Control? Constrains? Affordance?

It is a common debate on whether we are controlling the technologies or we are being controlled by them. I was just working on a publisher and it strikes me when there are a lot of things I wanted to do but I can't do. One of it is I can't publish the file into words after I have designed my file on publisher. I need to export it into a word file for further editing.

This is one of the control mentioned in the lesson. However, I do not agree that human is being controlled by technologies. Human create these technologies for our own convenience, thus human is the one controlling it.

And as to standardize everything, a system of rule have to be set to the program. This bring a huge benefit and convenience to our work as we do not have to worry about our work not being able to be opened by some other computer. This is the affordance technologies gives us. And we might not be able to get this affordance if not constrains were made in the first place. Thus instead of seeing it as a control, I think it is more corect to see it as a constrains that brought to our affordance.

And if anyone still thinks they were controlled by technologies, they can choose to stop using them. There are a lot of examples in the world that a lot of people choose not to have a mobile phone as they do not want to be "controlled" by the calls, then they have to give up the convenience provided by it.

So in my point of view, control, constrains or affordance depends on how you look into the technologies that you have and how you manage the use of these technologies. And I definately prefer to look on the bright side.

Social Networking

I have been in touch with social networking websites since very long ago without me knowing the exact benefit of it.

Since friendster, I have been actively participating in social networking activities. It was kind of fun in the past to write testimonials for one and other. But without more fuctions, friendster soon bores everyone off.

With the constant problem of friendster, I started using hi5 with my friends. Here, there is a function of groups, and people start creating groups... When friendster was once again back to function, many of the people switched back because of the number of people using it. Many people did not sign up for hi5 and thus we usually have more friends on friendster than hi5.

Soon, facebook is out for everyone. I started off considerably slow as social networking was not as popular in Hong Kong than in Singapore. But with the many many different function, it attracted lots of friends to start social networking. And now, my facebook have grew till 800 friends.

But I didn't know the advantage of me having such networking until recently. I found out that I have a considerably huge network cluster when I tried out some of the apps. This means that these connections might help me through my life. But frankly, I am not used to making use of it. But it is either I use it or I lose it.

P.S. Here are some other social networking website that I have used.

myspace


twitter