Week 10 lecture summary - 06/10/10

This week in the lecture we discussed the idea of the environment, the environment of technology that we often take for granted. The lecturer made a good example of saying to us that the environment is invisible to us unless our attention is drawn to it, for example in the lecture room we do not notice the technology around us but there is wireless internet and radio waves surrounding us. Another example used is that a fish in water does not notice its surroundings until it is changed into colored water. This topic was explained to us as many people were questioning why we are learning about certain things in the course. I now understand why it is important to appreciate how the environment evolves over time, this is why we learn about such things as the history of the internet and computers. In another part of the lecture we also discussed politics and the clean feed policy which discusses censorship and privacy. I believe that the clean feed policy is wrong and to me displays ideas to much political control, when the main concept of the internet is to have freedom to put anything you want up and look at anything you want. If the clean feed is pursued we are only taking a step towards being more like communist China.