tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499771778569209667.post6341949840087988109..comments2024-03-26T22:48:55.424-07:00Comments on Flying Totems: Talking tech talkBenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590397694589547524noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499771778569209667.post-81734751273774668892014-03-15T23:51:51.889-07:002014-03-15T23:51:51.889-07:00Neil Postman is someone who I've read about/he...Neil Postman is someone who I've read about/heard about but haven't directly experienced his work. He sounds very perceptive, so I'm interested in remedying that.<br /><br />Technology isn't evil in itself, but it's not neutral. Nor is it necessarily friendly to the great mass of people who embrace it. It serves those who pay for it. Naturally, those tend to be the same people who can afford to pay for everything else too. This is why there is and should be anxiety over jobs disappearing. <br /><br />Passivity is another problem in a technologically advanced society. The digital realm can feel like a very active activity when it often isn't. After a certain point there's little difference between web surfing and channel surfing. So yeah, that's among our problems.<br /><br />Glad you liked the pictures. I got interested in Deskey and a few others because I got curious about what industrial design could teach other arts. There is something there, in terms of unity of affact and purpose.Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06590397694589547524noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499771778569209667.post-17517765616294075322014-03-11T19:45:02.115-07:002014-03-11T19:45:02.115-07:00Although I haven't read Jaron Lanier's boo...Although I haven't read Jaron Lanier's book I have read some interviews and articles and think he makes some very valid points. He reminds me of the books we read some years ago by Neil Postman (speaking of another who was described as a Luddite crank) - Amusing Ourselves to Death and Technopoly - arguing that technology is never neutral. He also stated that science and technology are both our friends and our enemies; what technical innovation introduces as 'voluntary and optional' soon become 'compulsory and obligatory', ie, cars and traffic rules. <br /><br />What's happening with extraordinary speed these days is that our culture is being radically altered without the benefit of any guiding values or precepts about what is best for people and the greater community. Instead, what we see is frenzied competition between tech giants whose only aim is to make the most money from entertaining us more completely.<br /><br />His greatest worry was that we'd soon reach a point (and considering he died before the internet became totally ubiquitous) when every aspect of our culture ultimately bows to technology and it becomes the central, defining idol of the way our minds work.<br /><br />The fact that more than ten years after Neil Postman's death Lanier, one of the great tech innovators, is very concerned about the 'open culture' having become orthodoxy is very telling. That our society has become hollowed out is a worry. What we don't need is a situation where the ideology is more important than people. Let's hope we haven't gone that far yet.<br /><br />Thanks too for the story and links about Donald Deskey. I didn't know about him previously (nor the Tide box), but I see what you mean about he and his compatriots designing products for ordinary people. The pictures were very cool.<br /><br />susanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16747450215034568033noreply@blogger.com