Deus Ex Human Revolution

So recently I finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution and it’s actually opened my eyes about how far technology is actually willing to evolve and advance. Throughout history, whenever we feel weak, we’ve created tools to aid us, further and further it’s sparked advancements in technology, in a sense – technological determinism. But how far will technology evolve? Will merging biology with technology become the downfall for ‘humanity’? Will we lose what in a sense makes us human? I guess we’ll find out in the future if research and development ever take us that far.

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Symposium Week 8 Thoughts

To be honest I can’t remember what we talked about in the symposium for that week, something about technological determinism and technological neutrality. I don’t wanna go into too much detail but from what I took from the symposium is that technology can’t be neutral all the time, we find uses for technology that suits our needs if it can suit our needs. Similarly, the use of technology determines the advancement of that technology and determines how we use it. I don’t like being forced to take sides so I think I’ll just be an observer for this issue…

Are we that dependent on electricity?

So after reading Watts‘ extract on the technological age we live in, implying and stating just how dependent we are on electricity, it got me thinking a bit. Aside from the irony of a person named Watts writing about necessity and essentially a weakness of humanity when it comes to electricity consumption, what he mentions is quite true.

We rely on electricity more and more as technology advance further and further. In my opinion I too believe one of humanity’s weaker traits is that we rely on electricity and technology too much, so much we’ve probably already begun to forget our basic instincts as a species, furthermore we’re relying so much on things that the majority of us barely understand. So if the power is out, we in a sense become helpless until someone with expertise fixes it.

Shonen Jump nearing a new generation?

Alright so from experience reading Jump mangas such as Naruto, One Piece and Bleach, it’s come to no surprise that these series will eventually be ending, except for One Piece of course.

Bleach being on it’s last arc and Naruto finishing its last arc, what can we expect for the future of massively popular shonen action? Series such as Naruto, Bleach and One Piece have all taken the ‘Dragonball‘ route – made to amaze the minds of people and make them hope that the adventure will always continue, but it won’t it’ll just go on for a very long time.

When Naruto and Bleach end, I wonder what will replace them? Only time will tell I guess.

Technological Determinism

In short technological determinism is based off the idea that technology influences the development of us as a society. For example, the creation of Facebook sparked a new age in communication, community wise and business wise where businesses everywhere nowadays tend to rate your personality in relation to your work ethic, determining whether or not you’re suited for the job.

One could also argue as in my previous post about privacy, that this is a certain issue we face with the development of the internet, and how we seek to keep certain things hidden from public eye for such reasons. However, back onto technological determinism, I wouldn’t myself a full blown technological determinist, rather, I believe that in some aspects this theory can be applied, but as a species we develop not just through technology, but it comes down to the basics of instinct as well.

 

Shield’s proposal reflection

In David Shield’s extract on ‘collages’, he mentions that books and narrative are set and made according to the wishes of the author, that a story and the events within that story happen for a reason. However I agree in a sense that what Shield argues through implication is that we the reader have the ability to influence how we receive the message.

An author does not game power by writing a book, a story and fabricating events. An author gains power by the recognition he gains from the readers, in essence, the story we are provided with is the foundation of what we then use to build and create our own sense  of meaning from.

Symposium Week 6

The symposium this week addressed clearly the issue we have with privacy when it comes to the internet. Personally I think that privacy as not really become much of an issue online, rather it’s the same as ever, only the context in which it’s applied to is different. For example, if one were to break into another person’s account online, it would be treated equally in my opinion as if a physical break in had occurred, hence online theft and breach of privacy.

Ultimately it’s really up to us to post things online that we want to post, keeping everything else hidden from public eyes, sites like Facebook as well have the option to disallow others to go through your profile pictures and timeline. So in my opinion privacy is not a massive concern that should be raised when using the internet, face it, there are far more serious things we should worry about, and within the online community there’ll always be someone who has the ability to break in accounts such as there are thieves and criminals in reality.