Read the following article. What is the author's concern? Is our society in danger of becoming preoccupied with the trivial? At what cost? Are we conditioning ourselves to not care about "important" things? What does this say about consumer sovereignty? To what extent can government direct resources otherwise? Any connections to A Brave New World?
22 Comments
Alexa Frankel!!!!
9/20/2011 09:46:20 am
I agree with almost every part of this article.. Everyone's putting energy into easily programmed applications, such as is found at the Apple store that capitalizes on technology that's already been developed.. Very few of these do anything to advance human civilization and the physical world around us...we're ignoring areas of importance for the continued growth of our society. we must focus more on developing technologies that are going to help us cope with our changing climate and limited resources. In addition to the re-starting of our space program, id like to see further scientific examination of the part of our planet that occupies 2/3 of the surface area. between massive overfishing and pollution of our waters, we have some serious challenges ahead in restoring such a significant part of our ecosystem. We'll need more people's intellectual energy focusing on real problems rather then Angry Birds
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Roberto Rojas Martinez
9/21/2011 09:35:31 am
The author's concern is that most of the people are interesting and focused in things that can make money for them, they are not interesting in other things that can be educational or can offer something good to our society. People who has money are investing their money on online business, rather than in something else such as studies to find cures for diseases or things that can benefit us.
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Violet Elder
9/21/2011 10:10:16 am
James Temple claims that internet-based and technology-based innovation could be very useful in the grand scheme of things if investors were willing to, instead of putting their effort into finding new iPhone games or photo sharing mediums, fund and become more involved with ideas that would affect the real world, such as clean-tech. Temple belittles what he sees as the entrepreneurial focus on the "simple and frivolous" ideas that will earn them "quick millions." He notes that this desire for easy money results in more and more people ignoring ideas that would benefit the real world more in the long-term, but, for the present, may not present immediate gain, and, instead, turning to entertaining ideas that the public are more interested in but make no progress in fixing real problems.
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Frani Gray
9/21/2011 12:45:43 pm
The authors concern is that we, as a population, are wasting potential human inteligence on technology that does virtually nothing to advance society. People with the inteligence to create applictions for cell phones could be spending their time, enery, and effort investing their time in more important matters such as cures for diseases or our resource depletion issue. It seems that our society is being selfish and only focussing on technology that they themselves can profit from rather than technology that we can all benefit from. Our society is so material based that if a new i-Pone app isn't created every week, we go into a mass panic.
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Abigail Fisher
9/21/2011 01:59:13 pm
James Temple has summoned up perfectly why technology-based entrepreneurs have begun focusing on less important things like iPhone apps and photo sharing with two words "quick millions". Temple is concerned that young entrepreneurs and investors are loosing sight of the greater potential of technology. He explains how this generation has focused their time and energy on superfluous "applications" to our computers and cellphones. Born in an age with technology so readily available to us, Makes it easy for these entrepreneurs to take advantage of it to make quick money. There efforts to create new apps will condition, and maybe already has conditioned, our society to focus on trivial aspects of life rather than important social and global issues. This widespread consumerism promotes people to take the easy way out throughout life. Which is only going to further our economic crisis on a broader level. Government can't really help fix this problem because it is more of a social issue. I personally agree with James Temple but I have optimistic hopes that my generation will step out of this obsession with trivial technology and move onto use these resources for more important things in life.
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Melanie Gouveia
9/21/2011 03:32:05 pm
In this article, James Temple is stating that entrepreneurs are more focused on creating products for consumers based on popular icons like apps for iPhones, new xbox games, etc. instead of discovering new ways to pull the world out of this crisis of "global warming." For example, rising gas prices are a major issue today. Instead of creating the next holographic iPhone and wasting billions of dollars just for an improvement on a little phone, we should be using what money we have to create and discover more energy efficient fuel sources to help the community save money instead of spending more, especially while the economy is down so far. Society is at risk of becoming preoccupied with angry birds being flung at pigs, investing in popular websites, like Facebook, to make easy money instead of going the harder, more difficult path for providing for society's needs, rather than their wants. I agree with Temple that we should be using the technology we have today for the greater good and to solve problems that can provide for everyone so that we can live a better, cleaner life instead of abusing it for irrelevant and unnecessary utilities that we can honestly live without.
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Holle Depina
9/22/2011 02:27:30 pm
In this article, James Temple claims that entrepreneurs are more focused on creating products for consumers based on popularity instead of discovering new ways to improve and advance human civilization and the world around us. Entrepreneurs should invest their time in more important matters such as global warming and cancer because it will benefit us in the long run instead of putting so much energy into programmed applications that won't benefit our society. We must focus more on developing technologies that will help us deal with major issues such as climate change and limited resources. It is very clear that our society has becomed selfish and greedy by only focusing on technology that they themselves can benefit from instead of something we as a nation can benefit from. I agree with Frani that cellphones and Facebook are distractions that degrade our intelligence level. We become so drawn to these technology that we pay no attention to greater concepts such as global warming or limited resources that put our world in danger, we must change this mentality quick or we are going to be hit hard with reality.
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maria gonzalez
9/22/2011 04:38:22 pm
The authors concern is that the people are paying and wasting more money on the simple insignificant things such as ipods, iphones, apps, cars, jewels,...Simple things that we buy our-self to satisfy our wants. But we forget abut what we really need, we put them to a side. Yes our society is becoming more preoccupied on things we want more now than back then. The cost for this is that we leave everything behind that we really need in order to progress in life to a side. Yes we are conditioning our self to not care about important things that we really need in life in order to survive and focus more the things we want by using the internet or technology around us. This says about a consumer sovereignty that by our actions and decisions that we do daily we decide what gets produce and how much of it and the important thing is that we decide what we get rid off. The government can direct resources to some point in society by sing the invisible hand to encourage people to start to focus on more important things/needs. This relates to Brave New World in that we are being condition by technology on what we like/want more than on things we really need. One strategy that is really good on convincing people is the commercial and advertisements that re made daily to advertise an object.
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Chris Collins
9/22/2011 04:48:32 pm
James Temple has a really profound point. Why are we focussing on the individuals amusement when we should be focusing our efforts towards solving the mountain of problems we face at a global level. When you step back and look at the amount of effort we put into material goods that only avert the publics view from the grim reality we face, its somewhat depressing. Its depressing that we as a consumer spend money on an IPhone app that doesnt benefit society in any way shape or form, the same same money that if put towards a humanitarian organization could make a real difference in someone's life on the other side of the globe. Its up to the entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to change direction, because pretty soon their not just going to be dealing with angry birds but also angry people who are wondering why they spent millions on gaming technology instead of alternative energy sources when it could of made a difference. I believe its also up to the government to start implementing major changes instead of leaving it up to private entities.
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MAGALI GARCIA
9/29/2011 05:04:34 pm
In the article, "Silicon Valley lowering the bar on innovation," James Temple expresses his thoughts and opinion on modern technology. Temple's primary concern focuses on the waste of wealth and intelligence on superficial innovations that serve no purpose in the advancement of the world. Unfortunately, people today invest all their time and money to create new apps rather than to discover cures to diseases. To put simply, society prefers profit and cheap entertainment over saving lives.
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Maria Vittoria Gurrieri
10/2/2011 04:09:28 pm
Peter Thiel says "if one looks outside of computers and internet we've had 40 years of stagnation". The market prefer to deal with useless innovations instead than try to find "our generation's moon program". People are more interestedin investe their money inproducts that are already in the market ovewer than in new tecnology more usefull. It seems that for the society it is better don't think about the big problems of the world in which we live, but just to care about the model that could make us better in front of the others. This new growth of trivial innovations is just the resul of the consumers demand. This society seems to become everytime more similar to Aldous Houxley's society. We don't think anymore, we just try to be more similar to the model that the society shows us, we want identity. I agree with the article because I think that it will be better if we would use our resources to create new innovations that could help our environment, our intellettual groving; not innovations that just soddisfani i nostri "whims".
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Daniel Salzner
10/4/2011 09:35:48 am
The authors concern is that the tech world is overdoing itself by inventing more gaming and photo apps. James Temple is expressing that we should focus more on the important things that contribute to human development and civilization. People are wasting their time creating things that are of no improvement towards human people. Instead of wasting prices and energy we should save and chill for a little while. Technology is taking its toll but it is moving so quickly that energy cant possibly be saved efficiently. There are so many things that we can improve on. Problems that the world is facing right now such as overfishing or deforestation. People need to start caring about the world and what they are contributing to it. So all in all I agree with James Temple's facts and opinions. We alpha males need to stop caring about high tech technology and development and start thinking about real issues that will affect us , our children , grandchildren and many more in the future.
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Lucas Immer
10/5/2011 10:28:33 am
In this article, the author is concerned that rather than focusing their efforts on true progress and innovation, modern leaders in technology are spending time developing frivolous programs that waste time. On the whole, our society tends to invest far too much effort in meaningless activities that bring short term diversion at the cost of long term development. While it's not a critical issue yet, it is somewhat concerning that society tends to focus so much on such trivial pursuits. Confidence in society is certainly not helped when it becomes clear that consumers will pay 99 cents for anything that will entertain them for twenty minutes. People don't have control over what they're fed when it's that easy to feed them. It seems as though the government could offer subsidies or some kind of financial incentive in order to stimulate true innovation, then again this would only exacerbate budget issues.
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10/5/2011 01:11:36 pm
James Temple’s concern is that most of the tech industry has stopped making things that could better our society. They seem to only be focused on lining their pockets. It makes you wonder where we could be if all the money used to create frivolous games, etc. had been put into something more productive like creating an alternative fuel source. We, personally, haven’t been conditioning ourselves to not care about “important” things. The government and private industry are doing that for us. Because of this there is very little consumer sovereignty. Industries decide what is made based on what is “popular,” but not what is needed. The government, like Lucas said, could create incentives for products and services that could further our society.
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Madi Oliver
10/5/2011 03:42:54 pm
James Temple's concern in the article is that while our society has been consistently innovative in our technology, our efforts have been focused on providing endless games and socializing tools that bring in a lot of profit but are not necessarily benefiting mankind. The intellectual minds we depend on are no longer taking risk and attempting to make a breakthrough in a matter that is actually important because, from a business standpoint, the creation of phone and computer applications is relatively easy, inexpensive, and not much time is lost if the program doesn't go big. Also, such software has been made so much that the process is well known with no huge obstacles to overcome.
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Emily O'Kelly
10/6/2011 01:30:58 pm
James Temple is bothered with the fact that although we possess the energy and technology required to innovate tools that will prosper humanity, inventors are putting their time into creating mindless entertaining games that bring in the cash flow. In my opinion, Temple's concern is legitimate because he accurately describes the absurdity of our populations desires. Instead of focusing all of our energy to output various versions of one game to satisfy consumers, we should put that technology towards developing tools that will actually help us to reach towards future goals. To put the blame of this infinite outflow of games solely on the innovator is absurd. In order to pinpoint the cause of these games, we must look at the consumer. The media must diminish the attention given to games such as Angry Birds, as the article states, and encourage innovations that will further our success in the future. The high demand of these asinine products are causing inventors who could potentially be creating substantial technologies to focus their attention on things that simply are not needed.
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Patty Lopez
10/6/2011 02:25:46 pm
James Temple is worried that people are not using their intelligence to come up with innovative ideas. Instead, they are spending time and money inventing games, social networking, etc.- ideas that are essentially useless to society. Because of the fact that the apps being made today are relatively cheap and don't have much opportunity cost, people are focusing on things like this- especially if an app made in a weekend has the potential to generate millions. Temple is stating that our society is focused on short-term technology that is useless, when we should actually be putting our effort into long-term technology like clean-tech. This is all due to we, as a society, being too lazy to use our creativity and patience into delivering a useful invention that can help technology progress. The government can encourage people to focus their energy on innovative technology by offering subsidies.
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Kenji S Gutierrez
10/6/2011 04:59:40 pm
I agree with James temple’s views on the waste of innovation. James Temple communicates his views and beliefs about technology in the article, “Silicon Valley Lowering the bar on innovation”. Temple's main worry bases on the misuse of affluence and brains on phony advancements that don’t help the world proceed technology-wise. Instead of looking and finding cures for the many diseases that exist, people waste their money and time making applications for smart phones and tablets. Most people now would rather spend time on Facebook than studying. All these new applications have gotten everyone used to the surreal ideas of life. Nutritional health was among the most “important” things that were stated in the article. People need to be healthy and it keeps getting more difficult for people to get the healthier foods because the healthier foods are most expensive compared to the unhealthy foods. This makes me think that our consumer sovereignty is manipulated. Consumers can only buy what is affordable to them and by manipulating the prices, they are forced to buy only the affordable. The government is allowed to manipulate certain resources, anyhow since were are a capitalist and a free market country, this is very limited.
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Austin Hechler
10/8/2011 04:10:24 am
James Temple's "Silicon Valley lowering the bar on innovation" depicts a technological society not innovating for the future, but instead dwelling on unnecessary markets for personal financial gain. The primary concern for this article is our generation will have no "moon landing" discoveries. Instead of working towards achieving something that will benefit the human race as a whole, top innovators in Silicon Valley are working on simple mobile applications for the pleasure of mobile gaming. With this being said i am not concerned with our society becoming preoccupied in this gaming era. Games like Angry birds have been around for a while and are very lucrative to those inventors but its not easy to come up with such games with entertaining plots and puzzles. Such games are the fad now, but there are so many more ways to make an even higher profit and that's where the real minds are now. Curing caner could be the "moon landing" for our generations and many to come. The real medical and technological geniuses are working hard at it. In my opinion the article is asking why were wasting time making games when we should be doing something to greater benefit our society. I agree with the article in that sense, but when it complains "Thanks to inexpensive software and hosting services, two reasonably smart developers can bring an app, game or website to market over a weekend", i am confused. These "reasonably smart developers" creating a game which is making money the way you should in a capitalistic society. I dont think this is a huge problem facing our society and at a small cost to the world. Obviously the guys with ideas of colorful birds destroying pigs who took their eggs will not be the guys to solve caner or travel to mars, but they used their skill set to develop a lucrative game. Our generation will not be obsessed with the gaming era or not come out with big discoveries its just all the easy discoveries have been discovered, but the “moon landing” is yet to come.
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Violet Elder
10/10/2011 12:16:26 pm
Mr. L,
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Nick Harris
10/11/2011 01:03:59 pm
The issue brought up in this article is the concern that useful minds are putting too much effort into the trivial, money making ideas instead of the influential, big picture ones.It is not necessarily the "trivial" that we are becoming pre occupied with, more with methods of making fast easy cash. Games like angry birds are relatively easy to create for a computer savvy person, while the pay off can potentially be grandiose. The cost of this may be substantial, if less effort is put into the important issues such as the enviroment or the economy then the true cost is the waste of human energy that could be better used on issues such as these. We are not exactly being conditioned, instead we are, in a sense, being distracted from the important things. This is of course essentially our fault and we are the only ones that can stop it; but it is wrong to try and blame the creators of apps or social networks, they are simply trying to make money, as is everyone else, right? May of the important things that should be occupying our time are not sufficiently advertised or brought to our attention. What this says about consumer sovereignty is that it can be easily manipultated with as little as a fun iphone game. The idea of consumer sovereignty is based on the demand of the consumer, and it is safe to say tha no person NEEDS a game to occupy their free time, what we need is a wake up call that things like these should be second of importance to things such as the enviroment. Honestly the government has little to do with the funding of gma creators for example. These are people that simply want to make a quick buck and really have no way of influencing the important issues.
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Rayne Mason
10/11/2011 01:48:16 pm
The idea that the article is pursuing is that too many companies are coming up with 'new' ideas that seem unimportant compared to world issues; the least important, but what is being pursued are things like apps and time-wasting games or attractions, instead of paying attention to new developments that would benefit people, not just distract them from what's happening in the world.
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