Digital Divide

It is known that technology is everywhere. Since the pen I write with until the latest medicine invented to help with Alzheimer’s disease. What is not known for a few people in society is that, there are a few issues with technology that, instead of approaching people, pushes them away. This is called Digital Divide, and we can see it through: first, people with access and privileged information, such as countries spying others nations, second, people who have access of information and can make money with it, and third, those people who do not have financial conditions to be aware of what is happening, and cannot be a candidate in a job position, for example. Because of these disparities, technology should be used carefully and fairly.

In the past few months, a few spying situations happened between United States of America and Brazil, and / or several other countries. The Brazilian Government found out that they were being spied by the USA through the internet, telephone calls, etc. The fact is that politically the USA government could have some decisions being influenced by this information they had and the Brazilian Government did not know. It was an unfair situation, not very polite or even ethical. But in the end, there is nothing Brazil can do, because they cannot have control on what any other nation does, even if it is unethical. And by now, there is no way to know if the Brazilian Government has the same technology that the USA has. As the facts show the USA spies on Brazil, only the USA has the Technology and it is causing this divider, not in a small community, but in a very large scale.

A small issue is also an issue. When we have people that have access to monetary information or privileged information and can make money, that no one else can do, than yes, there is something wrong. Eike Batista is a Brazilian businessman that is known for having a huge quantity of money, and in the past, for being one of richest people in the world. The problem is that Eike had information about the financial market and some companies, which were provided only for him. This is totally unethical, unfair, illegal, but it happened – and I can assume there are a lot of people in the world that have this same “benefit”. This is way too much to be considered only a digital divide, and it is isolating people from something that should be equal and fair: the information.

This same information is not being given for people who need it to survive! In a few poor communities, the people do not have easy access to the internet or others ways of communication, that it is easily found in rich communities. A lot of companies use the internet to post job position and opportunities, but it seems to be excluding people that do not have computers (Robert Aucoin, personal communication, 27 November, 2013). Those people will not be able to candidate to these jobs, only because they have been excluded, but not because they are not qualified. If the propose of the internet is to connect people, than it should be at least cheap enough, for everyone be able to afford it.

Since the spying, making money or having a job, everything depends on a fair or unfair communication. This communication is failing. Not because it is bad, but because in a time that the world is being daily changed to be more democratic (with exceptions), my first sentence should not have the word unfair. If the technology is being used as a way to have access to information or to connect people, it should be democratic. This digital divide cannot happen in our society and people should care and be aware that everyone has the right to know.

Technology for dummies?

This week we had the PlayStation 4 releasing in many countries, such as Canada and USA. Next week the video game is going to be released in South America countries and another places as well.  We can say that this is a popular activity is several nations and the PS4 is known in almost every culture. There is a huge amount of people wanting to buy this video game since it was first announced, and this is curious because this type of technology brings fun, but not real production.

The video games in general had the first technological diffusion many decades ago, but they were not as common as they are today. What we have today is a common sense about the best players, games, and also, the availability of worlds that this electronic life have. It is a funny activity and today it is also a way of living. Either by those who play or those who develop and create the games. People make money in competitions and people make money using the imagination to produce the scenarios, characters and strategies.

It is all so popular that in this latest release of this week, there were people making lines in stores, at midnight to be the first to buy it. I just wonder if these people keep playing the entire dawn until the sun comes up.  I also keep thinking if these people who bought it this week have other types of jobs besides playing. OK, I primarily understand that a creator keeps playing all the night to test, and to feel, to develop new ideas… But a player? A common person?

Because there is no increase in someone’s skill if they just play… Besides playing skills… And when someone is developing the game – then there are all the abilities in the 3D software’s that they improve,  practice and when they are playing they can have new ideas, it is just an infinite world. But it is a profession. Everyone should have fun. But there are limits. A normal person could just go in the day after the releasing date to buy it, and it would not make any difference.

So, I wonder why video games exist… This is not a technology created to help us in some task. This is not an extension of ourselves anymore – except when we talk about video games for airplane pilots, for example, where they need training – and we cannot even say that there is a productivity paradox, for those people who play for fun, because they are not playing to improve their tasks  at work. They are just playing for fun.

To sum up, video games can be a needed tool when we talk about training, or they can just be a tool for fun. But when you keep awake only to play – then it is not for fun, but an addiction, and this is the only factor I can think of that justifies why there were so many people on the line last week. Are the creators of games making profit on dummies that do not have any new skill to develop?

Technological Nonsense

By the time that the world was spending money in a technology that was able to extract oil from the Alberta Oil Sands, in Canada, we could also see an increase of the Natural Resources usage, the growth of numbers of cars in China and many other countries, the large number of oil in transportation. But what we could not see was an investment in a sustainable energy, only the opposite.

The global oil consumption has grown from 60 to 87 million of barrels a day, from 1985 to 2005. There is a human dependence in oil, and it does not justify the reason why we are so worried about getting the oil from Alberta, because this increase in the natural resource usage has to have an end. Humans are using their forces and their abilities in the opposite way of the needed development. Today, our technology is basically based on natural resources, and we are not maintaining or protecting almost anything of that.

There was a huge growth in the numbers of cars in China, in 37 million, since 2009, and there are some researches that show that the number of oil consumption for transportation is going to increase in approximately 3% in 15 or 20 years. But the fact is either there will be no space for cars in the world soon, or the oil we are depending so badly is going to end before that. And we did not invest on any other energy while we had time.

China has invested more than $3 billion in the Alberta Oil Sands since 2009, what is just interesting, because the production among these oil sands uses almost more energy and resources to get the oil, than the product of oil itself.  And those investments, not only from China, but from many other countries are probably going to result in a profit in the next few years, but in a close future, this oil will have an end.

All facts around the investments in the Alberta Oil Sands result on the same issues. And this statement can be written with a ‘general word’, like ‘all’, because there are enough evidences to support this thesis. Unfortunately, there are not enough people to put their money in a sustainable and clean energy. Probably people are going to be without money and without oil. 

"StupidUs"

Today I heard a debate at CBC News Online, talking about the Internet: “Is the Internet making us Smarter or Stupider?”, and I also got another idea from the audio to share: “we know what a tool can do for us, what about what a tool can do to us?”. Yes, this is a very good question. Do we wonder how do we behave in front of a computer or in a world that most part of a communication is done electronically?

We know that Marshall McLuhan once said that “technology is an extension of ourselves”, and what does technology do to us? Today, we can easily go out to have a lunch and find many, if not all, people in a restaurant talking through some electronic device, we are just addicted at talking with (with?) our devices. This is our common behavior. If people need to do a research, most of them go directly into the internet to look for it – it is like if the internet had something that would stick on us and we cannot think about anything else then internet: “Internet is my solution!”. Wake up!

It is easy to fit than in some kind of Productivity Paradox – not only because we can spend so much time learning how to do something new, through some technology, but also, because sometimes we can forget our duties, just by “playing” online – chatting, gaming, reading something irrelevant… Because internet is full of crap and worthless things at the same time that it has a lot of important and good things to deal with.

So, yes! Internet makes things easier and at the same time, makes us waste our time. We do not have to think a lot about that. People get distracted from anything that moves. Internet moves all the time, internet has some life that we cannot understand anymore, and in many ways we can behave as if the internet were powerful then us! Even we created it. Stupid!

To Kill

Harris and Klebold, students, arrive at school in Columbine, Colorado, United States of America. They then enter on it and a few minutes later these two guys start shooting other students and dropping bombs wherever they go – a lot of people die. They finally kill themselves right inside the school. This is not a movie. This is not a book. This is not fiction. It really happened in April 20, 1999. We first create weapons it to hunt and feed, than we start defending ourselves from possible enemies or from nature, later we hurt people to gather information (I personally don’t think this is an excuse) and today, well, today we almost do not use it to hunt.

A long time ago, we used stones as a tool to hunt. Moreover, if we could hunt, we could eat! It was a practical use of a weapon and it helped us to survive and develop new ways to obtain food, it was new technology that at that time had a purpose.

As time goes by, people developed new purposes for stones! Yes, we found out that we could not only hunt, but hurt! And these two little letters make a big difference in creativity. That was when we invented more types of weapons, and people could use it in many ways of hurting. It was a time to defend ourselves from enemies, conquer lands, to get back heritages, and sometimes we could even use it to have some food. The development of weapon changes the rhythm and objectives.

Today, we are in a mess. We no longer have control on what we are doing and weapons became dangerous. Our society has so many technologies around new researches of arms and almost everyone have access to guns. We became a violent civilization (mess + free access to weapon = civilization?), where to have a weapon is a powerful thing or even safe. Cops have weapons to protect a community from criminals, government have weapons to keep enemies way from their lands, women have weapons to feel safe, men have weapons to show their power, and do teenagers have weapons to kill?

This is how we are using our weapons today. Wake up! Those two teenagers used guns, that they bought on internet to kill their colleagues, this was not something that we had thought before, when we created guns. We are not following the right rhythm of this technology’s development, because maybe, we are not ready to have it and to use it! Are we still using this technology properly or as an useful extension of us? Are we developing new ways of weapons and forgetting to expand our brain to learn how to deal with such dangerous technology? Isn’t this technology much more advanced than we can live with? People are maybe behind this technology expectation.

Technology as Status

As Chris Anderson, Wired editor, said; technology should be/ have into one to four of the following stages to be a success or popular:

- Critical price (people need to be able to buy it);

- Critical mass (should reach 20% of target);

- Replace another technology (as paper money and credit cards);

- Commodity (essentially free).

However, sometimes we may find a group of people (and let's easily include ourselves?), that cannot afford a type of technology, as a cellphone, because we are not part of a hypothetical company's target. So, for us, the new device does not have a critical price, the technology is not free, but even thus, we think we need it "to survive".

And we buy it. We buy it because we have been trained by television, by society, our friends, cellphones advertisements, that to be "someone" we must own an Iphone's latest version. Is it true? Since when my cellphone is more powerful than my brain? Technology becomes a status. Status that we create to split society (and to feel better? How?). 

And as cellphones becomes “better and better”, we stop being humans and start being robots. We start living as someone told us to, and we do not know who we are, or even who told us to be like this! People classify each other’s importance by the type of device we have, we can permit someone’s entrance in society only if he/ she has this cellphone. And so, we do not eat the dessert for a few weeks, we do not buy a book we need to read, but we buy the cellphone.

Now it is easy to include ourselves in society. This was our call to have the cellphone and to do not “waste” money with food or books. Now we can play a fantasy life. Let’s all pretend that we are better people now that we have the latest version of an “I beautiful phone”. This is our decision, right? Humans decided to be like that, and to act as robots that do not think or feel. After all, we need this technology to survive.

Making Connections... Or Not!

Society surrounded by the youngest generation of technophile, who knows everything about technology since the smartphones were invented, is a fact that the world is living right now. What about the rest of Technology’s history? We are used to talk about the latest cellphone invented, the newest generations of cars or a big 3D TV with the most impressive high definition ever made. When we need to talk about a past, even a recent past, as the computer’s invention, we fall in unknown information.

We have a wonderful tool in our hands. It connect us to the history, because it has the written history of anything we can ever research – it may contain the wrong information, but this is a question on how we research it. The problem is that we do not research! The internet is a technology that was supposed to make a bridge between society, old facts, new facts and future facts but nowadays, I see that, sometimes we are just stacked in present and future.

Moreover, for us to know what people need and also, to know how a community behave in a certain situation, information is needed, history facts, the past. It is hard, or I would say, almost impossible to build a new tool, make an invention without knowing what happen here a few years ago. That is the reason why we live in a Technological Determinism¹ where technology controls society. Even thus we own technology as our invention; we do not use it properly or in our favor all the times.

Maybe one day the history will not be important anymore, but then I think we will not think as well, because we will be machines or robots. By the time we are not robots yet, I really would like to understand how can tech connect us to the future and the past but we only know what did not happen yet and what is happening right now. Is that possible: a society without memories?

¹ Technological Determinism is a term invented by Thorstein Veblen, an American sociologist.

Tech Man X Rustic Man

NOTE: Before reading the text you may consider that “male” in here means something powerful both for men and women: as a great feeling. This is not a sexist opinion, since we can apply everything I wrote for men and women. The main source (except for the image) is my brain.

Men tend to feel powerful when they have a good tool to show people or when they use it even if the tool is not useful. This can be noticed when we compare people who have a newer technology device, as the newest cellphone, with those who have a bigger and heavier tool to work with, as the best hammer in the market. In both cases they may feel better with those kinds of equipment, even if they are completely different types of technology.

Thinking about the “new technology”, from nowadays, as cellphones, laptops, HD Television etc., it is possible to see that each day we have a behavior that is more common in our society: teenagers “need” to have a great cell phone to show their colleagues, instead of learning from their parents how to handle a hammer or a screwdriver. If they do not have the best device, they are going to be considered a child. It can be the opposite too. Adults nowadays are really worried about having the greatest technology in order to be part of a society!

On the other hand we still have a generation, maybe X generation or some before that, that wants to work with drilling machines or bucksaws, maybe because for them it is a pleasure to know that they are capable of dealing with problems that can be fixed by them or even that they are completely talented to build something. It is probably a reward to show it to everyone, maybe that is the reason why we still have a few "Home Depots" around the world, and they are always full of people building their own furniture, houses etc.

Logo from the band: "Tool"¹

Yes! In both cases they feel male! That is the word, male! And it is really interesting that we still have such different parallels in a society that is constantly taken as high tech (even though we have tech hammers). Do men really need an apparatus to feel important or more masculine? It is curious to think that "an extension of ourselves", as Marshall McLuhan said, can help us (men, women) to arrange an identity. We can try to be good people, have the best job - but in today's society what is important is to have the newest tool.

Source:

¹ ¹Unknown Author. (Unknown date). File Tool Logo Early, 25 October, 2005. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tool-logo-early.jpg

To Start: A few questions!

      So far, we already know that technology is all around us. It is here, right now while I am writing, it is the light that gives me the power to see, and it is the cell phone I carry with me... But as Robert Aucoin once said in the class: "how many of us think about what type of technology we are bringing with us today?".

     The answer comes so quick for everybody. We do not think about that at all. People nowadays are so used to having technology helping with everything and every task. We do not even stop to think if this is all necessary. Is it?

     Today we had a great experience in the Earth and Ecology class, that there is also a very good question to answer and it is all about technology. We were discussing who does not have a cellphone and then Casey Brant asked if someone knew what cellphones were made of. The answer again came so quickly. Almost everybody uses it, but almost nobody knew what cell phones or any other type of technology was made of.

     It just makes me think a little bit about it. Most people use it to upgrade their cellphones each year and do not think about how much time and money they are losing just by choosing a new device. Or they (by them, I mean us - I also have to include myself) do not think about how bad is to the environment to keep changing devices, cellphones, laptops, TVs and etc. Yes, we do use a lot of resources from Mother Nature to have access to all of this amazing high technology.

     To sum up, after choosing a new device each year, how much time do we spend on using it without having a different or a real type of relationship outside the machines? Or how bad do we affect the environment by changing our devices? Can we live with Technology or is Technology living our lives?