Click here: http://brighton.ncsa.uiuc.edu/prajlich/forster.html
The above link brings us to a story titled “The Machine Stops” which was written by E.M. Forster in 1909 exploring attitudes towards science and technology. It was written as a reaction to the optimism of the early 20th century about technology and shows man’s over-reliance on technology and his inability to live without it. The story claims that man has forgotten that it is indeed himself who created technology which resulted in the loss of direct experience and human connection, or the threat of virtual communities.
The story shows man’s dependency on technology. It deals with themes like meditated experience and the loss the direct experience, which degrades human communication. It shows that there will be a fear of direct experience with nature, with people as part of nature which ultimately will lead to dehumanisation, estrangement and alienation of oneself. The desire of comfort will be man’s ultimate doomsday.
The advance in technology results in globalisation of the whole world. The modern world today is full of machines and gadgets to help people live their lives in a more convenient and comfortable manner. With globalisation and the high level of technology, a person can become over-reliant on a machine, which in turn, will make the world a place void of natural human emotion and connection. For example, the telephone has enabled people to communicate with one another anywhere in the world. Now, there is the invention of the cell phone, which has the function of SMS. Between sending a text message and a phone call, people would choose the text message. This shows that with the advance of technology, more and more people will lose their human side and direct experience because of fear. Virtual communities will thrive because it supports non-direct experience, and the hiding of human emotion or identity. Thus, although globalisation and technology may have its advantages of convenience, it also has its downsides of turning the world into a machine.
Many existing radio and television broadcasters provide Internet 'feeds' of their live audio and video streams (for example, the BBC). They may also allow time-shift viewing or listening such as Preview, Classic Clips and Listen Again features. These providers have been joined by a range of pure Internet 'broadcasters' who never had on-air licenses. This means that an Internet-connected device, such as a computer or something more specific, can be used to acce
ss on-line media in much the same way as was previously possible only with a television or radio receiver. Podcasting is a variation on this theme, where—usually audio—material is first downloaded in full and then may be played back on a computer or shifted to a digital audio player to be listened to on the move. These techniques using simple equipment allow anybody, with little censorship or licensing control, to broadcast audio-visual material on a worldwide basis.
Webcams can be seen as an even lower-budget extension of this phenomenon. While some webcams can give full frame rate video, the picture is usually either small or updates slowly. Video chat rooms, video conferencing, and remote controllable webcams are also popular. Many uses can be found for personal webcams in and around the home, with and without two-way sound.
http://www.klove.com/music/listenonline.aspx
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/index.shtml
Technology is powerful as it renders state borders and boundaries meaningless. Development in technology such as the internet means that the state has lost it’s monopoly to control what comes in and out of the country. The internet is worldwide, anyone who has access to the internet has gained knowledge and information. For example, someone in
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In the above cartoon, it portrays a scene where “Mcwit” has an edge over the other competitors in the race because of his long nose. In other words, this edge can be seen as an advantage over the other competitors. Sports races are very close and the 1st and 2nd placings may only have a difference of milliseconds, one may not make it to the finals of the race because he has missed the timing by milliseconds. Thus, a little difference means a lot in the sporting world, namely racing sports. However, if one has the suitable technology, he may be able to have an advantage or an edge over the other competitors who do not have the same level of technology as one does. This is clearly shown in the cartoons above. I am going to talk more about the technology advancement in the world of swimming, a race sport.
Full body skinsuits
The most significant full body skinsuit that made it big, especially during the Olympics was the Speedo Fastskin swimsuit. The design was inspired by the unique skin structure of the shark. The Fastskin can be considered Speedo's most sophisticated and technologically advanced solution to aiding competitor's speed through water. The suit was developed and trialed over several years by a team that included scientists, a bio mechanist, a shark expert, a computer clothing company, a Japanese textile company, a swimming coach, and swimmers. 
The research team realised that the shark’s unique structure of its skin enabled it to reduce drag and move through the water faster. From this idea, they developed a 'skin' for swimmers with a texture that mimicked the dermal denticles (tooth shaped forms) on a sharks skin. Made from a knitted super-stretch nylon/elastane/polyester fabric the Fastskin features V shapes ridges and a denticle surface print. In water the effect of these surfaces combine, with large vortices formed by the fabric print flowing in the opposite direction to the small vortices formed in the fabric ridges. This ensures the water is sucked closer to the body which reduces friction drag on the swimmer by allowing surrounding water to pass over more effectively. The fabric also compresses the muscles reducing muscle and skin vibration which decreases fatigue and power loss.
Description above taken and edited from http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:ynLJKQbTv6YJ:www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/%3Firn%3D350066+fastskin+features&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=sg
From all the above examples of technology sports people seek to train with, it is fair to say that everyone has a common goal of winning, which draws people from different parts of the world together, encouraging globalization. In major competitions like the Olympics, people from different parts of the world come together in one place to compete against each other for the coveted gold medal, world record or Olympic record. The act of drawing everyone together with a common interest and goal is globalization. Thus, evidently, technology in sports encourages globalization as it compels the competitive spirit in people and makes them have similar aspirations of winning, and turning the world into a more globalized place.
- Apr 18, 2007
The Straits Times
http://digital.asiaone.com.sg/news/20070418_001.html
'My friends could be dead,' he typed on Bryce's Journal, which is usually dedicated to partying, the environment and sports.
'Tears continue.'
Members of the most wired generation in history dealt with Monday's bloody campus rampage by connecting on blogs, Facebook and other websites. Their eyewitness descriptions, photos and video made the trauma unfolding in the rural
Thousands of kilometres from the shootings, University of Southern California (USC) sophomore Charlotte Korchak received a call from her mother in
'I was able to immediately find out who was okay,' she said. 'Without Facebook, I have no idea how I would have found that out.'
Every tragedy now seems accompanied by an outpouring of grief and solidarity on the Internet - a fire hose of news, rumour, photos, mobile phone videos and instant opinion. So was the case on Monday, as the death toll climbed to 33 at the Virginia Tech campus.
By Monday evening, more than 16,000 had flocked to Facebook's 'April 16, 2007 - A Moment of Silence' discussion group. Other impromptu memorial groups drew thousands of members each.
'Since the launching of Facebook, there is probably nothing that has impacted the college audience as this has,' said a spokesman for the website.
On Monday, TechSideline.com, a website for fans of Virginia Tech sports, turned into a makeshift meeting place where visitors could seek word about loved ones.
'It allows you to feel closer to the situation,' said Mr Robert Niles, editor of the USC's Online Journalism Review and a former Rocky Mountain News reporter who covered the Columbine killings. 'To see that there is a functioning community is very reassuring to people who are disturbed by something as horrible as this.'
As the story broke, users of Digg, a popular news sharing site, posted stories by CNN and ABC News, then returned to those posts to share fatality counts, warm wishes to survivors, condolences to families of the dead and links to a mobile phone video recorded by a Virginia Tech student outside Norris Hall as the shooting happened.
'What this link became was a place to learn what happened in the last five minutes,' said Mr Jay Adelson, chief executive of San Francisco-based Digg.
Virginia Tech civil engineering student Anthony Le, 19, kept his ear pressed to a police scanner all morning as the drama unfolded, then posted whatever information he learnt on Digg.
'The count of the fatalities was a lot slower on CNN than on Digg,' he said.
An 18-year-old student identified as Carter had headed for his dorm as gunshots rang out and a message started blaring over the campus loudspeaker, saying: 'This is an emergency. Take shelter indoors immediately. Stay away from windows and remain inside.'
He managed to make two calls before the cellphone networks jammed.
'We did not know anything,' he said. 'So we kept trying to find out things online.'
He then began to blog, and as the death toll mounted at 12.40pm, he wrote the words: 'We topped Columbine, please God, have none of them be my friends.'
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Reflections:
People of a nearby church praying in the above picture^
The article above is about the Virginia Tech shooting incident which took place on the 16th of April 2007, this year. The article states that the students, friends and people related to the staff and student body of Virginia Tech turned to the internet for information when they heard about the shootings and wanted to know more. The Internet is a worldwide, publicly accessible network of interconnected computer networks. It is a "network of networks" that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government networks, which together carry various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, file transfer, and the interlinked Web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web. It is easily accessible as long as one has a computer and suitable internet access, and allows information to be transferred and read by anyone in the world. Over the years, the number of users of the internet has increased significantly as shown in the graph below. This shows the high level of technology attained by mankind so much so that people turn to the internet for information and news rather than to normal newspapers, or even television.
As stated in the article above, those people who turned to the internet for information used blogs, Facebook, the social networking site, TechSideline.com as a makeshift meeting place where visitors could seek word about loved ones, and Digg, a popular news sharing website. It is stated that Virginia Tech freshman Bryce Carter did what anyone his age would do in a time of crisis - he blogged. First, he assured friends that he was alive. Then he posted a video he shot of police cars gathering outside and still photos of sharpshooters. 'My friends could be dead,' he typed on Bryce's Journal, which is usually dedicated to partying, the environment and sports. Bryce’s journal can be accessed at http://ntcoolfool.livejournal.com/. This is a blog which touched many people’s hearts and provided many with information from the point of view of a Virginia Tech student. The online community has provided many tributes to the victims of the shootings, in addition, social network communities have set up forums for discussion and the sharing of information of this terrible incident. For example, many people have posted their thoughts, condolences and information videos on youtube.com, which is an internet video sharing community.
A view of Bryce's blog^
A view of youtube.com^
The fact that people are turning to advanced technology on the internet for information, support groups, and discussion forums instead of not-so-advanced technology like the telephone, shows that the people have well-acquainted themselves with the internet. This bonds people as one body with a common interest, which in this case, is to offer support discussion and information about the shooting incident. The internet allows for interaction in every direction, accessible to anyone. It is clear that the technological advancement of the internet has rendered state borders meaningless. The degree of technology allows for the freedom of information where by people are connected, free to receive and give ideas. In this state of global disorder it has become evidently clear that the world is interconnected through a complex web of transnational networks. Global interconnectedness is also what distinguishes the Internet, a medium that allows people to communicate and interact with one another, regardless of physical proximity. Generally defined as the network of networks, the Internet can help us understand the world we live in, a world in which the growing significance of boundary-crossing networks is forcing us to reconfigure our societies as interdependent parts of a global whole. With the internet, information can be received and transmitted all over the world, with just a single click of the mouse, pulling many people of the world together as one in the internet community, thus encouraging globalisation.
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Click on above image for clearer view^
There has always been a need for military weapons, whether in the past or present. According to the Wikipedia definition, a weapon is “a tool which is intended to or is used to injure, kill, or incapacitate a person, damage or destroy property, or to otherwise render resources non-functional or unavailable. Weapons may be used to attack and defend, and consequently also to threaten or protect.” From the dawn of time, man already had invented weapons of all sort for survival. Weapons were used to protect and achieve self-interests as it gave humans a sense of security.
These are some of the reasons why the technology of military weapons is always ever-increasing, and that with the advance of technology in this area, stimulates a growth of globalization in the world.
In the ancient times, namely the Medieval period, there was significant advance in weaponry which revolved around 2 major areas. They were the knights and castles. A Medieval knight was mounted on a horse and was an armoured soldier. They were associated with prestige, nobility and royalty, as they were often distinguished as being from a higher social class than the other infantry soldiers. Castles were built as a natural barrier to help defend and attack their enemies from. All these weapons were invented for the sake of conquest. During the Medieval period, many wars took place, with the most significant being the Holy Crusades. Thus, it is clearly shown that in the past, namely the Medieval period, there was already weapon advancement going on. Now, I will explain more about the Renaissance age, and the advance in technology of their weaponry.
The Renaissance age marked the beginning of combustion based devices in warfare. It has the most long-lasting effect as it involved the introduction of cannons and firearms to the battlefield. Until today, these are still a core of our weaponry, although now much more advanced. Cannons were used mainly to attack castles and other defence, a task that was equally well suited to undermining or non-explosive weapons. The development of cannons did have an important effect as it soon made existing castle designs obsolete. Firearms like the musket and the bayonet also made close-contact fighting of the Medieval ages not necessary as people could just shoot out an enemy using gunpowder in the firearms instead of physically taking out the enemy.
From the American Revolution through the beginning of the 20th Century, human-powered weapons were finally excluded from the battlefield. Sometimes referred to as the Age of Rifles, this period was characterized by the development of firearms for infantry and cannons for support, as well as the beginnings of mechanized weapons such as the machine gun. World War I marked the entry of fully industrialized warfare, and weapons were developed quickly to meet wartime needs. Many new technologies were developed, particularly in the development of military aircraft and vehicles. World War II however, marked the most frantic period of weapons development in the history of humanity. Massive numbers of new designs and concepts were fielded, and all existing technologies were improved between 1939 and 1945. Ultimately, the most powerful of all invented weapons was the nuclear bomb. After World War II, with the onset of the Cold War, the constant technological development of new weapons was institutionalized, as participants engaged in a constant race to develop weapons and counter-weapons. This constant state of weapons development continues into the modern era, and remains a constant draw on the resources of most nations. Above paragraph taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon
In the present day, the world military spending in 2003 increased about 11%, this is a significant and incredible rate of increase, even more so that it preceded by an increase of 6.5% in 2002. it has reached a remarkable spending of $956 billion. High-income countries account for 75% of the world military spending but only 16 per cent of world population. The combined military spending of these countries was slightly higher than the aggregate foreign debt of all low-income countries and 10 times higher than their combined levels of official development assistance in 2001. As shown in the figure above, the nuclear weapons stockpile has increased significantly over the years. All these figures show is that military weapons have a significant impact in our lives as it brings about globalization and the oneness of the world, which has similar motives for attaining military weapons, nuclear weapons in particular.
I have shown the technological advances made in military weapons over the past 2000 years or so. It is evident that this high level of technology attained has increased globalization all over the world. As mentioned in the previous “definitions” post, the definition of globalization is when there are rapid advances technology that are increasingly binding people and the biosphere more tightly into one global system. Thus, the development of technology in the military weaponry area has pulled people together with a common goal and interest of attaining weaponry for self-gain. In other words, the development of technology in the military weaponry area is increasingly binding people together more tightly into one global system which is that of the protection self interest. The common goal of self protection and gain has pulled the world together. The technology of military weapons shrinks the world as it does not require any close contact to have war. For example, a nuclear weapon in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon
http://www.weaponsblog.org/images/nagasaki_nuclear_bomb.jpg
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GLOBALIZATION
Globalization refers to increasing global connectivity, integration and interdependence in the economic, social, technological, cultural, political, and ecological spheres. It is best understood as a unitary process inclusive of many sub-processes (such as enhanced economic interdependence, increased cultural influence, rapid advances of information technology, and novel governance and geopolitical challenges) that are increasingly binding people and the biosphere more tightly into one global system.
The information above titled ‘globalization’ was taken from
TECHNOLOGY
Technology is a broad concept that deals with a species' usage and knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects a species' ability to control and adapt to its environment. In human society, it is a consequence of science and engineering.
The human race's use of technology began with the conversion of plentiful natural resources into simple tools. The prehistorical discovery of the ability to control fire increased the available sources of food, and the invention of the wheel helped humans in travelling in and controlling their environment. Recent technological developments, including the printing press and the Internet, have lessened physical barriers to communication and allowed humans to interact on a global scale. However, not all technology has been used for peaceful purposes; the development of weapons of ever-increasing destructive power has progressed throughout history, from clubs to nuclear weapons.
The information above named ‘technology’ was taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological
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