Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander (that is, if students have to do this I guess I should). I realize blogging is der riguer these days but I personally can't get excited about them as either a provider or a consumer. As a professor and administrator with strong capabilities with web development and email, I guess I am blogging constantly and have been for years, though perhaps to a narrow and captive audience.
Blogs are, however, an example of how wrongly advanced computer technology was predicted to affect human interaction. From the mid 1960's to the early 1980's, the notion and even fear was that computers would advance to become our peers and companions or even our masters (e.g., check out one of the best films ever made: 2001 A Space Odyssey), reducing or eliminating human-to-human interaction. What computers have done -- which required tremendous development in the basic information technologies -- is mediate and simply make possible methods of human interaction hardly conceivable 50 years ago: social networking, virtual spaces, instant messaging, blogs, electronic auctions, online courses). A modern concern is that these new forms of interaction can be unhealthy substitutes for "normal" water cooler or front porch chats and the like. Always something to worry about, eh?
4 comments:
Who needs human interaction? I have never met a PC that needed a breath mint or heard a laptop give a 30-minute acecdote about its children.
This is only a change in humanity. We are what we are. When you look back in history, we (the human kind) have changed according to time. One simple example, women as young as sixteen would get marry in the 1800's. Nowadays, her friends and families will probably say "Are you out of your mind!!!"
We are constantly changing to adjust for social changes. We learn to use and rely on computer for our own "perceived" good. Although I believe some of us did get a little carry away, in this case, information technology, I don't beleive we have given up what we are. We are, as always, humans.
Should we rely more on IT as it advances? It all depends on human factors such as psychological and emotional needs. I don't believe people will ever give up the fac-to-face communication. IT is just a tool and convenience for "keep-in-touch".
In a way, I thought that we would be more advanced now than we are. I'm still waiting for my JetPack to strap on to my back an fly wherever I want. I just new as a kid growing up in the 70's that the moon would be an optional place to live, and HAL would help us through life instead of just being the pre-Atlanta Olympics voice on MARTA trains. I agree though that technology has changes our lives and there is no going back. I'm still teaching my kids how to fish, just in case.
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