The tech-free challenge

Before the challenge
I plan on doing a mix of 1900(level 5) and 1850(level 6). I will cook my food on the fire area I have prepared with fuel and I can filter the rain water in various containers and buckets that have collected water. I will be giving up running water, electricity for cooking ( stoves). I might not give up flashlights. I anticipate that I will want to eat food other that hot dogs for a day. It won't be too hard. It will just take a bit more effort to prepare food especially if it is raining. I plan to do what I usually do with the exception of some essential modern conveniences. I hope to learn how to build fires better, how to cook on fires better and of course to appreciate even more the technology that we use daily. I plan to do this on Monday, Columbus day.

During the challenge
I wasn't able to do the level of the tech-free challenge that I anticipated I would because of the the amount of homework I did the day before, almost none. So I ended up doing all my homework Monday. So I ended up doing the challenge on Thursday at the 1995 (level 1). My first impulse to use technology was to use my email. Second to listen to music on Pandora. I listened to a CD instead. I was hoping not to use the internet and I did, mostly except for in class thursday. We did blogging so I used the internet. Besides that I didn't use the internet.

After the challenge
The tech-free challenge was not hard. It would have been harder if I had gone with my original plan. I wish I did the harder challenge, I could have if I did my homework the day before. So I could prepare my food on a fire. This would have been different if I had continued for a week or a month. Instead of emailing people I would use the phone, or wait until the next time I saw the person to communicate with them. Or I could use snail mail. I learned from this challenge that it is easy to take for granted things we use all the time like the internet.

What this blog is about

Well this blog is part of The Four Rivers charter Public School English class; Response to Modernization: Literature

Overview:
Students in this class will be examining the relationship between technology and community through literature. What is progress? How has our relationship to technology shaped our culture, and what does this mean for our present and future? We will be reading selective nonfiction about this relationship while studying dystopian fiction: texts that describe utopias gone wrong. We will examine the ways these texts reveal our fears and our values. Along the way, we will propose a tech-free challenge to our community: how does living without modern conveniences affect our interactions? The results of this experiment will be documented and discussed, a we will create narratives that articulate our visions for the ideal coexistence of technology and community.

Right now we are using the book Technopoly by Neil Postman

Continued opinion

Well to add to what I previously said. Niel Postmans main point was that The United states has turned into a technopoly. Niel describes a technopoly

” as a society that believes that “the primary, if not the only, goal of human labor and thought is efficiency, that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgment ... and that the affairs of citizens are best guided and conducted by experts.” page 51

Of course I disagree with his point, because not all labor is for efficiency. For example one might take the time to plant flowers for their beauty simply because they want to.

The second part of this quote from the book I disagree with as well because we as citizens do not constantly go to experts for every decision. I use the dictionary to find the meaning of a word not a linguist. The flaw in his statement is that people are naturally creative and he says otherwise in a sense. The affairs of citizens are not best guided and especially not conducted by experts. That is where innovation and self-reliance comes into play.

In general I think Niel Postman exaggerated the points he made about the effects of technology on mankind. I see where he is coming from and what he means, but he bashes the very tools he used to publish his literature. That is hypocritical. He is not a bad guy or anything like that. I just disagree with his point of view about technology. There are pros and cons of the technology of this day and age. I simply pay more attention to the positive. It's too bad he died in 2003 at the age of 72 from lung cancer.

Technopoly opinion

Well I think that it was a too critical of the technology we use. Which is the same technology the author used to published his book. He said numerous times in one way or another that our technology was replacing our culture. Hence the title of the book; Technopoly: The surrender of Culture to technology.