iWeb, Writing, and Growing Up

While working on iWeb for our presentations, I became very upset at the difficulties I was having learning a new program. I see parallels between this and the ensuing frustration, even anger, produced by some writers. Through writing, a medium to transport ideas, people can introduce new ideas and when they are different from the norm, or challenge our preconceived notions, the differentiation of reactions is enumerable. I myself have been made to laugh, learned to think more deeply, and been outraged entirely. While reading President Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, I learned things I had not thought about before. However, I do not really grow as much as I would like to when I read things by people I already agree with, and I have found my best growth when I read works by authors I disagree with. Intellectual conservatives like Peggy Noonan and George will have presented ideas that forced me to rethink my own in order to justify them, and in doing so, I came to understand those ideas better. Through this process, I discovered more about myself.

The Rise of Technology and the March of Freedom

The last two chapters of Natural Born Cyborgs sum up the basic point that Clark is making. In his example of the scientists at the University of Warwick, he was able to present both points of view and also explain why the advantages of the technological advance of our society outweigh, and possibly cancel out the risks. Fortunately, he does acknowledge some of the complexity regarding this on page 179, "We really do need to pay closer attention to the many ways in which new technologies may impact our social relations, and our sense of ourselves and of others." It seems that through our technological advances we have the potential both to build up and to break down our society. We could descend, as John Pickering fears into a society of people that devalue themselves and those around them, or facilitate more developed cooperation within our society. My estimation is that we will see both evolving among our populace, we will eventually see the traditional conflict between development and deconstruction fought through the medium of whatever technology is developed. There will be governments (including our own at some point in time) to insert themselves within the private confines of individuals as occurred in the 1950s during the Red Scare. However, their will also be those that will use the informative capacity of the internet (or whatever succeeds it) to crush the oppressive regimes and warlords who enslave people through force of arms, by bombarding them with a force of truth (just as Radio-Free Europe did during the Cold War).



My estimation is that we will require an informed citizenry that can communicate and mobilize. The good news is that the advances of this technology only makes this easier.

Chocolate Rain by Chad Vader

iPod Determination and The Fall of Humantiy

I would like to return to our discussion on Wednesday about iPod Culture. Almost everybody mentioned ways that using iPods have changed our behavior. I think that this has strong parallels with Technological Determinism. Potts says, "as media technologies change, profound cultural effects ensue. These effects operate on both the level of the individual psyche and the social formation as a whole." Our discussion was largely centered around this idea as it relates to iPods. We automatically recognize that someone with both earbuds in should be left alone, that it is common courtesy to take on bud out when you talk to someone else, and we do not talk to each other on the bus anymore. These examples of our cultural norms that have changed from iPod use, suggest that some technological changes are powerful enough to be more than one more element within a larger social movement. The technology itself is the catalyst of this social movement by tapping into parts of our psyche that previously went ignored. In the case of iPod, I am concerned that this technology may have a dehumanizing effect. Instead of socializing with people around us, we dwell in the isolation of iPod music. We are using the iPod like a drug o escape from the pressures of big cities and crowded buses, and we become dependent on it for constant stimulation and when forced to cope without it we have lost the ability to reintegrate into the society.

The Power of the Dream in Scientific Revolutions

This title is for the last post. I forgot to add it before I posted it.

On page 7 (page 56 of reader) of "Introduction: A Role for History" from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn states that, "Scientific fact and theory are not categorically separable, except perhaps within a single tradition of normal-scientific practice." This sentence has many meanings. It seems fairly rational that a scientific theory must be based on some kind of observed and fact that may be confirmed, and it is logical that before a you can declare a particular idea "fact" it has to be validated by some kind of scientific process. However, the idea that theory can be separated from fact seems revolutionary to me. This idea threatens to widen the notion of what is and is not science. It is plausible to me though, that in order to expand our understanding of the natural world that we may have to develop a theory that is not entirely based on fact. In order to have any kind of validity within the scientific community, or to have any practical applications for our society, it would eventually require some kind of factual basis. However, to devise theory that is beyond our current notions of fact, would be in essence to dream. Is dreaming necessary to stimulate innovation within our scientific communities?