Made to Break 1st third pg 1-83

In the book "Made to Break" written by Giles Slade, Slade talks about the Capitalist Government and the industries in America and how they use products to produce more revenue. They are able to produce more revenue by purposely making products that will break after a certain amount of time. This amount of time could be right after the manufacturer warranty expires. Giles Slade exaplins it as, "Planned Obsolescence is the catch-all phrase used to describe the assortment of techniques used to artificially limit the durability of a manufactured good in order to stimulate repetitive consumption"(pg. 5). That way consumers, American society, will continuously buy the same products once every 3 or 4 years (depending on when the product is set to discontinue to operate). These products range from everyday household items such as toasters, tv's, vacuums, to large products like cars. (I heard BMW's are set to break down after they reach the 100k miles mark).

With the ever-growing rate of technology today, technology is getting out-dated faster and faster. A technology that was made today can be outdated quickly in a matter of months, weeks, or even days. That is why the brand new technology being sold on the market is the most expensive and a few years later you can get the same product for about 1/8 of the price. I remember when i bought an I-Pod (the really bulky one with no graphics on the screen and it was 300 dollars). The technology is outgrowing itself and is a perfect product to be used with "planned obsolescence". Justus George, an advertiser, brought up the notion of "Progressive Obsolescence" because consumers are not dumb and become wearer of the products that magically just stop working. He suggests, "the progressive obsolescence principle...means buying for up-to-dateness, efficiency, and style, buying for....the sense of moderness rather than simply for the last ounce of use" (pg 58). American society wants products they can rely on and pay for the newest product in its category. They do not want to see their personal belongings die after a short period of time after they have purchased the item.

Wikipedia Analysis 2nd Half

The second half of "The World and Wikipedia" by Andrew Dalby begins by talking about why society loves wikipedia. Dalby suggests that society loves wikipedia because it is like a virtual world, "We love it because it's a virtual nation, or rather a virtual world" (pg. 120). Also since Wikipedia is so interactive and anyone is able to change its content. But i believe we love it because when we need information it is so easy for us to go to the online encyclopedia and access the information that we need. American society is in love with laziness. Whatever is easy and fast for people they lean towards and rely heavily on it. That is why people are in love with the internet and great sites just like Wikipedia. In the book there are a lot of examples of articles wikipedians put on the website. There are many articles about people and usually the information is from the authors themselves. Dalby also says, "We love Wikipedia because we love talking about ourselves" (pg. 148). Which i agree with completely. Society is filled with a bunch of people who love to think highly of themselves. These people combined with the wikipedia website creates a reason for people to use the site.

Cars Drive Themselves?

My current event was about the Google car, which is an autonomous car capable of driving itself IN traffic. The article was from nytimes.com. The link - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/science/10google.html?_r=1&ref=technology Sebastian Thrun, the director of Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory is the mastermind behind the project. The car is equipped with sensory cameras which give the car a 360 degree view of what's around it while driving. The only time the car was in an accident was when it was on a test drive and someone rear-ended it from behind while it was at a red light. How ironic.

My question to the class was "Are we as a society ready to put our lives in the hands of this technology?" And the other question was "If the car was to get into an accident who would be liable, the passenger behind the wheel or Google the developers?"

There was mixed thoughts about the technology. Of course this project will take many more years until it is ready to take on society. Some students thought it was not safe and we cannot trust it. What if the car malfunctions? Stuff like that.

People thought the person behind the wheel should be liable because they are capable of taking control of the car anytime. It is still their responsibility to make sure the road is safe.

Overall i thought this was a very interesting article and would like to see this product further in the future. But for now society is not ready for it.

Why Wiki Web? Critical Analysis 7-113

In Andrew Dalby's "The World and Wikipedia", Dalby tells us about the people who contribute to Wikipedia, (Wikipedians) who invented Wikipedia, why it was invented, and the pros and cons of Wikipedia. A brief overview of why it first came into existed: Gaius Plinius Secundus, referred to as Pliny in the book, spent everyday getting books read to him as well as always had a notebook in his hand. He uses the word encyclopaedia which meant "full circle of knowledge", "He is the first known author to have used the word encyclopaedia, 'full circle of knowledge'" (pg 20). There was simply too much information to be put on paper. As well as the problem of updating the material, "One annual issue looked very much like another, and people soon discovered that a slightly used set of Britannicas was very nearly as good as a new set while costing a small fraction of the price" (pg.29). So then encyclopedia enthusiasts moved on to CD-ROMs. This was a good idea at the time but then it was too much a hassle for users to switch between CDs if they needed information from another CD, "Encyclopaedia Britannica itself appeared in a CD-ROM version, in 1994, it would not fit comfortably on one disc; a big nuisance to any home user..." (pg. 30). Wikipedia came about from the initial idea of an online encyclopedia, Nupedia- started with Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales. Later Sanger thought of an idea of adding software that allowed “anyone” to alter the information. That is how Wikipedia got its name from the Hawaiian adverb ‘wikiwiki’ which meant ‘fast’. Wikipedia started on January 15, 2001. Since then it has grown exponentially. Some problems that come with Wikipedia is that people can conduct vandalism and put information that completely false and it will be able to stay on the website until someone else changes it, “The best feature of the site is that anyone can edit virtually anything contained on it. The worst feature of the site is that anyone can edit virtually anything contained on it” (pg. 50). There was an incident that someone falsely wrote a biography about a certain person, John Seigenthaler Sr., the guy who did it was named Brian Chase and after he was found had a Wikipedia article titled Brian Chase (Wikipedia hoaxer) named after him.
To state the truth, I use Wikipedia for my classes to find information about subjects I am not educated in. Is that a problem? Some teachers believe that Wikipedia is a way of cheating if used to research topics in class. Others do not mind at all, in fact teachers use articles from Wikipedia in their lectures and teachings, “Ever more often, students find themselves using Wikipedia because their treat it as a teaching aid” (pg 104). I feel as though we are in a day and age of technology and if all this information is given to us at our fingertips, why not use it to its advantages? If the material that one researches is incorrect then that student should pay the consequences and get a bad grade for not looking up other sources other than Wikipedia to make sure the information is liable.

From Tools 2 Technocracy 2 Technopoly pg 92-199

In the second half of Neil Postman’s “Technopoly”, Postman introduces the innovation of medical technology in American society. Of the first inventions of medical equipment, the stethoscope was the most significant. The tool is used to listen to internal problems of sick patients and indicate to the doctor what could be causing illness. After the stethoscope, the same technology concepts were innovated into other areas medicine. Other instruments would include “ophthalmoscope, which allowed doctors to see into the eye; the laryngoscope, which allowed doctors to inspect the larynx and other parts of the throat, as well as the nose; and, of course, the X-ray, which could penetrate most substances but not bones” (pg. 100). After all of this new technology was created and implemented into regular medical procedures, training for doctors had to be changed as well. This all leads to patient’s expectations of medical treatment being high when they are paying hospitals for surgery: closely related to Postman’s argument that American society has become so dependent on technology to the point where without it the society would be lost. Again to reiterate from my last post, Technolopy describes how society, mainly America, has become dependent on the ins and outs of technology and the beliefs people have on science/technology playing a larger role on decision making than humans do. Postman believes people should not fall into the trap of technology. He strongly urges people to spread the word about Technolopy and don’t let technology take us over. I personally think that Postman is over exaggerates a little; technology in American’s society today is necessary is some ways. Like medical technology, for instance, without medical technology there would be a significantly higher amount of people who die in hospitals every year. Though Postman does not argue that technology is not necessary he wants to point out that people are not well educated about the technology and also other education. He believes teachers nowadays should teach differently, “Every teacher ought to be a semantics teacher, since it is not possible to separate language from what we call knowledge. Like history, semantics is an interdisciplinary subject: it is necessary to know something about it in order to understand any subject” (pg. 194). So that being said all Postman wants is for American society to be more educated about technology and to not let technology run people’s lives or someday it will literally run the human race. I agree to some extent; people cannot become lazy and let technology figure out all their problems for them. If we become dependent on technology, we cannot be dependent on other people and most importantly cannot depend on ourselves.

-ChristoPHO