Sgt. Pepper, 2/28

Since everyone is giving their two cents about the different setup of class last week, I guess I will too. I also liked being able to split up into groups and get my peers' perspectives on the article because it's interesting to see how our minds differ, but I also thought we shouldn't have relied solely on our ideas to understand Poster's article. When we switched off to tell about our specific section, some people from other sections had a lot to say that I didn't notice when reading the article, but some people I didn't learn anything from. And I'm not blaming them, but I think we should've had a little insight from Dr. Rog, at least, before trying to teach it ourselves.

Anyway, the section my group talked about was the first. Like I mentioned in my pre-class post, I really liked Poster's "historical metaphor" of emerging technology to the Middle Ages. Our section was basically just Poster's introduction, and I think the major point he was trying to make in his introduction was that the advancement of technology isn't just the advancement of technology. It is affecting people and will continue to affect people in many more ways. Like Poster describes in the metaphor to the Middle Ages, one major thing that comes with the advancement in technology is the change in the way people communicate. Communication is consistently becoming quicker, easier, and most important, less and less personable. Talking face-to-face is becoming drastically less prevalent, so naturally people's social skills will change, thus their personalities will change. (This is a theory) We will all adapt to a more individually-based frame of mind, and that could lead to seriously bad things for the world.

So I think basically what Poster is trying to say in the introduction that my group was assigned to that while the advancement of technology will bring many good things to the world, if we get too caught up in it, it might be too late to realize the negative aspects.