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Journal 2

The summer before my senior year, I was able to take a trip down to Nicaragua as a part of a youth mission trip with my church. During the eight days that I spent in the country we learned about its history, lived in small, dirt-floored cottages, and helped the Natives perform their stereotypical chores. One day, we helped them clear some land for farming. The plot was covered with weeds, overgrown with tangled grasses, and dotted with small trees. Our leader, a Nicaraguan native, brought out a wagon full of machetes and then proceeded to demonstrate how to squat low to the ground, sweep the machete, and properly excavate the plot from the weeds and grasses. We all clamored to grab one, excited to help in whatever way that we could. I gripped the handle of my own machete, trying to mimic the same motion that I had just seen. The machete flew through the air and collided with the ground, leaving a huge divot, not the perfect fresh line that the leader had. I looked around and all the fellow students had seemed to have had the same amount of success and I had. I heard a “whoosh” behind me and realized that some of the native women of the village had joined our work. They tore through the land, perfectly manipulating the machetes, and working at a pace at least ten times that of our group.
Although, at the time, despite my incompetence, I truly believed that I was helping the natives, I have come to realize that maybe I was just helping myself. Reflecting on my experience now, the idea of the “White Man’s burden,” the theory of European imperialism where the “white man” felt as though their conquering of native lands and the introduction of new forms of government and technology was truly helping the native people, came to mind. I came to realize that this sort of need for those of high privilege to try and help and affect the lives of native people or those of lower privilege still permeates today. I was brought to Nicaragua to “help” the natives, when in truth, they do not and did not really need my help.
When I began to read A Connecticut Yankee in King’s Authur’s Court, I began to wonder whether Hank Morgan imposes his own rules, regulations, and introduces the citizens to new technology not only out of his own arrogance but comes from his own sort of “White man’s burden.” Hank Morgan truly believes that his system is helping the people, believes that his superior intelligence will makes their day to day lives better. His superior intelligence gives him privilege that he may yield.

Emma Irwin

IP Journal Reflection

This past week, during my two hour and twenty-two-minute-long classes I feel as though we’ve already covered so many interesting topics that have been relevant to many important parts of my life. A couple of the conversations that struck my eye were the conversations about social media, and how we incorporated Sigmund Freud’s view and Hank Morgan’s view. Every Sunday night when I’m home, and throughout my childhood I have been having dinner with my cousins. During all the dinners it’s required that all cellphones are put in a basket where we can’t reach them, and over time I have truly begun to notice the difference between my Sunday night dinners and my dinners with my friends and my family at other occasions. As well as putting my phone away, it’s become really important to my parents that I’m educated on what social media is “doing” to our generation and other generations exposed to this technology starting at such young ages, and that’s why the discussions we we had in class regarding the technological advances and the social media advances struck a chord with me.

My conversations with my parents and with my extended family regarding social media and it’s impact also ties into the discussions we had about the optimistic and pessimistic views of these changes. It goes along with how we discussed different generations having different perspectives on the newer generations and the technology, and why the different generations have these opposite views. Personally, I think it’s natural for there to be opposing views on the subject, it’s completely changed the lifestyles of different generations and more specifically, it’s the parents who are raising their kids in generations completely different from their own. It seems natural for them to feel negatively towards something that is so drastically different from what they are used to- especially since it does appear to be having some negative effects. If parents struggle to grasp their child’s perspectives because they are too busy checking Instagram and many other apps. All in all, the discussions in class have really caught my interest because they are so relevant to my life and tie in to so many conversations I have regarding the same subjects.

In some ways, the human brain is parallel to a computer. In the past decade, technology has evolved from mechanic typewriters to complex software. In Robert Epstein’s, “The Empty Brain” article, he compares newborns to technology, in which he proposes that newborns are equipped with powerful learning mechanisms that allow them to change and learn at rapid paces to interact with the world and its surroundings effectively. Even though humans are not born with technological components such as software or applications, humans have similar processing information. Computers and humans are metaphorically similar because computers process information with encoded binary code called bits and bytes, and humans process information with brain neurons and signals.

I thought it was so interesting in Gary Marcus’ “Face it, your brain is a computer,” article, he related the idea of emotions to a computer. He states that even though computers lack emotion, the amygdala’s neural systems modulate emotions by transmitting signals and integrating information in the brain similarly to how computers transform binary code into outputs. I thought Marcus’ analogy was funny as he states, “airplanes may not fly like birds but they are subject to the same forces of lift and drag.” Because even though computers and the human brain may differ in size and anatomy, the overall objective is the same: both process and compute information in systematic ways.

I really enjoyed the readings over break. They were very straight forward and interesting to read. The readings reminded me of my foundation seminar that I took when I was a first year. My foundation seminar class was about science fiction, and I actually wrote my final paper about how technology is metaphorically “alive.” Overall, I’m excited to learn more about this course. Thank you

Reflecting on this past week of classes I wanted to zero in on one particular aspect of class that was especially thought provoking to me. To me it was the idea that at any particular time in history, no matter what that time period is known for or the light that it is painted in, there will always be people who didn’t see it that way. History is not necessarily kind to all people, just because a time period was known for it’s advancements or it’s carefree lifestyle that does not mean that everyone who lived at that time thought of it that way. This reminds me of the fundamental idea that history after all, is a tale told by the victors. The losers are never the ones who’s story lives on, the positives are always taken into account first. This makes me think of today’s society and our endless technological advancements and how we as people are shaping society and the world around us. We may see what were accomplishing as being purely beneficial, but is it beneficial for all? Are we taking advantage or overlooking certain aspects of our world and society that normally we wouldn’t consider? I think that this is an absolutely valid question and this notion could be one that we’ll look back on years from now and regret. I firmly believe that as a society it couldn’t hurt to use precautions as were endlessly churning out new technological advancements and take a step back and think about what were impacting by doing so. As our time in this class goes on I want to continue to think about this question and see if this is a trend that has happened throughout history.

Technology has become more and more commonplace as time has progressed. That has never been as true as it is today. The reliance we have on technology has reached a point that the educated entities of the world have begun taking serious concern on the roll they play in our lives. This week we talked about the reliance that the students in the class have on technology and related it to several external understandings and points of views on the subject.

We began our first full reading of the course in Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s court” which has begun to discuss the differences in technological advancement between these time periods. This is analogous to our world today where, in comparison to Hank Morgan, we would find ourselves in very similar situations as to what he is experiencing in Camelot.

As the course continues I expect that we will see more discussions of the differences in technological innovations as the name ‘Time/Machine” would suggest. Furthermore, I think that the discussion of our brain as a computer will play heavily into our discussions in the future since it is a powerful metaphor for technological innovation.