DIG 245: WEEK 4 , GROUP 3-READERS

Look Who’s Talking (1999):

In this article, Howard Rheingold explores the development of humans that has come with the development of technology. Doing so, he analyzed the Amish people, who continually add “rules for new tools,” and their use of phones. The Amish have adopted the use of the phone among much debate, however the phone is used as a community, in that they mainly use the phone to return calls rather than answer calls. The reason is that the Amish are concerned with how a piece of technology such as the phone can change their person. The Amish’s practices offer a very unique perspective of the effects of phones on a society. The technology that they allow is judged by whether it can bring the community closer together or not. Rheingold poses some interesting questions about how phones are changing the way people are, how they act, and what is important to them. His concluding question deals with our value of community in light of the usage of phones. While this case study of the Amish and their practices was somewhat interesting, it was not necessary to make the observation that phones are changing the way we are. It is obvious that the technology we use today is changing the way we think and interact with other people. Nevertheless, it seems that Rheingold’s purpose was to make a point that we also as a society should have ongoing conversations about the tools that we use in light of our values. This is a reasonable point, however one could make this generalization about many things that shape our society and ideology; we should have ongoing conversations about all the important aspects of our lives.

Is Google Making Us Stupid? (2008):

Throughout this article, Nicholas Carr, discusses the development of the human thought process in relation to the developments in technology; most specifically the technological advancement we’re all intimately familiar with in Google. The paradigm shift that concerns Carr the most is his ability to read, not that he is becoming illiterate but that his and his peers way of reading and processing information is changing. While clearly lamenting this newfound inability, he brings up a historical discussion of innovations in technology and the how they changed history while also bringing up interesting points about human psychology and physiology. In human psychology, he points out that we as a race have a tendency to take on attributes of our tools. HIs key example of this was the writing of Nietzsche after he got his typewriter. Ultimately, Carr’s fear stems from a scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey with a robot who seems more emotional than his human peers. I think that Carr’s worries are well founded and researched, and throughout my life I’ve noticed the shift in conversations going from speculation and discussion based off prior knowledge being transformed into the statement “Google it.” The correlation between technology and stupidity seems to be memory retention, during most of the time periods examined. However, with this level of technology I feel that Carr’s unstated fear is the human ability to even think. He fears that technology will progress to the point where even the most basic human capability such as expressing emotion is compromised. Eventually, this article seems to raise the question of when technologies start to hinder us more as people than help.

Facebook is eating the world, Columbia Journalism Review (2016):

Emily Bell makes the observation that social media platforms, and big tech companies in general, are now in control of a huge amount of news media. Social media is so popular, that news organizations benefit from publishing their content straight to these platforms. They reach more people, and they can make more money off of ads. Facebook and other platforms have effectively become something they never intended to–news organizations. They may get the content from many sources, but a lot of people, particularly younger people, rely on these companies to provide them with the news. This isn’t always a good thing though. For example, during the last presidential election, many people were worried that Facebook and other social media platforms had a significant effect on the election. The presence of “fake news” on these platforms became a real issue, and it was because just about anyone can post onto these platforms. Also, social media tends to filter what you see based on what it thinks you want to see. So when people read the news on these platforms, they might only be seeing a very one-sided version of the news. This is obviously quite problematic and can end up having a very tangible impact on the world.

Data Culture — Observers Group 4

Using Survey Monkey, our group surveyed the class asking for their honest answers pertaining to what website they spend the most time on, and how much time they spend on that site per day.  Facebook was the most popular website for our class by 26% with the average time being 1.2 hours.  We then compared our class’ preferences with the same questions Alexa.com gathered for their statistical breakdown of the 65 million active Amazon Prime users.  Alexa.com reports that Google is the most used website, at 3,560,046 linked sites and people spend an average of 7:50 minutes on Google, but the length of observation (ie measured per visit, per day, per month, etc) remains omitted.  On Alexa.com, Facebook came in at number three with 7,600,185 linked sites and an average of 10:09 minutes spent on the site, again we are unsure about the specifics in regards to time measurement.

From our class observation, we can deduce that social media occupies our peers’ website traffic, followed by Youtube (1:40 hours) and then Netflix (1:20 hours).  We are skeptical about these results because students hypothetically should be doing research or completing homework which usually requires Googling something.  We have concluded that people often disregard Google as a site itself and think of it as just a passageway to other content.  If content is being reached through Google, at what point is Google excluded from the usage equation? Furthermore, college students are 18-22 years old on average, representing a cross section of the population.  Complicit with other research, it makes sense that social media and entertainment websites are occupying our time the most.  Interestingly, Facebook is still very popular among Davidson students even though it was ranked third on Alexa.com and has been decreasing in popularity for some time, much to Zuckerberg’s chagrin.