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"The Critical Engineer considers Engineering to be the most transformative language of our time, shaping the way we move, communicate and think. It is the work of the Critical Engineer to study and exploit this language, exposing its influence."
"The Prevail Project aims to be the worldwide clearinghouse for humanistic response to rapid technological change. Its goal is to accelerate bottom-up, enlightened triumph in the face of exponential challenges the way the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency accelerates technology. Its core hope is that in the face of unprecedented transformation, humans will continue to prevail, shaping their own futures, toward their own ends, rather than being the pawns of their explosively powerful technologies. For the only enduring advantage is to learn faster than the competition. And the best way to anticipate the future is to invent it yourself."
"My wondering was rewarded by this excerpt from Spiritual Instruction and Discourses, Vol I: The Authentic Seal by Archimandrite Aimilianos: “Orthodox Spirituality and the Technological Revolution”
He argues that there isn’t anything essentially different about today’s technology, in its effect on our spiritual life, than there ever has been. Technology per se is not the problem. Rather it is the “absence of accountability in the way in which technology is administered and exploited.” "
"Though we may be competent at using many technologies, most of what we think we know about technology in general is false. Our error stems from the everyday conception of things as separate from each other and from us. In reality they belong to an interconnected network the nodes of which cannot exist independently qua technologies. What is more we tend to see technologies as quasi-natural objects, but they are just as much social as natural, just as much determined by the meanings we give them as by the causal laws that rule over their powers. The errors of common sense have political consequences in domains such as medicine and environmental policy. In this talk I will summarize many of the conclusions philosophy of technology has reached reflecting on the reality of our technological world. "
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The level to which we are forced to censor ourselves is even more damaging than our social media-induced group-think. Most people are afraid to be completely honest with what we share, because of the capricious nature of the public. This makes us innocuous caricatures who live in fear of offending anyone. Social media sharing is a lot like a temperamental boss who tells you to speak freely. His words say one thing, but the reality is he might fire you if he doesn’t like what he hears. To protect yourself, you only tell him the good news and any negative feedback is conveniently omitted.
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Facebook and Twitter have created a generation obsessed with themselves, who have short attention spans and a childlike desire for constant feedback on their lives, a top scientist believes.
Repeated exposure to social networking sites leaves users with an 'identity crisis', wanting attention in the manner of a toddler saying: 'Look at me, Mummy, I've done this.'
Baroness Greenfield, professor of pharmacology at Oxford University, believes the growth of internet 'friendships' – as well as greater use of computer games – could effectively 'rewire' the brain.
"In fact I can’t be, because most of the data in these “social networks” is not mine. Functionally (if not also legally), it’s theirs. And I’m just a calf for each of them.
Of course, all these companies want to help me do everything, by leveraging the “social” data they have about me. Mostly they give me advertising that doesn’t help, but sometimes they just try to improve their meat and potatoes with “social” gravy. "
Kids spend an increasing fraction of their formative years online, and it is a habit they dutifully carry into adulthood. Under the right circumstances, however, a love affair with the Internet may spiral out of control and even become an addiction.
Whereas descriptions of online addiction are controversial at best among researchers, a new study cuts through much of the debate and hints that excessive time online can physically rewire a brain.
Cathy N. Davidson, author of the forthcoming book Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn (Viking) could safely be deemed a Never-Better, with perhaps a dash of the Ever-Waser. The major technological changes of the past decade and a half present an array of "exciting opportunities," Davidson argues -- opportunities to promote efficiency, satisfaction and success at every stage from kindergarten through career. If we are inclined to side with the Better-Nevers, worrying that our brains never evolved for shifts of such magnitude -- if kids attend to text messages and video games with alacrity, but fall behind in school, while adults feel swamped by information overload and spread too thin by multitasking -- the trouble, in Davidson's view, is not with all our new technologies, but rather with our failure thus far to adapt and restructure ourselves and our institutions.
"So, okay: "IT'S NOT THE TECHNOLOGY, STUPID!"
It is just so hard to believe how many reputable intellectuals, writers, scientists, social scientists, and even educators are willing to indulge in a specious logic that they would never allow on another topic. They like to say that the Internet makes us shallow, stupid, distracted, lonely, or, in the case of this piece by the executive editor of the New York Times, that it somehow compromises us morally and spiritually: "My own anxiety," Keller writes, "is less about the cerebrum than about the soul." I can only imagine an executive of his stature snickering with derision remembering how so-called "primitive people" said exactly the same thing about photography. "
Review of The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser.
"Dennis Baron’s extended essay A Better Pencil looks back over the entire history of writing technologies (clay tablets, pens, pencils, typewriters), but the focus is on the recent transition to digital devices. His title implies a question. Is the computer really a better pencil? Will it lead to better writing?"
Some key questions on media/technology evaluation from Neil Postman, and Marshall McLuhan
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