Made to Break: Part Two

In the second half of Made to Break, Slade mostly talks about pre and post-war economies as well as their products. He discussed the important role that electronics played in World War II, and how technology changed warfare forever. With the development of FM radio fresh on the market, America wasted no time incorporating it as their standard of communication during the war. (p.100) The development of transistor radios soon made other radios obsolete. Radios were getting smaller and less bulky, which drove their prices down, making not only AM radio obsolete, but large counter top ones as well.

            The section on “Suburban Obsolescence” was really interesting to me. After the war, there were a lot of veterans without housing. Eventually the blue-collar suburbs were born. These little communities were developed by Abraham Levitt and his sons. They created the Levittowns in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. After reading about it, I began to realize just how uniform these towns were. I have been to Levittown, PA and a lot of the houses are all the same. The idea behind this is obviously mass production because the houses are very simple layouts and easily constructed. They were made for the blue-collar workers and veterans to be able to afford and live comfortably. These new detached-style homes made the older row style homes obsolete. Everyone was interested in the privacy these newer, streamlined homes offered.

            Another section I liked was the part about “death-dating.” Death-dating is the development of products with an intended expiration date. People seemed to be bothered by the industry’s loose use of the term and their frankness for doing so. They considered it “low standards of business ethics” and “dishonest, immoral and self-destructive both economically and politically.” (p.166) However, the majority of people still like new and improved things, regardless of their durability. That is why even to this day; people are throwing out yesterday’s fad and on to the next one. We as consumers live for fads, and unfortunately our bank accounts suffer from it.

Made to Break: Part One

In the first half of Made to Break by Giles Slade, the topic of planned obsolescence is the major theme. “Planned obsolescence is the catch-all phrase used to describe the assortment of techniques used to artificially limit the durability of a manufactured good in order to stimulate repetitive consumption.” (p.5) Slade explains that America is one of the world’s most wasteful nations and that this is no mere accident. This causes us to question the psychology of our nation. “What can be said of a culture whose legacies to the future are mounds of hazardous materials and a poisoned water supply?” (p.7) He starts from the beginning of mass production and how, even then, we were creating things with the intent to throw them away.

            What I found most interesting in this reading was learning about the beginnings of things that we as Americans take for granted. For example, as a female, the disposable razor and women’s sanitary items are God-sends. Just thinking about what it would be like to not have those items makes me think how horrible life could be. Of course I am being overly dramatic; however, this further proves Slade’s point that Americans have become so reliant on the ease of throw-away items they forget that there was a time when these things did not exist. Thus, proving that Americans look for the ease and modernism in things rather than the thrift of reusable items.

            The biggest example Slade used was the automobile market. He talked about the beginnings of Ford and GM, along with their still apparent rivalry. While Ford focused on craftsmanship and durability, GM focused on giving consumers the newest and most modern styles and was less focused on durability. This gave GM the competitive edge because people were/are obsessed with anything new. This “trading-up” mindset has been forever engrained into our society in every aspect of consumerism. I really enjoyed how Slade commented on how women back then/ today were more focused on their car’s appearance than the inner workings. As a woman, I do not know the first thing about cars so when I bought my first car I was more concerned with how it looked and not how it ran. My dad soon convinced me otherwise, and I am proud to say that my first car from junior year of high school is still my current car today (6 years later). This aesthetic view on consumerism is apparent in everything. “Obsolescence of style-a specialized kind of psychological obsolescence-focuses consumer attention on the visual or design features of conspicuously consumed personal items, ranging from cars, cell phones, clothing, hats, jewelry, laptops, lighters……etc.” (p.50)

                                                                       

2nd Half of Wikipedia

In the second half of The World and Wikipedia, it discusses why people are using it, why they “love” it, why people do not trust it, and why they should trust it. As I was reading I could not help but notice how often the author brought up occurrences where there were articles written in a libelous nature. Granted a lot of these articles were edited or corrected, but this further shows the “dangers” of Wikipedia and why people are so hesitant to trust it. I was somewhat perplexed as to why these amateur editors would go out of their way to vandalize the pages of the website with false information. Do they have nothing better to do? But then I thought of the psychology that goes behind it and for some of the editors it is like playing God. They can easily change information on pages and hide behind a fictitious username. Many feel their identity will be concealed and can get away with their acts of vandalism. But is it not a great deal of justice when these culprits are caught? Oh, the wonders of technology and tracing.

            As it matures, however, Wikipedia is earning some respect. Its use is being seen in courts as well as the news. “Wikipedia has sometimes suffered from the self-editing that is intrinsic to it, giving rise at times to potentially libelous statements. However, inherently, I cannot see that what is in Wikipedia is any less likely to be true than what is published in a book or on the websites of news organizations. I consider that the evidence from Wikipedia can be taken at face value.” (p.197) This quote from a UK court case pretty much says it all when it comes to the website. You know going in that the site is constantly edited and re-edited by users all over. Users of whatever information just need to peruse the site with the “buyers beware” mentality.

1st Half of Wikipedia

For this week’s reading we read the first half of The World and Wikipedia: How We Are Editing Reality. I found this book to be really interesting because I had always wondered how Wikipedia had started and this book explains it. I had never really equated the site to an encyclopedia before, but after reading about its beginnings I have come to find that it actually is an encyclopedia, a very dense one. I also thought it was amazing how fast information is gathered on this site. In the past ten years Wikipedia has collected well over three million articles (p.39), which is infinitely more than the old fashioned book encyclopedias. It has also been translated into over 250 languages (p.49), making it available to a lot more people.

            One of the biggest criticisms and praises of Wikipedia is that information can be uploaded and edited by anyone. I would have to agree with this criticism because while this process makes it available to everyone, it is also making it available to people who may not know what they are talking about. This lends room to many errors and carelessness that does not always get “edited” right away. While there is heavy traffic on the site, with thousands of edits everyday, information is still left untouched that may not get an edit for a while. Because of this many people view Wikipedia as a faulty source of information. I know as a student, many professors do not consider Wikipedia as a valid source for this very reason. Unfortunately, the site is so irresistible to use because of the ease and accessibility. From information on “Bacon Mania” (p.11) to the 9/11 WTC attacks, this site has just about anything you could want to research, the question is how good is the information?

Technopoly: Part Two

In the second half of Technopoly, Neil Postman discusses medical technology, computer technology, “invisible” technology, and scientism among various other things. What I found to be most interesting was the medical technology. Postman seemed to blame medical technology on a lot of our current medical problems. He sights America as being the most “aggressive” when it comes to medicine. This meaning that our country is overly cautious by x-raying, surgeries and giving out antibiotics, where in a lot of circumstances, these things are not necessarily needed. Many cancers are caused by medical radiation, which in turn makes you wonder if these kinds of things can be prevented. He revealed an alarming statistic from a study in 1974 saying, “American doctors had performed 2.4 million unnecessary operations, causing 11,000 deaths and costing about 3.9 billion dollars.” (p.105) Postman raises an interesting theory where in this day and age, doctors are being used by technology and how this affects their work. That is why there is such a high demand for medical malpractice insurance because of these faulty technologies that our doctors have become so reliant on.

            Another section that I enjoyed reading about was the computer technology chapter. Postman compares technology to religion in the sense that people will most likely believe something if it comes from a computer. He states that this “obedience” is the equivalence of “God’s will.” (p.115) I can really understand what he is talking about because people put so much trust into computers and technology that they do not realize that computers are capable of errors due to the humans who input the information.

            Overall, I would say that Technopoly was definitely a better read than the first book. There were a lot of interesting themes brought up and I actually did not mind reading this too much.

Technopoly: Part One

In the first half of Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, by Neil Postman, it discussed the evolution of technology through culture. It was broken down into three cultures: tool-using cultures, technocracies, and technopolies. Each culture was broken down to its beginnings. The tool-using cultures represented the primitive cultures where tools were used to “solve specific and urgent problems of physical life” (p.23) or to “serve the symbolic world of art, politics, myth, ritual, and religion.” (p.23) Most importantly, “tools did not attack the dignity and integrity of the culture.” (p.23) This last line really struck a chord in me because our modern tools today do the exact opposite. Maybe not intentionally, but technology has allowed itself to be a vessel through which many horrible things can be done to people. Case and point: the recent suicide at Rutgers University. I will elaborate more on this topic in another blog I am planning on writing, but in this most recent case and in other cases of cyber-bullying, technology was the major catalyst in these instances. It was used to attack people’s dignities and integrities, which is a testament to how people are using technology today.

The second culture was technocracy and this culture is “a society only loosely controlled by social custom and religious tradition and driven by the impulse to invent.” (p.41) It was the late 1700s, where we began to see a rise in industrialism and humans were becoming more reliant on machines for many aspects of their life. We were seeing the widespread sale of books due to the printing press, as well as cotton spinning machines which were creating the mass production of textiles. At this time there was an upheaval against machinery, known as the Luddite Movement. They destructed machines due to their unhappiness with wage cuts, child labor, and unprotected skilled workers. I found this interesting because today many people do not revolt against machinery, they embrace it. Instead people revolt against other people, placing the blame on someone that could actually be held accountable.

In the third culture it is the development of the Technopoly. Through the rise of this culture there is a constant tension between two world views: traditional values and technology. It is about the rapid development of technology and all other things falling to the way side. It redefines people’s ideas of religion, family, politics, history, truth, privacy, and intelligence. (p.48) Postman describes this as “totalitarian technocracy.” People lost confidence in their belief systems, but found that technology was a constant and could not be shook. I found this to be really amazing that people, not even that long ago, put so much into their beliefs that something like technology could shatter every part of it. I knew technology had a huge impact on the entire human race, but it is somewhat hard to think that something that many people take advantage of today was something that many people were against not too long ago. It make you wonder what the correlation of this could be in the future.