Week 2 Post

There are two questions that I have put forward after reading the articles.

1. Do technology and social relations evolve independently of each other? From my stand point, they are mutually constituted. It is important to encode social relations into technologies and vice versa.

“An advance in technology not only must be congruent with the surrounding technology but must also be compatible with the existing economic and other institutions of society.” (Heilbroner, 1967) For example the presence of expensive labor will accelerate the use of labor-saving machinery and otherwise the opposite.

I read an example of low overpasses on Long island, New York. The work can be traced back to the 1920s to 1970s. This height of overpass had discouraged the presence of buses. And the poor people and blacks, who can only afford the public transit, were kept off the roads. The design of this technology overpass has reflected the social-class bias and racial prejudice. From this example, we can see technologies do contain many physical arrangements that contain explicit and implicit political purposes.

It reminds me of that technologies can be seen as neutral tools that be used well or poorly, for good, evil or something between. I think one of the important purposes for this course is to let us think deeply about the social implications within the technologies.

2. Will Technology change the way how people communicate with each other?

There is a popular social app called WeChat in China, which has lots of functions and facilitate the lives of people. In the meantime, it has also changed the way the people communicate. People can have their mutual friends’ circle, give likes or leave comments in the moments. However, it also has some problems, causing Inauthenticity, social anxiety and low self-esteem.

For example, many girls spend lots of time modifying themselves using photo-editing tools to meet the needs of social expectations that girls should be somewhat thin and good looking (big eyes and a pointed chin). However, many of them just get off the path that they “over photoshop” their posts and even their friends could not recognize them in real person. Initially, Moments is a place to make friends, but at last it becomes a place to be judged by the other people even if people don’t want to be judged by others. During the social interactions, people are motivated to self-branding and try to avoid making undesired impressions on others.

In a nutshell, the technology do change the ways people interacting with each other. So how to make use of the technologies to better serve the way people communicate both in the school or daily lives? Hope for the further discussions in the class.