By answering Tim Jackson's question of "[w]here do we want these technological vehicles to take us, and why?” My answer for this is that we humans expect both technology and internet to take us away from our real and hard world. We hate to go to the bank to make a payment, so instead of spending gas and time to go to the bank, we do it online. Obligations that once were a hazard to do, such as, sending payments by mail and the company not getting these letters on time, it is over. Now, we can rely on the internet that will give us at least a confirmation number as proof of the online payment. Another example is when we want to do our chores in less time, so that’s why students like me buy our books online avoiding us to stop by the bookstore.
But I think that many times we expect too much from the internet in which it is supposed to have a fast service and free stuff. One of the free e-cards companies that send late electronic cards are Gusanito because I think that they are swamped by so many customers that many of the receivers get them late on special days like Valentine’s Day or Holidays. We also expect the internet to fulfill the needs that we love and care for that special person when we could actually buy a real Valentine’s Card at Wal-Mart.
On the other hand, I agree with Kevin Kelly that we will be “dependent … on what the Machine knows about us and about what we want to know… It will become our memory. Then it will become our identity” (Kelly, 5). It’s already happening, if we are in google and type the word “eat”, next time when we write a word that starts with the letter “e”, the internet will gives us the option to choose the word “eat” or we can still continue to type the different search we want to know. This helps as a memory and a nice reminder of what we are looking for in the past. But this can also become our identity because when we sign up for a website magazine, or any other type, we end up having a bunch of e-mails that sometimes we do not even have the time to read in order to find out what are in those. We’re probably becoming too dependent on the internet, especially on news that keeps updating everyday. It’s a distraction for students who do their homework or when they have a purpose of finishing an online chore, but when they turn on the computer, the distraction appears on the Home Page of the web window.
People who will have time to veg out all the tons of information out there are the ones who will get paid, love to correct others, and get upset if they don’t do it. For example: ASU librarians get paid by students’ tuition. The librarians’ jobs are to find out who wrote the information that they look at and if it’s reliable for students to use. Also, Wikipedia is as good as the Webster’s Dictionary because even if we do not have people who get paid to sort through the infinite information, there are so many professional people who get into the same information others are viewing and make corrections. The consumers are still us, web users, who have the responsibility to make good transactions at our own risk and need to verify if the website is reliable to give our bank account numbers.
I also think that sometimes we expect too much from the internet. I feel like we want it to do more and more and as a result our dependency on it grows.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand developers seem to be able to meet our demands so who knows maybe its a good thing that we have such high expectations of what the internet can do for us.
I agree that we expect to much but I think it's the high expectation which speeds its advancement.
ReplyDeleteDo you think that if sharing is abused we will lose our status as consumers?
Hi oriuken, I invite you to send an ecard at gusanito.com this Valentine's day, i feel that this time the ecards are going to arrive in time no matter how many customers are on the page
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