Do technologies have ideology?

Everybody felt moved to debate after Nestor's post on Facebook (here). I didn't want to be less -you know-, and, even though I opted not to intervene in the discussion, I took some time to write a post on what I consider my personal conclusions on the topic. The title of this post is The ideology of Technologies, and you can have a look at it in If I may say so... (here)

Conclusions to Forum 4: New technologies, positive or negative?

We’re closing our Forum 4 and it’s time to attempt to draw some conclusions. I noticed that most opinions were coincident about the double nature of technologies. Technologies, most of you agreed, have advantages and disadvantages. Something that has passed unnoticed in the discussion was perhaps the inevitability of technologies. No matter how reluctant we had been to accept computers or cellphones, it’s most probably we had finally been drawn by the force of change. We could ask ourselves, for instance, whether we could keep good contact with friends if we refused to carry cell phones. Some suggested that this would mean displacing face-to-face communication. Contrary to what we usually think, studies on adolescents are showing that new technologies have enhanced personal interaction:

“Friends play an expanded role in the lives of young people. When they come home from school, college or work, socialising does not stop as it used to, it just goes online. Kids and young people are now connected constantly.” (Andrew Davidson, cited here)

Our class could be an example of this. We interact, send doubts and comments and read ourselves online; however this doesn’t mean that we don’t have things to do or say personally. On the contrary, new technologies expand our class, they take our class beyond the institute, but they don’t (and they can’t) replace it.

Of course there are very clear drawbacks to new technologies, and you mentioned many during the forum discussions. But, as Robert put it, “there have always been two sides, one positive and one negative, in relation to these new technologies and pastimes.” Whenever new things appear there are always conflicting views. This is the case for computers and television, but it has also been the same for calculators and even books. New technologies have always been a topic for debate, although, as history teaches us, they have always come to stay. So, if new technologies are unavoidable, perhaps the wisest thing to do would be to get to know them; only through knowledge and experience can we develop a critical relationship with them, being able to exploit their potentials and avoid their dangers.

Finally, as a conclusion to this conclusion, let me invite you to read Reactions to technology: past and present, a post from If I may say so… which I wrote last year after a heated discussion on these same issues. And don´t forget we’re still discussing Do we live in democracy? Don’t miss your chance to participate there as well.

Forum 4: New technologies, positive or negative?

Once again, Néstor has proposed to us another opportune topic for debate. With his article On a Pessimist view he has already launched a discussion on new technologies and their potential risks. I would like to begin our first forum this year by expanding Néstor’s concerns beyond Facebook. Our leading questions are simple, though answers may not be so:

Are new technologies positive or negative? To what extent? What are we gaining from their use? What are we loosing?

Join the debate.

‘On A Pessimist View’ (By Néstor Cevasco)

As I know that many of you are habitual users of Facebook like me, I regarded interesting to share my personal point of view referred to an article from La Nación written by Richard Bernstein. Intelligently, by applying a rhetorical question in order to achieve a pragmatical effect on the reader like introducing the element of doubt and criticism, this writer wonders ‘Es posible que Facebook estupidice a los usuarios?’

Honestly, never had I spent my time in asking myself if Facebook users could possibly become stupid either for investing a considerable part of their precious time in sticking photos on the Internet to expose these to a wide social net of friends and relatives or just for making insignificant comments on their routines which they would like to share with the rest. I should say that I do not agree in the least degree with this writer, although I must humbly recognize that since I introduced myself in Facebook, I have been spending vast hours of my time in entertaining myself, time that could have been used in reading an interesting book or in hearing a serious debate on the Internet for instance.

I think there’s nothing wrong in getting banal with something new. Maybe banality is just a part of a natural process. There are plenty of examples showing that people generally get banal or entertained to the excess whenever they are faced with something new. For example, adolescents getting banal as soon as they get in love for the first time, a little boy that could possibly get banal because his/her father has recently bought a new play station. Constantly, people get banal whenever they are faced with something that attracts powerfully their attention. Sooner or later, this symptom changes either because one gets tired or because there’s a new entertainment ready to replace the previous one. Therefore, this symptom of ‘stupidity’, or in better words, of banality evidenced on people, as soon as it has easy come, must easy go.

Concluding, the idea that facebook can make its users ‘stupid’ is totally unjustifiable. On the contrary, sometimes this label of banality or triviality described by some pessimist, apocalyptic observers on people who naively entertain themselves is just a sign of a transitory symptom which does not last forever and naturally changes almost imperceptibly as soon as something different appears like a serious book, a change of habit or just a different life situations.   

On RFID Microchips and Big Brother (by Néstor Cevasco)

To my delight, one of the books I enjoyed the most in reading was ‘1984’, written by George Orwell in 1948. In this distopian, fictional novel Orwell creates a distinct world, a society whose totalitarian form of government depicts a sub world of party members who are followed by spies. What follows is a list of neologisms implemented by this author in ‘1984’:

Big Brother: an entity with absolute power capable of controlling the party members in the society of 1984 novel. In the Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, Big Brother is signalled either as a supreme authority or a tyrant. (Page 425 of the index).

Black white: The acceptance of what authorities say without questioning.

Thought crime: the crime to dare to even think that the authorities could be wrong in a way.

Face crime: (careful, it’s not face book) A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety that carries with it the suggestion of abnormality or of having something to hide.

Thinkpol: The though police whose role is to eliminate thought crime through spying and total surveillance.

Telescreen: an electronic device like a TV screen used to spy or monitor people in their homes or at workplace.

One of the common questions that comes to the reader’s mind after finishing this book is how close we are as a society to the Orwellian perspective of the world. As regards this, it is interesting to observe the spreading of rumours about RFID microchip implantations on humans in a distant future. Such a thing may lead one to believe that the future of our society does not seem to be so far from the paradigmatic vision proposed by Orwell in ‘1984.’

But, what is a RFID? It is a microchip whose acronym means Radio Frequency Identification Device. It is very tiny, as big as the size of a rice grain, and can be inserted underneath the skin of animals or hidden inside things. What is it used for? Technically speaking, it sends a radio frequency signal, or radio waves that can be traced by satellites. These send all the information collected to a PC in order to determine specific parameters such us identification or location. For the time being, such devices are used exclusively in industrial processes or by scientists to monitor groups of animals. However, in a not so distant future, as it is presently rumoured and debated on the Internet, such technology could be used on humans in the form of microchip implantations under the skin. This high technology could be implemented to collect from people valuable information such as insurance company, I.D number, name, and so on. In addition to this, there are those who suspect that such a new technology could possibly be used to monitor and spy people by security service enterprises in the future, exactly like it occurs in Orwell’s novel, but in a real context.

As a conclusion, provided that all these vague rumours of human micro chipping were true, then George Orwell’s vision, of a society of a supposed Big Brother watching all of us, would be very closer to the society to come in the future.

The computer versus the blackboard

(The English Press, June 1995)

Article sent by Cristina Hoppenthal

The class room is in semi-darkness, illuminated only by computer screens. In front of each computer,  sits a child manipulating a cursor to create shapes as part of a routine maths lesson. The screens show symbols, video images and texts, all designed to national curriculum standards. The computers speak directly to the pupils through headphones, electronically encouraging, correcting or congratulating them. Patrolling the classroom as a “facilitator”, the new name to  describe a teacher.

This scene is fictional, but not as futuristic as it might sound. Some predict that it could be common by 2020. Much of this technology already exists, and politicians want to maintain the momentum of what educators describe as  “the education superhighway”. But is the superhighway, despite  good intentions, a dead end?  Though no one doubts that our children’s survival in the computer jungle of the 21^st century will depend on how conversant they are with computer speak, not everyone feels optimistic about the future in which computers take the place of blackboards. […]

Suspicions about dependency on computer learning are increasing. On one hand, there are those who argue that the computer  revolution will promote a new way of learning which will help Britain to compete with its economic rivals. On the other hand, there are those who say that the technology is being misused, and that countries such as Japan have not introduced it into schools because they want their children to understand the basics first so that they can then use the computer as a tool.

Some worry about their dehumanizing effect as, although computer learning allows a high degree of personal interaction between students, in the end the most important interaction is done with a data base.

Mark Sealey, editor of the English magazine Educational Computing and Technology, states his stance about computer learning. “The most important skills are the high order skills”, he says. “Most of the knowledge will be available electronically so that students will not have to waste time memorizing it. After all, it is not knowing the number of wives Henry VIII had that is important, but asking why he had so many.”