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!
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!
posted by Lauren A at 4:52 PM
0 comments
