The Digital Past

In class on Monday, we talked about different mediums and how technology has changed a lot. Personally, the most interesting thing we learned was how “the medium is the message.” I never thought about that, but it’s true. Think about it, a text vs a call, which is more urgent? In that sense, the medium (which is the call or text) is the message of urgency. Nowadays, the medium is the thing to capture your attention, not the actual contents of the message. Then we talked about how technology has changed a lot of things in our lives, which couldn’t be more true. It has changed our perception of time, as the internet condenses things for us to we can spend more time doing other things, which also makes it harder for people of our generation to focus on just one thing. It also affects our memories, as now we can “google” anything and have the information right then and there, as opposed to internalizing information. Professor O’Malley then brought up whether you would want a doctor who has to consult the books or one who has everything memorized, which you would most likely choose the one who has it memorized. If something were to go wrong, the one with everything memorized would have a better chance of saving you, as they know what to do, but the other guy would have to take time to go look at a book. It’s scary looking at how much technology really has changed everything, as I’ve never really thought of it.