The Machine Is Us/ing Us

   Professor Wesch titled his video, “Web 2.0 The Machine is Us/ing Us,” which is a very clever title.  His point is that people created the machine, so it innately is "us" because anytime a person adds more information to the machine, the machine/technology grows, thus "using us."  So the machine is "us", but the machine is technology too. More and more people are using technology.  But the machine/technology is becoming who we are as a person almost.   Every time we go to the WWW and view, link, write, post, change information, and tag, we teach our machine/technology a little bit about ourselves and the machine/technology grows, and evolves.  We teach it and other people teach their machine/technology about themselves a billion times a day.

  Text no longer links information but people do.  People are linked together by their sharing, trading, and by their collaboration of ideas with their machine/technology because complicated code is no longer needed to upload content to the web.  We are different people because now we are using things  like blogs and wikis.  There is sharing of videos and pictures and social networking that has become part of our daily lives.  The technology that people use continues to change, grow, and evolve more each day.

   In fact, it is so complex that information is mashed with more information to create endless opportunities for people to find data or information.  The question Professor Wesch poses is " Who will organize all this data?"  The answer is obvious-we will.  The machine is "us" because it is people who develop this new technology and input the information or data.  But the machine is "using us" because it has to rely on people to develop the information for the technology.   I think Professor Wesch wants us to rethink and edit things about ourselves and the machine/technology, especially about legal issues, ethics, and our responsibilities to this new technology.  We must be careful and thoughtful in our decisions.