The Machines Are Using Us
Notes:
-Michael Wesch
-The machine is using us
-Text is linear
-Rethink ourselves
-We are teaching the machine
-Why is digital media changing us
-Is the machine using us, or we using it
-HTML
-We have set up programs to make typing easier
-Digital text can do better
-Title defines content not form
-Data can be exported free of formatting constraints
-Do not need to know complicated code
-You tube
-Two sites can mash data together
-Web 2.0
-We are the web
-Each time we forget a link, we are teaching it an idea
-Web 20 is linking people
-We need to rethink
-Digital anthropology
Connecting words
-digital
-text
-links
-family
-anthropology
-love
-teaching the machine
-teaching
-web 2.0
-linking people
-community
-bold
-title
-rethink
-digital text
-change
-remove
One paragraph response about what matters:In the You Tube clip of "The Machines are Using Us", directed by Michael Wesch, he points out what "the machine" has done to people and society, or if the machine is people/society. I think that the machine is the computer, and that we are teaching the computer to help us. We have become one with technology, and we need each other to survive. The computer helps us do this by changing the way digital text helps us communicate. By using digital communication, we can type documents faster than writing paper. It becomes easier to chance words rather than having to erase everything on paper. The machine allows us to link ideas and sort data, so it is not all one big pile of unorganized information. The machine also allows us to communicate faster, via e-mail or IM.
When we make a mistake, the computer gains knowledge of how to fix it to make technology better. Every time a Web page is opened, the computer is able to track more and more information about the page, how many viewers it has had, and other such facts. When Michael Wesch said that the Machines our using us, I don't think he meant in a bad way. I think that he meant that the machines were using us to gain knowledge, and to advance in technology, which would make life easier. I think that when we give the computers ideas, we give more ways to help us fix our errors as simply as possible.
From this we can make inferences on what matters about the advance in technology. The world today is all about making life better by making it easier. There have been many advances in this day and age that life is much simpler than it was 50 years ago. We have made advancements recently in the computers by adding programs such as Microsoft Word 2007. By doing that, we have made typing documents easier, and more efficient. It is now harder to lose your work if the computer shuts down because Word auto saves your documents every five minutes. That is another example of how technology is making life easier. Before, we could lose all of whatever we were working on if we didn't manually save it to the computer.
The Advance in technology has impacted our ways of life in so many ways then we every thought it would. When we say the machines are using us, i don;t think it is a bad thing. The machines are using us for good, and we can help advance that when we add more technology to the world.
