Modern Technology in Samuel Holiday’s Under the Eagle

Subject: Literature
Pages: 2
Words: 362
Reading time:
2 min

Endowing technology with its own individual meaning transforms not only the way of seeing what the technology is but also the way of being an object entangled in the subjective world. It is known that not a single object has an initially given objective meaning, and the way of its use and application depends only on the meaning and aspirations invested in it by an individual or a certain social group. For example, a glass bottle can be used as a container for liquids, or it can be viewed as a musical instrument. By collecting several different bottles, you can create a kind of orchestra, and several similar items will be used to obtain music. This music, in due time, can also be endowed with meaning and symbolic meaning.

Thus, by bringing our own meaning into the technology, we ourselves, as it were, build the universe of this object and its purpose in the system of meanings and values. This year, people around me have been transforming their space in a variety of ways. For example, technologies that were previously viewed as workers have come to replace face-to-face communication. If earlier a person did not have to use video communication services to communicate with his friends and relatives, today, if you want to see them, this is often the only option.

The meanings of other everyday objects also change. For example, for many, the kitchen, which was previously only a utilitarian quick-cooking room, has become a space for unity with family and loved ones in the process of trying and preparing new, often complex dishes that were usually bought in the store or did not matter at all. There are also negative examples of the transformation of space in connection with changes in the usual way of life. For example, public places such as museums and bars were previously a place of attraction for people. Today, on the contrary, they have acquired a new meaning as places to be avoided because danger awaits there. However, this example uses the technocratic scientific rationality and reasoning inherent in the agenda of developed countries.