Black Mirrors

While I didn't always enjoy the topics discussed in the season one episodes of "Black Mirrors", they brought up very thought-provoking topics regarding media and technology use. They discussed dependency and ethics and caused me to think differently about how my life is influenced my media and technology.

The first episode, which we watched in class, was the most realistic to me about our world today. No new technology was introduced, it merely raised a question about how dependent our lives are on technology. To me, this seemed like a very real scenario in which a person of power was blackmailed into doing something inappropriate in public, in order to save the life of another person in power.

The following two episodes seemed to be set in the future and, to me, required a bit of imagination for them to be believable. The second episode was confusing to me because I didn't feel that enough context was provided. During this episode, I was more questioning the logistics than their media use. The final episode of season one seemed like it could be possible in the near future, and drew a strong connection to the book "Feed". While there may be some conveniences to being able to conjure up memories at any time and replay them, the people in this episode were living in their past memories and not trying to make new ones with the people they love.

Overall, I found these episodes to be very thought-provoking and I have since been questioning my media use. It took me a while to understand the title "Black Mirrors", but even the title sparks questions for me now, as I have since been noticing people constantly checking their reflection in the black screens of their phones and other technology.

Geek Heresy: Chapter 3

In this chapter of Geek Heresy, Toyama discusses the idea that technology may not be entirely to blame for our reliance on it. He discusses some of the ways in which technology has instead adapted to our lives and our needs. This has caused our addiction to the technology, and not the other way around.

It is very easy to see a pattern in how we adapt to new technologies. This generally happens in four phases. The first phase involves the recognition of a problem, which leads to the second phase of determining how technology can be used to solve that problem. The third stage involves finding the faults in the technology and either adapting to them or fixing them. And the final stage is the domestication of the technology. In this final phase, the technology is now ordinary and accepted; it is no longer viewed as a threat.

Toyama recognizes these phases and blames our addiction to technology on the fact that these addictive tendencies have been in existence for some time, the technology just amplifies them. He uses an example of a clothing line that itches those who wear the clothes. These clothes won't create demand in the market, and therefore won't sell. Instead of items becoming popular due to their creation of a demand, products become popular because they satisfy a demand in the market that already existed. Technology was and is created to fill a demand, it does not itself create the demand.  

Geek Heresy: Chapter 1

Chapter 1 of Geek Heresy, by Kentaro Toyama, discusses the introduction of technology into the school systems in worse off countries and its impact on the education that the students receive. There seems to be the general thought that if everywhere in the world can be on the same level playing field, technology wise, then every country will have access to the same resources and no one will be worse off than others. This chapter caused me to rethink that notion and reminded me of the week I spent in an inner-city Buffalo middle school over winter break.

Everyone seems to think that if you give a child access to the latest technology, they will be able to learn as much as another average student, and at the same rate. However, that is not true. Just because everyone may have the same access to technology, does not mean that they all know how to use it in the same manner so as to reap the same benefits. Not only do people need access to the technology, they need the resources to be able to understand it and use it efficiently as well.

This phenomena holds true within our country's borders as well. Over winter break I participated in one of the MOVE Extended Service trips and spent a week volunteering at an inner-city school in Buffalo for at risk students. As no one can afford to pay tuition to attend this school, the board relies strictly on donations to keep the school up and running. One of the biggest projects that we tackled there during the week was to get the latest computers donated up and running so that they could be utilized in the classrooms. The teachers explained that the computers had been donated over a year prior, but no one had had the time or knowledge to install them and get them running. Upon further exploration into the unused classrooms in the school, we found dozens and dozens of old computers stacked up collecting dust. People think to give old and nonworking computers to places like this, thinking that they can be fixed and put to use. Often times, however, these places don't have the resources required to put these donations to use, and they end up being a burden instead of a solution.

Reading this chapter of Toyama's book reinforced, for me, a phenomena that I had the opportunity to experience firsthand. Technology isn't the end-all fix to the world's problems. Often times it creates more barriers and problems than it does solutions.