3rd Writing Assignment

here's the address to my 3rd writing assignment:

Androids and Identity

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Create Your Own!

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My Ugly Page

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That Evil Machine!

I believe when it comes to deciding whether I take Vannevar Bush's view of the great-new indefinite verses the Nathaniel Hawthorne view of anti-progessive-stoves when it comes to my computer, oddly enough, considering how much I'm practically strapped to the machine, I have to agree more with Hawthorne. Hawthorne, afflicted by the new invention of a wood stove, mirrors modern technology concerns with what it will do to mankind as a society. As an anthropologist, I am naturally drawn to this technology-driven breakdown of social structure as well.

Although I see Bush's point that technology and science has indeed improved many ways of life for many people, and that it has benefits that go beyond the individual and to the culture as a whole, I must still lean on Hawthorne's side of the death of human social interactions. Although Hawthorne is sighing over the loss of the glow on his loved one's faces from the lack of open fire, he is really complaining about the lack of family gathering. In his essay, Fire-Worship, he talks about how the new invention of the wood stove, while effectively warming the whole house, also keeps the family from having to endure each other's presence. Modern technology has certainly affected the nature of social interactions. Starting with the TV, and maybe even the radio before it, people began to divert their attentions away from each other and conversation towards a box (of some sort) that spoke to them. People began choosing the automated machine to communicate with rather than their own family.

So the question remains, what happens now? With the internet as readily available to almost everyone, communication, especially social communication, has drastically changed. Instead of writing a letter to a friend or writing our thoughts in a diary, we now post blogs or live journals about our strifes. We now have friends that we have met only online. People play games, interactive games, with other people sitting at their computers somewhere in the world instead of actually going outside and playing in the real, natural world. People base friendships on how many people are on your MySpace friend list rather than the people you see on a day-to-day basis.



The computer has now become a personality and entity all its own. We get angry at it. We yell at it and ask it redundant questions as if we were addressing a child or sibling. We talk to it, and play games where it is the opponent. I have even known people to name it. This is obviously a new era of interaction with the machine. When radios first came out and became a staple in middle class homes, people would talk to them, but they could not play chess with it, like people were able to do with the most basic computer programs. This type of human interaction is what scares me. The moment people started having internet friends instead of people in their own sphere that they could actually touch, I knew things had the capability of turning bad and fast.

I think of 2001: A Space Odyssey in which one of the main characters is actually a highly functioning computer. Ever since this movie aired, I believe people have kept the idea of HAL in the back of their minds. Of course Hawthorne wasn't thinking in terms of something as drastic as a super computer that can pre-meditate murder of humans, but his idea is still the same. New technology destroys old and useful community and social structures. The problem now is whether it is avoidable or not. Some, probably Bush, would argue that these new social structures are better because people only have to interact with the kind of people, or machines for that matter, that they chose to, instead of being forced to interact with those they would normally chose not to.




I still believe that the internet generation has lost something essential to human thought development in a similar way that Hawthorne discusses the new wood-stove generation and how it will have lost something. But how could you ever tell them, they don't take their iPods out of their ears long enough to listen!

Computer Memories..

When I think about my first computer, I remember sitting in the basement room in my house, my dad called it the "office", but it was mostly old stuff we didn't know where to store it, the dog room, and our bigger toys. There was a desk, though, and on that desk was a new (old now) MS DOS computer. It had the black and yellow screen with the blinking bar, and I remember him teaching us the different functions to make it work. That was back in the days when you regularly had to use the "F" functions.. F7 did something, F12 did something else. We had a little sheet you put above the F-functions to help remind you of their purpose. It was one of those computers that had a " />: " and you had to enter a command after that to start different programs. It looked a lot like this: (note the floppy disk drive! don't you sorta miss those?)


My father had installed a few games on this old computer, and my brother and I spent hours of our childhood fighting over them. I can see myself sitting there at the old wooden desk (it was one of the first desks built and made for computers) pulling each other's hair over an intense game of Memory. Yes, Memory; my father had installed the game and my brother and I couldn't get enough of it. It had a full screen of yellow (and black) squares, and if you matched them right, you would win wonderful things like boats and houses and cars. To us, it was no ordinary memory game, and our friends that would come over thought we were the coolest! We were famous for keeping neighborhood kids over past their dinnertime playing things like Snake...and other games.


I don't really remember my first instances with email because my parents didn't allow us (my brother and I) to have our own email address. While my friends all were playing on the first versions of AOL, I was emailing them using my father's email address. How cool was I? When AOL finally made AIM available to people without AOL itself, my whole pre-teen life changed. It was a new way to flirt, make plans, and talk about stuff late at night without your mom being able to listen or find out what you were talking about. I think I might have gotten a few middle school boyfriends out of the instant messaging scene..
My computer use has evolved to include shopping and other research/school related stuff, and of course Myspace, but I feel many things are the same. I still like those simple games, and I still fight with my brother over games like "Worms". I still use email and instant messanger to gossip sometimes, and I still remember some of those function keys. It is amazing to see how far things have evolved in what seems like such a short amount of time. Wonder what is next...

Welcome to my blog!

Hello folks!

Thanks for visiting my blog.. and welcome! I'm including a bigger version of this picture my friend took b/c I just love it! HEEHEE!!!