Blog Assignment 7

For this essay assignment I used two sources that were both movies because I considered it a rough essay and wanted to focus on the films first. So as a viewer when I was watching these movies I had to think as if something like a persons identity being completely changed in “The Net” could actually happen. When I watch most movies I find myself thinking that something like that could only happen in a movie, but when viewing “Wag the Dog” and “The Net” it helped to make the ideas Nye was trying to convey more serious by thinking the movies could happen in real life. Nye’s point in using these films as sources in his essay’s was to show that the plots in both films were not so far fetched and could actually be a possibility in today’s society. I really enjoyed that fact that I was able to use these movies as sources because even though reading is not always boring it was still a neat experience to be able to watch a movie and relate it to my essays topic. When doing the peer editing I found that once again most of the comments were very positive, but both people who commented felt that my essay may have been a bit too short. These comments helped because I felt that if both people felt that the rough draft was too short then it would be a good idea to expand on the topics more. I also liked seeing how other students were writing their essays and noticing similarities between theirs and my own helped confirm some things I had in my essay. From what I noticed with Nye’s sources he used them very well to tie into his own ideas and I think that is the most important part. Even if the source you are using may not agree with your opinion on their writing you can still pull away important concepts from a source and the better you explain how the topics relate the better it will help make the source a more powerful part of an essay. The most important part of writing a research paper will be to do a source justice when using it as an example. I don’t want to try and make the source seem irrelevant and by tying in as many good ideas as possible it will ultimately help my research papers topic to be clearer.

Nye Assignment 9

The story technology matters by David Nye uses sources from other authors, but also explains key ideas through examples from movies. In Chapter eleven on page 218 Nye talks about a movie called “Wag the Dog” where a president creates a fake conflict overseas to help keep him remain in office after a sex scandal. The president in the movie uses fake media that was made in a studio to help make the conflict seem real to the average American citizen. Nye also uses the movie “The Net” in his book, which is a story about a corporate software company that is able to hack into peoples “medical records, police files, and bank accounts” to falsify data and ruin people’s lives. After a programmer figures out what’s happening, the corporation ruins her records and makes her seem like a drug addicted prostitute felon who is wanted by police. The programmer, who is intelligent enough to fight back, proves her real identity and defeats the corporation by exposing evidence. The story may seem impossible to some people, but as the corporate world controls more and more of our country and decisions, the possibility is not so far fetched but the outcome of the woman is much less likely to end so happy.
David Nye uses the ideas behind these movies to help point out to his readers that we do not live in a perfect world. Nye helps to show how dangerous technology can be if it is in the wrong hands and also used for the wrong reasons. When Nye uses a movie as a real life possibility it helps to create a sense of realization that these types of scandals could actually be happening.
These types of situations that Nye explores through the movies “Wag the Dog” and “The Net” help to bring a new aspect into something like my final research paper. When writing my first papers I focused more on an idea similar to “Wag the Dog.” Which was that the government could use certain scenarios to trick the public into supporting a war. “Wag the Dog is a perfect example of this and will help to confirm that point in my final research paper, but the movie “The Net” brings a different and important topic to the table. “The Net” shows how our rights and freedoms can be stripped from us through technology. Things like wire tapping could be a very important subject in today’s world that this movie could help relate to.

Blog #5

When reading through the first assigned chapters of David Nye’s “Technology Matters” I had a hard time seeing any relations to “The Cat’s Cradle” and “The Human Factor.” However after reading through chapter eleven in “Technology Matters” I started noticing how the previous books we had read were helping me interpret Nye’s book. In Chapter eleven on page 218 Nye talks about a movie were a president creates a fake conflict overseas to help keep him in office. The president in the movie uses fake media that was made in a studio to help make the conflict seem real to the average American citizen. After reading “The Cat’s Cradle” this section of chapter eleven made more sense to me because Kurt Vonnegut seemed to use the Bokononist religion to show how people can be convinced into things by their government. However if the average person is able to be convinced through things like the media on a television then we are not really free people, we are slaves to manipulation and corporate control. Another subject in chapter eleven was when Nye talked about another movie where a corporate software company was able to hack into peoples “medical records, police files, and bank accounts” to falsify data and ruin people’s lives. After a programmer figures out what’s happening the corporation ruins her records and makes her seem like a drug addicted prostitute felon who is wanted by police. The programmer, who is intelligent enough to fight back, proves her real identity and defeats the corporation by exposing evidence. The story may seem impossible to some people, but as the corporate world controls more and more of our country and decisions, the possibility is not so far fetched but the outcome of the woman is much less likely to end so happy. In “The Human Factor” Kim Vicente talks about how the average human has no chance of solving a complex disaster like Chernobyl. This clearly supports Nye’s example about the movie. There is no chance that an average person who stumbled across a corporations corrupt computer program could stop them from ruining their identity and life. The girl in the movie was a genius, but the average human would be caught by the police and put in jail for their new record the corporation made them. On page 218 Nye says that “Future technologies in nanotechnology and other things like robotics will force legislatures to make hard and potentially irreversible choices.” This is a huge concept in the readings we have read so far this semester because things like nanotechnology could result in disasters far great than Chernobyl and cause “The Human Factor” to end life as we know it. Nanotechnology is extremely tiny machines on a molecular level that could be controlled to perform tasks in the future. They could be put into someone’s body to kill cancer or even used to destroy carbon in the atmosphere and help reduce global warming. However software would control this new technology and if it were put into the wrong hands or mistakenly used to do something like destroy oxygen in the atmosphere then a phenomenon scientists call the “grey goo” would occur. “Grey goo” is and apocalyptic condition where the nanotechnology would continue to replicate itself and destroy all matter on earth leaving nothing but a grey goo behind. Nye says “complex technologies demanded more resources and lengthened the gap between making and possible use.” This directly relates to things like nanotechnology and Nye is simply saying that technology is not as simple as an axe or arrow anymore. Technology needs to be respected and used more carefully in the future so we can preserve our way of life and prevent disasters.