Ahhhh, eLearning and Digital Cultures course, how you appear to hate technology oh so much.
Not really, but I do believe that either - due to the choices of our educators or the creative collection of society in general - people are using technology to depict technological-futures in a very bleak light.
This may be because providing that sort of drama makes for a much better storyline than one where people communicate more openly, learn more vividly and complete mundane tasks with ease. I can't help but agree. Why would I want to see video of some kid learning in a Volvo when I can be on the edge-of-my-seat in suspense as a cell phone mysteriously chokes its owner using the power of cellular signal? No matter what the deal is, it is definitely creating an impression upon my fellow classmates in #edcmooc.
Not that technology has gone without slaughtering humans. We've been developing tech since our ancestors, with weaponry usage being exhibited by chimps who learned how to manipulate tools. And sure, they used some of these tools to bash each other's skulls in -- others used different tools for fishing ants out of anthills. Silly chimps...when are they going to realize, like us humans, that slaughtering your same species is wrong. Oh, wait...crap.
So, the first homo-made weapon are referred to as the Schöningen Spears and were used by Homo heidelbergensis. Since that time we've upgraded tanks and rifles, planes and atomic weaponry, even hypothetical Star Wars style anti-weaponry. But the focus of the class that I am currently taking hasn't surrounded any of these well developed, industrialized techs which have wiped the world clean of so many humans. Instead, the focus has been on the laziness of the human mind, how it has been entrenched by an overwhelming amount of day-to-day systems (like a phone, or an iPad), and how these things are capable of destroying society from the inside out. Definitely important subject matter, though it seems somewhat disconcerting that the focus of technology's imminent destructive tendencies seem to come through development and innovation, as opposed to through brute force, human ignorance and an inability to stop irrational actors from making moves upon the world stage.
In Week 2, the future view of technology as described above is crafted through images of the bleak. Of course, we do have two load balancing films which are supposed to anchor the staunch dystopian view that is put forward in the rest of the videos - but that doesn't really seem to playout in the student's mindframe. In fact, from watching the reaction of my classmates through TweetDeck and Google+, it is more then abundantly obvious that our society has directed its focus towards thwarting itself from its own impending doom that is caused by us having access too....too much information too fast, I think. Or something.
I will attempt in future entries to develop my thoughts regarding this division and to try and grasp the reasons individuals tend to lean towards this "Glass half empty" view of technology. Of course I don't really believe that my classmates hate technology, but maybe they fear it? Or maybe they see how much they use it as a crutch which will make them into weaker beings - just as the Periodic Table of Elements obviously made Einstein stupid because he no longer had to look up mass and atomic number of an element, and just as how people became inherently weaker when the Wheel was invented because they no longer had to work as hard for as long...oh...wait....damnit!
It will be interesting to see what conclusions you come to. I would add that some of writings may lean toward what we think the instructors want to hear about the choices of resources that they made. That is always the danger of groups whether F2F or ditigal - we often try to please someone else.
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