Machines Are Using Us

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THINKING WITH TECHNOLOGY Dear Ms Turkle, I read the article you wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education in 2004 called “How Computers Change the Way We Think”. At this point it would be appropriate to acknowledge that your intended audience was people associated with the field of education and teaching and not undergraduate students. However since the computer culture is ubiquitous, I believe that it is a matter which concerns all of us. When you wrote your essay back in 2004, computers were certainly integrated into the fabric of the society. However, the role of computers in our lives today in 2011 is exponentially greater. Everything from registering for college courses, to booking airplane tickets, to ordering food, to filing tax returns is now done on the internet. Doing anything manually is now considered unnecessarily complex and tiresome. The purpose of life has become making life simpler. As you mentioned in your essay, all this technology does not pass beneath our fingertips without leaving traces in our minds. Computer, a tool conceived to expedite human, thinking has now taken control of it. People now interpret the world around them in a computing sense. Recently a friend sent a text message to me saying that he would like a group study session because he would like to “Download” some information. My chemistry teacher once told the class to “Copy and Paste” from a text book for a paper. I once borrowed some history notes from a friend who I knew had a very active online social life. Throughout his notes he spelled through as “thru”, would as “wud” and many other words in their shortened and much more “efficient” versions. Even now as I type this letter on the keypad of my laptop computer, I realize how accustomed I have become to using technology. Whenever I write manually and make a mistake, I instinctively start looking for a “backspace” button

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