THE MACHINE

In this video called "The Machine is Us/ing Us" by Michael Wesch, he talks about the difference between digital text and the written world and how mark up languages on the internet can influence how we can influence content on the internet.

One of the things that is a major difference between the written world and digital text, is that digital text is very flexible or adaptable to each person's interpretation. XML vs HTML make it possible to seperate content and form, which is important, because it simplifies the processing of changing the content we come across the internet and making it our own without having to worry about a set format. When we have the ability to constantly change and connect different sources together by hyperlinks and combining content, we are creating pathways. The internet is the machine, and with every connection we make the machine learns new information. In this way we are controlling the information that the machine learns, because we create the pathways and combine information. However, the machine also controls us, because the things that we read or think about are often dictated by what is popular on the internet at the moment. While the internet is a good tool, it can also become faddish if we don't use it properly. We are actively involved in shaping the content of the internet, but that content also shapes us, so it becomes a never ending cycle.