Taming the Beast: Choice & Control in the Electronic Jungle [Hardcover]

 

 

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The author has unusual credentials. A Ph.D., he teaches Technology Assessment at the University of Alaska in Juneau, and directs the University's Educational Technology Program. He is an original thinker with fresh views on how to be at peace while awash in Information Age: technology." He provides a thinking process that helps make it serve you rather than rule you. The impression one gets from the media often leaves a disturbing, hopeless feeling of being controlled by a technology. "Technology" though, is just a new way of labeling something that's been around forever; its called "change." Remember the old rag about change: "If you don't bend, you break." We must be in control and not allow technology to break us. Ohler has figured out many of the questions we need to ask about technology. He has put them down in a way you can understand and use, but he doesn't presume to know all the answers. This book deals with the grassroots problems of change. Uncertainty, unpredictability, uncontrollability. A sampling of the questions we must ask to maintain control of a technology. Three basics: (1) what is unique about it? (2) what is the real ultimate goal (any manipulation)? (3) how does it impact environment, the individual, institutions? Is it a tool or a machine? Tools are controlled by the user; machines force us to adapt ourselves to them which is a loss of control. Is the technology an information machine, or a work-producing machine? Ohler points out that tools and machines extend our senses, physical capabilities, our intelligence, and emotional experiences. In the wrong hands, they can be dangerous; properly used, they can improe our lives. Example: A microwave oven reduces the time spent cooking, increases the amount of time to do something else, but reduces family participation and interaction. Why it's important to ask questions about a technology. If you think about it, advertisers and lawyers don't particularly seek truth. They earn their keep trying to get others to adopt a particular point of view, using the tools of truth, as do their intentions, but we need to be aware of "presentation," versus "content." This is scary because of the persuasive power of information technology. Instead of "convince me" the operative words should be "inform me." This is a book with an important message for our times. We can expect that the pace of change will only increase and it's up to us to understand whether the changes are for the better or may destroy us. Ohler has set out a roadmap to enable us to evaluate the opportunities of anew technologies. Not an easy read, but this little book (141 pages) deserves a place on any thinking person's bookshelf.

I've known and learned from Jason for years and I appreciate him taking all of his brilliantly simple, yet practical suggestions and advice, and accumulating them into one good read. If you aren't fortunate enough to drink coffee with Jason and pick at all the wealth in his brain, this book is an excellent substitute. END

I have just finished Jason Ohler's book, Taming the Beast Choice and Control in the Electronic Jungle. It captured my interest immediately;I read it in three sittings. I found this book compelling. I am not a computer savvy techno. I work in the field of mental health. Personally, I have been wandering somewhat unconsciously through issues of relationship, community, culture, and technology and with Ohler's book it was as if I had been handed a map of the terrain. Ohler takes issues and ideas we "know" and presents them anew. Jason Ohler does what Robert Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintence,refers to in commenting on James P. Carse's book, Finite and Infinite Games,that is, "add new patterns to existing facts...things you've known for years suddenly stand up in a whole new dimension." Upon reading Jason Ohler's book I have contemplated my microwave oven for the first time. Through my use of the questions that Ohler proposes for a Science and Technology Agent, a fictitious FDA adptation, I recognize a greater sense of the trade offs, the choices, the impacts inherent in living with technology. My sense of being overwhelmed by the technology of the postmodern world has lifted some, as I apply the aspects of technological literacy Ohler puts forth. In the midst of all the proclamations of "good" and "bad" technology and what it will reap for us, it is important to become what Ohler refers to as, fourth stage literate. Fourth stage literacy is being skilled at seeing and evaluating. It is then that we realize our choice and control. I am reading this book again and proposing it be added to the cirriculum of high schools and university education departments.

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