Sunday 24 November 2013

Popplet on gains and losses of technological development in "Thursday" #edcmooc

What is humans' role in the tension between a natural world and a technological world? Even though short animated film "Thursday" presents a rather dystopical account where technological development has its side-effects, i.e. it displaces the natural world, the film creators do not seem to take a perspective of technological imperative, where an ability of accessing existing technology leads to its inevitable application, but rather embrace voluntarism and suggest that people are active agents and it is their choice to give up the natural world in favor of technology. The latter is neither good nor bad, but nutral.

In my view, the film creators aimed at drawing our attention to what humans are moving towards in their obsession of technology. The movie most likely suggests what the nearest future would look like, unless people start making different choices. Whilst humans can travel in the space nowadays, it is not open to mass access yet, as for enjoying "beautiful views". I also believe that in the present days vast majority of people interact with the nature much more actively than it is presented in the film: we have gardens, enjoy walks in the numerous city parks, set up wild-life feeders, and keep pets. Nevertheless, I cannot dismiss the statement made by "Thursday" and its call for changes reminds me of that overheard in one advertisements: 

people say that there is nothing left to discover in this world and concentrate on heading in to the space, but there are so many species and places on our planet that many of us have hardly seen; there is a lot to be found and to be lost...

It is important to remeber that it down to people to make choices and shape the future of the natural world, which is not to be lost to the technological development. We are responsible for keeping the balance so that technological gains would not be paid for by irreversable looses of natural world. In this respect, considering the main points of both (gains and looses) suggested by "Thursday" is of help, and I hope that my popplet notes would come in handy.


Behind the scene:
I still have to learn a lot about using Popplet (thought the tool itself is very straightforward), but I already like a lot is that it can be created collaboratevly (good idea for a group project), edited at any time, shared in many various ways (including being embedded) and zoomed in and out (just like Prezi). It is also great as allows for adding text, images and video from a number of different platforms, not only uploading from a PC. Honestly, I am delighted at this discovery!  If you feel like trying any new e-tools at all, I would recommend this one.

Well, with a free account one can store 5 popplets only, but the good thing is that those can be exported (and saved on PC) as PDF, JPEG  or PNG files, then the old poplets can be delited (whilst I would expect their embedded copies being lost as well, so would have to be replaced by those other formats) and new popplets can be created in their place.

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