Weekend Reading Response

        First of all, I feel that I have learned a great deal from the little reading that we have done in this book so far. Slack and Wise certainly present a great deal of information in a way that is much different than reading a normal textbook. I like how they try to get reader to fall somewhere in the middle when it comes to either technological determinism or cultural determinism. Clearly, as we saw in our class debate Thursday, there isn’t going to be any winner, and Slack and Wise provide both the positives and negatives of each side, making the middle ground easier to reach. After reading over the weekend, I found the discussion about control to be very interesting. I now wonder, is it ever going to be impossible for control of new technology to keep up with the invention of new technology? Obviously, as we get more and more advanced with our technology, the control over that technology must become better as well. I think this goes back to our class discussion last week when several people mentioned how we continue to come up with new technology that is better, quicker, more convenient, etc. and it gets to a point where the technology is so advanced that being able to have control is a concern. I wonder if this crisis over control is more serious than we think and if it should be brought up to more people’s attention. Until reading this segment of the book, I never seriously took the time to think about how these technologies could be out of our control. It’s scary to think about how some of these technologies are running themselves or are in the control of just a few experts.

     One quote from the reading that I also found interesting and brought back up the idea of convenience was, “Rather than being a convenience, the new technologies make it easier – sometimes imperative – to continue to work on evenings and weekends” (59). I think it is funny that some of these tools, specifically our cell phones, make our lives so much more convenient, but they also make our lives so much more hectic and stressful. Now it definitely isn’t uncommon for people to have to worry about work when they should be relaxing during time away from work. Cell phones now have so much capability that make it easier for a co-worker to reach you on a Saturday when you’re at home with the family. Our culture isn’t designed to go back to the days without these mobile devices, but I wonder if things were less stressful back then when people didn’t have these types of tools. I think we have gotten to a point where the majority of people are dependent on their technology. Take a cell phone away from someone for an extended period of time and I seriously think they would struggle as to what to do without it because they are so used to having it every moment.