So lets start off with a basic definition to set the stage. Technoculture is the interaction of technology and culture. I bet you couldn't of guessed that one. Now with that in mind, we can move on to how it relates to the book.
Little Brother is entirely based around the use and abuse of technology in society. Marcus himself knows all the tricks of the trade, so to speak. He knows this stuff inside and out, gets through any sort security measure put in his way. But what has given him this edge? What has exactly made him so much more immersed then everyone else? There are many reasons to this, but we can't rule out the fact that techonoculture has clearly made a large imprint on our Marcus. Then we see the other side of the technoculture in the story, when the big bad Department of Homeland Security jumps in and begins to watch every citizen with an apprehensive eye and a big budget for some fancy tech. Our evolving culture has caused us to take this technology and manipulate it for our own vendettas, good or bad.
But wait a minute, lets look outside the book for a moment. For the sake of this brief experiment lets narrow down the definition of technology to any sort of device that requires electricity to function. Now take a look around you and see if you can count the number of technological devices in the room you're currently in, on one hand. If you could, congratulations, chances are though that you could not do this. This is because technology is substantially ingrained into our culture. Taking all of it away at one time would be akin to chopping off one of your legs then trying to run a marathon. I don't know about you, but I can't run a marathon with two legs.
Whether you like it or not, our society is built on technology. As we see in Little Brother, we can use this for good and bad purposes. And recently we've had to keep a close eye on the thin line between our own privacy and technoculture. I personally believe it's very important to understand how reliant we are on our devices, because as soon as we lose that understanding, we lose control of our culture.
Thanks for reading.
Oh by the way, here is a picture of a cat.
I really enjoyed this blog. I liked how you were speaking very personally about the subject of technoculture and put your own opinions into it. One thing i think you could have done differently is relate more facts about technoculture and where they appeared in the book.
ReplyDeleteI liked your defintioion of technoculture and your examples about our lives as pepole today. I also quite enjoyed the random picture of a cat. I think you could have said more about the book but overall its a good blog!
ReplyDeleteVery well written blog post. I very much enjoyed the tone you set in your post and I quite enjoyed reading it. More reference to the book would have been nice but I think the cat more than makes up for it. ;)
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