I think Postman is a little crazy

I didn't quite see this at first, but after re-reading pages 50-55, I think Postman is a little insane. He feels quite strongly about the topic of Technopoly, and he makes these claims about books written in 1911 as being the "scaffolding" of our modern Technopoly in America. He continually makes references to A brave new world as somehow Huxley wasn't writing about fiction, he rather had insane foresight and saw the world he was writing about come to pass many years down the road. Postman essentially says that we're living in the society from A Brave New World.

-On page 52-53 he discusses how "all of these have been written about extensively in many contexts and are well known" (53) are the four reasons why technopoly has taken hold in America. This seems to me to mean that hes sort of saying "here are my reasons, they're well known, therefore my argument is infallible. And how can you stupid people not see what is right in front of you? How could no one see how these four pillars of Technopoly shaped and molded the people and nation to become a technopoly?" I'm getting weird Terminater-esque vibes, meaning how Sarah Conner is so sure that Skynet is gonna come and fuck everything up but no one believes her. This dude is saying pretty much the same thing, but the only difference is that Skynet hasn't become self aware yet while we've missed that opportunity to not become a Technopoly, its already happened and we did nothing to stop it, in fact we maybe even embraced it! Personally I don't see anything wrong with living in a technopoly, I apparently, according to Postman, was born into the technopolic world, and if i truly was, how could i know anything besides existing in this technopolic world? I can't. Therefore I have no problem with living in such a world.

Final Paper Blog

So i'm reading the technopoly book again, and im amazed at how far advanced Postman's views about tech in the future were. In 1992 he was pretty confident that eventually, computers would essentially take over our lives in every aspect of use and activities. I remember when Quicken came out in like 91 or something, the tax software. My dad was super excited to use it, however simply by reading the manual, he couldn't figure out really how to use it. That year he spent a while on Quicken, failed, and had to scramble to do them by hand. Flash forward about 10 years, he's still doing them by hand and it takes him about 100hrs to do all the tax stuff. In 2008, his business and something else (i can't remember) switched to this computer only format whereby making doing his taxes by hand almost impossible. He bought the new quicken, and the Quicken for Dummys book, and within a few weeks, he was able to learn the software. He wasn't fluent in using it, however in 2010, he has become a quicken genius. My point being that had my dad wanted to continue doing our taxes by hand, technology and forces he couldn't control, forced a switch in what he was doing. If he had painstakingly learned how to use quicken back in 91, all the years prior to 2008 would have likely been easier for him to do the taxes, and when he was forced to switch to the program, he wouldn't have had to segregate himself every evening for a few weeks learning how to use the program.

Midterm Wiki Blog

Should Wikipedia be used as a scholarly source?

-The answer is "not really". Its not a flat out NO, but it is a "not really" answer. The more straight forward facts that the entry has, generally means its actually pretty reliable because the numbers or facts are just copy-pasted from a website into Wikipedia. The more arguments, concepts, ideas, anything that isn't a black and white fact should be seen with some skepticism before accepting the entries claim as factual.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of this source?

-I think the greatest strength of Wikipedia is the magnitude of available information in such a small place. There are millions and millions of articles in over a hundred different languages. I can honestly say I don't think there is this much potential knowledge anywhere else on the web, or in the world. There is just so much info just waiting to be learned that its somewhat humbling. The greatest weakness of this information smorgasbord is that any schmuck with a computer can post something and have it be misconstrued as fact when it is far from the truth. So ironically, the same feature that makes it great, the amount of information, is also its greatest weakness in that you as the reader have to comb through all the information and do research on the citations to make sure what your reading is legitimate or not.

What do these strengths and weaknesses tell us about the potential effects of technology on American culture?

-This may be somewhat of an un-politically correct answer, but here it goes. People today, rich or poor, smart or stupid, have pretty much the same access to information. Years before, it was only the rich that had access to information. Not all of them smart, however it was only the smart and rich ones that added to the knowledge bank. Today, irregardless of your financial background, you have access to more information that ever before in recorded history, however there is no teacher to help guide and steer the student, there just becomes a jumble of information that is not properly understood. What I'm trying to say is that people will rely too much on immediate information which they will accept as pure and utter truth, and people will actually learn less from half-truths and facts from more sources and more topics than they would if they learned correctly and absolutely about less sources and topics. This technology is a phrase, making us dumber, not smarter.

What did I learn? What will I take away?

-Well actually I learned that Wikipedia is actually a little more credible than I had thought. In 2004, I was a senior in highschool and Wikipedia had very rapidly burst onto the scene. We didn't know then that most of the information was bullshit, and I remember we had a quiz and most of us took the info from the entry and regurgitated it on the quiz. We all failed. The only kid who didn't fail actually read the book while we tried to take a short cut. After that I have always taken Wiki entries with a grain of salt. My auditing however showed me that at least in some articles maintained by competent contributors, the information is more or less correct. Writing research papers I would never, ever, ever, use any information from Wikipedia even if I made up the citation from a real book, the info itself is somewhat tainted. However if you're looking for some quick answers or if your having an argument with a buddy, the site is great. Overall, Wikipedia is more real than I had previously thought, however there is too much room for contributor error and bias.