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Concept paper 1 CIS 390 Darryll Dixon

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Each author touched on different aspects but also had a lot in common and their common thread seems to be making people seriously consider the impact that technology is having on todays world and society. Neil Postman wrote a great article on technological change that had me thinking a lot about the change of technology between the 20th and 21st century. In his piece, he touched on the excitement and anticipation of the new technologies that this century will usher in, all while warning his audience to advance with caution and wisdom in relation to these foreign innovations. In Derek Thompsons editorial, he discusses how communication has rapidly increased due to technology. In Thomas Friedmans excerpt he calls for people to better adapt to this new and increasingly growing global competitive market that technological revolution has birthed. Neil Postmans Five Things We Need to Know about Technological Change was one of the best articles that I have read. I feel that it is easy to adopt a nave mentality about how good the technology is and not consider the future impact of the device which could be both good and bad. As Postman stated, technological change is a trade-off (Postman, 1998). For every advantage that a new technology offers there will be a corresponding disadvantage. A great example would be the groundbreaking Google Glasses. For all of its undeniably cool features, such as being able to record video with a simple voice command, people are increasing becoming aware of how much it destroys privacy. Jessica Guynn of the Los Angeles Times writes about these privacy concerns. She writes, Lawmakers are alarmed by the privacy implications and have begun asking pointed questions of Google. And some commercial establishments -- most notably casinos and bars -- have already banned Glass (Guynn, 2014). Another Trade off that technology will have on the world is that of jobs. Technology will one day take over jobs such as hard labor because most of all the things that were mad made products are being able to be made by machines and man will be soon out of jobs. I feel like Derek Thompsons piece was very short, his observations about the soaring rate of communication due to technology were really on point. Technology has made it possible for people to communicate more through many different methods. As I stated earlier this can be both a good and bad thing. There was a study that examined the impacts of social networks on the interactive communication of the University College Irbid female students. The results were mixed. They found, There are statistically significant relationships between the use of Facebook and interpersonal contact with the family and others and the number of hours of using Facebook and interpersonal contact with

Dixon 3 the family members and others, which confirms the validity of first and second hypotheses. The views of the study sample towards the effects of Facebook on the personal contact were positive, meaning that the results of the statistical analysis showed that the use of Facebook makes it easier for the subjects to communicate with others. However, facebook affects the interpersonal contact with the family in that it helps to reduce the interaction of the sample families. (Al-Khaddam, 2013). Social media sites have also set up some very complicated ethical circumstances. An example of this is teachers and students interacting through social media. In the American University Law review, diMarzo (2012) writes an excerpt on this highly emotionally intense debate. Thomas Friedman had a very informative article. As time passes and technology increases, many other countries are now being able to compete globally with the United States. Subcontracting is just one of the ways that other countries are competing.

In conclusion I think that all three writers put things into perspective and made things more clear when it comes to technological change. New technology comes with trade-offs, consequences, and debates and people should be aware of these things when purchasing or using new technology instead of going into something clueless not being aware of the pros and cons.

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References

Al-Khaddam, H. (2013). Impact of social networks on interpersonal communication of the students university college irbid girls: Facebook as a model. Cross - Cultural Communication, 9(5), 17-22. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1462498827?accountid=28829

Bilton, N. (2013, Aug 12). New targets for hackers: Your car and your house. New York Times. Retrieved from http://sks.sirs.com

di Marzo, G.,M. (2012). WHY CAN'T WE BE FRIENDS? THE BANNING OF TEACHER-STUDENT COMMUNICATION VIA SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH. American University Law Review, 62(1), 123-166. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1325013207?accountid=28829

Guynn, J. (2013, Aug 11). Google glass sees all and that's a worry. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://sks.sirs.