We heard a good speech from our dean Daphne and a short and moving speech from our old Dean Frank who founded ADE and gave thanks and recognition to those who worked with him. I like Frank a lot, always have.
And then we had a short video presentation from David Putnam, which was impressive but video is not really the same as having the man there as many of us 1st thought.
and then....
We had a talk from Tony Bosma @tonybosma about .......well what... I dunno really, it was kinda of a warning about the dangers of technology and data and robotics and ...well lots of stuff, but I truly failed to see his point. I found myself more irritated by the wealth of images and supposed danger signs of tech than intrigued.
Also deeply annoyed at a comment made on one slide that education was simply regurgitating knowledge...not really true of modern education, in fact not really true of education generally for quite some time.
For a futurist and trendwatcher he seemed to do nothing more that point out all recent reports about the amazing new tech and tech ideas then try to shoot them down to prevent the "sheeple" from falling from it...from what exactly?
One basic point was valid, we all generally followers, or as he put it sheeple, we conform and as such we tend to become targets for marketing hype and advertising...but thats hardly new...ask any Roman emperor about that. They used the new tech of proclimations to ensure the people fell in line. Likewise the church and its adoption, eventually, of the new fangled printing press to print bibles and papal bulls to keep the masses in comfortable lines.
Yes it put a lot of hardworking scribes out of work but hey progress is there to indoctrinate us into the new and wonderful benefits of technology.
Yes technology does indoctrinate us, we do conform to the mass view, it also however educates and expands our minds and gives us the choice to conform or rebel.
Tech does put people out of work and for them its a threat, ask the scribes, luddites and fleet street printers...
But it also gives us benefits. Google is not, as was suggested a replacement for our brains...its a replacement for libraries, which in turn were replacements for the horribly unreliable but steadily employed soothsayers and oracles they replacedm, despite their dire warnings of the dangers of these new fangled.."book stores" they tried to burn down.
The idea that Hollywood will be replaced by robots making movies, or that people will willingly remove their limbs in favour of artifical ones is so far off the mark as to be comical.
Also conspirocy tracking theories about micro chips and GPS have been around for ever...partly true perhaps, we can track people down with thier phones and facebook checkins, but this is still some way from being a big brother world.
Tech has benefits...tech has risks....but I think blinding yourself to the benefits is a bit silly, otherwise we'd never be able to hook up our macbooks to the interwebbins with our laser pointer/clickers to be able to explain the dangers of this new fangled tech.
I could rant on and on about it, but so many points were covered that I'd lose my train of thought quickly...many of us there were very uncomfortable with this talk, it just seemed too pointless. And furthermore, aimed at a tech savvy , tech hungry and creative independant thinking audience who do understand, appreciate and use this scary tech, it was rather inappropriate.
So to control my rants to less than 140 characters.....I (re)joined twitter (you were wondering about the @ and # symbols weren't you mum?) and made my point. The talk was not very good, and I'd hate for me and my acadamy to be associated with it without some dissent, so I want to go on the record...that I didn't agree with it.
I had joined twitter in December but didn't really see the point....but for this it serves its purpose
Probably won't bother with it though, not to keen on this new fangled twitter stuff, you don't know whos watching do you!
I'm not entierly sure its safe! Think of the children.
Ahthankyew
No comments:
Post a Comment