Summary and Response to "Machines are Using Us"

In “Machines are Using Us” by Michael Wesch explains to web users that the they are the web because every time they click on a link the machine remembers that for the future. Wesch writes that digital text is flexible and movable. Digital text can be hyper linked to anywhere on the web. People don’t need to know complicated code to do something on the web anymore. When HTML was more widely used, form was inseparable. HTML expanded and added other elements like bold and italics. Digital text, now, has it where form is separable and can be free of formatting constraints and can be exported. Every time somebody uses the web the web remembers where you went for future reference. The web adapts to any searches you make. People who use the web are the web nowadays.

We are teaching the machine.

Michael Wesch’s “Machines are Using Us” is correct in saying that machines are using us because every time somebody searches a funny video on youtube the machine keeps it in that person’s history. Wesch is telling the truth when he says the web adapts to your searches and to the links that you click. If you click a link on a pancake recipe twenty times then the search engine in the future will recommend sites to you that have pancake recipes. It would also keep your history of each time you went onto the website. Also when you search for something it records data for surveys and stats. It would record for number of people to watch a certain video or people who read a certain article. This video connects to Michael Wesch’s other video “A Vision of Students Today” because, in both videos, Michael Wesch states how technology is affecting us in good and bad ways. It can be good for computers to remember our searches, but can be bad by taking away people’s privacy. People need to realize that they control their computer and how easily it finds data for us, but also realize that the computer is using them by recording what they do.