Networks.
I thought I’d use technology and the internet to talk about technology and networks (irony, I know). With the amount of gadgets available to us, we have access to thousands of networks. Information flows more freely, we can get in contact with virtually anyone, and in order to keep up in this day and age, you have to be tapped into one.
Sure, you can survive without text messaging, Facebook and email (remember, I did it for a week), but it keeps you in the stone age. Everything is going digital, Notebook and pencil sales are down (okay, I made that up), and I can double check anything a professor tells me in a matter of minutes by Google-ing it.
You’re ‘logging in’ to a network with almost everything you do. Every time you use a cell phone, you’re broadcasting your location to a network of satellites, every time you swipe an NYU ID, you register what building you’re at, and for how long, every time you log onto facebook, in some database somewhere, it tallies how many times you log on and how long you’re logged on.
Forget 1984, Big Brother should’ve waited until 2008. With the amount of networks and technology, they can find anyone.
2 Comments
Your travelogue is very interesting and I commend you for your week without technology (I’m not sure I could possibly do it). The world has become enormously enveloped in digital technology. We discussed how it has become NECESSARY to be a member of this socially technological culture if one wants to be a part of society and the world. You can no longer be a member of a university without an email address; you cannot take part in politics if you do not watch television and there are many more environments and communities that rely and are founded on digital technology. It’s crazy to think how far we’ve come since the nineties and even the start of the millennium and how quickly no less. I think it will be interesting to come back to this travelogue in a few years from now and see that all the technology you’ve mentioned is already outdated. Imagine things like beepers that were so part of many peoples lives in the 90’s is practically annihilated. What will be next?
This new world of technology makes me wonder why nations and communities across the globe have people starving to death and risking their lives and the lives of their families in their attempt to secure some food. If everyone in the “connected” world will have two of everything as this video states, why do some people not only have one?
I want to be able to rejoice with the rest of the technological world as we become more like a connected network but I can’t knowing that millions of other people don’t nearly have the same devices or privileges we do. When will our nation cease from being self-interested and start helping developing nations?