Depalma 1-2

Readings –

DePalma Units 1 and 2

Annual Editions, Technologies, Social Media

and Society, 12/13 ed.,

DePalma, Editor McGraw-Hill,

ISBN 978-0-07-352873-1

2. List each reading with the number and title as shown below with each written summary.

Unit 1 Introduction

De Palma – Overview

In this section De Palma talks about the relationship between technology and society. The relationship between them is that social values affect technical discovery which, in turn, affect values. He also talks about how the meaning of a single word (computer) has shifted throughout the years and how computing has changed people’s lives. He also mentions how computing is thought to bring benefits and make people’s lives easier but leaves a question mark that society can only answer. Are we growing smarter, healthier and happier with the coming of the computer?

De Palma – Reading #1 - Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change

In this article Neil Postman talks about the five things we need to know about technological change. In his first idea he states that for every advantage a new technology offers there is always a disadvantage. He mentions the automobile as an example, which is obviously an advantage but has poisoned our air. In his second idea he mentions that new technologies are not distributed evenly among the population. He also mentions that there is no doubt that new technology is certainly advantageous to the military, airline companies or other big institutions but questions the extent on which technology could be advantageous to steel workers, vegetable store owners, bakers, etc. In his third idea De Palma states that every technology has a philosophy and mentions the famous sentence by Marshal McLuhan “The medium is the message “meaning that technology can actually alter the ways in which we experience the world. In his fourth idea he claims that a new medium does not add something, it changes everything. His fifth and last idea he refers as...