern digital landscape. However, the question still stands: what supports all of this? Upon what structure does all of the information rest? Does it rest upon the several tens of millions of computers that are connected in tandem across the world? If so, these computers obviously make up an extremely large network, one which is evidently profound and extensive. Who maintains the integrity of this network? Where are the chief junctions which support the network? Who connects these terminals in a successful and efficient manner? What offers ultimate stability to these oftentimes unruly and dissident connections? And this question brings me back, in a rather circular way, to my original question: to what and how exactly is the internet grounded? When I think of the internet long enough, I come to realize exactly how little I actually know about it.

I think many times in our modern world we take things for granted to the point of passivity. And I think that humanity has done this generally with a great many things, including the internet. We are so enmeshed in an internet-driven world that we really could care less what exactly the internet is. All of us are a part of an unfathomably huge anomaly in the history of humanity, and for the most part we don’t really know anything about it. We are being passively carried along by an alien creation, a creation which in itself often works to spawn passivity and lethargy. Although I am somewhat wary of Borgmann’s disdain for modern technology, I must agree that we are increasingly drawn away from activity which uses skill and assemblages of proactive behaviors on our part. And I think that the internet may be one reason for this occurrence. I can only imagine how long it will be before our society trades the supermarket in for an internet-supported food market. I mean, think about it. By our standards today, the Nintendo Entertainment System is nearly a relic, one replaced by massive online multiplayer games and games which capitalize on the communal aspects of the internet. Fifteen years ago, who would have thought that that would have happened? Therefore, it’s not really that hard to fathom a time when almost all things will be consumed by the internet. Now don’t get me wrong, I appreciate much of what the internet does for humanity and would never wish it away; but with that being said, I will say that we need to work to better understand those things which we interact with on a daily basis (e.g. the internet). This may be the only recourse which routes the further engenderment of a passivity which already plagues humanity.

Why Do We Need This Technological Advance

As I write this I am sitting in my dining room listening to my brand new turntable filled with a Bob Segar album that is older than me by a good number of years. As I sit here I wonder why we had replaced this technology? It's perfectly functional and the sound is incredible! But yet i still have in the other room two MP3 players along with a mountain of CD's.
This brings me to the maing topic of this post. Why have we deemed it necessary to advance technology the way we have? Do we really need to have a phone that can also do a million other things? Honestly people just think about it, has that Iphone really improved your quality of living? Does your refridgerator have more food in it because of it? I would be safe in assuming that the answer to the questions above would all be "no."
The only thing man needs to survive is food, water, and shelter. I do realize that this technology makes life "easier" but its not necessary as some might think.
Technology is a vicious parasite that is invading every aspect of our lives. A perfect example of this would be how I have to post my homework on a blog instead of printing it and turning it in like would have occured only ten years ago.
Maybe I am too negative, maybe I am downright wrong, but it is my fundamental belief that if we do not do something about this parasite we may end up loosing ourselves into it. Who knows, maybe the Terminator movies predict the future.

Technology is dehumanizing!

With our discussions in class about Albert Borgmann and the technology question, I couldn't help but constantly think about how dehumanizing this world has become. When we want to contact someone, we do it in all the ways possible EXCEPT seeing them in person: if our phone dies during a text message we turn to email, and if the email isn't working we turn to facebook, etc. Its almost as if the importance of one-on-one interactions has ceased (convenience of communication is becoming increasingly important).

Speaking in sociological terms, our current technology is a of great benefit, but only to a certain degree. We rely too much on the internet and text messaging for the simple things: organizing a party, contacting a professor, asking someone out on a date, even grocery shopping (some people actually order their groceries online and have them delivered to their house). Sure, its O.K. to use facebook or use one's phone to get events together or make plans, but to make it their primary tool of communication and lifestyle is just sad; people need to get off their butts, live life, communicate in person more often and stop being lazy.

As a result of our dependence on convenience and our laziness, we now see a decline of human social skills; we don't know how to act to people around us anymore, nor do we depend as much on "normal language" when we communicate with our technology- ex. "LOL omg that vid wuz awsum. make sure to send it 2 steve b4 u d/l it! ;)".

I just hope that the world soon wakes up, and realizes that what is called "progress" may actually be an advance backwards.

the question

When posted with the question “has the internet changed the way we think?” I had to sit down and think of a time that was before the internet. The shocking thing is I have never been without the internet or computers. To some people this may be very odd to others this could be a normal statement. So I browsed the articles to see what others have been saying, and I find one titled “we are changing the way the internet thinks”. The article is very interesting; it has a good take on what the internet has become and how it has affected us. The internet and I have an intertwining relationship and I feel that people had much to do with how the internet is how it is today then we think. We shaped the web to fit our ever growing needs, our ever growing minds, and our ever growing ambitions. The internet has not changed us, and the people who think that are the men and women who refuse to accept that the world is in the twenty first century of technology. In the article he explains that the internet is becoming an “ever-growing conversation”, which in fact is very true with all of the new social sites that are out there. We share everything with everyone we are all connected; literally. We do think as we always have, it is just in its condensed internet form, and this is where some people might get the notion that the internet is changing our mind.

The Internet or Web :: #1

In class we briefly discussed the fact the most people, even the intelligent and well-informed, are confused about the difference between the internet and the web. Most people associate the internet as simply the medium in which they view their favorite websites or check their email but in fact the internet is so much more. The internet is a massive networking of networks and computers globally in which all the computers can communicate with each other. The web is just one of the many ways in which information can be retrieved from the internet. Many of us believe that the internet has been a huge innovation that is greatly changing and shaping our lives however we don’t even begin to grasp the scope of it. We may think that we only spend a couple hours a day using the internet but most of the time we probably don’t even realize that we are using it. Many of us may connect to our work computer from home, talk to friends using VOIP services, send and receive emails from our phones, downloads using peer-to-peer software, programming DVR’s via cell phones, only to name a few. We live in an environment of technology and though we may only spend a couple of hours a day on the web, most people spend a good portion of their day using internet resources. If the internet were to have a malfunction or be offline the repercussions would be even more catastrophic than just temporarily loosing your ability to surf the web, the way of life as we know it would cease to exist.

Blog #1: On the Device Paradigm…

Before I begin to catalogue some of my brief thoughts with regards to Albert Borgmann’s “Device Paradigm” I want to offer a slight disclaimer. Like most everyone in our class, save Dr. Langguth, I have yet to finish “Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life.” Much of the inquiry and examination which I apply to Borgmann’s way of taking up with technology and our global sociopolitical context is at a serious disadvantage at this stage in our discovery of Borgmann’s paradigm and earnest cogitations. Much, as I am quite sure, has yet to be procured through impending analysis. As such, much of what I comment on and argue in this and the following blogs will likely come to a point of reconciliation at a latter instance in Borgmann’s work. Thus, in hindsight several weeks from today, my reasoning in this my first blog may appear rather unfounded and trivial when taken in light of the necessary and final developments of Borgmann’s central apriorism. As the book is carefully worked through, I hope that any crude opinions and notions which I first envisaged are reformulated in an appropriate fashion. However, this point, in and of itself, offers the ardent learner and genuinely interested reader both much caution and help. Such a reflection alerts the reader to stave off any preconceived notion of how exactly Borgmann regards modern technology as of yet. We need not rain down a final judgment when the defense has yet to offer four fifths of the evidence in its favor. Nonetheless, there are a couple of issues which I would like to discuss.

The introductory chapters and topics, many of which work to diagram what the device paradigm is and how humanity takes up with its technological foreground and background, almost seem to come down as condemnatory of any technology which is not pre-modern. Those examples of modern technological features of our society, or features which were at least modern when Borgmann had his work published in 1984, seem to be demonized by Borgmann amidst the backdrop of an excessive romanticizing of what has once been. Take for instance the stereo set (this is actually kind of a throwback to the ‘80s isn’t it?). When speaking of this ‘device,’ Borgmann seems to want to imbue his rather negative ambivalence toward the object upon the reader when he states that there is “an extreme concealment or abstractness in the mode of [the music’s] production” (page 4). Here, Borgmann positions the device within an enigmatic context, and the reader has nowhere to turn but ambivalence towards the stereo set. He seems to do this with many of the examples he cites. I mean, yes. I guess he’s right. Other than the basic knowledge of magnetism, circuitry, and sound I acquired in my Elements of Physics course here at Thomas More College, I really couldn’t tell you exactly how the music I gather from a stereo set is procured. The ends seem very distinct from the means. I most certainly couldn’t fix a stereo set either. But at a much deeper level, I don’t think many people could tell you exactly how music from an orchestra is procured either. Yes, the musicians strum their instruments, blow into them, bang them, or what not to incur vibrations in the air, vibrations which stimulate our neuronal connections. But that knowledge of the acquirement of music is almost rudimentary when compared to the musician’s knowledge of the same subject. So, as it would seem, the means can also be quite concealed in such an object which likely constitutes a “thing” from Bormann’s point of view. When looking at such topics from this perspective, the line between things and devices becomes rather obfuscated.

Why would devices be so bad? Yes, things, in the Borgmann sense, do seem to offer more of a focus than devices sometimes do today but not always. There are many devices which seem to be a place of focus. It may sound rather ironic, but isn’t the modern family room with all of its electronics and media still a place of high focus for many families. I know that it is for my family. Sometimes, the television set draws my family together in order to rally around our favorite sports teams or listen attentively to our national leaders. Sometimes, the familial warmth and affinity which is cultivated around the television is more potent and stronger than that nurtured around the traditional hearth. Now certainly I know that many exceptions and arguments to the contrary undoubtedly exist, but these premises, along with a final thought, are worth our consideration. Have you ever considered the tradeoffs required to move along the evolutionary line from thing to device? And if you have, are those tradeoffs worthwhile?

Citizens of the Technological Age: (Un)lucky Us!

One statement in this week’s reading that stood out to me was the fact that one of the original ‘promises’ of technology was the benefit of extended leisure time. It seems appropriate to use technology to respond to this sentiment: http://i45.tinypic.com/2njes9l.gif. Although there are innumerable realistic advantages to our technological age, the luxury of leisure has not been one of them in my experience.

As computer applications, speedy transportation, cellphones, and all other sorts of advanced devices continue to impact schools and businesses, it seems that educators and employers are keen to respond to the aid that technology provides with more tasks, higher expectations, and more complicated procedures. Because of this, many individuals still wake before sunrise, return home just before dark, and end up falling asleep ten minutes into the movie that they were finally able to sit down and watch. To make matters worse, video games, YouTube, Facebook, and even Lolcats has made it so easy to procrastinate on academic, work-related, and domestic responsibilities, which also detracts from our free time.

I find it ironic that most American labor is now completed in a quiet, stationary position while many forms of leisure activities today involve outdoor physical engagement. Furthermore, I resent modern technology for taking away the simplicity of being able to curl up on the couch next to my family with a notebook and a pen to complete assignments. Now I spend my evenings insolated in a tiny room hunched in front of the glaring computer screen on a hard chair with the perpetual purr of the computer luring my mind into a drowsy haze. At this rate, I will be spending all of my future ‘leisure time’ in some doctor’s office collecting recommendations for neck and back pain medications or getting my eyeglasses prescription strengthened for the umpteenth time. Therefore, I conclude that toil and drudgery have not in fact been eliminated from our lives like the early technological theorists predicted. Now we are just experiencing it in hyper-speed.

Is It "A Small Price To Pay"?

This week, our ethics and technology class was assigned to look over some of the posts regarding the question of the year for 2010 "Is the Internet changing the way we think?". I found most of the experts responses very interesting as all of them seemed to take a different approach giving readers many different things to consider. The post titled "A Small Price To Pay" posted by Psychologist and Dean of Social Sciences at Harvard University, Stephen M. Kosslyn. The title struck me because in today's society, when I think of computers and technology, I think of big prices. We have to buy a piece, well multiple pieces of technology in order to use the Internet. In today's society everyone is trying to get the latest gadgets and the most high tech equipment, which of course is pricey.
However, as I continued to read Kosslyn's thoughts, I realized he was not referring to the technology that we access the internet but the internet itself. Kosslyn discussed how much we, as Internet users, can access just by having internet. Kosslyn stated "Even in its current state, the Internet has extended my memory, perception, and judgment". I completely agree and feel that if everyone looked at the internet in this form, then yes, we could say the internet has changed the way we think, and that this change was for the good.
I will be the first to admit that the internet can sometimes be more of a distraction then a resource. I have actually been interrupted by facebook a few times as I have been posting this blog. Facebook along with other sites have a tendency to take over our lives, but at the same time, it is so easy for me to "chat" a friend who is online if I happen to forget my homework or if I am in need of other information. As Kosslyn goes into detail on explaining how the internet has made these extensions, the memory extension parallel really stuck out to me. Obviously, everything we read online will not stay in our memory just because of us browsing, but because everything online is so accessible, Kosslyn points out how easy and helpful it is to remember where that information was to go back and use it if needed.
Internet can improve one's judgement if the internet is used properly. For example, Wikipedia is a website that can be edited, so when accessing information from that site, it is important to have back-up sources too. There are also many forms of gossip and rumors floating around in cyberspace, so again it is important to not trust everything you see online. However, as Kosslyn states in his argument, we can also use these sites to our advantage, to check and double check and triple check. In conclusion, if we all look at the internet in the same way as Kosslyn, the internet will change the way we think for the good.

Back in the Day

The beginning and the end of almost every story my grandpa tells me he usually says, "Back in the Day(and then his long long story)...these days you got it too easy". After reading the assigned material this week for class I began to hear those famous words from my grandpa. Now I don't know if that is a good thing or bad thing but usually I try to forgot about the stories I seem to hear over and over again. Though this time I think I might understand what he means by "These days you got it too easy".
After I read the assigned text I began to think about all the things that make our lives easier and in all honestly really comfortable. For instance, how about having easy access to food on almost every corner with your local grocery stores, or the idea of having an ever ending supply of water being pumped to your home. Something that really caught my attention is how many people these days can not change their oil, build a deck, fix a water leak, or just start an ordinary fire to heat a home. I know I was lucky enough to learn all of these things, but I can say that majority of my friends couldn't even tell you were to begin at checking your oil let alone change it. I think that technology has changed many peoples lives for the better, but one flaw that I seemed to take from the reading is that majority of people in my generation are losing the essential skills of survival and the understanding of how to live without having easy access to all the things we want and find essential to our survival. By being so technologically advanced I think that my generation is losing the basic aspects of life and what got us to where we are today. My grandpa always seemed to ask me "could I survive the way people lived two hundred years ago with the skills I have now". In all respect to my grandpa, I hope to God I don't have to because, "These Days we got it to easy".

Is the Internet Changing the Way We Think?

Please have a look at this website, on which you will find a wide range of responses to a related question: how is the Internet changing the way you think?

Is the Internet Changing the Way We Think?