Blog Post #12: Takeaways

I think that a main point I’m finding myself take away from the class is, if I understand it right, the gist of Benjamin’s theory – claiming that we’re using old epistemologies in handling and operating new technologies. I think that this manifests in a lot of the different topics we’ve covered, from: drugs in the water supply; the high-sugar, high-carbohydrate, corn-infused foods that we’ve come to see as normal; increasingly pervasive social media; and direct-to-consumer advertising. These are each pretty separate instances, but they are connected I think by overwhelming evidence implying that we don’t yet know exactly what we’re doing with these technologies, especially in controlling how they’re affecting us physically and mentally.

Moreover, I think it’s notable that each of these examples has been normalized to us over varying periods of time, but mostly since the beginning of the second half of the 20^th century. For a long time, we’d gotten along well without drugs in the water supply, and high-carbohydrate diets, and social media, and direct-to-consumer advertising – but now, we’re suddenly wrestling with how we should attempt to filter out these drugs (or at least minimize their adverse impacts), fight heart disease and cancer while keeping our unhealthy and unsustainable (but delicious and addictive) diets, promote authenticity and mental well-being despite ever-present social media that seems to incentivize unhealthy behaviors, and possibly limit advertising which seeks to stuff down our throats various drugs that we might or might not need.

I’ve taken away from this class that the conditions surrounding our everyday lives aren’t as normal as we’ve been led (or persuaded) to believe, and that, for the sake of our individual well-beings, we should each consider taking steps in limiting how these factors affect our daily lives, if not advocate for proper societal control over them. I’ll be thinking twice the next time I drink from the tap, eat a Dorito, log onto Facebook, or ask my doctor about whatever medication I saw advertised on YouTube – despite the limited agency I have in exercising alternative methods in living everyday life.