Rough Draft for portfolio

Is society today plugged in? Are we any different than our parents were when they were children/teenagers growing up with the ‘new’ technology they had? These are questions that I decided to research and look for answers. Seeing how there is no definite answer, the best that can be done is to look for answers that researchers have come up with and also personal opinions that I have experienced along with others that I have noticed. This paper will focus on sources that I have had to read for this class along with the research that I found while searching for answers to this question. This involves anyone from just being born to those who are elderly; rich and poor, because we all are some how plugged into something, whether it is technological or not. It relates somehow and in some way can be compared from the technological world to the non-technological world.
To start off, there is Kim Vicente. Vicente wrote the piece called The Human Factor. This piece is interesting because it starts off with talking about an event that had happened in the past and had terrible consequences. The event took place at Chernobyl. The failure of a nuclear reactor had tragic consequences that resulted in the deaths of many, radiation burns and other hazardous illnesses that followed. You ask yourself though, how does this deal with being plugged in? It may not directly, but sometimes, like today we are used to machines dealing with them. We expect them to fix their own errors or have no issues at all, in other words, we expect and more on the side of want, them to be able to never fail. What I am basically trying to say is that machines and technology have come so far that we expect them to be flawless, we expect them to work, but they don’t. Ergo, we are plugged into the fact that it, the technology, will never fail, and this leads us into the idea of being blind of what happens.
However then you go into the idea of being able to fix the ‘malfunction.’ Some of us do not have any idea what to do. We buy the product thinking that it will last us the time duration, which we need. There is no need to worry about what will happen to it, we have a guarantee. This leads us into the idea of being blind; we are now plugged in. We do not look at what the problem is, instead we are so in tune and in sync with what we are doing, that everything around us, becomes a blur and what we are doing is the only main focus. There are many things that we can see this compared with such as: cell phones, TV’s, computers, internet, and just so much more. Society once thrived on people being able to work together and get things done, but now we are able to cut work forces in half. This just leads to more problems with the economy, but that is off topic, but it shows that what we do has consequences. Has society come down to simply being lazy? Yet again, a bit off topic, but it just shows that each decision society makes leads to something either positive or negative. If you break that down into the individual person, it can also be applied, we make decisions about many different things, such as when we choose to use our phones, watch tv, go on the computer or anything like that. When we choose to do that we are in an economic term making “opportunity costs.” What this means is that we are giving up something for the use or production of something else. So either way we are dedicated to something, we plug ourselves into what we want to do, whether beneficial to society or ourselves only.
Whatever we do, there is a cause and effect. Sometimes it is beyond our control, while other times we proceed without looking beyond what we already know. When inventors create projects they always, or should always be thinking of the repercussions that might be possible if it fails. Like nuclear reactors, if they fail, they cause much damage to the area. They think of the benefits and harms of the product, but it is not up to them sometimes to see where it goes. Take iPods for example: They are great for sharing music and getting information, but can make society anti-social in many ways. There is a lack of communication between people when we are "plugged-in." We are the final critics of the technology and how we use it is the review. If we use it a lot, it will get a good review, but sometimes the over use and under use of something can be good or bad. But sometimes we are so near sighted that we lose our focus and cannot seem to look beyond the actually problems that might be caused. In the end, it comes down to being our fault then, we are the reasons why communication is at a breaking point, why it fails and why the world seems to be more individual than what it was before.
Then we have David Nye and his book Technology Matters. First, before I decide to go into the piece, I felt that his title was more of a question, but put as a statement. More along the lines of…Technology Matters? The reason I feel this way is because his chapter titles are usually questions. So you would think that the book is a matter of fact and opinion. The facts coming from his use of other books to make his points, but then his opinion, which would be later, stated in his chapters. But, beyond that, there is much that can be said about Nye and his work.
With Nye, as stated before, he labels each chapter with a question. One chapter in particular that really catches my eye is Cultural Uniformity? or Diversity? What makes this chapter so interesting is the fact that with Vonnegut and Vicente each talk in some way of being uniform or diverse in life. Nye uses this to discuss the ways in which we live as individuals. He uses a quote from the book The Making of a Counter Culture by Theodore Roszak. His quote talks about how there are ‘little boxes’ each with the same family style, children, all who go to the university. It makes me think that deep down are we all trying to be the same as those around us? It may not seem like it, but I see it. If our neighbor gets a new TV, we want a new TV as well, but just not the same brand. We are trying to ‘Keep up with the Jones’. Another chapter, which can also tie in with Vonnegut and Vicente, is Sustainable Abundance, or Ecological Crisis? Vicente can be tied in with his idea of Nuclear Reactors, and even basic things such as schedules and Vonnegut with the idea of Ice-Nine.
With those authors in mind, it makes you think about today’s society and what should be doing and not be doing. Things that come to my mind are the ideas of being ‘plugged-in.’ We have so many personal items, such as cell phones, laptops, mp3 players, that we forget that we are part of society. Society cannot depend on surviving with individuality, but the cooperation of everyone. IF we are not paying attention to what is going on around us. Something extremely important might be announced but the headphones block it out, we have the opportunity to see who is calling and not answer, and we have the opportunity to do whatever we want basically from personal computers. It is a scary fact that we have those liberties. Now I am not saying to ban them all, but we, as individuals need to look beyond our own goals/benefits and ourselves and see what we can do to help each other out and benefit still at the same time. This would be a very interesting matter to look at, because we all are uniform in ways of wanting the same things, but unique in the ways in which we use them.
This just brings it down to the idea of being less secure. In one of my previous works I mentioned the idea of privacy. How do you feel about the issue? Do you feel that you still have the same privacy as you did 10 years ago? Take for example going online, people seem to know what you want. I go online and there are ads that are promoting things, such as shoes, phones, and other accessories that I am interested in. When you search for things, the people at ad companies see this and know how to target you and make you want to buy their products. Where is the privacy in that? We have government officials who listen in on conversations of people because of threats against the United States, but there is no privacy there at all.
In my own opinion, well to narrow it down, there has never been full and complete privacy. Thing leak out from people, documents get into the wrong hands. In regular day activities people always ask what you have been up to, and when we say we don’t want to talk about it, they start to speculate about what might be going on. Why can’t people just stick to what the have and not worry about others? It is who we are, it is what we do, and privacy doesn’t seem to be in out English language.