Blog Prompt #3

The metaphors used by Tuft and Carr that really stood out where Tuft's comparison of Power Point to a totalitarian dictatorship and Carr's comparison of Fredrick Winslow Taylor's machine methodology applied to workers in a steel plant in Philadelphia. Tufts article "Power Point is Evil" mentions how the slide show's linear pattern is comparable to a totalitarian regime, or possibly that Power Point is comparable to a totalitarian dictator in that Power Point is one form of presenting that is used almost universally. Before being introduced to Prezi I thought there was only Power Point available for presentations.

In Carr's article "Is Google Making us Stupid?" he points out how Taylor applied a mechanical process of working as ideal to how workers should perform:

"By breaking down every job into a sequence of small, discrete steps and then testing different ways of performing each one, Taylor created a set of precise instructions—an “algorithm,” we might say today—for how each worker should work. Midvale’s employees grumbled about the strict new regime, claiming that it turned them into little more than automatons, but the factory’s productivity soared."

Both Carr and Tuft ave similar debates in that the technology we use provides a template for the way we should organize our thoughts, even though that may not be how our minds work. Tuft claims:

"Particularly disturbing is the adoption of the PowerPoint cognitive style in our schools. Rather than learning to write a report using sentences, children are being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials"

Carr and Tuft would agree that the technology we are using is shaping out cognitive framework. Taylor's system of maximizing efficiency proposes the system to be favored over the traditional way for thinking for one's self as opposed to following a protocol. And as Carr commented on Taylor's system:

"Once his system was applied to all acts of manual labor, Taylor assured his followers, it would bring about a restructuring not only of industry but of society, creating a utopia of perfect efficiency. 'In the past the man has been first,' he declared; 'in the future the system must be first.'”

So there is concern with Google doing the thinking and keeping the information for us because if it collapses, for one reason or another, all the information collected that would have been at the public's disposal readily would re-re-shape society not having it. It is easy to see why Plato was apprehensive in this sense about "writing" and it taking away from people's ability to retain information otherwise not able to be stored any other way.