Technological affordances

In last week’s reading, the article written by Paulus et al. (2014) briefly described that the use of technology brings both affordances and constraints in human life. In the last part of the chapter, the authors encourage readers to evaluate each research tool in relation to its affordances and constraints.

The given articles for this week elaborate the concept of affordances more deeply. Boyle-Cook's (2004) article provides an introduction to the concept of affordances.  The article of Conole- Dyke (2004) sorts into categories the affordances of information and communication technologies.

Today, I am going to write my reflection regarding Conole-Dyke’s  (2004) article.  The article starts with an argument that the ubiquity of technology, in particular the use of computer and software programs, bring numerous facilities in human life.  One of   the big affordances of technology is to provide new forms of dialogue and communication. Through technology, diverse group of peoples from different part of the world can able to come together to discuss and share their ideas.  Social networking tools including blogs, twitter or Google allow individuals writing and sharing their reflection with thousands of people in a quite high pace. ICT presents various multimodal and nonlinear learning opportunities resulted in allowing people to adopt individualistic learning style.

The authors also discuss possible challenges of the use of technology drawing upon ideas of Anthony Giddens. According to Giddens, the concept of risk is a part of our understanding of modernity.  The use of technology is a sign of modernity; consequently includes some sort of inevitable risks.  One of them is the growth in the amount of information available on the web creates ethical problems, and plagiarism is one of them. It is possible to increase number of examples showing the risks of technology.

Overall, Conole-Dyke's (2004) article is quite informative for me in terms of making taxonomy of affordances of technology.  It serves as a supplementary study considering last week’s readings and classroom discussion. In addition to affordances, the article touches issues including uncertainty, globalism, surveillance- all of them quite interesting topics and I hope to discuss in the class.