2/9/2016; Criticlal Summary Portfolio

Critical Summary 1- The Flight From Conversation

Flashpoint- “We are tempted to think that our little ‘sips’ of online connection add up to a big gulp pf real conversation. But they don’t. […] They do not substitute for real conversation.”

                In her article, “The Flight from Conversation,” MIT professor Sherry Turkle breaks down and analyzes our societal transition from face-to-face conversation as a means of communication, to snips of dialogue we accumulate throughout the day through means such as email, text, and social media. Throughout the early parts of the article, Turkle tends to stick to more of an observatory approach; simply reporting on what she has seen in her everyday life, and how the communication progression has looked through her eyes. Later on in the article, however, Turkle changes her approach to actually analyze this progression on what it says about society as a whole, and even gives some advice on how we can overcome this social “issue.” To me, as seen in my flashpoint quotation above, Turtle seem like she is trying to dive the point home that, contrary to popular belief, the rise of abbreviated communication methods such as email and social media is not increasing our interpersonal connection, but actually driving us apart and leading us become more isolated from the people around us. As a MIT professor of the social studies of science and technology, Turkle is more qualified than anyone to dig out the underlying effects of our social evolution within the last few decades to one that revolves around not the people around us, but the screen in front of us. Over the years, our advancement to a technology-dependent society has been obvious and unavoidable, but what hasn’t always been so obvious is what this really means. For this reason, the value of this article, to me, comes not from the societal observations it possesses, but the analysis it proposes. As relatively innocent as social media and the like may seem, it is hard to ignore the disastrous effects that show up during the last half of this article. There is no stopping the ever increasing landslide of technology that lines store shelves year after year, but buyer be weary, with every new version of IPhone that comes out, our society will continue to progress down a path that cannot be reversed.

Turkle, Sherry. "The Flight From Conversation." The New York Times. The New York Times, 21 Apr. 2012.               Web. 24 Jan. 2016.






Critical Summary 2- Where Will Technological Evolution Take Us?


Flashpoint- “Will technological evolution take us in desirable directions, as we usually assume biological
evolution does?”

                In the article, “As Technology Gets Better, Will Society Get Worse?” Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu writes of an all too likely scenario in which our technological ambitions lead us into a life of complacency and ease which could very well spell the end of human civilization. Within the article, Wu contrasts greatly the difference between technological evolution, where we are propelled forward based on what we want, and natural biological evolution in which favorable genes evolved based on what we needed to survive. He says that while biological evolution is still at work, and always will be, the technological variety actually has a much larger impact on the future of the human race because of the rapid pace at which it is evolving. For the sake of his argument, Wu uses the example of the Oji-Cree people, an isolated Canadian tribe that, until recently, still lived according to the ancient traditions of their ancestors. Wu notes how over the past 70 years, a rapid increase in technology and other modern accommodations have transformed this tribe from one of the most physically and mentally healthy cultures in the world, to one of the least. Because of a rapid decrease in required exercise and self-dependence, drug and alcohol addiction now runs rampant amongst these people, and nearly half of the population now suffers from type one diabetes.

                The most important thing I took out of Wu’s article is that there are many very well educated people who believe the current path of technological development will not lead us to the future we imagine, but to “a future defined not by an evolution toward superintelligence but by the absence of discomforts.” In a market economy, the technological path of our age is defined by what we as consumers are willing to buy, and as long as we continue to seek out technology that is only designed to make our lives easier and more comfortable, we will continue down the path to hopelessness.

Wu, Tim. "As Technology Gets Better, Will Society Get Worse? - The New Yorker." The New Yorker. N.p.,              06 Feb. 2014. Web. 01 Feb. 2016.






Critical Summary 3- Sofalarity, Not Singularity


Flashpoint- Scene from 1:00-1:03; When the fat man falls off of his chair and is helpless to do anything about it.

                During this snippet from the well-known film, Wall-e, we are exposed to future much different than the one represented in films like Star Wars, but just as likely. Coupled with my last source, taken from the New Yorker magazine, one can see that if we continue down our current technological path, we could “approach not singularity but a sofalarity,” or a state lacking any discomforts, as opposed to a state defined by its superinteligent abilities. One may wonder what’s wrong with a future where any of our craziest discomforts are magically taken care of, but does this movie clip look like a future we should aspire to? As we continue to become more and more dependent on the technology industry year after year, we are not only asking them to make our lives easier, we are relying on them to point the direction of our evolutionary progression. This clip from Wall-e shows one possibility for the future of mankind, but is it really all that different from how we already are? Over the past half century as technology has become a larger and larger part of our everyday lives, the obesity rate here in America, and around the world, has run rampant. Over this time period, the number of daily steps taken by the average American has declined severely, while daily calorie consumption has increased by as much as 20 percent over the same time period, according to livestrong.com. One step into any large superstore and the dystopian future we see in Wall-e doesn’t look quite so abstract after all; the film characters are simply foreign stereotypes of Americans visualized on screen: morbidly obese men and women riding around on motor scooters drinking big gulps and eating mass produced junk food. Only time will tell what the true technological future of mankind will look like, but if humanity continues to progress down the same path it is currently traveling, it’s hard to ignore this scene as a possible future scenario.

"Human Dystopia." YouTube. YouTube, 30 Aug. 2011. Web. 04 Feb. 2016.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1BQPV-iCkU





Critical Summary 4- The Technological Singularity

http://bigthink.com/dr-kakus-universe/the-technological-singularity-and-merging-with-machines