Although it seems a new challenge for us to engage and organize people in the cyberspace with the help of social media and websites, the underlying tactics and theories are rooted deeply in our attributes as social beings. For instance, the principle of Porter's Funnel does not only work offline but also shows its validity online through a variant of Funnel as the reader-to-leader framework in Preece and Shneiderman's paper.
What's more, there is no certain virtue or essence of the internet and other ICTs, despite the hope they have brought us of creating a communal area that endorses freedom and sharing. Just as Preece and Shneiderman put it, power of these technologies will also be taken by "hate groups, terrorists organizations, and deceptive corporations" with "malicious intent". Slander and libel will get their chance to spread at the same time when we improve our design to promote sharing of good ideas. The paper assigned last week, "technology as social practice", shared the same view in this aspect -- "technologies and social practices are mutually constituted".
Even if many disciplines culminates because of the increasing ability of analyzing big data, it is not sufficient to give evidence for "technological determinism" we discussed. As the slides, "six provocations for big data", present, the acceleration of data processing capability never automatically provides us with the right way to use it. Data do not necessarily entail accuracy and "bigger" is not equivalent to "better". It is still mankind that determines which model should be applied and how to interpret the outcome.
Therefore, it is us that consider our relationship with technology and change it if we want but not vice versus. Also, the introduction of new technologies never reforms the human nature as much as we imagine.
hi karen thank you for sharing your thoughts.
ReplyDeleteofc human is our primary concern but the particular question here is how we utilise the technology. "Technology determinism" never claims that technology is virtuous by nature so the limitations of big data do not necessarily serve as a qualified counter-example. Theoretically it is up to us to "change our relationship with technology" but really to what extent are we in control?
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Deletehi karen,
ReplyDeleteI feel happy to see someone has the same thought as me, because most of classmates in this class believe that technology is the basis. However, I strongly believe that people's needs are the most important forcing power! Started with people's needs, we have the motivation to refine the devices and technologies, so I defiantly feel the same as you~<
Hi Karen,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoy your summary of the readings combining with your insightful thoughts. And I totally agree that it's not the technology or the internet changes the way we behave, but rather we are always in this way, and the Internet has augmented our behaviors.