Critical Assessment of our Technocratic Society
Our present society has been saturated with media technologies, especially the internet. If you are always on the net, have you ever wonder about some of the things that we have taken for granted in our information age? Take for example, the internet is able to give us the sense of more time for us to do work, through the process of compressing time – we can connect and communicate with others instantaneously on the net using synchronous programs like MSN messenger, ICQ, AIM and other online chat programs. But have you ever noticed that instead of having more time to do more work, instead, you are getting less time? The more people you are able to connect to in the net, the more attention that you will need to divert to them. The more windows you have opened on your desktop, this means that the more total time you are giving overall to your tasks on the computer. In this sense, time compression is actually time reduction.
Do you ever have other online identities on the net that is not your real life identity? Have you ever wondered how much effort and time you devote to your online persona, such that your online identity becomes much more real than your real life identity. Usually, people treats their real life identity to be much more important than their online identity, but in our actual reality, the opposite is the case. People usually treat their online persona as much more realistic and important than their real life identity nowadays. For example, have you realized how much time you devote your life to your online identity in virtual communities such as forums, weblogs, online gaming like MMORPGs, etc. In this technocratic society that is inundated with so much virtual stuff, this is not surprising.
Finally, while being connected to the net, the fantasy of cyberspace gives you the impression that you are transcended from your physical bodies, because technology allows us to overcome physical limitations and facilitates us to connect to people far away from us, without us ever to leave our home. But have you ever wondered that in this facade of transcendence, the technology is in fact not omnipotent? Have you ever realized that the technology have to be supported by raw materials and resources such as oil, electricity, and the computer parts that you buy for the computer, they do not come freely but have to undergo a series of manufacturing processes. And have you wondered about the underlying social hierarchical structure that makes our technology able to function without fail? Do we ever hear about the cheap labour and those poor people being exploited to manufacture our computing technologies, in order that we are able to sit comfortably at home and connect to the net. Always, such underlying structures that supports our society are often hidden from our eyes, and we feel that cyberspace is flawless and allows us to transcend our physical limitations for eternity. We do not think what will happen if our limited resources are used up, and the social structure breaks down – this could result in the breakdown of our technologies too, because they cannot exists without such supports.
The point is that when using technologies, we must not assume that everything is perfect. The problem with our society is that we have become so dependent on technology that we will feel a certain sense of loss if we are not able to use the technology when it breaks down. From a critical perspective, the internet is just a simulation, and a copy of our reality, whatever social problems that we face in our technocratic society, like social exclusion, and inequality, terrorist acts, etc, they are also mapped onto the virtual world. It is a fantasy to think that the internet world is free of any problems and is a transcendence from our physical limitations and escape into a utopian world.
Do you ever have other online identities on the net that is not your real life identity? Have you ever wondered how much effort and time you devote to your online persona, such that your online identity becomes much more real than your real life identity. Usually, people treats their real life identity to be much more important than their online identity, but in our actual reality, the opposite is the case. People usually treat their online persona as much more realistic and important than their real life identity nowadays. For example, have you realized how much time you devote your life to your online identity in virtual communities such as forums, weblogs, online gaming like MMORPGs, etc. In this technocratic society that is inundated with so much virtual stuff, this is not surprising.
Finally, while being connected to the net, the fantasy of cyberspace gives you the impression that you are transcended from your physical bodies, because technology allows us to overcome physical limitations and facilitates us to connect to people far away from us, without us ever to leave our home. But have you ever wondered that in this facade of transcendence, the technology is in fact not omnipotent? Have you ever realized that the technology have to be supported by raw materials and resources such as oil, electricity, and the computer parts that you buy for the computer, they do not come freely but have to undergo a series of manufacturing processes. And have you wondered about the underlying social hierarchical structure that makes our technology able to function without fail? Do we ever hear about the cheap labour and those poor people being exploited to manufacture our computing technologies, in order that we are able to sit comfortably at home and connect to the net. Always, such underlying structures that supports our society are often hidden from our eyes, and we feel that cyberspace is flawless and allows us to transcend our physical limitations for eternity. We do not think what will happen if our limited resources are used up, and the social structure breaks down – this could result in the breakdown of our technologies too, because they cannot exists without such supports.
The point is that when using technologies, we must not assume that everything is perfect. The problem with our society is that we have become so dependent on technology that we will feel a certain sense of loss if we are not able to use the technology when it breaks down. From a critical perspective, the internet is just a simulation, and a copy of our reality, whatever social problems that we face in our technocratic society, like social exclusion, and inequality, terrorist acts, etc, they are also mapped onto the virtual world. It is a fantasy to think that the internet world is free of any problems and is a transcendence from our physical limitations and escape into a utopian world.
posted by Snow Angel at 6:42 PM
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