Category: Group B

Posted on

Can You Survive At The Dinner Table Without Your Phone?


Warning: Undefined array key 0 in /home/digitald/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/radgeek-FWP---Add-Attribution-70acf52/add-attribution-feedwordpress.php on line 363

Today, we cannot seem to go anywhere or do anything without the presence of technology. If we look back to the rise of electricity and the invention of the telephone, as Carolyn Marvin traces in When Old Technologies Were New, we see the shift towards dependency and as a result a change in lifestyle. What most interests me is how technology has shaped relationships in the home.

Marvin writes: “Home was the protected place, carefully shielded from the world and its dangerous influences. New communication technologies were suspect precisely to the extent that they lessened the family’s control over what was admitted within its walls” (76). This fear, arising just from the invention of the telephone, is still true today. What we come to find is that not only has technology influenced what has been “admitted within [the] walls” of the home, but it has shifted how members of the family interact with each other as well. The video below shows this shift, highlighting just how distracted family members have become — not even paying attention to each other while at the dinner table. The son is constantly being fed information through the television, the daughter and mother through their phones, and the father through his computer.

Even in my group of friends today, we have to make conscious efforts to put our phones away when we go out to eat. Chick-fil-a even rewards you if you can last the entirety of your meal without using your phone. The rise of electricity and the telephone shifted familial dynamics in ways that I consider to be irreversible. Even if you make a conscious effort to remove technology from a specific setting, our day to day lives are built on technological interactions, so our conversations and discourses will always be influenced by what we see, hear, and engage with.

Posted from Digital Studies 101 by Rosalia P.

Posted on

Privacy Concerns in Online Shopping


Warning: Undefined array key 0 in /home/digitald/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/radgeek-FWP---Add-Attribution-70acf52/add-attribution-feedwordpress.php on line 363

In her chapter Community and Class Order, Carolyn Marvin discusses a number of sentiments that people in the late nineteenth century felt because of the rise of electricity. In particular, one shift that she touched on was the worry that many individuals, specifically families, felt regarding their loss of privacy with the rise of electricity and technology. She explains that this new technology “had less than amusing consequences for those who found themselves trapped by the great new machines of publicity” (Marvin 67 – full chapter here).

I was very interested by this part in Marvin’s chapter because this feeling of being trapped and watched by technology is a feeling that has only escalated since that time in the late 1800’s. Internet privacy is a hot topic in today’s world because of how intertwined we are with our technology. One specific area where we experience a significant loss of privacy is online shopping.

I’m sure that everyone has experienced something similar to the image below, where you can tell your online shopping habits are being tracked because of the related ads you continually see.

Online habits are seemingly always tracked today. From Cartoonstock.com, Source

But going beyond just advertisement, another interesting point that a recent Forbes article (read the full article here) makes is how online shopping can allow retailers to uncover each individual’s personal demand curve. Online retailers achieving this, the article argues, would mean that online shopping could essentially make us poorer. If all online retailers were able to discover exactly how much each individual was willing to pay for a given good or service, they could perform perfect price discrimination, mitigating any utility gains that consumers might experience if they were able to purchase a given good or service for less than what they were willing to pay. While we have not yet reached this point in the realm of online shopping, continual technological advancements and data storage make this a distinct possibility moving into the future.

Posted from Digital Studies 101 Blog by Patrick G.

Posted on

I Think I Love You… Just Not as Much as You Want Me To?


Warning: Undefined array key 0 in /home/digitald/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/radgeek-FWP---Add-Attribution-70acf52/add-attribution-feedwordpress.php on line 363

Love. A concept that has existed from the beginning of time, something that everybody has sought after, but how has technology changed our understanding of it? In this TedTalk, Helen Fisher argues that technology has not changed love, while Esther Perel claims that our need for love has not changed, but how we love has. In the book, When Old Technologies Were New, Carolyn Marvin discusses how a husband discovered his residential telephone was tapped and used this information to prove to the court that his wife was cheating on him. In another scenario, a man was about to ask if he could court a woman, but right before he managed to speak, the phone rang and another gentleman beat him to the punch.

These scenarios aren’t that far off from what occurs today. Cameras and tapped phones are still used to investigate questionable significant others and one text and/ or DM can change a person’s entire day’s plans and potentially even relationship status. The chapter does later go on to say that “despite the artifactual efficiencies of electrical media so admired by professional experts, they, too, attached greater weight to the irreducible face-to-face encounter as a more trustworthy guarantor of integrity” (page 87). Fisher claims that millennials value being a good parent more so than having a good relationship, while the latter is more important to the parents and grandparents of these millennials. She also mentions how she believes that the shift to egalitarian relationships has caused more of a change than technology has. Now that women can support themselves, they no longer need to search for a suitor with a good socio-economic status, but are free to make choices based off preference. Perel then added that though this is true, technology has broadened one’s horizons.

People have more accessible choices for a partner now than ever before and while this excites and entertains many, it also ensues a bit of dread. People have a fear of missing out, of choosing the wrong partner and yet, they also have a fear of being alone. Fisher made the point that people are consumed with getting to know every little detail about their partner that “where marriage used to be the beginning of a relationship, it’s now the finale.” Though comical, both speakers made compelling points that our society is becoming overwhelmed by choice and, as a result, is choosing to live a lukewarm love-life. We have so much access to another person’s personal life that, by the time of a first date, you probably already know where that person grew up, who their friends are, and what they value. The spontaneity and romance is dying as people become more fixated and critical about the details.

As the saying goes, comparison is the thief of all joy. We can go on our social media feeds, compare one couple’s highlights to our mundane and become completely jaded towards our partners for not living up to our high expectations. We are slowly sabotaging our relationships by remaining fixated on the world around us. We are forgetting to water the plants in our own garden, which leaves us feeling desolate. Technology is only going to keep advancing and I’m not claiming that we should all go live under a rock, but rather, we should take a step back every now and then to appreciate what’s in front of us.

Just some food for thought,

Stir Fry

 

 

 

Posted from Stir Fry Education by Nicky E.

Posted on

Fighting Crime with New Technology


Warning: Undefined array key 0 in /home/digitald/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/radgeek-FWP---Add-Attribution-70acf52/add-attribution-feedwordpress.php on line 363
Remember the days when it was considerably easy to get away with crime in cities? Well, nobody alive does, because the advent of the simple thing we call electricity. As the reading tells us, phonographs, telegraphs, and early electric gizmos started the crime busting technology launch in the late 1800s. For example, the city of Baltimore created 170 call boxes in order for policemen to call back into headquarters to share valuable info. Burglary alarms were being put into place, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art even used new technology to guard their prized artwork. The city of London was able to connect with the Parliament, police, and fire departments, and some workplaces used electricity to monitor a worker’s night shift. For the time, these technologies were amazing and set the table for what we have today, but we are nowhere near done. I do believe that the early improvements all the way back from electricity will eventually evolve to the super-technologies that were present in the novel and film The Circle. A scene shows a worker for this massive world-dominating corporation presenting a camera that can be placed anywhere around the world to take continuous video to be viewable by a vast audience. If this ever comes a reality, it would dispel crime at the highest level. The issue of privacy would be incredibly in question, but the many wrongdoings it would stop might be a final solution to the problems that have been faced since the beginning of civilization. Can you imagine all of the crime that would occur daily if it was so probable that individuals would “get away with it” ? I don’t think we’ll ever go back there again. Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3UgCtRfO3c, “When Old Technologies Were New- Community and Class Order by Carolyn Marvin

Posted from My blog by Wes K.

Posted on

Same Fears, Different Technology


Warning: Undefined array key 0 in /home/digitald/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/radgeek-FWP---Add-Attribution-70acf52/add-attribution-feedwordpress.php on line 363

The world is constantly in fear in the future, weather that be in today’s world where we are terrified of the possibilities of AI or virtual reality, back to the early 1900’s when phones were first developing, there are many instances throughout time where we are scared of the potential future. In both of this week’s readings, the technology that was being developed posed a “threat” towards society. The first of the week’s readings being the Kaleidoscope reading called The Forgotten Kaleidoscopes Craze in Victorian England , written by Jason Farman. In this reading, Jason states how Kaleidoscopes use to be some crazy form of technology in which literally everybody was doing it. And it wasn’t like they were doing it secretly in their rooms or houses, no, they were wondering around the street with these metal/plastic toys fixed to their eyes. As you can probably predict, this could cause some problems and I’m sure a lot of fear for the future of this piece of technology.

In the second reading for this week, When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late nineteenth Century, written by Marvin Carolyn, we see that the new technology to be feared are telephones. In the article Carolyn states, ” In their (electricians) journals, which monitored the official and unofficial worlds of electricity, and wherever they spoke to one another about what they observed in both realms, electricians gave anxious voice to the possible loss of the world they idealized, a world threatened by new modes of electrical communication and put at risk in the very act of their aspiring to it.” (65). As we can clearly see, this upcoming form of telephones had an appeal, however, there are always some who fear how it will change the world as we know it.

(An overview of all the technology over the ages that could have led to fear.)

 

Bibliography

The Forgotten Kaleidoscope Craze in Victorian England, written by Jason Farman, November 9th 2015

When Old Technologies Were New : Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century, written by Marvin Carolyn, December 1988

Posted from My blog by Nile

Posted on

Freedom for Females: Can technology change social structures?


Warning: Undefined array key 0 in /home/digitald/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/radgeek-FWP---Add-Attribution-70acf52/add-attribution-feedwordpress.php on line 363

The technology of the late nineteenth century had strong implications for social structures and dynamics. One of the most notable effects was on the role and power that women were able to wield. For young girls, the telephone and new modes of communication became ways to escape the harsh supervision of their parents. In the image below it can be seen that female switchboard operators got to know the men on the other end of the line. In one instance, it even resulted in a father threatening his daughter’s life because he was so appalled at her flirting with multiple young men (Marvin, 74). The romantic landscape was completely transformed by communication that allowed both privacy and intimacy from long distances.

Female operators at a telephone switchboard in 1880. They would flirt with men on the other end of the line, one of the many example of their freedom.

This new media also gave young women confidence to move outside the constraints of typical obedient behavior that was expected of them. Girls were now allowed to attend shows without a male companion, referred to as matinee girls, and they were perceived as unintelligent, obsessive, and creatures of fleeting interests (72). These women closely parallel the fan girls of today who worship men they barely know and dedicate their lives to following the cult of their music. Electric communication in the external sphere was deemed as something for males, however, in the internal sphere it was something for women as well (81).

One of the original perceptions and goals for electricity was that it would eliminate the idea of separate spheres, something very prominent in early women’s history in England. Instead, in an article for Penn State “Has technology made life easier for working moms?”, it is concluded that technology does not create free time but instead fills it with stuff that may not always be meaningful. While technology did have positive implications for allowing women more freedom and independence, it still today has not erased the separate spheres perceived for women and men.

Posted from Blog by Ashley W.

Posted on

Wintermute Is Coming


Warning: Undefined array key 0 in /home/digitald/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/radgeek-FWP---Add-Attribution-70acf52/add-attribution-feedwordpress.php on line 363
 
In a minuscule fraction of the length of our earth’s history, the brilliance of our minds has allowed us to take over the planet in a way never seen before. We have defied any and all odds to complete such tasks as reaching the moon and building a small tablet capable of holding all the world’s information. Our minds are wired to use logic to solve intricate problems all other species could not. How then, can we ever be challenged? Reading Neuromancer and following the news has significantly altered my opinion.  AI development through machine learning has continued to grow steam, and the capabilities that they possess are starting to strike fear.  Earlier this year, an AI programmed by Elon Musk beat out professionals in the complex PC game Dota 2 after just two weeks of machine learning. As Nick Bostrom points out at a TED convention, AI has the capabilities to reach exponentially higher levels of thought. Our brain is only so large, and a computer can be built to fill a vast room. Our neuron speeds can only travel so fast, but what if a computer can accelerate the speed of human-like thoughts? So when Case witnesses the combination of Wintermute and Neuromancer (what I like to call Big Brother 2.0) and it says to be “the sum total of the works, the whole show”, it becomes what Bostrom’s vision of what AI’s “final form” could actually entail. In fact, Bostrom unveils that scientists have claimed that by 2050, there is at least a 50% chance that AI meets or eclipses the thought capabilities of a human being. Depending on who creates this monster, it could be taught to either “stick electrodes into every human being to make them smile” or find the nth digit of pi. But the danger looks like it may exceed the helpfulness of artificial intelligence, and it seems to me personally that it may be inevitable that terrorist attacks, mind control, or human destruction will very well be a side effect. Whether the bulk of us likes it or not, someone will find a way to build the ultimate invention. #WintermuteIsComing      

Sources:
Neuromancer by William Gibson

Posted from My blog by Wes K.

Posted on

The Female Digital Assistant: Promoting Female Subservience


Warning: Undefined array key 0 in /home/digitald/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/radgeek-FWP---Add-Attribution-70acf52/add-attribution-feedwordpress.php on line 363

Ed Finn’s remarks on the performance of gender of virtual assistants, specifically “the predominance of female voices” in digital assistants such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, made me realize just how engrained and propagated these ideas are in day to day life. In the video below, you see Jamie Foxx interacting with Siri in what seems to be a flirtatious encounter. To have such a commercial aired across the globe seems like a smart business move – who wouldn’t want to buy something that not only made your life a little easier by, for example, setting reminders for you, but also helped to boost your confidence by making similar, flirtatious comments?

In the article “How We Trained AI to be Sexist” by Kerry Davis, Davis highlights the work of Jacqueline Feldman, the mastermind behind MyKai — a genderless artificial intelligence digital assistant. Feldman writes all of the Kai bot’s interactions — making sure that the comment it makes are as non-complacent to harrassment as possible. She makes sure to call the Kai an it, not a she. The development of the Kai bot is an important move for the future of digital assistants — it is a reflection of company values just as much as it is a reflection of the need for change in our society.

If the idea of a genderless digital assistant does not spread throughout the artificial intelligence world, what does the continued propagation of gender performance in artificial intelligence mean for the future image of females and the role females play in everyone’s day to day life?

Posted from Digital Studies 101 by Rosalia P.

Posted on

Siri as Feminine


Warning: Undefined array key 0 in /home/digitald/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/radgeek-FWP---Add-Attribution-70acf52/add-attribution-feedwordpress.php on line 363
In the chapter “Building the Star Trek Computer” of What Algorithms Want, Ed Finn very quickly mentions the performance of gender in computers, particularly in the context of Siri. He cites Annalee Newitz who argues that “the predominance... Read More

Posted from Intro to Digital Studies by Lauren C.

Posted on

Siri, You Are My Best Friend…. “That’s nice.”


Warning: Undefined array key 0 in /home/digitald/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/radgeek-FWP---Add-Attribution-70acf52/add-attribution-feedwordpress.php on line 363

https://www.typeform.com/blog/human-experience/siri-is-dying-long-live-susan-bennett/

      If you’re wondering what you’re looking at, it’s my pleasure to introduce you to Siri… or rather, the voice behind Siri, Susan Bennett. She is a voice-over artist, who can now talk to herself (as long as she has an iPhone).

Many people are under the impression that Steve Jobs is a technological genius and invented Siri from his imagination, when, Siri is actually an old concept. In my digital studies class, we discussed ELIZA, a response system created to help solve all your problems (in moderation). Even the article, “Building the Star Trek Computer”, discusses CALO, yet another technological program made to help make your life easier created long before Siri.

People rely so heavily on technology that they lose sight of the world around them and yet, this technology was created by another person, just like you or me.

If the internet were to shut down today, most of the world would go mad, and I say “most” because the internet doesn’t touch remote areas. We view technology as an all-knowing god and yet, there are people out there that have probably never even seen a camera before, let alone a phone and they’re doing just fine.

People don’t know everything and yet, they are able to program these machines that are believed to. It’s understandable why much of the older generation holds angst towards millennials creating things to replace people. Have we really become so bad at listening to others, that we’ve invented machines that’ll do it for us?

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had my fair share of Siri jokes, but maybe if more people got together without their phones, we could have more Thomas Edisons or Albert Einsteins in the world.

Just some food for thought,

Stir Fry

 

 

Posted from Stir Fry Education by Nicky E.