I watched “The Machine is Us/ing Us” by Professor Wesch on You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g) and read chapter one in “Choosing Web 2.0 Tools for Learning and Teaching in a Digital World” by Pam Berger and Sally Trexler. I had to take a moment and think about the title “The Machine is Us/ing Us”…What does it mean? It all seemed to make sense after watching the video post. The machine really is using us by using information we input in order to make suggestions to us. The machine continues to be able to gain information from us each time we allow it to by giving it information. For instance, if you click a link on the internet the machine used the information from your click in order to respond to us (be it through web suggestions, paid advertisements, etc.). How many of you have a cell phone? When you text, does your device suggest words so that you don’t have to type the entire word? T-9 offers suggests to us of different words that have the same or similar letter combinations. It’s going to pick the word you use the most as a priority suggestion. Each time you text, your cell phone is learning from you! People are constantly communicating to the machine and the machine continues to pull information from us.
