Monty Python cartoon: Television is Bad for Your Eyes
Why is technology always viewed so negatively? And why is the future always bleak? Why does it feel like the future-thinking theorists and prognosticators of the late 20th century as well as the present day always seem to be pointing out how present technoproblems automatically mean future pains?
Yes, that’s a long title, but I have so much to talk about! This week’s readings for my Evolutions and Trends in Digital Media course covered myriad subjects, but I have been able to draw out some common ideas and will assiduously attempt to tie them all together here. We students were asked to take a look at some more of Brian Winston’s book, Media, Technology, and Society, on the subject of the telephone and recorded sound, as well as Clay Christensen’s Seeing What’s Next, regarding the semiconductor, and lastly, Vannevar Bush’s prophetic 1945 treatise “As We May Think“, which rightly predicted the era of the computer. I will somehow connect these works together and bring them all back to the subject of communication in general. Wish me luck!
Thesis Question and Statement of Purpose
For my term project for my Evolution and Trends in Digital Media course in the MCDM program, I propose conducting research focusing on the phenomenom of online dating. For purposes of this proposal, online dating shall be defined as the collective body of subject matter and practices related to using the contemporary web to find romantic partners. The adjective “romantic” herein does quite possibly possess a broad definition, but the project itself will be contained in a much narrower field of focus — romantic will have to be specifically defined. (I will probably settle in the final presentation on defining romantic partnering as the act of finding a longterm familial relationship, so as to exclude more than a cursory glance at services and practices related to casual dating and sexual encounters.) In terms of my thesis, I intend to answer the specific question: has online dating become a “supervening social necessity”; meaning, is going online to find a dating partner productive, useful, and most importantly, ubiquitous, and what does that mean? (more…)
Nerd Acumen by Matthew Stringer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at nerdacumen.com.
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