Reading Responce #6

In our culture, as Amercians, we tend to believe what we are shown- whether that be adds or photographs. In Cynthia Selfe's essay Lest We Think the Revolution is a Revolution, she discribes three different popular narratives- which are when we create fantasies of how we like to think of technology and all of he positive influences it has given to us. She then explains her revised narratives- what technology is really doing to our society. With her audience mainly being to educators, she states " an exclusive focus on the positive changes associated with technology, often serves to distract educators from recognizing how existing social forces actually work to resist change in connection with technology." She is saying that as educators, all focus on technology has been on positive changes while casually ignoring the social ways in which technology does not support change. In her essay, she compares the popular narrative- what we want to believe, with her revised narrative- what we really believe.
The first narrative, The Global Village deals with the fact that we would like to believe that "technology will help us create a global village in which the peoples of the world are all connected." It is nice thought that we have access to all these people around the world. We don't have to worry about race, what country you are from and all walls are torn down. It is then highly disapointing when she discribes that her revised narrative as "the global village [retaining] its geographical reach, but it becomes a world in which different culture, different peoples, exist to be discovered, expored, marveled at." In a sense of learning and education about other societies other than our own, the internet is a great source. However, in the sense that we are connecting with people from all over the world as if there are no barriers between us, that is highly unrealistic and nieve. We cannot possibly create a "global village" on the internet, it's just not possible. The internet can be very unsafe at times because you don't know who you are really talking to and if they are telling you the truth. So to simply rely on thinking that we as a world is becoming a community due to the internet, its foolish.

As for the next two popular narratives, they explain how in "this landscape, Americans like to believe, [it] is open to everybody- male and female, regardless of clor, class or connection'', while the last popular narrive is focusing mainly on gender biases. The revised narrative is that "Amercia is the land of opportunity only for some people" and that they don't show any kind of minority. I don't think this it true nowadays. I think that today, companies that air ads, are so affraid of being pegged as predidous that they steer clear of most things that are biased and try to put in more minorites while still keeping in mind as to who their audience is. This is a hard task, you aren't going to please everyone. We all need to remember that we are not at the point where everything is perfect, but we are trying and hopefully, we will get there.