Blog #8

While thinking of a research topic, while trying to best relate it with technology, the first thing that came to my mind was how crazy about it some people are. Ten years ago, how many people would have called you crazy by meeting the person you married, online? Most likely, people would think you were absolutely nuts. Today, it’s so often you hear of people going to “Match.com” or “FindLove.com” or whatever they may be. Also the relationship to how internet social networks affect people’s social skills now a days. Someone could write novels on a computer, expressing their feelings, and that same person, may not be able to carry on a conversation to your face for longer than 30 seconds. Overall, I guess its just interesting to me HOW the internet can affect people’s social skills, and just how many different ways its being used today.

Assignment 5

Throughout David E. Nye’s book, Technology Matters, he sites several sources that help him to better explain the points in which he was referring to. For example, in chapter 10, he refers to a writer by the name of Debra Galant, who wrote the article called “Driven to Distraction,” the source quoted by Nye states, “Many drivers have trouble keeping their eyes on the road as they drink their coffee, eat, and talk on the phone, sometimes steering with their knees. A few drivers try to work on their personal computers or personal digital assistants”(186). In this section of the book Nye starts by explaining the positive side, so to say of multi-tasking. For example when parents “praise” their children on their ability to listen to music, do their homework, and surf the internet all at the same time. However, when it starts to consume our lives, and multi-tasking becomes a part of everything we do, is it such a good thing? Of course it’s nice when all of our favorite restaurants, now have drive thrus, but that’s just another thing to add to our busy, hectic days. All of these everyday tasks tend to just form into being a normal routine for everyone, increasing everyday and if said from Nye’s point of view is because “people seem almost compulsive about keeping up with information flows”(186).

Another source that Nye refers to in his text, is taken from a book called Digital Being, written by Nicholas Negroponte. While explaining how much of the world today, think technology is a type of leisure item, rather than a necessity, Nye goes against the opinion of Negroponte when he states that: “digital technology can be a natural force drawing people into greater world harmony”(19). As Nye’s response to that is this: “This is nonsense. No technology is, has been, or will be a “natural force.” Nor will any technology by itself break down cultural barriers and bring world peace”(19), he obviously strongly disagrees that technology such as the television can have such a great effect, or too, a positive affect on society. He also argues that they can in no way be a “natural” force in the sense that technology in and of itself are inventions, not something that’s always existed. This opinion seems rather fair, seeing as how you can’t give something the credit of being “real” when it’s taking the place or making something easier, after the original product has always existed, just maybe not been as convenient as new discoveries.

All throughout Nye’s text are many strong, well reasonable arguments. The ones I chose to explain are just two of the hundreds of sources Nye uses throughout his entire book. While explaining an interesting topic, he uses either sources that agree with his opinions, or ones that argue against them, making it easier to express his point of view.

Although Nye doesn’t agree with all the uses of technology, he doesn’t necessarily “bash” any of them either. Using several examples of ways that can improve society, along with the ways it doesn’t, help people to realize the changes America really goes through everyday. Today, do any of us really realize just how much the world around us changes everyday? Do we realize how far we’ve come from 50 years ago, or even just 10 years ago? When we go out and buy the newest ipod, do you realize it was only just a couple months ago that we just bought the newest one then? I think these are the kinds of questions Nye is trying to raise. Ones that are so simple, yet everybody is completely oblivious to.

“Driven to Distraction,” an article written by Debra Galant, I about the many things drivers do while behind the wheel. Everyone obviously has their own comfort ability level while driving, most people tell other people not to talk on the phone or text while they drive, yet they do it so often themselves. Montill Williams, a national director of public affairs for AAA, the travel club, states in the article that: “ Everyone else’s cellphone irritates you, but your own is indispensible. People think its O.K. for tem to do it, but its bad for everyone else.”
Galant says many times how our society is encouraging the distractions while driving by building more and more drive-thrus. How many restaurants now have the convenience of a drive-thru, you’d count almost all of them.
A chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee, named John Wisniewski, states in Galant’s articles that he believes multi-tasking in cars has become a “need, rather than a want. For people like soccer moms and convenience store owners. My biggest driving challenge is drinking a cup of coffee and eating a Krispy Kreme at the same time.
Multi-tasking while driving has different effects depending even on just the state in which someone is. For example “bending over to pick up a dropped French fry in Utah could cause someone to run into a ditch, whereas in somewhere like New York, it would cause a chain reaction and tie up the turnpike for hours”(2).This is just an example of the outcomes of such driving.
In a book called “Digital Being,” written by Nicholas Negroponte, is a book that could be summed up into the writer explaining how technology and digital programmed machines are going to one day “take over the world.”
Negroponte starts part of his introduction by showing the statistics of just how many Americans own desktops or laptops. “35 percent of American families and 50 of American teenagers, have a personal computer at home; 30 million people are estimated to be on the internet; 65 percent of new computers sold worldwide in 1994(5). If so many people are already owning computers to help them do their everyday tasks, obviously people want the easiest way to do things, so they are going to buy those things. Hence the reason technology greatly advances everyday.
To show the determination to get his point across Negroponte says this: “Your telephone won’t ring in discriminately; it will receive, sort and perhaps respond to your incoming calls like a well trained English butler”(6). All of us have one day wondered if our cars are going to be able to fly. Or just how many things are going to drastically change within our lifestyle, Negroponte just makes it clearer to us what types of things these may be.
In comparison to David Nye’s book “Technology Matters,” these two sources raise a lot of the same points as does Nye. Their outlook on the intensions of technology are similar due to the fact that they show how far technology has brought us today and how its still changing everyday in the hopes to make our lives easier.