Rise of the Technology Class
These conversations are between students from Ecuador, India, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Spain and the US who see technology serving a higher purpose: A counter-culture to their predecessors. This is evidence of a new type of generative class who apply technology to their creativity with art, music, science and involvement within the community. Their activity is transparent and active to our evolving civility. These multinational students are socially conscious storytellers. The Moderator of this conversation, Michael Davis is an Executive MBA graduate of Steinbeis University Germany, The Berlin School of Creative Leadership.Author Archive
By Veena – The Music Industry
Despite advances in technology that make recording and spreading music easier, the music industry continues to face hard times. So many people use peer-to-peer sharing software like Limewire to download music for free, while legal downloads on iTunes and Rhapsody fight for fees along with music labels. CD sales have almost gone the way of the cassette tape.
The artists are the ones who suffer getting less money from their recording as the record companies make less profit. Seems now that music labels are taking far less risk by not signing many new artists and cutting established artists not doing well. What irony since it’s so easy for artists to buy a computer and inexpensive recording equipment for their homes… but they can’t get distribution.
There are exceptions, but music sites won’t make money on unknown artists. I think less young people will choose music as a career and the selection of new music will be significantly less. There may even come a time when the only way to hear new music is to go see it live.
By Veena – Space Travel fades away
When I think about it, I am very surprised that we have not made greater advances yet in space travel. In the middle of the 20th century things were moving much more quickly, it seems. Kennedy said that we would have someone on the moon before the 1960′s were up, and we did! But since then, the excitement has seemed to fade away a little. I know we have sent robots to Mars, but where is the technology to send people? Has it not been discovered yet, or is there just not enough interest anymore to fund it? I think many people’s eyes have turned away from the skies in the past few decades, as domestic and international issues have continued to weigh us down.
Will life ever be like it is in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Or better yet, like this?
Where is all the futuristic technology we’ve been promised by the cartoon “The Jetsons” and movies like Gattaca (1997) and Metropolis (1927)? The closest things I’ve seen have been those segways that tourists ride around on in downtown Chicago. Where are all the hovercrafts on the streets instead of cars? The helpful robots (though not the ones that surpass their owner’s intelligence and turn on them)?
Segway
By Veena – Advertising in the shadows
There are so many different approaches that can be used in ads, such as humor, emotional appeal, celebrity endorsement and many more. Which approach really depends on the audience the ad is supposed to speak to. There’s a ton of rules that the people who make the ads have to follow… For example, in ads for children’s toys, there can’t be any shadows in the ad because research has found that shadows scare kids. It sounds crazy at first.. But when you think about it, you never see Elmo’s looming shadow as he’s doing the Hokey-Pokey, do you?
Veena – News on TV
I am going to be starting college in the fall, and I plan on majoring in journalism, most likely broadcast journalism. Because of this, I’ve been starting to watch news shows on TV more and more, to get a feel for the kind of reporting they do. In a normal news broadcast, they cover a ton of wide-ranging stories, but because of the limited amount of time, they barely delve into the issues, they mainly just give headlines and a few words of information before moving on to the next topic. A major news story may be allowed 5 minutes of air time, but not much more. If you just want the basic idea of what’s going on in the world, this kind of reporting would suffice, but it is not detailed enough to give anyone a good grasp on the issues.
titanic sinks new york times
Since hardly anyone reads newspapers anymore, even the ones online, it seems like there’s a serious lack of information being passed along to the general public.
Yeah, it's Anchorman...
Does anyone on here stay up to date with current events? If so, what forms of media do you usually get the information from?
Veena – Internet and Television
I just got the internet and TV back at my house today, after they had been down for nearly two weeks. At first it’s horrible… You feel disconnected from your friends (no Facebook, no instant messaging), and to the rest of the world (no Conan O’Brien, no Michael Jackson’s memorial). It really doesn’t get much easier, but I found other things to do, simply because I had to. I spent most of my time at home reading, which I would not have done had the cable been working properly, and I made a much greater effort that normal to leave the house whenever I could. As hard as it was for me to go without internet and TV for so long, I think that every once in a while it’s good to step away from those things and find other ways to occupy your time, if for no other reason but to say that you can.
Veena – Nature and Technology
It seems like the more advanced technology gets, the less we need to interact with nature.
In our fully-insulated homes we are immune to the extreme weather outside. It was nearly 90F (34C) degrees in Chicago today, but my room was nice and cool at 70F (21C) degrees. Instead of taking long walks or going for a run outside, we go to gyms and health clubs to work out on machines. These things are designed to make life easier… and they do, without a doubt. But it also means that we spend less time outside and less time exploring an environment with its own amazing technology that wasn’t created by humans.
On one hand I feel like we should all spend more time in nature and less time inside with our own technology (which I am extremely guilty of)… But on the other hand, I feel like… it’s the 21st century. Men have been to the moon and back many times now, we have cured diseases that once killed millions of people, and we have figured out a way to alter peoples’ appearances with surgery so that they are unrecognizable… After all these advances in technology, science, etc… Why hasn’t anyone come up with a good way to keep spiders from coming into my room?
Veena – business, technology, disease
It seems like most of the time business plays a major role in technology–almost a greater role than technology itself does. Even if we have the technology to create something, if the business community is again it, it will not be created. An example of this is several years ago when electric cars were first introduced in the U.S. Gas companies did not want people to buy the electric cars because it would be bad for their business, so they lobbied and spent money to keep the electric cars from becoming a big thing. Electric cars went out of production here for a very long time because the businesses were against them.
Another way that business controls technology is in the area of medicine. It is very possible that if it was not for insurance companies and hospitals trying to make money, we could find cures for some of the diseases that are most prevalent right now. However, doctors know that the real money is not in research, but in practice of medicine, and hospitals and insurance companies want people to buy vaccine after vaccine each year for things like the flu or meningitis, instead of finding one cure. I’m pretty sure that a cure hasn’t been discovered for anything since polio. 
Surely we have the technology to cure other diseases, but if the business world is against it, technology doesn’t really have a chance.
from Veena – Technology and War
Over the years as times have changed and technological advances have been made, the face of war has also changed. Before World War I, fighting was done with bayonets and muskets, which could only fire one bullet before being reloaded. Weapons like these made war very personal, because the two sides had to be within a close range to use them.
As technology has advanced, war has become extremely impersonal. We can now fire missiles into other countries hundreds of miles away. We can use airplanes to fly over and drop bombs on the enemy. The invention of guns that can shoot much farther and carry multiple bullets means that soldiers no longer have to look into the eyes of the people they kill. Instead of being out with the soldiers, generals can now sit safely miles away from the fighting and issue orders by phone. All of these technological advances, and more, take the personal feeling out of war because they make it so the people involved do not know who they are killing.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It could be said that this impersonal feeling helps because it doesn’t let the soldiers’ morality get in the way… But isn’t our morality what makes us human? Technology has taken the human element out of war. This is a terrifying thought to me. With all the “weapons of mass destruction” we have that could easily take out half the world (or more), I think the last thing the world needs is a loss of morality. I guess what I’m getting at here is that technology can save the world, but it can also very easily and quickly destroy it.
Veena – Technology in Chicago
I feel that in Chicago, there are two attitudes among the general public towards technology. There are those who think that technology’s purpose is to make life for themselves easier, and those who believe that the purpose is to benefit the world as a whole. It seems that for every person I see driving a Smart Car, I see two or three in a gas-guzzling SUV. Although I often wish I had one of those 4-wheel drive monsters in January when I’m stuck in 2 feet of snow, I know that that technology is impractical for the daily life of a Chicago resident. I find it surprising how few hybrids you actually see on the streets, for all the talk there is about them, you would expect to see a lot more. While Chicago and the rest of the U.S. are still trying to wrap their heads around electricity, France has developed the technology to create the Air Car. Has anyone else heard about this? It runs on compressed air! If everyone in Chicago had one of those, no one would care that we have the highest gas prices in the nation!
Here is a short news report about the Air Car:
Moderator, US
Joshua - Tel Aviv, Israel
Aruna - Mumbai, India
jacqueline - Cicero, US
Salvador - Orihuela, Spain
David - Orihuela, Spain
Cristo-Orihuela, Spain
Veena - Chicago, US
Nikolas - Glenview, US
Caridad - Orihuela, Spain
Katie - Administrator, Chicago, US
Ryan - Glenview, US
Samantha - Santiago Papasquiaro, Mexico
Kaito - Tokyo, Japan
