In the first chapter one of The Current Crisis in Digital Media,, I begin to learn more about how technology is affecting society. More specifically how digital culture impacts civil engagement. “The guiding principle of techno-utopianism (supported by a never-ending stream of “proof of progress” data) is that everything always has, always does, and always will continue to get better and better, forever and ever, amen” (24). This quote stood out to me because it goes to show how society has no limit on how much they are growing. Which is apparent in the technology world, this is shown by implementing an ample amount of new technologies constantly throughout the year. This is impactful because these technologies gain small amounts of information about how we live our lives. Silicon Valley technology companies use this as a tactic to increase their sales. As a society, we always want the newest, most technology advanced product, so Silicon Valley is just encouraging our over consumerism society.
From Jurassic Park (1993) example in the reading, Dr. Malcolm states “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn’t stop to think if they should” (Jurassic Park, 1993). This example really stood out to me because, in the reading I learn how technology makes us move faster as a society. Thinking we can just ‘delete’ something if it goes badly wrong. Today for example, companies are trying to sell face recognition programs to the government in hopes of implementing face recognition technologies. Amazon’s Rekognition software has received a slew of backlash after the software has been misidentifying an ample amount of people. This is not the first time Amazon has received backlash for a product not working properly, for example the Amazon Alexa has received backlash from laughing in the middle of the night, and just creeping people out. In response to these technology slip-ups, some people are stopping to say “should we really be doing this?”. To end the reading, we learn how we need to learn when enough is enough. Below shows a current example on what went wrong with Amazons Rekognition software, throughout this article you can see what happens when technology is released to society that is not ready.
Digital Proverbs 