Social change

How is society changing our identity?

Introduction

n The creative destruction of social change:

n something new is created but something old is lost (Cockerton and Chaparian 72).

Examples

n stock market crash, recession

n It forces companies to redefine their product, become more efficient.

Marriage breakup:

n 40% in Canada (73)

n How are people changing because of this?

emotional labour:

n Manual labour decreasing in North America

n Replaced by service sector (massage moods of customers)

Immigration:

n positive and negative at the same time?

n How is it changing Canada?

n Other examples?

Technology

n “Plausible Futures” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bZte_eDc2Q

n How is technology both creative and destructive at the same time?

History of Technology

n From http://www.explainthatstuff.com/timeline.html

n 10 million years ago: First tools

n 1 million years ago: Humans learn to control fire

Materials

n 6000 BCE: Bricks

n 1000 BCE: Iron age begins

n 105 CE: Paper

n 700 CE: Gunpowder

Transportation

n 3500 BCE: Wheel

n 1814 CE: First steam locomotive

n 1885 CE: First gasoline powered automobile

n 1903 CE: First manned, powered flight by Orville and Wilbur Wright

How is technology changing us

n Think of an example of technology that you think has profoundly affected human beings.

n How does the technology make us act or think differently?

How does technology change us?

Creative destruction

n Is technology both creative and destructive at the same time?

n What are we losing?

n What do we gain?

n How is technology changing us?

n http://www.elearntube.ca/video/271/How-is-technology-changing-us

Does technology use us?

n Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

n “The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded” (Cockerton and Chaparian 87-88).

n Does Google make us think differently?

n Is it an “intellectual technology” that helps us think better?

Unforeseen consequences

n “My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles” (88).

n Maryanne Wolf: “When we read online … we tend to become “mere decoders of information” (89).

n Our attention span decreases and we don’t reflect on what we read.

Technological change

n Introducing a technology changes the whole social framework.

n Eg. the clock

n Lewis Mumford described how the clock “disassociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences” (90).

n The clock separates time from natural rhythms.

Technological determinism

n Tools shape the user (individual and society)

n Eg. Printing press (a factor in the Protestant Reformation: individual interpretation of Bible)

n Other technologies?

Technology shapes the user

n Neil Postman, in Technopoly, argued that different media produce different thinkers:

n print media (eg. books) produce linear thinkers

n TV appeals to emotions

n computers privilege individual problem solving

 In-class writing (5%)

n Write one paragraph answering one of the following questions (do an outline first!):

n Describe one example of a technology (not described in the textbook) that is changing us. How does it make us think differently about ourselves?

n What intellectual technology would you like to see invented? Explain how it would affect human thinking.

Cyberspace

n How is human communication changing in cyberspace?

n Social networking

n Relationship processor

n More communication, creativity, contacts

Are there some dangers?

n Students who use Facebook get lower grades.

n Anita Hamilton, “What Facebook Users Share: Lower Grades” http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1891111,00.html

n The rapid-fire communication style of Twitter does not lend itself to compassionate thinking.

n Rick Nauert, “Twitter Tweets, Texting May Lack Compassion”

n http://psychcentral.com/news/2009/04/14/twitter-tweets-texting-may-lack-compassion/5317.html

Can technology help us be better humans?

n Steven Johnson, in Everything Bad is Good for You argues that video games make us smarter.

n We learn to strategize, plan and evaluate possible outcomes.

n Does it help us learn to problem-solve?

Is technology inevitable?

n Google’s mission: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” (93)

n One of the founders of Google said that “The ultimate search engine is something as smart as people—or smarter” (93)

Is Google smarter than us?

n Artificial intelligence

n It illustrates the “belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized” (93).

n http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7mp6A3Zrtg&feature=related

Artificial intelligence

n Can a computer think?

n Eg. Deep Blue, the chess-playing computer that beat Gary Kasparov, the grand champion

n Can it be creative?

How would we use it?

n Chatterbots

n Alice http://www.pandorabots.com/pandora/talk?botid=f5d922d97e345aa1

n Robot receptionists

n http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-GDgprOajE&feature=related

n Care-givers

n http://twendyone.com/demo_e.html

Is technology neutral?

n Some argue that our tools are not ethically good or bad in themselves; it is human beings who use tools for good or evil purposes.

Technology as metaphor

n Human beings are seen as machines

n Do we start to think like machines?

n Are human beings just information processors?

n Virtual reality (we see the world through technological lenses)

n Eg. Google glass

n http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-y3bEjEVV8