Hello, my name is George Gordon. I’m currently in the Professional and Technical Writing major which is why I am taking this class. I’m hoping to learn better writing skills and broaden my knowledge of writing as a whole. Upon reading through the syllabus, I noticed that this class is touching upon on topics that I’ve never given much thought about. Which is probably what I find most interesting.
After finishing the reading I seemed to get the idea that Postman was talking about how technology is advancing much too rapidly for us. We aren’t able to keep up with the new technology, whether it be writing, television, or computers, and how it affects us all. We don’t stop to ask about how these new pieces of technology with affect us in both the negative and positive. As well as seeing, how all of this will change how we view the world and the things we learn or are taught to us.
I can see where Postman was going with this. Today, the majority of us have computers or at least access to one, or carry smartphones with us all day. Yet, how many of us think about these devices and the harm they could bring? When some new piece of tech is introduced to us, we open it with welcome arms because we are told it’s going to improve our lives and make us all more efficient. However, not everyone uses these things for such noble reasons and a big chunk of the world does not even have to access to these devices. Almost everything we could ever want to know is now in our pockets, the good and the bad. As with the case of privacy right now, thanks to cameras, drones, cellphones, x- ray machines, etc, we can now be watched and recorded every second of the day, which is told is done to keep us safe. Understandably, we can afford to lose some privacy for the sake of our safety but where is the line where the invasion of privacy beings and the defense of “safety” ends? It’s something we should be discussing but the public seems to not care or just shrug it off with the “safety’ excuse. Every new piece of technology that has come changed the world in a big way and every new piece to come will continue to do so and we should become more involved with these pieces of technology because who knows how the world will be in 50 years.
First off, I feel that your blog post is rather well written. One thing that you spoke about that I didn’t put too much thought into when I was writing my post was the concept of giving up privacy for convenience. I feel that this is a major issue that we are facing in the society of today. I also feel that this was a very clever connection that you made from what postman stated about he negative effects of the advent of new technologies on us as a society. Although many of the technologies that were discussed were long before the privacy issues that we face today existed the clear connection can be made to the negative effects of the technologies that were considered new in the past. Your connection furthers the idea that the new technology that is introduced doesn’t really matter, simply the fact that it is a new technology mean that there is a very likely chance that there will be some sort of negative effect on society due to it’s introduction.
Try to do more, if possible, in the summary section.