Silence is Golden

Silence and the Notion of the Commons

Summary: In this article the author, Ursula Franklin, talks about how technology has come to affect the soundscape. She mainly talks about how silence is being privatized and manipulated for profit. She talks about how businesses constantly surround their customers with noise (music) aimed at getting them to buy something, or feel a particular emotion. She argues that silence used to be common to all, and how now, silence is something that can be privately manipulated.

Quotes:
"The distinctive character of this domain of silence is that it is an enabling condition that opens up the possibility of unprogrammed, unplanned, and unprogrammable happenings."(Franklin643)

This quote is interesting because it is a central part of her claim for silence. This is why we need silence: because it enables for these amazing, thoughtful things to occur.

"But in many cases silence is not taken on voluntarily and it is this false silence f which I am afraid. It is not the silence only of the padded cell, or of solitary confinement; it is the silence that is enforced by the megaphone, the boom box, the PA system, and any other device that stifles other sounds and voices in order that a planned event can take place."(Franklin163-165)

This quote is interesting because the author is claiming that forced silence is bad. She later goes on to claim that forced noise is also bad. Because of this, she seems to claim that any private manipulation of the sound scape is a bad thing.

"I wonder if music will soon be piped into the voter's booth, maybe an upbeat, slightly military tune: '  Get on with it. Get the votes in.'"(Franklin644)

This is very interesting considering we already see this happening with political propaganda. If it is an attack ad, the music will be very dark and dramatic. If it is a campaign ad, it will be hopeful, soaring, patriotic. I wouldn't be surprised if this were to happen.

Questions:

"The kid is programmed. We are programmed. And we don't even ask for a quiet space anymore."(Franklin646)

I don't really know what she means by "programmed". What is it that we are programmed to do?

"Is not our sanity at least as important as the safety of our cars? One should begin to think: are there places, even in conferences like this, that are hassle-free, quiet spaces, where people can go?"(Franklin,645)

I understand her argument here: silence allows for sanity. There is a character on Doctor Who called "The Master". Ever since he was eight, The Master has been able to hear a constant drumming sound in his head. This sound drove him insane. My question is: Is this what is happening in real life? Has a lack of silence contributed to the increase in school shootings and the like?

The Bird and The Machine

The Bird and the Machine by Loren Eisley

"The Bird and the Machine" is an essay by Loren Eisley about the inhuman nature of technology. He makes a claim that, even if we can get a machine to replicate the human body- or any other body- exactly, it will not be quite human. It won't be alive. It lacks the necessary emotions and thoughts that make up a living creature. He says that, even if we can manufacture a machine that is exactly like a living creature, it won't be the same. He claims that technology is inferior to biology.

Quotes:
 "This is the great age, make no mistake about it; the robot has been born somewhat appropriately along with the atomic bomb, and the brain they say is just another type of more complicated feedback system."(Eisley601)

This quote is very interesting because it illustrates how the "great age" has come at the price of devaluing organic, human life.

 "I have no doubt it can be done, though a mouse harvesting seeds on an autumn thistle is to me a more fine sight and more complicated, I think, in his multiform activity, than a machine "mouse" running a maze."(Eisley602)

This is interesting because the author makes the claim that it is far more complicated for a living mouse to get seeds than a machine mouse. Most of the time, we look at it as being the other way around.

"Ah, my mind takes up, on the other hand the machine does not bleed, ache, hang for hours in the empty sky in a torment of hope to learn the fate of another machine, nor does it cry out with joy nor dance in the air with the fierce passion of a bird. Far off, over a distance greater than space, that remote cry from the heart of heaven makes a faint buzzing among my breakfast dishes and passes on and away."(Eisley607)

This is the passage Eisley ends his article on. I found it very interesting because it tied his claim to his story of the birds in a very powerful way.

Questions:

"I had all the information I needed just like any skilled assassin... I had a professional assassin's reputation to keep up...An assassin has to get used to these things. I had a professional reputation to keep up."(Eisley605-606)

What does he mean by "assassin"? Why does he keep referring to himself as an assassin?

"I quit looking into that eye and managed to get my huge carcass with its fist full of prey back down the ladder."(Eisley605)

Why does he refer to his body as a "huge carcass"?

Eisley, Loren. "The Bird and the Machine". The Immense Journey. 1957

Personal Narrative

Personal Narrative

My experience with technology has always been a strange one. I have always felt like there was a disconnect between my interactions with technology and other people's interactions with technology. Other people have always seemed to be more obsessed and addicted to technology than I ever have been. People act like technology- specifically social media- is an important, and even necessary part of life. If you weren't on a social network, you obviously didn't have a social life.
I started to notice people's obsession with technology early on in life- starting with my dad. My dad is an engineer who works on the GPS and tracking systems for buses. He has a work issued laptop. My dad always brought that work-issued laptop with him whenever we went on vacation. Because of the laptop's frequent appearances during our vacations, my mother facetiously decided that it must be part of the family and decided that it needed a name. So she called it Larry. Each time my dad got a new laptop from work, we would just rename the laptop to Larry the 2nd, then Larry the 3rd, then Larry the 4th, and so on and so forth. I am not quite sure which Larry we are on now, but he still remains my father's constant companion. Every morning, the first thing my dad does is go on his laptop and check up on the buses. He and his technology are practically inseparable.
It wasn't really until middle school that I started to notice that me fellow students were having a similar obsession. Instead of buses, though, they were obsessed with checking their Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. It seemed like everyone had a Facebook. I didn't get one until maybe 7th grade, but when I got it, I didn't actually use it very often. In fact, it wasn't until very recently that I started to use it with any consistency. I would go years at a time without using it and it never bothered me. Meanwhile, other people couldn't go an hour without checking their feed.
For the longest time it confused me as to how other people could become so addicted to their social media. It wasn't until this past Christmas that I finally figured it out. Their social media was so addictive because it was so easily available- it wasn't a hassle for them to access it. What changed at Christmas was that I got a new iPod Touch. Before, I had an iPod Classic Video (which I had lovingly nicknamed "the dinosaur" whenever I was around middle school students). I had been quite content with my old iPod, and for years I never thought of getting it replaced. That was, until I had bought some Doctor Who HD episodes on iTunes and found that I could not load them onto my iPod because its old systems did not support the glossy HD-ness of my Doctor Who episodes. That was enough to motivate my nerdy butt to ask for a new one. That Christmas, I got exactly that- a new iPod Touch. However, my new iPod touch did more than play Doctor Who episodes and music- I could also link up to my house's Wi-Fi and log onto Facebook via my iPod! This meant that I didn't have to get onto my computer in order to access my Facebook account- which completely changed how easily I could access Facebook. Using my computer to update Facebook was a bit of a hassle. During my middle school years, my computer was so behind on its OS that I couldn't even see the pictures or images on Facebook. When that finally got updated, I found even more problems. Sometimes, my computer would log me out as soon as I logged on to my computer, so even getting on my computer was a problem. Then, when I actually got on my computer I had to be sure to save whatever I was doing every few minutes because my computer screen had a habit of shutting off whenever it felt like it- leaving only the backlight on. Then, I would have to turn my computer off and back on again, because there was no other possible way to continue to operate the machine. I also had multiple internet problems where my computer would decide to not connect up with the internet for no reason. To top it off, my computer was extremely sluggish. All of these factors made logging onto Facebook more trouble than it was worth. My new iPod touch meant that I could bypass all of those problems completely and get onto Facebook easily. Suddenly, I found myself using Facebook more and more often. I also used YouTube more often because of the YouTube app. That is when I realized that the reason why I wasn't as addicted to Facebook was because I didn't have an easy way of accessing it. I'm still not as addicted to Facebook as other people- I think that is because I learned to live without it.
I have also noticed that I am not as addicted to texting as other people. I have easy access to texting- so that is not the issue there. I think part of it may be the fact that I am actually a fairly private person. That could also contribute to the fact that I don't use Facebook as often. I like to have time exclusively to myself, and I prefer to communicate in person. So maybe people's personalities can have an effect on their use of technology. Maybe that is a good thing. I don't think the world needs everyone to be loudly voicing their opinion to the rest of the world. Sometimes the world needs some peace and quiet.

The Interface is the Message

TED Talks

Aaron Koblin: Artfully visualizing our humanity

Summary:
Aaron Koblin's talk on TED Talks was about how technology can make us more human. He talked about how people can be connected together through technology, and they can actually express themselves through interface technology. He showed several projects that he was working on, using primarily sites such as the Mechanical Turk. In each of these projects, he had people do a simple task- such as drawing a picture, and every picture drawn would be put together to make a piece of art. In some cases the people knew the context of why they were doing a particular task, in others no context was given at all.

"19th Century culture was defined by the novel, 20th century culture by cinema, the culture of the 21st century will be defined by the interface."

This was a tweet that was shared by Aaron Koblin at the beginning of his talk. It was interesting because it really summarized everything he was going to talk about. It was also very interesting because the quote itself was a tweet- it was a product of interface itself.

"The interface is the message."

This was the phrase that Koblin ended on. It was very interesting because it was a play on the "medium is the message", this time he was saying that the specific type of interface had a message of its own.

The Mechanical Turk.

This was a site that Koblin talked about quite a bit. He used it to get people to do a specific task- without giving them any context for that task. It was a site created by Google, and it was named after the story of the amazing chess machine that wasn't actually a machine- just a legless man playing chess.

Questions:

Interface

I didn't exactly know what he meant by interface- I had a vague idea, but was still a little confused.

Sheep.

How did the sheep portray anything about humanity being increased by technology, was it the individuality?

Koblin, Aaron. Artfully Visualizing Our Humanity. Making Sense of Too Much Data. TED. 4/7/13. Web. http://www.ted.com/playlists/56/making_sense_of_too_much_data.html.

Technopoly by Neil Postman

Technopoly

Summary:
Technopoly is about assessing technology for both its good and bad consequences. In this particular chapter, "The Judgment of Thamus", Postman stresses that one cannot only look at just the bad side or just the good side of technology. He also stresses that technology may have unforeseen consequences. He talks about how technology changes the balance of society and shifts the way people communicate.

Interesting Quotes:
 "I have brought Freud into the conversation only to show that a wise man- even one of such woeful countenance- must begin his critique of technology by acknowledging its successes."(Postman7)

This is interesting because this sentence characterizes the way Postman advocates looking at technology- that one must look at both the bad and the good. It is also very interesting that he brings in Freud as an example of someone who has critiqued technology well because he first talks about the positive effects of technology, then goes on to talk about its negative effects.

"No manuals have been written to explain what is happening, and the schools are oblivious to it. The old words still look the same, are still used in the same kinds of sentences. But they do not have the same meanings; in some cases, they have opposite meanings."(Postman8)

This is a very interesting quote because Postman assumes that no one is talking about the way technology has changed speech, and no one notices the difference when it has, in fact, been noticed. Last year we read an article on how words have changed to either mean "good" or "bad". It wasn't exactly addressed as to whether or not technology had a hand in this, but it was addressed. Also, Postman doesn't actually give any specific examples of which words have changed and how they have changed. Sure, later on, he gives a list of words who's meanings have been supposedly changed- but he only says that they have changed. He never takes any of those words and says that its meaning has changed from this one specific thing to this other specific thing. This is where Postman's argument is weakened. He assumes that the reader will just blindly agree with his argument that those words have changed in meaning. The article we read last year in Modern Western Thought gave specific examples of words that changed in meaning and how they changed in meaning. For example, the author of the article we read last year said that the word "gentleman" went from a land-owning noble ( a member of the gentry)  to any man who was chivalrous.

"He means to say that those who cultivate competence in the use of a new technology become an elite group that are granted undeserved authority and prestige by those who have no such competence."(Postman9)

This is an interesting quote because it puts into view a different way of looking at the digital natives and the digital immigrants. This is a far more negative way of looking at the whole concept of digital immigrants and digital natives- that the digital natives have an unearned advantage over the digital immigrants.

Confusing Quotes:
"But we may learn from Thamus the following: once a technology is admitted, it plays out its hand, it does what it is designed to do. Our task is to understand what that design is- that is to say, when we admit a new technology to the culture, we must do so with our eyes wide open."(Postman7)

I thought Postman was trying to argue that technology does things that weren't in its original design or intention, not that they do whatever their design intends. Also, are we to only watch and point out all of technology's effects? What is his call to action? What do we do in response to all of these affects?

"For one thing, in cultures that have a democratic ethos, relatively weak traditions, and a high receptivity to new technologies, everyone is inclined to be enthusiastic about technological change, believing that its benefits will eventually spread evenly among the entire population. Especially in the United States, where lust for what is new has no bounds, do we find this childlike conviction most widely held."(Postman11)

What other countries is he talking about besides the United States? He only seems to point out the United States, and it sounds like he has a bias against that particular country. Especially because it doesn't seem like he has actually done any research on what everyone in the United States is thinking. We just read two articles by people in the United States about how a lot of people in the United States are concerned about the negative effects technology may be having on the population. Where has he done his research?

Postman, Neil."Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology". 1993. New York, USA. Vintage Books.

The Touchscreen Generation

The Touchscreen Generation
 "The Touchscreen Generation" is an article about the affects of technology- specifically touchscreen technology- on young children. It mainly looks to answer the question "Is technology good or bad for young children to use?" The author primarily talks about the whole debate surrounding technology and young children. He addresses the paranoia parents experience over letting their young children use technology. He ultimately comes to the conclusion that technology can be beneficial, but should be limited if it begins to cause problems in a child's behavior and development.

Quotes:
"By their pinched reactions, these parents illuminated for me the neurosis of our age: as technology becomes ubiquitous in our lives, American parents are becoming more, not less, wary of what it might be doing to their children. Technological competence and sophistication have not, for parents, translated into comfort and ease. They have merely created yet another sphere that parents feel they have to navigate in exactly the right way. On the one hand, parents want their children to swim expertly in the digital stream that they will have to navigate all their lives; on the other hand, they fear that too much digital media, too early, will sink them. Parents end up treating tablets like precision surgical instruments, gadgets that might perform miracles for their child’s IQ and help him win some nifty robotics competition—but only if they are used just so. Otherwise, their child could end up one of those sad, pale creatures who can’t make eye contact and has an avatar for a girlfriend."(Rosin1).

This quote is interesting because it sheds light on a reason for limitation of technology that I hadn't considered. It points out that parents limit technology to children because they are made nervous by its increased accessibility.

"Previously, young children had to be shown by their parents how to use a mouse or a remote, and the connection between what they were doing with their hand and what was happening on the screen took some time to grasp. But with the iPad, the connection is obvious, even to toddlers. Touch technology follows the same logic as shaking a rattle or knocking down a pile of blocks: the child swipes, and something immediately happens. A “rattle on steroids,” is what Buckleitner calls it. “All of a sudden a finger could move a bus or smush an insect or turn into a big wet gloopy paintbrush.” To a toddler, this is less magic than intuition. At a very young age, children become capable of what the psychologist Jerome Bruner called “enactive representation”; they classify objects in the world not by using words or symbols but by making gestures—say, holding an imaginary cup to their lips to signify that they want a drink. Their hands are a natural extension of their thoughts."(Rosin2).

This quote was interesting because it points out why iPads and iPad games are so appealing to young children. The touchscreen technology makes the games much more intuitive to young children than other games may be.

"Technically I was the owner of the iPad, but in some ontological way it felt much more his than mine."(Rosin2).

Its very interesting how the author feels alienated from her own possession due to the ease at which her child uses the author's iPad. This is interesting in light of the whole concept of "digital immigrants". She is the digital immigrant, her toddler is the digital native.

Questions on Quotes
"A longitudinal study of children older than 2 and a half showed that the ones who watched Blue’s Clues made measurably larger gains in flexible thinking and problem solving over two years of watching the show."(Rosin3)

How does this connect to the banking concept? Is it not an effective means of teaching because it is not interactive?

" People fret about television and ADHD, although that concern is largely based on a single study that has been roundly criticized and doesn’t jibe with anything we know about the disorder."(Rosin4)

Why do people think that ADHD is connected to TV use? I thought it was largely genetic. My dad grew up only being allowed to watch one TV show, one time a week- The Adventures of Batman and Robin, and yet he has ADHD. Most of his sisters also have ADHD. My brother and I also have ADHD. We inherited from our father, not from the television screen.

Rosin, Hanna. "The Touchscreen Generation" The Atlantic. 20 March, 2013. Web. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/04/the-touch-screen-generation/309250/4/

Is Stupid Making Us Google?

"Is Stupid Making Us Google?"

What is the argument of the reading?
The argument of "Is Stupid Making Us Google?" is that people use the Internet and Google because the way people think and have been educated has changed. The author of the article argues that the way we think has changed in such a way that discourages deeper reading and thinking. He argues that the reason why people use the information for quick fact finding and skimming as opposed to close reading is because that is the way we think now. He argues that politics have caused educators to teach that history and the old way of doing things were both steeped in racism, sexism, homophobia, etc- as opposed to the correct open thinking of today. He argues that education has been dumbed down, and therefore, our thinking has been dumbed down.

How does this connect to other things we have read or discussed?
 "Is Stupid Making Us Google?" is a response to "Is Google Making Us Stupid?". "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" argued that the structure of the Internet has changed the way that we think and consequently has made it harder for us to do deep reading and thinking. "Is Stupid Making Us Google?" argues the opposite- that the way that we think has changed the way the we use and shape the Internet- not the other way around. The author of "Is Stupid Making Us Google" blames politics and poor education for the lack of deep reading found in people today- which is similar to the article on the banking concept that we read at the beginning of the year. It also relates to our discussions surrounding the banking concept. The author of the article that we read at the beginning of the year wrote that the banking concept serves as a way for the higher classes to keep the lower classes from thinking independently- in short, for political reasons. In our discussions we watched a video in which a man explained that the banking concept education that children were getting was scientifically proven to decrease their creative thinking skills over the years. This is similar to  the argument the author of "Is Stupid Making Us Google?" makes. He argues that education is the cause of people's lack of critical thinking- not the Internet.

Question:
If education was the reason why people stopped thinking and reading deeply, then why is it only affecting older people (who graduated years ago) now? Why is it that they have only stopped reading deeply now? Wouldn't it have kept them from reading deeply in the first place?