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Antypa Stella Professor Smith Expository Writing I GD 10/18/2020 A technocratic world full of spectators Technology and social engineering are manipulating people’s behavior. For some people, such as Cathy Davidson, technology can be only beneficial, as she states in her essay “Project Classroom Makeover”. Davidson is introducing crowdsourcing, which is a new, more collaborative way of learning, that can work better, as she says, with the use of technology. She fails seeing what Foer on his essay, “Mark Zuckerberg’s War on Free Will”, talks about; the profit driven corporations that run the algorithms behind this technology trying to manipulate people’s minds for money and resulting in a technocratic world, a world ruled by an elite of technical experts. A parallel opinion is this of Maggie Nelson in her essay “Great to watch”, where she talks about the change that tv, media and generally technology has made in society, where people became spectators, stuck between terror and banality. People are manipulated by the power of technology and media, which take down the human agency, the ability of a human to make decisions by himself, and result in a technocratic society full of senseless human-doings, people that play the role of the spectator, obeying the powerful corporations. Foer thinks that the use of technology tears down some core ethical values, as he explains the world of Facebook, but people don’t realize, and Nelson has the same opinion as she is implying that behind tv and channels there are powerful people and corporations that are manipulating society. There is nothing more unethical than

undercutting free will and privacy. Foer specifically says “Though Facebook will occasionally talk about the transparency of governments and corporations, what it really wants to advance is the transparency of individuals-or what it has called, at various moments, “radical transparency” or “ultimate transparency”. The theory holds that the sunshine of sharing our intimate details will disinfect the moral mess of our lives. Even if we don’t intend for our secrets to become public knowledge, their exposure will improve society.”(Foer 105). He explains that privacy is no longer possible for the people that use Facebook on a daily basis. It seems like they have a choice of choosing between having a Facebook account and not having one, but it can be concluded that there is a lack of choice in this situation. This happens because their minds are being manipulated without them realizing because they are given the role of the spectator, someone who just observes. The worst part about this is that instead of reacting to this technocratic world, which is constantly growing, people are accepting and are “performing” the role they were given. They are loosing their identity and are becoming all the same. Society becomes a boring homogenous mixture instead of being an exciting heterogenous mixture. Nelson introduces the idea that tv channels, which are corporations too, show terrifying images and film footage of violence to citizens for their own profit without caring about the consequences that it might have to society. Behind a channel there is a corporation, that will do anything that is possible for people to watch their channel. They just want high ratings because that is the way they make money and they will accomplish that with offering entertainment. Nelson says “ Davidson argues that technology can be really beneficial when used in education but Nelson’s opinion about technology and media, suggests that society is experiencing massification. Davidson says “The iPod experiment was not an

investment in technology. It was an investment in a new form of attention, one that didn’t require the student to always face forward, learn from on high, memorize what was already a given, or accept knowledge as something predetermined and passively absorbed.”(Davidson 51). She believes that technology is helping crowdsourcing, a new more collaborative way of learning, to work better because there is no hierarchy. Davidson tries to explain that technology expands people’s attention, helping them stimulate their individual creativity

discuss the influence of technology and media on the self-identity of contemporary people, and on society.

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What kind of society might result (or is resulting) from the concepts the authors portray? Does the perpetuation of media that encourages a focus on violence and selfabsorption reflect the interests of corporate consumerism, technocracy, or other hierarchical or elitist political powers?...