How TV Ruined Your Life

Found online: 
NotPercy203 2012, How TV Ruined Your Life - s01e01 - Fear, video recording, YouTube, viewed online 4 April 2014, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQBwNyJDHsw>.

As Kling mentions in 'What Is Social Informatics and Why Does It Matter?, ICTs only benefit sections of society, not the whole (Kling 1999). How TV Ruined Your Life points out how TV has been used by those in power to control and manipulate society, showing how ICTs are political. One of the reasons this works so well is because it played on human biology and our ingrained reactions to threats and fear.    This makes us realise the effects our biology and history have on how ICTs affect society in a noticeable way. One of the reasons TV has such an affect on us is its pervasiveness, with most people owning at least one TV. TV has been presented as a necessary item, allowing those in power, both those in government and in media, to control a large section of society.   

Not sure if meme

Source:

MemeGenerator n.d. #2 Futurama Fry, viewed online 4 April 2014, <http://memegenerator.net/instance/32019067>.

This meme, like all others, is a product of hybridity, a combination of television and the Internet as well as a number of references. It only makes sense if you understand the multiple references, Futurama, Somebody That I Used To Know, Call Me Maybe. The fact that it is a meme suggests that people do understand all these references, one of the consequences of ICTs in the connectivity around the world. Large amounts of people from all around the world are now able to view the same thing, which has helped with the rise of pop-culture.  

Overheard conversation

I overheard two men talking on the train on the 23 of March while I was traveling from Central to Warnervale. One of the men was a train driver and was telling the other that not long ago some guy had jumped out out in-front of the train he was driving and it was too close for him to stop. About half an hour later the body was removed from the tracks and his boss told him that he was expected to continue the train journey. He protested, his hands were still shaking, but his boss was adamant. 

Davenport writes that using social informatics as an approach to studying ICTs in the workplace, we can see how "technology is humanized, in contrast to how humans may be systematized" (Davenport 2005, p. 17). It now seems that the efficiency of technology is being valued over human emotion and people are expected to be as emotionless even after a traumatic event. Here we see a lack of consideration that has grown from expectations set by technologies standard.     

YouTube Abuse Recovery

TheGeekyBlond 2014, YouTube Abuse Recovery, video recording, YouTube, viewed online 24 March 2014, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Uc5eNNG60o>.

The abuse mentioned in YouTube Abuse Recovery show that ICTs have created new power relationships. As Kling mentions, ICTs tend to benefit certain groups more than others, in this case we see how the creator/fan relationship that YouTube has brought about, can be manipulated to the harm of the fan (Kling 1999). YouTube was previously perceived to be unlike any other media, with an absence of negative effects. These events clearly show how individuals use ICTs for their own purposes, while YouTube in neutral, people are not. It also raises the question of wether the benefits of such ICTs out-wiegh the potential they have for harm.   

Never Let Me Go

Ishiguro, K. 2005, Never Let Me Go, Faber and Faber, UK.

Never Let Me Go makes us aware of the ethical implications technology can have. If a technology can have such a positive affect on one section of society, does that justify the misery of another? In this world it appears as if what is viewed as technology has become more human than the humans, the clones are capable of love and friendship and the humans are easily able to use them for body parts. This made me think of the ways humans are becoming more and more computerised, with technology everywhere does that leave us in danger of becoming just like it? It also raises the idea of what it means to be human and how far away technology is from becoming human. Already technology can make connections and assumptions, similar to the human thought-process which has come to define life.