Is technology liberating or does it reduce our choices?
- it enables us to do more things, and that is freedom of a
sort
- does technology allow us to express our individuality more?
People used to think that technology was going to make us all the same:
- the Model T Ford is the extreme example of this--mass
production tends to make things more uniform
- First we would all have one of a few different kinds of cars and houses, then we would start all thinking the same thoughts.
- You can see this fear of the machine swallowing us up in the Charlie Chaplin movie Modern Times
- Also in 1984 and other disutopias
- regional accents are much diminished due to radio and television
- it is hard to find a restaurant these days that isn't part
of a chain (or a hotel...)
- Target has had success by selling the same products in all its stores (Walmart adjusts more to different areas)
- developments with rules to keep all the houses the same--in
many areas you aren't allowed to paint your house purple (neighbors protested
the house below)
Yet since then technology has been taking us in a different direction, sometimes called mass customization:
- each Dell computer is assembled to a particular customer's specifications
- clothing, shoes, and gear like bookpacks is being offered with custom features at a reasonable cost
- the Mini Cooper automobile offers a build your own option, meaning they will build it to your specifications
- how limited are those choices?
- if everyone has the same choices is the total effect to make
things more the same?
We see technology serving our individuality
- appealing to customer interest in variety turns out to be a
good business strategy
- cable TV meant much more choice of television channels
- the internet makes it easier to buy obscure things
- individual cell phones, ring tones
- in the mainframe era computers were a symbol of top down control, now the internet allows more individual expression
- we get advertisements aimed at our particular interests in the mail and on the internet
- computers give us opportunities, but Clemson requires everyone to have one
- how disadvantaged are you if you don't have access to the internet?
- simple living--focus on what is important instead of buying so much stuff (voluntary simplicity)
- anti-consumerism
- a meal from McDonalds is based on factory farming--large
amounts of chemicals, animals kept in very crowded conditions,
etc. It is very based on corn, which feeds the cattle, provides
oil for frying, and provides sweetener for sodas. 13 of the 38
ingredients in Chicken McNuggets are derived from corn. Each
bushel of corn grown by a factory farm requires up to 1/3 of a gallon
of oil, by the time you count up oil used as a raw material to make
fertilizer and other chemicals, oil used to run the machines, and
etc. And then the products of factory farms are shipped around
the country, mostly in trucks, and processed. The carbon
footprint is high.
- a meal cooked from ingredients bought at Whole Foods, a big
health food supermarket (there is one
in Greenville now). Whole Foods buys mostly from big farmers, not
family farms. The food is less processed, but large amounts of
energy are used to transport food from farms in California to stores on
the east coast instead of buying from local farmers.
- Pollan then looks for the experience of actually being connected to where our food comes from--first he visits a small farm then he hunts and gathers his own food
- he thinks agricultural technology has taken away things we
should value
Still, the overall effect is that
technology has come to support
- an individuality that the public values
- the elaboration of racial, ethnic, and regional diversity.
This page written and copyright Pamela E. Mack