Toyama 5-7

I really enjoyed continuing to read Kentaro Toyama, as I find a lot of his points about technology and advancement really interesting. In chapter 5 of his book Geek Heresy, he speaks of camera technology at a school in India and how it apparently was the cause of the schools and teachers success. What happened was they decided to document teacher attendance by camera, to ensure that the teachers were showing up to teach their classes. However, they attributed the full success of the class to the camera technology holding them accountable for their attendance. However, what they did not factor in was the years of hard work behind the teachers lessons. This goes to show how sometimes we give technology a lot more credit than it deserves. We have to remember that humans are still valuable too.
I also really enjoyed his analogy with the ant and the grasshopper. In this analogy about work and happiness, the grasshopper is content being warm and happy all summer while the ant works very hard to prepare for winter. And when winter comes, the ant is content because it worked hard to prepare and the grasshopper is cold and miserable. The moral of the story is that long term happiness does not come quickly or easily, it is something you have to work at. I think that this idea can not only be applied to happiness, but also to helping countries in need as well. Merely sending laptops in attempts to help education is not going to create long-term change or well being. Fixing the problem overnight might sound like a tempting way to help, but in reality it is not helping in the long run.

Geek Heresy By: Toyama

I really enjoyed the first section of this reading, where Toyama discusses how technology has crept into and taken over our lives, but questions if it has helped larger social issues in the long run such as poverty. He speaks about how connected the world has become due to increase of Internet access and mobile phones. So much so that mobile phones could outnumber humans on earth by 2015. This increased access and connectivity has had direct impacts on knowledge, talent, education and social change. However, Toyama questions why the poverty level hasn't gone down in the US since bigger and better technologies have been emerging. Are we not putting our money or focus in the right place?

I also enjoy the section about Technoholics Anonymous which speaks of using technology as a way to solve your problems. I think with the amount of access to the Internet and the amount of information on the Internet, it can be difficult not to search for answers to your problems. I also think that we have been relating human progress with technological progress, but that is not always the case. To go back to Toyama previous observation about poverty - just because we were advancing technologically, does not mean poverty was getting any better. I think we too often get sucked into creating technology for the sake of creating it. Instead of creating technology to mimic reality with things such as virtual worlds, we need to focus more on ways in which technology can enhance reality.

Guest Speaker - Eliza

Our guest speaker on Thursday November 3rd, Eliza from the Burlington Free Press, made a lot of great points about advertising in the age of social media. One of the very first points she made was one of the most fascinating for me. She asked the class if we remember a time in our younger lives when we were not surrounded by the internet. She went on to say that if we do remember that time, then it makes us a valuable person. Her reasoning for this is that people who remember what life was like without the internet have a very different experiences with media because it isn't as integrated or taken for granted. These people see the internet as an addition to everyday life, not as everyday life.

Eliza also made a great point about how evolving technologies have had an effect on the value of communication. Before the printing press, communication was not taken for granted because it was very limited. But nowadays, multiple forms of communication are constantly at our fingertips. Essentially, communication went from being a luxury to being easy and free, and therefore less meaningful. This directly relates to advertising because it takes so much more to be able to grab someones attention. We have thousands of messages being thrown our way, so it makes it harder for one to stand out. This leads to the common thread that was present throughout Eliza's presentation, and that is: trust. With too much competition in the marketplace, it is hard to know what brands and ads to trust. Brands also have a history of being untruthful in their ads in order to draw more attention, so this also leads to trust issues.

Also seen through her presentation of the evolution of advertising is that this industry is defined by change. As we could see through the years and years of history she went through, Eliza pointed out that the communication industry is constantly changing. Whether it be the communication forms, the social media, or the target market, this industry will constantly be changing and advertisers are constantly trying to keep up with it.