The fears of technology that people had at the turn of the century seem to parallel the fears we have now of everyware consuming our lives. Its interesting to think though, about what they feared then and how it seems like such an innocent technology now.
Telephones – “some objected that it encouraged too much familiarity and incivility and that it undermined neighborhood solidarity”
Our society now is all about connections, and with the internet I am unsure if we will ever have “too much familiarity” with anything, especially each other. But during the 1920s when this claim was made, their society was completely different than ours is now, I am sure the idea that you could talk to someone whenever you wanted, several hundred miles away would be very scary thing, next to your farm house being abducted by a flying saucer of course.
“College administrators in the 1920s argued that automobiles distracted students from their studies and led many to drop out”
Perhaps more people are dropping out help their families, or some other noble cause that requires them to flee from school. If cars are suppose to help people go places, and people are leaving college (granted dropping out is not good) then I would think cars are serving their purpose of transporting.
While reading Technology and Modern Life it seems like new technologies and society are playing a never-ending game of cat and house. If its not telephone that are causing moral breakdown, it’s the radio, if its not the radio than it has to be videogames, or cell phones, or computers, the internet, basically every major technology has “been then and caused that”. But they are all just technologies, and we, the users of technologies should be the ones taking the blame.
“The telephone cannot think or talk for you, but it carries your thought where you will. It’s yours to use...” This quote can serve any technology, and as I type on a computer, it is I thinking, not the keyboard, mouse, or monitor.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I agree in some ways, but not in others. First, I think you're right on about the internet- definitely no problems of knowing too much. However, you can see where their fears came from right? I mean look at it from the same point of view as the people afraid of losing their privacy to rfid tags now. I think their fears were, if a little silly to us now, justifiable to them then. They didn't know what would happen. As a whole, humans tend to fear that which they don't understand. And that leads us to the problem at hand. The reading talked about the difference between "things" and "devices" with the main difference being that we don't understand the "devices" or how they work. The main problem is, we are leaning more and more towards the "devices" as everyware becomes more prevalent. There has to be more understanding or the tools will hurt instead of helping us.
Post a Comment