This weekend is a good time to start thinking about your blogpost. You can dig into anything we've discussed so far. For example you might more closely compare "Sight" to the Googleglass promo video, or think about how we workship/fetishize technology as "Bendito" suggests, or look at your own relationship w/ your phone or your gaming experiences.How do game landscapes compare to 'World Builder'? Watch and compare "The Story of Stuff" to Wall-E. There are many options. Here's a model.
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I've been seduced. After resisting smart phones for a long time, I got an iphone a few weeks ago. But it's not the phone I'm enamored with, but rather that little 'ping' sound that tells me I have an imessage. You know the feeling, the pull of the ping, that sweet iphone sound (why are their sounds so good?), and the urge to drop whatever you're doing and see who sent you something, who wants to see you, really, who loves you. The little endorphin rush. Here's where those commercials promising love w/ every device (like the BT landline commercial we watched) feel briefly, potentially, true.
The 1998 movie "You've Got Mail" uses the AOL (America on Line- ask your parents) mail greeting to emphasize the thrill of email. The original audio file (here) is now available as a Chrome extension for nostalgic boomers.That all seems particularly dated now, but even going to the physical mailbox had a similar power. You've probably felt it opening the mailbox, looking inside, sorting through the envelopes for something from a college. Then, why do I feel guilty about my response to the imessage 'ping'? Perhaps it's because I've always felt unmoved the lure of technology, (ok, I have always wanted a Macbook, true) and now, I'm not.
That's the story of the movie 'Her' as well, albeit in a more literal seduction. And while a rom-com movie explores the romantic aspects of technophilia, it also returns to a standard sci-fi question- What happens when our technology escapes our control? What happens when we become tools of our tools? The insult 'tool' seems particularly apt here.
Adam Gopnik suggests in a great New Yorker article that responses to technology fall into three predictable categories- The Cassandras who cry 'the end is near', the utopians who see a technological nirvana, and those who claim humans never change. Our videos tend to fall into the first two categories. A strong point of view makes for a better story, certainly. In this video Ray Kurzweil seems to avoid these oversimplifications noting instead that the 'Singularity', the moment when humanity and technology merge, is an event horizon beyond which we can't see. His 2012 movie, Singularity- The Movie however, seems like cheesy pandering to our fears. Time magazine did the same when his book The Singularity is Near came out in 2011. Yet just as this technological revolution seems as important as the revolutions of the printing press or the steam engine, so too does the pending creation of artificial intelligences that surpass our own.
While I don't think my sudden fondness for my iphone's ping sound means I'll be jacking into the Matrix any time soon, the larger movement blurring the boundaries between humanity and technology seem inescapable. And I do believe, like Socrates, that our tools change who we are. For the moment, having a world of information in our hands feels powerful, and my immediate question is- how to best understand and use this in our classroom.
Special added bonus- Check out this great TedTalk about computers w/ personality.
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I've been seduced. After resisting smart phones for a long time, I got an iphone a few weeks ago. But it's not the phone I'm enamored with, but rather that little 'ping' sound that tells me I have an imessage. You know the feeling, the pull of the ping, that sweet iphone sound (why are their sounds so good?), and the urge to drop whatever you're doing and see who sent you something, who wants to see you, really, who loves you. The little endorphin rush. Here's where those commercials promising love w/ every device (like the BT landline commercial we watched) feel briefly, potentially, true.
The 1998 movie "You've Got Mail" uses the AOL (America on Line- ask your parents) mail greeting to emphasize the thrill of email. The original audio file (here) is now available as a Chrome extension for nostalgic boomers.That all seems particularly dated now, but even going to the physical mailbox had a similar power. You've probably felt it opening the mailbox, looking inside, sorting through the envelopes for something from a college. Then, why do I feel guilty about my response to the imessage 'ping'? Perhaps it's because I've always felt unmoved the lure of technology, (ok, I have always wanted a Macbook, true) and now, I'm not.
That's the story of the movie 'Her' as well, albeit in a more literal seduction. And while a rom-com movie explores the romantic aspects of technophilia, it also returns to a standard sci-fi question- What happens when our technology escapes our control? What happens when we become tools of our tools? The insult 'tool' seems particularly apt here.
Adam Gopnik suggests in a great New Yorker article that responses to technology fall into three predictable categories- The Cassandras who cry 'the end is near', the utopians who see a technological nirvana, and those who claim humans never change. Our videos tend to fall into the first two categories. A strong point of view makes for a better story, certainly. In this video Ray Kurzweil seems to avoid these oversimplifications noting instead that the 'Singularity', the moment when humanity and technology merge, is an event horizon beyond which we can't see. His 2012 movie, Singularity- The Movie however, seems like cheesy pandering to our fears. Time magazine did the same when his book The Singularity is Near came out in 2011. Yet just as this technological revolution seems as important as the revolutions of the printing press or the steam engine, so too does the pending creation of artificial intelligences that surpass our own.
While I don't think my sudden fondness for my iphone's ping sound means I'll be jacking into the Matrix any time soon, the larger movement blurring the boundaries between humanity and technology seem inescapable. And I do believe, like Socrates, that our tools change who we are. For the moment, having a world of information in our hands feels powerful, and my immediate question is- how to best understand and use this in our classroom. Special added bonus- Check out this great TedTalk about computers w/ personality.
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