Thinking Differently

By Andrew Joseph Rezendes

In one of the podcasts assigned for this week Professor Donig was able to interview Mathew Harsh, who was able to give his insight on the idea of ethical technology. There was a part of the podcast I found particularly interesting that focused on the idea of how people view the world differently. He brought up a project done by Bryan Win about how local sheep farmers and the government scientists viewed a specific problem rather differently. In the end they came to different conclusions to the problem based on their own experiences and how they think/perceive the world.

I find the difference in thought processes rather interesting because this is something that I feel has plagued me my entire college career. I grew up raising livestock animals (including goats, pigs, cattle and sheep, even as I write that I sit in the parking lot at a livestock show happening in Northern California) and can attest to the statement made about sheep farmers in the podcast. Just by simply raising animals for my entire life, I am able to understand things about their behavior that I believe a textbook or a classroom setting cannot teach (like the idea of like a veterinarian). However, college has trained me to often take a different approach to identifying and solving problems. Instead of following that natural more gut instinct, I find myself taking a more systematic or tested approach to things. I don't perceive this to be as a bad thing. One of the main topics of the podcasts was how beneficial interdisciplinary studies can be for students. This seems to be a rather similar idea to the interdisciplinary studies idea, where I have learned multiple ways to view and perceive the world. While I may not be able to directly switch between them at will, I will still be at an advantage to approaching problems that some people may be more "narrow minded" in their approach. 

This then leads me to the idea of how this can be applied to technology. I think in the early days of technology as I know it (this being the social media, online platforms, the internet, and everything electronic) a lot of the initial concepts presented were based off of a simple gut feeling or idea. They didn't have a method to how they were building the technology, they were simply looking to advance forward. This led to many successful platforms as well as many failures. The things that worked were studied until a "more" systematic way to achieve success in the technological field was developed. At times it seems that this system has actually developed a roadblock for continued innovation. The only logical path forward is to learn to think differently and continue to allow for new ideas in the future.