12 bits of technology we would uninvent

In class we discussed a site found on the internet with the 12 recorded things that people would choose to uninvent if they could. Some of the major ones that I agreed with were;
- The car alarms; I think we can all admit that when we hear them we don't go running to see if someone is breaking into the car it is coming from (which is why they were originally made) we choose to ignore them, then get angry and annoyed when they continue unheard and unstopped. They are an invention that nobody pays attention to and would rather not have to listen to.
- Indestructible blister packs; I understand the reason that they were made which is so that the product can't be take out of it's package and stolen but these packs are pushing it to an extreme. They are impossible to open without some sort of sharp utensil. It gets tedious trying to open them and i would rather buy another company's product that didn't wrap their product in this packaging.

Then there is one major one on the list that I don't agree with:
- The automated checkout scanners, I personally like these because first of all there are several with shorter lines and thus you get through faster. Also I know when I make trip's to the grocery store it is usually before or during my dance nights I will walk over to the local Sobeys to buy some dinner and I will be listening to my Ipod. I'll find what I want, go up pay and not have to take it off where as if I went to a person doing check out I would have to be respectful and take off my Ipod. If I didn't I wouldn't be able to hear them. I'd rather keep my Ipod on listen to my music, then listen to some chashier try to make small talk and fake a smile at me.

If there was one thing I would choose to uninvent that is not on this list it would probably be the microwave although helpful to heat things up, they are completely unnecessary and just harms our bodies. Everything you do in a microwave you can do on the stove or in the oven or in a toaster or even a toaster oven. The only need for the microwave is to do this faster but in reality most foods just get soggy when microwaved (or so I find). Also factor in the fact that microwaves let out microwaves aka radiation which is known to cause cancer and is bad for our bodies. So why put our bodies at harm when we can do the same things a safer way and get the same outcome?

Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan published a world famous book in 1964 called Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man in this book he made many statements about the media that have become famous. One statement in perticular is "The median is the message", this basically means that the median embeds itself into the message. This creates a link between the two and means that the medium influences what the message is going to say. McLuhan went on to compare the reading of soemthign and the watchign of soemthign. When reading if you didn;t understand it you can simply reread that line, where as when watchign a movie you have to rewatch an entire segment. He claims that watchign TV or a movie requires more thinking and processing on the viewer's part because they ahev to enterpret what they are seeing.

Marshall McLuhan has impacted the media to an extent. He changed many peoples perspective on it. Personally I agree with McLuhan, the new technologies in media are taking away from our learning. It is a proven fact that you don't absorb what you read on a computer as well as what you read from a printed version, so why do we force ourselves to have to work harder? It is also proven that when watching a movie or TV that your brain isn't fully concentrated on the show, you're either multi tasking (doing homework at the same time) or your brain is wandering off thinking about other things. Every time you watch a show over you will see something new that you didn't notice before. Once again we are putting ourselves through more trouble, and having to spend extra time rewatching things to see the part you missed.