9/3/2008 Mythinformation by Langdon Winner Excerpt from the book "Questioning Technology" 1991

After reading the essay “Mythinformation” by Langdon Winner I immediately went to my computer and searched Webster’s Dictionary for the term “mythinformation” to see if in fact it was a real word and if that was its actual definition. Turns out it’s not. Winner, who is a professor of political science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in order to display the feelings of the era, created the word. In the midst of reading this essay I came across the line, “current dreams of a ‘computer age’ stand out as exaggerated and unrealistic,” (Winner, 1991). At first I was taken back since I believed that we were currently living in a computer age. After a minute of confusion I flipped to the back of the packet in order to see the date in which this was written. 1991 was the beginning of the technological revolution, slowly newer and better technology was being produced in order to make the lives of citizens easier. We now live in an era where everything is as easy as one would want it, yet surely enough even greater technology will be invented to help us out.

Winner speaks of the dangers of the new technology and I completely agree with what he thinks will be long-term consequences. As a science fiction fanatic, I’ve read and seen movies about the dangers of both artificial intelligence and boundaries beyond Earth. With technological revolution and the possible feasibility to monitor our activities, 1984 is the first thing that comes into my head. The government might eventually be able to see and hear all we do and use its power in order to turn our government from democracy into totalitarianism. This is obviously a possible farfetched and extremely pessimistic outlook but eventually boundaries will need to be set on privacy issues as even newer technology is created. Also, through technology like texting and Ichating today’s youth is losing its ability to communicate with other people. Social skills are slowly being lost with people due to their reliance on computers or phones to do everything.

The novel this excerpt came from is called Questioning Technology, seventeen years ago I could understand being apprehensive about the future and its new age wonders. The world we live in currently would not be the same without these new technologies, but as new inventions come into existence, will anybody have the guts to stand up and question them if our freedoms slowly dwindle because of them?