Thesis final draft: Modern Technology & Social Change

Society is always adapting and modifying to the environment around it. Technology has just helped it along in the past century; our modern generation thrives on it. All you need to do is step out of your home to see this. It’s impossible to go almost anywhere and not see people using cell phones, driving in hybrid cars, or listening to music through iPods, just to name a few. One of the most powerful questions I have recently asked myself is; what did people do before the creation of the cell phone? Our society has advanced past living in the technological past, going backward is not a feasible option for most modern individuals. We see these small technological advances, but how many individuals actually realize the cultural shifts as technology develops, devices are created and used more often and are become more relied on? The world benefits from this technology advancement; our societies and cultures are ever-evolving and allowing for new ideas and purposes for modern technology.

            We see this evolution of technology in our American school systems; in 1997, 98% of schools in the United States had computers in their schools, but the average ratio of a student to a computer was 24 to 1, an all-time low (Coley, Cradler, & Engel, 1997). This began changing with the introduction to the one-to-one or laptop computer program that has been crisscrossing our country since 2008, since laptops are becoming less expensive (Zucker & Light, 2009). Some computers are even being modeled for school children, such as the, “Intel Classmate personal computer” and policy-makers are investing in this new resource for our students (Zucker & Light, 2009). These laptop programs are aimed to bring computers to every student in every school throughout the United States, and those that have these programs, have seen an increase in their academic scores, a decrease in student drop-out rate and an increase in teacher technological aptitudes (Zucker & Light, 2009). They have also seen an, “increase in student engagement, improved technology skills and a positive effect on students’ writing” (Zucker & Light, 2009). These changes within our American education system demonstrate that schools and computers have been evolving in recent years, creating new purposes for the betterment of our students and therefore our society.

Some do not believe technology has made our society better for all and this has seemed to create a block between our society and some individuals, such as the American minorities and immigrants. Gómez-Peña has partially addressed this issue within his essay, “The Virtual Barrio @ the Other Frontier”. He states that the technological myth behind Mexicans and other Latinos in the United States are that they are incapable of understanding high technology, and that they are perceived by Americans as naïve within this category (Gómez-Peña, 2010). High Technology is defined as: “scientific technology involving the production or use of advanced or sophisticated devices especially in the fields of electronics and computers” (Britannica). Gómez-Peña has a unique perspective because he is Mexican-American, born in 1955 in Mexico City and not moving to the United States until 1978, when he was 23 and spending a good portion of his younger years within the Mexican school system (Gómez-Peña, 2010). Mexico is technologically a poor country, especially in regards to computer and internet access; “Mexico is lagging behind in the Internet age. Just 28 percent of the population has Internet access. That puts Mexico behind Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, Chile and Argentina, where 30 percent to 40 percent of the population is connected online” (Villigran, 2011).  One conclusion a survey taken in 1996 established that, “Students usually learn more in classes in which they receive computer-based instruction” (Coley, Cradler, & Engel, 1997). This means most Mexicans, such as Gómez-Peña who grew up in Mexico, would have a hard time learning or understanding some technological advances that Americans are used to and have grown up with, such as daily internet use or school/home use of computers and computer software, because most of the Mexican population didn’t grow up with them within their schools and at home as U.S. modern citizens have.

Within American, we have been privileged to have a good deal of technological advancement; Dr. Benjamin Franklin’s experiments into electricity, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and more recently, the research done into nanotechnology, a very promising enterprise into science, such as healthcare. Dr. Chad Mirkin, the director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology (IIN) at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and an affiliate of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), was recently a guest speaker on National Public Radio (NPR). In this segment, “Hitting The ‘Off’ Switch On Antibacterial Resistance”, Dr. Mirkin explains the research his facility is currently working on into nanotechnology and medicine. Nanotechnology is defined as: “the science of manipulating materials on an atomic or molecular scale especially to build microscopic devices (as robots)” (Britannica).  In this recent NPR segment, Dr. Mirkin explains that in the past 15 years, they have been working on a specific Nano devices that can evolve along with bacteria, entering their cells, turning off switches, deactivating there damaging properties and ultimately causing bacterial death (Flatow, 2011). These devices can also target cancer cells, “The beauty of these constructs, they're part of a larger field called gene regulation, which actually has won the Nobel Prize for its promise, the idea that you could use this - a concept of switching off genes or down-regulating genes so that you could adjust protein levels and take effectively a diseased cell and make it healthy, or in the case of a cancer selectively cause it to die.” (Flatow, 2011). These advances in technology are the promise to our future for a better attack against bacteria, viruses and cancer, and the possibilities of finally destroying such things as the common cold or even helping physically and mentally disabled persons by altering DNA.

            These tidbits of scientific statements are important to others across the globe, but presently other nations are looking toward different technological significance. On December 17, 2010, an Arab man in Tunisia, North Africa named, Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in front of the governor’s building in protest to government policies (Cohen, 2011). His protest was recorded on a cell phone and sent via Facebook, “Al-Jazeera, the Arab TV network, was alerted through Facebook. Along the way, Bouazizi, who did not even have a high-school diploma, cyber-morphed into a frustrated university graduate that resonated in a nation where many graduates are jobless. This myth went round the world. Information moving this fast is inspired, rather than bound, by facts” (Cohen, 2011). This started the Middle Eastern riots and revolutions that continue to rage months later after the initial protest. (Louis & Sabah, 2011).

Because one man protested government rule, was recorded on a cell phone and sent to mass viewing by wireless internet, the politics of the Middle East may never be the same. Healthcare facilities in the United States are researching into areas such as Nanotechnology that may one day cure us of colds, influenza, bacterial infections and cancer. The American school systems are working to advance student knowledge through the use of computers and internet access. While Mexico, our southern brothers and sisters, struggle to meet the technological standards of America and some Central and South American countries. This gives pause to think what else technology may impact on other societies’ and cultures’ in the coming years, where these advancements and benefits will take the nations of our planet and if all nations will have equal opportunities to find out.

Works Cited

Britannica, E. (n.d.). Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Merriam-Webster, Inc.

Cohen, R. (2011, January 24). Facebook and Arab Dignity. Retrieved from The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/opinion/25iht-edcohen25.html

Coley, R. J., Cradler, J., & Engel, P. K. (1997). Computers and Classrooms: The Status of Technology in U.S. Schools. Policy Information Report. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service - Policy Information Center.

Flatow, I. (2011, 12 02). Hitting The 'Off' Switch On Antibiotic Resistance. Retrieved from National Public Radio (NPR): http://www.npr.org/2011/12/02/143055120/hitting-the-off-switch-on-antibiotic-resistance

Gómez-Peña, G. (2010). The Virtual Barrio @ the Other Frontier. In N. R. Comley, D. Hamilton, C. H. Klaus, R. Scholes, N. Sommers, & J. Tougaw, Fields of Reading (pp. 555-563). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's.

Louis, M., & Sabah, Z. (2011, November 20). Hundreds Injured in Renewed Egypt Protests; 24 Killed in Syria. Retrieved from Bloomberg Businessweek: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-11-20/hundreds-injured-in-renewed-egypt-protests-24-killed-in-syria.html

Villigran, L. (2011, November 24). Mexico struggles to emerge from ‘digital abyss’. Retrieved from SmartPlanet: http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/global-observer/mexico-struggles-to-emerge-from-8216digital-abyss/777

Washington, J. (2011, January 10). For Minorities, New 'Digital Divide' Seen. USA Today.

Zucker, A. A., & Light, D. (2009, January 2). Laptop Programs for Students. Retrieved from www.sciencemag.org

Thesis draft II: Modern Technology & Social Change

Society is always adapting and modifying to the environment around it. Technology has just helped it along in the past century; our modern generation thrives on it. All you need to do is step out of your home to see this. It’s impossible to go almost anywhere and not see individuals using cell phones, driving in hybrid cars, or listening to music through iPods, just to name a few. One of the most powerful questions I have recently asked myself is; what did people do before the creation of the cell phone? Our society has advanced past that point and going backward is not a feasible option for most modern individuals. We see these small technological advances, but how many individuals actually realize the cultural shifts as they are created and used more often and are become more relied on? Society, culture and technology are ever-evolving; the United States and the world benefits from it.

            We see this in our American school systems; 98% of schools in the United States have computers in their schools, but the average ratio in 1997 of a student to a computer is 24 to 1, an all-time low (Coley, Cradler, & Engel, 1997). This began changing with the introduction to the one-to-one or laptop computer program that has been crisscrossing our country since 2008 (Zucker & Light, 2009). These programs are aimed to bring computers to every student in every school throughout the United States, and those that have these programs, have seen an increase in their academic scores. They have also seen an, “increase in student engagement, improved technology skills and a positive effect on students’ writing” (Zucker & Light, 2009).

            Some do not believe technology has made our society better for all and this has seemed to create a block between our society and some individuals, such as the American minorities and immigrants. Gómez-Peña has partially addressed this issue within her essay, “The Virtual Barrio @ the Other Frontier”. He states that the technological myth behind Mexicans and other Latinos in the United States are that they are incapable of understanding high technology, and that they are perceived by Americans as naïve within this category (Gómez-Peña, 2010). High Technology is defined as: scientific technology involving the production or use of advanced or sophisticated devices especially in the fields of electronics and computers (Britannica). Gómez-Peña has a unique perspective because he is Mexican-American, born in 1955 in Mexico City and not moving to the United States until 1978, when he was 23 (Gómez-Peña, 2010).

Mexico is technologically a poor country, especially in regards to computer and internet access; “Mexico is lagging behind in the Internet age. Just 28 percent of the population has Internet access. That puts Mexico behind Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, Chile and Argentina, where 30 percent to 40 percent of the population is connected online” (Villigran, 2011).  One conclusion a survey taken in 1996 established that, “Students usually learn more in classes in which they receive computer-based instruction” (Coley, Cradler, & Engel, 1997). This means most Mexicans who grew up in Mexico would have a hard time learning or understanding computers in the United States, since they did not grow up with them as U.S. modern citizens have.

            These tidbits of technological statements are important, but not so much to others across the world. On December 17, 2010, an Arab man in Tunisia, North Africa named, Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in front of the governor’s building in protest to government policies (Cohen, 2011). His protest was recorded on a cell phone and sent via Facebook, “Al-Jazeera, the Arab TV network, was alerted through Facebook. Along the way, Bouazizi, who did not even have a high-school diploma, cyber-morphed into a frustrated university graduate: that resonated in a nation where many graduates are jobless. This myth went round the world. Information moving this fast is inspired, rather than bound, by facts” (Cohen, 2011). This started the Middle Eastern riots that are still occurring today, now in Egypt and Syria (Louis & Sabah, 2011).

Because one man protested government rule, was recorded on a cell phone and sent to mass viewing by wireless internet, the politics of the Middle East may never be the same.  This gives pause to think what else technology may impact on other societies’ and cultures’ in the coming years.

Thesis draft I: Modern Technology & Social Change

Americans are told technology is there for anyone who wants or needs it. We have computers in almost every household, every school in the United States and cell phones in most individuals’ pockets. But are these technologies affordable to everyone who actually needs them? Are they used to better themselves or just used for entertainment purposes, and why does this matter?

            In a recent USA Today article, the author suggests that Latinos and African Americans have “less access to the web and slower online connections – placing them on the wrong side of the ‘digital divide’,” (article, “For Minorities, New ‘Digital Divide’ Seen”). This may be correct, but I believe it would change in some geographical locations within the United States. Minorities in Chicago would probably have a different view of how they use their cell phones than the minority in a small town. They would probably have more knowledge of entertainment purposes within a large city. But it would also depend on their values and beliefs and on their financial background because technology isn’t cheap and the newer products are more expensive each year than the last. Some individuals may have access and the income to buy this technology and instead of using it to read the news; local, national and international, or use it to make personal and professional connections to widen their scope of knowledge, they may use it to play games or for distractions from “social” sites.

As the saying goes, “It’s how you use it that matters”. In this case, it’s how you use the content within our technical devices that matters. Is it really better for all Americans to have a computer at home; equipped with a browser and Microsoft Word software and then only use it to play games on Facebook, or to watch comedic YouTube videos? I don’t think so. I think this kind of access will only dim individuals’ perspectives of world conflicts and international debate, only decrease their reading and writing skills instead of challenging their thoughts and beliefs to gain new insights. I have heard in the past few years that the newer generations since the introduction of the cell phone on a large scale, now in college or graduates of college, have trouble with their writing skills because of texting. Theirs’ are the first generation to use texting on a cell phone as a whole population and we can now see the damage it has caused. It has weakened their ability to write well, which makes it much harder for them as students in college to have the same expectations to write well as their parents and grandparents were expected when they went to college and it makes it more difficult to job search after college, to create appropriate resumes. How does this affect minorities that speak English as their second language, one they barely grew up with and still have trouble writing?

Techno-utopian was a phrase formed in response to earlier generations belief that computers and technology would one day create a paradise; where individuals would not need to work as hard or at all and our civilization would be condescending towards its technological peak. Now it’s still a perspective future, but it’s also become harder to see it since there are areas of our country that have fallen behind in academics and our recent economical strife. Where do we go from here?

In the past few short decades there have been incredible advances in technology within the healthcare field and in “green” technology. They have created artificial organs and limbs, solar power and “B” cycles- community bike share programs, they have the same idea with smart cars. I believe these are the first steps to creating that utopian paradise. We need to see our failures and probabilities of disasters if we are to correct them.

The human mind can be an extremely creative tool. Since the television set was first created and science fiction became available for mass viewing, there have been many television shows about possible technology. I remember watching episodes of Star Trek where they used “communicators” to communicate with other officers’, not unlike a cell phone, or they read staff reports on a technical pad, reminding me of the Nook. All we have to do is imagine it and it is possible.

Works Cited

Washington, James. "For Minorities, New 'Digital Divide' Seen." USA Today 10 January 2011.

Midterm - Two Perspectives on the Impact of the Internet

Midterm question: In Nicholas Carr's essay, he laments about the ways online searching and reading have changed the way we read and think. Explain the simularities between Carr's thoughts and about Google and Sullivan's thoughts about blogging. To what degree have online technologies impacted aspects of how we express and communicate with one another?

 Carr and Sullivan both discuss technology and how individuals use them to express themselves. In Carr's essay, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", he explains his view of how computers are seemingly changing the way people think and read. While Sullivan's essay, "Why I Blog", is about his experiences with blogging and how the style of blogging is different that writing an article in a newspaper or journal. Carr and Sullivan have a history that helped each become what they are today, they have insights into communication through the internet, and an importance on modern society.

Both essays describe important aspects of technology, but each settles that importance of different areas of thought. Carr comments that "we still await the long-term neurological and psychological experiments that will provider a definitive picture of how internet use affects cognition". He explains how he and his colleagues have noticed a shift in the way they read since starting to use the internet years before, that there is a lack of concentration and more of a scanning than absorbing the words. Sullivan's essay loosely describes how blogging was created. A blog is the combination of the words, "web" and "log". Blogging is different than any other style of writing, because it is a "form of self correction". To blog is to write backwards because the author doesn't know where his stories may go, most bloggers write for self-discovery. This also could change the way one thinks, if he is constantly writing blogs. He may have extreme difficulty reverting back to how most children are taught to write, with definitive purpose or a known ending. Before technology existed, books were mostly created by monks or certain individuals, and they were only able to write so many books in their lifetime, so this limited the variety and quantity of books available. Most people didn't even know how to read, so this caused as individual to not have a chance to learn how to read, and when they are taught, they are taught in a certain way that is a standard among their society.

Carr now believes that the internet is reprogramming the way we think and read. Sullivan, on the other hand, accepts the style of reading and writing on the Net, in the form of blogging. Carr uses a few people with experience into such matters, such as Mary Ann Wolf, a developmental psychologist. She explains that in her experience the "style of reading promoted on the Net" is not a style humans' are used to while growing up. Children are not "instinctive" to reading as they are for speech, they must learn how to speak and then see letters, form them into words and then read. Sullivan says that to blog, individuals must "embrace hazards". They must have a "willingness to learn to fall off a trapeze rather than fail to make the leap". Sullivan comments on how his readers are the most integral part of his blogging experience, they challenge him if he makes mistakes and that they have become a group of friends, not in the normal terms, but in that he can trust them to respond honestly about his entries.

Sullivan also comments on how "blogging suffers from the same flaws as postmodernism". He says this because blogging is one of the newest forms of writing and he didn't personally accept it right away. Sullivan says that he had difficulty switching from how he was taught to write to what is expected of a blogger. He explains that to write in such a "hazardous" way, he needed to "let go of narration" and to write in a "free form" style. He has progressed well since his early days and it has helped that blogging has become more and more popular online. Sullivan says that he finds weekly blogging topics now help him to come up with ideas to write about in his weekend newspaper article. Google has also been around for years, it's become a common term to say, "just Google it" when referring to trying to find a piece of information online. One of Google's missions is to create an artificial intelligence and to make it easily assessable to humans. Carr describes his worries about how this may change how humans think and read beyond what we are supposed to and what he believes he has already witnessed between himself and his peers. This may make it even more noticeable to older generations of the mental changes that may be caused by the internet and computers in general.

Carr and Sullivan both express deep emotions about their topics. Carr mostly describes his trouble with accepting a new wave of mental cognition, even as Sullivan is apparently jumping from the high board into the internet pool of ideas. Technology has been around for years now; the internet is easily assessable to anyone who has the initiative to use it. Before technology became so popular, most individuals didn't own cell phones or personal computers. Technology becoming more and more affordable has meant that individuals can buy these pieces of technology. Some have found that even though it's great to have a cell phone on you at all times, it's that much easier for others to communicate with you 24/7. It may be great to have access to the internet through your own personal computer, but it's also that much easier to her your personal identification stolen. All new ideas have risks, even the possibility that the internet changes the way we think, but it's also worth it to have a chance to evolve and to learn new creative ideas from inspired technology that may benefit us in ways some cannot yet see.