Reflective Essay

Technology was the topic that was chosen for my class and me for a base of discussion throughout the course. We looked at different views on technology and different aspects such as how technology fits in the world, how and if people depend on it, and if technology controls us or if we control it. In class reading the texts Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, it showed us how technology can go wrong if placed in the wrong hands and if technology is to advance for the human mind. In The Human Factor by Kim Vicente it explains how the human factor comes into play when technology gets to powerful such as Vicente states, “More and more, we’re being asked to live with technology that is technically reliable, because it was created to fit out knowledge of the physical world, but that is so complex or so counterintuitive that it’s actually unusable by most human beings” (17). In Technology Matters by David Nye, it gave us different situations with technology in that do we really know what technology is and how can we control it without it overpowering us. With reading these texts and the discussions in class I always went back to the question can people survive without technology? If the power goes out around the world, will people know how to survive? Or is technology apart of our life so much that everyone will be clueless. Seeing as that question is very broad I decided to narrow it down to the culture that does live without technology, the Amish.
Every year I have a family reunion in Tomah, WI on a farm in the middle of no where. Down the road lived an Amish family and we would always see them on their horse and buggy or when we drive past their house there would be hard at work in the field. I always found them interesting because growing up in my generation, technology was always around and I never understood how people could or would live with out it. Every year I always wondered how exactly they lived and why they choose to live that way. One year my aunt asked us if we wanted to go down and meet Rufus and his family. I felt like I was in a totally different world. A world with no electricity or cars and I just didn’t know how it could be done. They worked so hard for their living and appreciated doing it without help from high-tech technology. Going back to my question at the beginning of the course of can people live without technology, throughout this research on the Amish it showed that it can be done and it may in fact be easier to live without the complications of technology and risk of human error such as Nye states “the greater the power of systems, the more serious is potential failure” (167). The Amish help show that the simple way of live may in fact be more beneficial.
While researching the Amish and their culture I was only looking up things dealing with the Amish. Their religion, values, why they believe in the things they do, I thought that would be enough for my paper. In conferences and discussions I realized I needed to look deeper into my research. I discussed in my paper about how more people are turning to organic way of life so I had to look up why people are turning to this way of life and how it affects the Amish and also other stakeholders such as regular grocery stores or farmers. It wasn’t easy finding quality research that was good enough to be used. Looking for scholarly information is not as easy and sometimes became a challenge. Going to the library and getting a class on how to look up well researched information came in hand with these challenges and I was able to find the well balanced information that I was looking for. Along with researching, there was the challenge of citing my sources correctly. Citing sources is very important and if I don’t cite a source that I should have I could be charged with plagiarism. In the beginning of this course I had an idea about when to cite sources in a paper, such as after using a direct quote. After discussions in class and looking over previous students work I learned that I have to put the page number after every sentence that had information I got from elsewhere. That didn’t take me a while to get used to, but making sure I cite right was something I always made sure I did with looking at the English Writing Intensive book for reference.
In writing about the texts in class about how the different authors portrayed technology and how it affects our every day life, either in a good way or bad helped me write my final essay. Having the ability to go back and look at how I analyzed my first essay to my last gave me a view on how I grew as a writer and being able to notice my mistakes and how I fixed them throughout the course. Writing in out blogs every week which focus on our opinion about a certain topic and with having an interest in the Amish culture helped me be able to incorporate my opinion in my paper which I feel is an important aspect because the audience would like to know your feelings on the certain topic you are discussing, which also helps them conclude their view on the situation. Looking back through out the process of writing this paper I had many questions that came to mind. Firstly, starting off with why do the Amish live without technology? What benefits them to be different from the rest of the society? Have their views and way of life made such an impact on the society that more and more people are turning to the Amish way? These questions were what I was looking for when first researching for my paper. Coming across these answers and formulating them into a paper was not an easy task, but with the help of my previous work and looking at texts from class helped me present my ideas and information onto paper.
I had obstacles throughout writing this paper. I never was good at analyzing texts and being able to commute my thoughts onto paper. In class discussions we would talk about the different views of technology and how it affects our every day life, but I had a hard time putting our discussions and readings into my paper. To meet the goals, I tried to look past the texts and see what the author is trying to portray, go beyond just the words but find the meaning. Throughout the course it became easier with each text I read and each essay I wrote to connect different authors’ views on technology and with that put it into my research paper to help strengthen a point. At the end of writing my research paper I want the audience to feel they have all the answers or come up with their own conclusions and opinions on why the Amish choose to live the life they do. Why they use a horse and buggy over a car, why the telephone is not allowed, just to get a feel of being in their shoes, which is what I was most interested in when starting this project.
Writing is not my strong point and writing a 10 page paper made me nervous. Throughout the course starting out small with weekly blogs and essays about texts read in class helped me succeed in writing a research paper. Being able to write an essay than have your peers and also teacher comment was also helpful, then going back and fixing the mistakes and taking the comments and revising the essay to make it better gave me great practice. In the beginning of this course I was not very confident in my writing and after having the practice of writing many essays and learning how to do proper research I have been able to gradually put together the research I found about the Amish, previous work and my own thoughts and ideas to develop a 10 page research paper.