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.