The Machine is Us!

Wow! The Youtube video of "Michael Wesch: The Machine is Us/ing Us" was amazing! I really had to stay focused to watch everything. The production of the video was fast moving. A few times, I had to stop and blink my eyes because there was so much information. I thought I wouldn't be able to keep up. There were a few times I paused and had to go back to watch it.

I liked how he started with pencil and writing, then erasing what he wrote. The images quickly changed to more of a digital format that we are use to seeing on computers. He talked about the creation of HTML then XML. He showed how they both changed how information was sent and received. The new format made it more user friendly for people to search and share ideas over the internet. Texting, Youtube and flicker were also mentioned as ways people communicate today.

I enjoyed how he brought us into his world by quickly changing words and images. This made me have to process what I saw very quickly. But, it made me realize how quickly I had to take what I saw as fact. It was only when I finished watching that I could sit and process all of it.

I think the most important part of the video was the caption of "who will organized this data". For me, it brought it back to people. People or "users" are the ones who will not only organize but more importantly create what we see on the internet and the world around us. He says that we teach the machine what we want it to know. In effect, we are teaching each other how to communicate faster and in a language we can all follow. But, he says we need to rethink a few things such as copyright, authorship, ethics, love, family and ourselves. I couldn't agree more with this statement because we are moving so fast with new technology that I have to wonder if we ever stop and ask ourselves if it's a positive thing for our lives. Do we ever stop and question if it's right?