New Century with New Technologies

 Thirteen years has already passed away since this new century started. After the beginning of this new century and new millennium, there might be a lot of changes in many ways. However, among all, the change that can be felt in our bone the most would be the development of information and communication technologies.

First, the rapid popularization of computer and internet changed the world completely in every aspect of human lives. Internet technology made human lives free of physical obstacles in communication such as time and distance. Now we can mail to the cousin living in Paris from Seoul in a second, while it took a few month by ship in the previous century. No matter how far the distance between two places is, they can interact in no time because the whole world is connected by the light-speed internet. It means that the internet is a great catalyst of globalization. Therefore, in other words, globalization has been accelerated a lot by the internet since 21^st century had begun and internet makes the age of globalization come true.

 There’s another significant change in terms of way of communication: cellular phones. Even a score of years ago, nobody expected that we would be able to talk to the friend far away while walking on the street. Of course, there sure was a telephone but it’s not the thing to use outdoor; it was available only in a house or public phone booth, except for a car phone which was limitedly used. Cell phone brought us a big change in terms of basic life pattern. Simply thinking, I can cancel the appointment with my friend, just ten minutes before the appointed time. People of the 20^th century would never imagine that kind of situation. There was no way to contact the friend when they were already at the appointed place. So they just had to ensure. In my humble opinion, this means more than the fact that cell phones made the world comfortable. However, it is one side of our attitude toward human relationships. I think that the development of technology made us negligent about human relationships and other human values like trust and promise. This ‘alienation’ (that Marx used) caused by technology is making the world arid.

Lastly, I cannot skip this great invention, smart phones. This can be described as a kind of combination of the two inventions above. It is not just a cellphone but a device that can connect to the internet at the same time. Even though it seems very simple, it made bigger utilities than the combination of that of the two above ─ we call it a ‘synergy effect’ ─ by letting us be connected to the extremely wide virtual web anywhere. To be connected to the internet anywhere is not just a single surprise. This means the idea of ‘Ubiquitous’, the Latin word that has a meaning of ‘anywhere, whenever’, which appeared in 1991 of late 20^th century. Finally, after about twenty years, a simple concept of ubiquitous computing is materialized. Now, we can turn on and off a bathroom light at work, or check where a meat loaf is from at a butcher. This will bring us whole different life from the floor.

I’m sure that the development of technology is the driving force of most changes in this new century. Moreover, those changes would be the one of the biggest event through the all human history. They’re not all and it will continuously develop more and more. I am pretty excited to expect what kind of new technology is waiting for us. I hope that I can be a contributor in the development of next technology.

Your Culture, My Culture

 Before writing, I confess that unfortunately I already have read about Nacirema before on the internet and known about it, thus I was not so shocked or surprised. Reading my in-class, I just clarified the truth of Nacirema there. For that reason, I will focus on how it could affect the way you view or interact with people from different cultural backgrounds, even though Mr. Menard told us to primarily focus on the moment of realization when you knew what the piece actually was.

Reading the article named Body Ritual among the Nacirema, I’m sure that most of the students thought about how the customs of this tribe called Nacirema are weird, and so did I when I first met it. However, there was no tribe such as Nacirema, but it was just a form of wordplay by spelling ‘American’ backward. This means, in a different point of view from us, anything we think that is very natural can be seen weird. In other words, some other cultures we think that is weird can be natural and reasonable enough in the position of the members belong to that culture. This is the main idea of cultural relativism. In cultural relativism, culture is not something that can be understood by someone outside of that culture. It never is understood because culture is formed by so many kinds of environments of the society. Therefore a person who was born and lived in different environments is impossible to understand that culture.

This interesting and weird document about Nacirema suggest us a great example of why cultural relativism is needed. Experiencing this ‘gestalt shift’ which is a word used when the object is same but the cognition of people is changed, anyone might be surprised pretty a lot. I emphasize again that no culture is natural to anyone and we cannot understand the other cultures. Hence, the only thing we can do is to respect. To respect other cultures can be said that it is the key point of cultural relativism. By the article, I hope that everybody is motivated enough to respect other cultures.