The website I chose out of my personal array of sites I choose to follow that have to do with technology is one of the best of the bunch. This website is extremetech.com

I chose this website because at the moment I am very interested in the newest technologies. I like knowing what other people are capable of inventing, for instance, with regards to technology.

This particular website makes them more interesting and worthy to follow because they talk about everything and anything to do with the newest technology. More particularly they go above and beyond most technology sites by going in-depth with each technology they showcase on their website. For instance they look at the behind-the-scenes of these technologies, which is different than the normal technology sites out there. This site has users and experts writing their entries that according to them are “seeking to answer the unanswerable questions of technology”. And to do this they use very easy to engage with and understand language, which is again out of the ordinary for other technology sites. This makes is so that anyone in the public can read their site entries.

They use their blog style website to communicate effectively by including many different category links, so if a person is looking for something in particular they can easily access it on the front page. They also include on their front page “top searches” and “trending” links. This is very effective for the audience because they are able to see what other people are looking at and what the most popular technologies are of the moment.

I would include them in my own Personal Learning Network because they have a particular sense of humor and easily understandable entries on their site. The sense of humor and beginner vocabulary that they use on their site makes it very easy for me to read and follow along. This in turn allows me to become interested in what they are writing about.

I watched the sci-fi movie titled “Her”. Not only was this movie very eye-opening but it also made me a bit excited for the future, if it is anything like in the movie.

The vision of the future that it presented was heavily involved with technology. And as many people are very vocal about being against how involved in technology as a society now, I am totally not against technology becoming more involved in our daily lives. It was evident from watching the movie that technology that is a theme in the technology of today, that it is convenient. The future that is portrayed in this film makes it seem like the technology used makes everyone’s lives easier and therefore becomes convenient. In terms of the job the main character had, that job would have been a significant amount more difficult if he had to hand-write the letters. But with the speech to text technology it made everyone’s job easier.

However, there was a negative that was portrayed in the film about the future. And that is that we become less social animals because of technology. Even though the technologies provided gave the characters in the movie a way to communicate, it also decreased their social interactions with human beings.

It made me think differently about the present society because I can see how involving more technology into our daily lives can turn into something completely negative. But on the other hand I can see how it is portrayed in the movie, how everyone gets along just fine with the amount of technology in their lives and it even makes their lives easier.

Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age, a book by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, is all about how digital technology does not have the capability of forgetting, which for some people can bring about certain consequences. Even though it is clear after reading this book that Viktor is very knowledgeable about the history of digital technology, the science behind forgetting and especially knowledgeable about how to combat the challenge of forgetting in this digital age, his argument is not complete. He mentions that “we can respond to the shadow of digital remembering employing a variety of different means” (Mayer- Schönberger p198), and he even describes these possible means in the book, but his argument is lacking information on how to teach younger generations about their Internet hygiene, and this could be a step towards forgetting in this digital age.

In the first part of the book Viktor provides a background to the consequences of digital technology not being able to forget. He does this by providing a story about a woman, who was on the path of becoming a teacher when her university officials denied her of her teaching certificate because “her behavior was unbecoming of a teacher” (Mayer- Schönberger p1). This was because of one of her Myspace pictures she posted of herself in a pirate costume drinking out of a plastic cup, which the university officials obviously presumed was alcohol. This story provides the premise of the book because it is a recent example of what consequences can happen if you share something on the Internet that cannot be forgotten.

In the third section Viktor talks about there being four main technological drivers that have facilitated a shift from analog to digital in our world. The first driver he describes is digitization. It is because everyone’s world in our society is controlled by digitization. We all have some sort of digital device that we use on a daily basis. Photos are now taken digitally, etc. The other three drivers are cheap storage, easy retrieval and global reach.

In the next section Viktor talks about the consequences of not being able to forget in our digital world. He mentions, “with the help of digital tools we- individually and as a society- have begun to unlearn forgetting, to erase from our daily practices one of the most fundamental behavioral mechanisms of human kind” (Mayer- Schönberger p92). This means that we used to be able to forget easily, but with the invention of digital tools that notion has become obsolete and it is causing us more harm than good.

Viktor goes on to describe potential ways to fix or prevent those consequences from happening. Those ways are by using digital abstinence, by using information privacy rights on websites, or by adjusting and really thinking about what you are going to share on the Internet. And in the very last section Viktor talks about reintroducing forgetting and how that can help Internet users to not have to suffer through any more consequences.

As much as it is obvious that Viktor is very knowledgeable about everything he talks about in his book, he is lacking one very important concept. This concept is that older generations have to teach the younger generations, who are starting to use the Internet, about Internet hygiene and what it means to really think about their Internet identity and to think about what to post publicly or not to post online. This needs to be taught by parents to their children because the Internet “provides new modes of social presentation and positioning, new media for expression, and new ways of narrating the self” (Kirmayer, Raikhel & Rahimi, 2013) and if young generations are not taught how to properly use the Internet it could ruin their lives, like the story that Viktor provides in his book.

I really believe that teaching the younger generations about their Internet hygiene could be progress to forgetting in this digital age, or not having to forget because Internet users are not sharing things that could potentially ruin their lives. This is because from a young age when my family first got the Internet my parents taught me about Internet hygiene. One of the main things they taught me was that anyone in the world at any time can take a screenshot of something I’ve shared on a social media site, for instance, and they can keep it forever. They really instilled in me that nothing is ever properly, one hundred percent deleted from the Internet.

Reading Viktor’s book was really good insight into the history, science and future of forgetting in this digital age. However, it lacked due to not having any information about the young generations in our world that are just starting to use the internet and what we can teach them about Internet hygiene.

BIBLIOGRPAHY

Journal Article:

Kirmayer, L., Raikhel, E., & Rahimi, S. (2013). Cultures of the Internet: Identity, community and mental health. Transcultural Psychiatry, 50(2), 165-191.

Novel:

Mayer-Schönberger, V. (2009). Delete: The virtue of forgetting in the digital age. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Hey. My name is Shelby Abbott. I am a fourth year Sociology major and Technology and Society minor. Because I grew up on the internet I am very familiar with it. I have been using social media sites, whether it be Myspace or Nexopia since I began using the internet. So I am very curious to look at social media sites from a critical stance instead of just a avid user stance. For instance, the fades of the different sites, is there going to be something better than Facebook in the near future that everyone starts to use instead of Facebook, like it has been done with Myspace and Nexopia before? What are the major cons of social media? Do all the negatives have to do with the privacy issues we are beginning to hear about more often now? K cool can’t wait.