By Sean Hudson
Technoculture is a culture that is defined and is built on technology. Our society is dependant on technology for information, for communication, and for entertainment. When people get home they jump on the computer, or sit on the couch to watch television. Social activists depend on it, by committing hacktivism. These groups are dependant on it to get their message across. Without technology how are people going to get their information, there is only so many things that can be put in a newspaper, but on the Internet there is unlimited space. People use telephones, facebook, or instant messaging to communicate, without these they would have to write a letter, or meet up with people face to face, and there is no way you could communicate as much with as many people by meeting up with them. this society needs technology to keep together, and informed, it needs technology to save the time which we value so much. Many people use dating websites, and depend on them to find someone for them. An average of 542 eharmony members, in the United states, get married to someone they met on eharmony each day. If it weren't for technology chances are, those people would never have met.
The book, Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, is full of technology and technoculture. The ARG that Marcus, and his friends are playing at the beginning requires a lot of technology to keep the game running, and possible. The technological items which they use, are what gets them arrested and suspected of terrorism in the first place, setting the entire story in action. Later on Marcus begins to use Paranoid Linux an OS that keeps him hidden from from the government. This operating system was made up for the book, but back in 2008 when some programmers began to work on a real version of it, but the project was dropped in 2009 after the alpha was released. If this was finished it would likely been used by the darker side of technoculture, such as child pornography and terrorism. Marcus also uses the Xnet, which is their version of freenet. A program made to cover up illegal doings on the computer, and hide from the government. There are other technologies that Marcus uses. They are all mainly used for illegal purposes, but he finds a way to use the darker side for justice, which shows that just because one thing like freenet is used for many illegal things doesn't mean it is bad, or can only be used for illegal things. It also allows people to host websites for free, which can only be viewed over freenet, many businesses even use it.
Works cited
http://www.eharmony.ca/about/eharmony
"The Dark Side of the Internet" By Andy Beckett
That was so interesting to see your perspective on a topic like this. I liked how you touched on society and how we couldn't function without our technology, because it's 100% true. I related instantly because im constantly glued to my cell phone, or computer and I know that I wouldn't be able to survive without it. I also liked how you touched on the darker side of using technology, and why it is good to have protection because if there was no protection then there would be much more child pornography and terrorism. I think you could have checked your grammar before submitting, but you did a great job :)
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with the constant flow of information through various devices and the Internet. Nothing ever quite stops anymore, so technoculture is an interesting phenomenon based on its speed alone. It was also good to connect this topic to online dating (eHarmony), because even though we at our age cannot participate in that, we know quite a bit about it from the media. Furthermore, I really liked how you could justify Marcus' use of the "dark side of the Internet" both inside and outside of the book. Perhaps an example or two of the other devices Marcus uses could built on these ideas. Like Shaundra said, fixing a couple run-on or clipped sentences and some punctuation could improve this. Good job! :)
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