Does Technology control Us?

Nowadays, everyone got an iPhone or a smartphone which allows them to get access to the Internet and SNSs every minute and every second, on Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. People go to Facebook when they are traveling the MTR, having dinner with their family and friends, and even walking on the street, so does technology control us or do we control technology?
Let's watch a video about how the future technology will make us become.

The man has a pair of lazy eyes, implying the future technology will make us stupid. The Mactini is also an irony of the products of Apple.

At first, I think it’s us that control the technology because technologies are invented by human beings to improve our living standard and lifestyle. Computers make our lives much better when compared to the 70’s. There are computer system behind traffic lights and microwaves, as mentioned in the lesson. I think no matter how advanced the iPhone 4 or MacBook Air is, they still have to control by us, in order to accomplish something. Another example from the lesson is the idea of Hacking. The most popular example would be jailbreaking iPhones because people want to escape from paying the apps in iTunes Store.

But as time goes by, as we are surrounded by so many technologies, we forgot what is around in our surroundings. It is so true that technologies really do allow us to do a lot of things, like Skype, which allows us to contact our family and friends in all over the world or Facebook, which allows us to find your classmates which was sitting next to you in kindergarten. But sometimes people are so tied up with the technologies, like when your lecturer has asked you to do a paper on the impact of Internet on our language use. Students just go to Google and there are already hundreds of papers or researches have been done on this topic. Actually there are lots of books in the library that provides us information, but because of the ease of getting the information online, we fail to leave the Internet behind, so I think the situation now is that we are both controlling each other.

Let's watch an awesome video about the screen technology!

Social Networking!

The main social network sites (SNS) I used are Facebook and YouTube.

I am sure all of you are very familiar with Facebook. Facebook is so popular to the extent that you will be isolated among your friends or you are not a human being at all if you don’t have a Facebook account. More and more people are getting on Facebook, even parents and grandparents.

One thing I like about Facebook is that I can connect with my friends so easily. As I said in class, it is even more convenient than calling your friends as they will ALWAYS be in Facebook even though they don’t answer any phone calls. As Facebook allows us to create events, my friends would create events on Facebook whenever they want to have gatherings and it can show who is available and who is not. Here is my Friend Wheel! 

Facebook is a great tool somehow if you use it wisely. Some people would afraid that they don’t have any privacy when they have Facebook account. One thing I heard from my mom is that the employers would go on to Facebook to check on their potential candidates, to see what kind of person they are by looking at their photos, comments and so on, to define whether that candidate is worth hiring. As I said in Week 3, I think there is a choice that people have to make. You always have a choice whether to give up your privacy in order to enjoy cool things or not. To be a wise Facebook user, I think we should think about the issue of privacy.

YouTube is a useful SNS too. I have an account with YouTube where I can subscribe videos, so whenever there is newly release videos, I would receive a notification through my Gmail.

I seldom write comments on the video, but I found that the audiences are quite brutal on the comments. However, sometimes the comments can be like a little blog where people can share their opinions after watching the video.

YouTube can help me find songs that have long history, like the following one.

It can also remind me of my childhood memories.

And I appreciate the people who have the patience to make such great videos. Here are 2 examples!

Please Enjoy!