Writting assignment two

How technology is viewed in our society today is still in a state of gaining acceptance. Nathaniel Hawthorne in Fire-Worship believed that technology was the end all of the old way of life and the comforts and beauty he had grown to love. In As We May Think, Vannevar Bush viewed technology as a way to better society by constantly improving of the technology and ones self. I will show in this space how I believe that both were correct, more so with Bush, as well as how blogging in particular fits in to their views.

Hawthorne took the very pessimistic view of what technology and change could become. He refers in the opening of his article about how he grew to love the flicker of the open fire, and how it could spark creativity and a sense of home. By adding in futuristic wood burning stoves you took away the open feeling of warmth a fire gave off, as well as the visual presentation. I take Hawthorne however to be a very bare necessities kind of man, so any luxuries that are unnecessary are just that, unnecessary.

If he were too see the blogs of today I feel he would frown upon them. Obviously if he were displeased by a mere wood burning stove, the thought of a device that complete removes the personal touches would displease him. A blog can have personal attributes and be very personal in what you share in it, and to my generation many use it as such. Older generations that grew up with the pen and paper style of journals can view it in a much less pleasant light. Part of the personal touch you place in a journal or blog is not only what you are writing, bout how you are writing it. If someone takes the time to meticulously write out each letter in clear penmanship verse writing it very sloppily you can tell what that meant to the person.

The second article I read was about Vannevar Bush and his views on how technology will be able to advance to better people. He foresaw many of the improvements of modern day technology but limited to the technological equipment of his day. The memex was his view of what will revolutionize the way we store and view our documents. No longer would they be sorted only by alphabetical order, but now can be tied together as the brain thinks, by category and association.

If Bush were to see the internet of today and how information is being shared I believe he would be amazed at how effective it is. He envisioned a personal desk with limited data of ones choice, not a literal endless source of information which is the internet today. You can search for a topic in a search engine, and it will bring up not only that topic, but closely related articles depending on how users have rated their usefulness. It is also getting to the point where the need to go to a library is not even necessary anymore, as all documents are being digitized to allow access through the web. Bush spoke of how he thought much time was wasted waiting on books to arrive or going to find information, but with the internet now all of this information is accessible almost instantly.

Bush would greatly enjoy the ability of blogs as a way to share information as well. While I believe he would use them as more of a technical space to write out his theories and read others ideas, I believe he would enjoy the technology. He enjoyed that during the war all of the science community came together to create weapons of war and stopped their side projects and in-fighting. The ability of the science community to be that connected would no doubt be to Bush’s liking.

At the end while I believe these men had different views on how technology would affect society, I believe both would embrace it as it stands today. Regardless if Hawthorne disagreed with the detachment and loss of the comforts he grew up with, the new technology adds a whole new comfort that he could not have dreamed of. Bush had a better on grasp on what technology could become, and while for the most part it has. There is a lot of trash on the internet, but there is also an equal amount of extremely useful information that would have been nearly inaccessible to a person in Bush’s time.