I think that this week in class was a real eye opener for me and probably a lot of the class pertaining to how modern technology has messed with the way we do our day to day life. Now it is a matter of opinion if this in general is a good thing or if it a bad thing for us in general, but I think there is no doubt that it has changed most of the people with at least a smart phone or a lap top.

In the Black Mirror viewing we had this week, The Entire History of You, I looked at it with a different perspective than I did when I watched it for the first time. I went into watching the episode the first time with more of a mindset that all black mirror episodes are just whacko sci fi thrillers meant to entertain you, or that they were just episodes that were bordering the line of reality just enough to make us think maybe, just maybe this was a possibility. The second time I watched it was after I read a few articles about how technology has affected our brains. I watched it now thinking that this probably isn’t going to happen in our life time, but what if it does. Apparently there is the technology to do it, so if people want that in their brain, and people are willing to do the procedure, who’s stopping them?

In the article The story of the self the author talks about how memories can be altered very very easily. They briefly mention that in Black Mirror when they were questioning the girl for not having a chip in her head. This Is one of the advantages/disadvantages of having a chip like that.

As I alluded to earlier, I read a few articles about how the technology is affecting our brains and what we should, or should not worry about when it comes to that. First off everyone can agree that life is much, much easier than it was even 25 years ago in the mid 90’s when it comes to communication, finding information, and convenience. I take it for granted, and so do a lot of people. I barely remember a time before my parents had a smart phone and I always remember being able to just hop on the internet and find what I wanted to find or do what I wanted to do.

The big discussion is whether the change is a good thing for us or if it is a bad thing. There are two counter articles that we read were one was titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, and it’s counterpart is “Google Is Not Making You Stupid. It is pretty self explanatory which one has which viewpoint, but they do bring up good points. The one that thinks Google might be making you stupid brings up the point that a lot of people find themselves in a situation where they are trying to do some deep reading and their brain starts wandering and they can’t focus on what they are trying to read. The other article points out how we would not even have access to that information in the first place.

The concept of these articles relates to another article which we had to read titled Foucault and social media: life in a virtual panopticon. In this article the author says “There are no guards and no prisoners in Facebook’s virtual Panopticon. We are both guards and prisoners, watching and implicitly judging one another as we share content”. A panopticon is a prison where the prisoners have no clue if they are being watched or not because they are in constant view of the guards who are in the middle of all of them. (see below)

In today’s day and age we have all this access to information which can really help us very much in a lot of ways, but mentally that is up for debate. I want to ask you, do you think the pros out way the cons.