Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Digital Story Treatment: Thoughts and Ideas

Technology is the invention and manifestation of ideas. It is something that is ever-changing. Technology expanded when someone rubbed two sticks together to light a fire, put together a bow and arrow to shoot down a bird, and created a wagon, and again with a car, to get us from one location to the next. The existence of technology is to make our lives easier. Productivity is human nature, and through technology, we develop ideas to help us along to reach our ultimate end-state/goal in a quicker, more efficient and effective manner.

But at what point in time does technology go from helping us to inhibiting us from performing daily functions on our own? Where do we draw the line of dependency?

What used to be something that couldn’t function without us – i.e. we have to not only think of the ideas, but act on them as well; sticks can’t rub themselves together to light a fire – has turned into something that we cannot function without. How would we find our way home without GPS? How would we notify the police if we had a car accident and forgot our cell phone? How do you make ice without a freezer and keep food cold when the power goes out?

At what point in time did the dependency shift from technology being dependant on us to us being dependant on technology? When did technology shift from being an extension of ourselves to us being an extension of it?

These are the questions I will be raising within my three-minute digital story. The story will be an exploration of a specific technology, how it has manifested in our culture through time, and the shift from it being dependant on us to us being dependent on it. Do we impact technology or does it impact us? There will actually be two stories presented: 1) that of us; and 2) that of the technology. Can technology be manipulated in such a way that it has human tendencies? Can technology have a story of its own?

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