More "evil" technologies

 

Honey, we're just friends. That's all.

 

A couple of technology-contrarian writings that are intriguing.

The first "The Image Culture" by from The New Atlantis Journal takes a hard and thoughtful look at images in our society and asks what  impact  Photoshop  might have on how reliable we find visual information. (See photo left. And I have no Photoshop skills.)

 

The second  writings come from the blog if:book, a publication of the Center for the Future of the Book, about the possible downsides of the $100 laptop project.

    hundred dollar lamptops may make good table lamps, Nov 17, 2005 

    no laptop left behind, Nov 8, 2005

 

If there is one thing that makes me nervous about getting hooked on blog reading (which I definitely am), it's that I tend to only read those people with whom I feel simpatico - rarely those with whom I disagree or genuinely challenge my core beliefs. For those who get their news primarily through RSS feeds, this tendency to only read those we agree with and about issues which are of personal interest is exacerbated. With a print newspaper, I do read George Will and look at the news which is not pretty. Does this make RSS a potentially "evil" technology.

 

I keep thinking about a statement that Paul Saffo made at the NLB conference last week. The Web is lessening our "common culture." The example he gave is that when he polls audiences, people have either read The Da Vinci Code or the Left Behind series - rarely both. Studies of the buying habits of Amazon customer show that Republicans read only Republican books; Democrats only Democrat books.

 

It's always been  my firm belief that we learn more from our enemies than we do our friends. How can we develop the tendency to read a wider range of opinions in both ourselves and, even more importantly, in our students?

 

Happy Turkey Day!

 

Comments

[Aidan Maconachy]

Visual information is increasingly becoming suspect. Computer enhancement techniques make the ugly ... cute, the absent ... present and put people together in fun loving groups who would never be caught dead together.

Yes it is worrisome, because visual information has lost a lot of integrity. It's basically gotten to the point where you can't 100% trust what you see.

[Jacquie Henry]

Ahh.. the big downside of Web 2.0. I just downloaded the newest version of Google Desktop. It comes with an annoying feature that constantly scrolls through news "alerts" geared (supposedly) to the user's personal interests. So far, I am not impressed. It is annoying and intrusive - so I have turned it off. But - this is the wave of the future for news.

Your comments remind me of the flash video - EPIC 2014 <http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/> where "Googlezon" provides news and information custom-tailored to the consumer's personal preferences. There is an update to the video, called EPIC 2015 <http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/epic> - but I prefer the original. Somehow the narrator's voice in EPIC 2014 comes across as more soothing and yet somehow .... menacing....

[Laura]

Doug, I always knew you had a thing for Laura's...

Seriously, this is an issue that's worried me since grad school, when one professor would laud the soon-to-come availability of satellite radio. "Imagine," he'd say, "you can listen to your favorite music or talk shows all the time, all over the country." When I pointed out that this was narrowing our worldviews, he'd pooh-pooh me. I have friends that only read/watch media that aligns with their ideas and beliefs. To me, this is dangerous because it increases the divisions in our society. The past few elections have shown how little understand "the other" - RSS feeds just enhance that.

As an educator, what should we do? Try, as much as possible, to keep exposing students to views, ideas, opinions and beliefs that challenge what they think. Then help them figure out for themselves how to decide.