Partner Q&A Week 3

Partner: Caroline Kennedy

1) The Political Power of Social Media

Why should the government be worried about technological progress?

As technology progresses citizens have a new way to voice their opinions and discuss issues.  If they are upset about how something is being dealt with, it also provides a means to quickly get the word out and ban together to protest for a cause.  I think this scares some governments because of the power it gives to the people to gain momentum and within hours have a mass assembly or protest.  Like the impeachment trial of the Philippine President discussed earlier in the article, which stated that a protest with over a million people was arranged through text messaging. 

I think governments that are trying to hide information from their citizens fear social media the most.  Information is power.  Technology provides citizens with information and the truth about what is happening, which some governments want to keep hidden from their people.  Technology is also a tool their citizens can use to ban together to create change.  This is why some governments filter the content that their citizens can view with their technological devices.

If governments have nothing to hide, and are open to free speech, then I don’t think they are worried about technological progress.  If anything, I think it has made government officials more aware of the consequences of their action.  I think this because we have seen how with technological advances, information is now widely available to all, and when one bad action is discovered it can be revealed to millions within a number of hours.

           

2) Resisting Technology

Can we really resist technology?  It is everywhere in everything we do…how can we avoid it?

I agree that in the society we live in now, it would be very difficult to resist all technology.  It is needed for educational, social, and informative purposes.  I don’t think we can avoid it all together, especially people in our age group living in this kind of society.  I think Agaewal wants people to think about how we got the technology we have today, and who was affected in the process.  It is not a right; it is a privilege that people in our society are lucky enough to have.  It is important to think of it in this way, so we do not become completely sufficient on it.  If something was to happen and we lost all our technological devices, it is necessary that we would still be able to survive and carry on without them.

  As each generation gains technology at younger and younger ages, they lose appreciation for it, and also become more and more dependent on it.  For example, young elementary students will be much more dependent on technology than our generation because they have grown up with it and it is something they have always had.  It is important to consider how we can use technology to help others, instead of always using technology for personal convenience and satisfaction.  So in conclusion, I don’t think in our society we can completely avoid technology, but we can think about it in a new light and about the good that it can be used for.

3) Some Tentative Axioms of Communication:

If it is impossible to not communicate, then what is it when someone is not responding to a question?  They are being communicated to, but are not communicating back.  How is this communicating?

Communication can be either verbal or nonverbal.  Just because someone is not saying anything or responding to a question does not mean that they are not communicating.  One can communicate using their body language, facial expression, behavior and even through the way they present themselves.  As the article explained, communication can be viewed as a series of interchanges.

For communication to take place, there needs to be a sender and a receiver of information.  Sometimes the sender is unaware of the message they are giving off to the receiver, or the receiver may misinterpret the message the sender is trying to get across.  There are various types of noise that can cause problems in the communication channel between the sender and the receiver.  By using technology has a medium for communication; an extra barrier to effective communication is created.  I think this because while using technology to communicate, the receiver usually can’t physically see the sender of the message, so they are not able to use non-verbal cues to help interpret the message.  Often times the receiver only sees what is written in text, which can lead to miscommunications.  So if you ask someone a question and they don’t respond, you are still perceiving something and receiving some sort of message from this interaction.