I was given the opportunity to speak to two political science classes at Seton Hall today about politics and technology. Aside from having a great time (hopefully some students came away with a new interest of exploring the implications of new technologies) it really reminded me how important it is to really engage with the different technologies that we use everyday. Before long, new technologies that at first seemed strange, encroaching on our privacy or otherwise inconvenient seem to more-so define our daily lives.
The Facebook Newsfeed is a great example. When it came out, a large percentage of Facebook users got fairly upset how their lives were being displayed publicly for anyone to see. Now, imagine if Facebook took away the News Feed and the alerts about what our friends are doing? It hardly would even seem like an interesting or useful service to use. Yet, that is exactly what the service was for the first couple years of its deployment.
All of this not to say that these technologies, or more specifically, platforms, are necessarily, or inherently, bad, but rather that we really should make sure we all fully understand the long-term implications of the technologies that we more and more use everyday
I was one of the students present today during your presentation. I thought it was interesting, but maybe online activity will come full circle. Soon everything about everyone will be available and people will become so inundated with "facts" about people that no one will care at all? Dare to dream.
ReplyDeleteOn a random note, is your blog description ironic? No one is truly "objective" (unless you're a freak for Ayn Rand).
yeah i think that is probably starting to happen now with the facts actually. there was some professor on the daily show a while back talking about how he puts a ridiculous amount of information online about himself, what he is doing, where he is because at a certain point it's just too much for anyone to deal with.
ReplyDeleteand yeah i suppose it's ironic. i kind of like the idea of arbitrarily objective, whatever that means exactly. i'd like to think i'm logical and rational, but then again maybe i'm just crazy for thinking that?