ARC 597 | On Speed Situated Technologies Intellectual Domain Seminar, Fall 2014

Improvement in technology may increase our power to solve physical problems, can make non-physical problems worse. (Heylighen and Toffler) When we are talking about technology it is not all about software or devices and how they make life easier for us. But also communication technologies have the potential to change the way people think, communicate, and organize social groups. Computing technologies increase the human talent for cooperation and participation as we see today text messaging makes it possible for group of people who do not know each other and who are located in different parts of the world to be connected to share their interest. By using their mobile phones they can connect to the data information sources as well as other people phones. Internet makes billions of people capable of using their personal communication devices to enhance their situation, for gaining something or protesting against something (generally the collective actions). In my country, we had exactly the same situation 4 or 5 years ago, Individual communication devices and in particular applications such as Viber, WeChat played a significant role in creating demonstrations (about the result of voting for choosing the president at that time ) which made the government to filter these apps and cut the people connections. It made the protests become capable of being aware of the situation in different part of the country and decide what to do next. I think these kinds of devices have the social, political or economic potential that were not discovered by the people who invented, designed or manufactured them. I have seen an interesting question somewhere which was: ‘Are the citizens of tomorrow going to be users, like the PC owners and website creators who turned technology to widespread innovation? Or will they be consumers, constrained from innovation and locked into the technology and business models of entrenched interests? ’