The Machine is Us/Using Us.

Dr. Michael Wesch, an anthropology professor at Kansas State University, has developed several YouTube videos outlining the changes in computing and society. His video entitled "The Machine is Us/Using Us" delves into the ways that computers have changed us, and the ways in which we have changed computers. I like his title because it describes how we seem to be controlled by technology. We are lost without our connection to the internet, as if it is a body part that we can't live without. It has all happened so fast that I think we sometimes feel, as least those of us over 4o who didn't grow up with the computer, that we are being pulled along by some huge machine and we have to keep up or become irrelevant. Professor Wesch also points out that we are the change, we are the machine, almost like pulling back the curtain on the "wizard of Oz" and finding ourselves at the helm. Our need for communication, in a world that has increasingly become people inside houses inside fences with little communication between neighbors, has driven the technology of the computer to create neighbors and friends that we can access inside our fortress. The technology of the computer and the internet changes according to what we try to find the most often, use the most often, depend on the most often. We,in turn, change when we have so much access to people, places and ideas, even if we are just connecting to society through a satellite link.