Technology makes us unwitting slaves - BUT it does not have to be that way

Technology addiction makes us unwitting slaves is indeed somewhat philosophical but also a practical article with very pragmatic eye openers that touches on the contemporary issues of technological determinism vs. social constructionism discourse, especially as it pertains to the role of information technology in the information society.

The last bullet/paragraph in the story states: "Technology's promise and alluring capabilities are used to surreptitiously entrap and willingly imprison members of the information-age society instead of truly empowering them."

Perhaps the open source technologies which are usually not developed with profitability (i.e. bottom line in $$$) in mind can show that technology does not have to be entrapping and imprisoning. It is exactly this that I'm trying to argue in favor of open source software as an actor in the ecology of open source supported technology that manifests itself as an antidote to the claim that thechnologies "surreptitiously entrap and willingly imprison members of the information-age society".

Quotes from the article:

"Yet as we rush to embrace the latest and greatest gadgetry or high-tech service and satisfy our techno-craving, we become further dependent on these products and their manufacturers -- so dependent that when something breaks, crashes, or is attacked, our ability to function is reduced or eliminated. Given these frequent technical and legal problems, I'm wondering if we're as free and empowered as we've been led to believe."

"To make things worse, government practically has outsourced the oversight and definition of technology-based expression and community interaction to for-profit corporations and secretive industry-specific cartels such as the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America and the Business Software Alliance. Such groups have wasted no time in rewriting the rules for how they want our information-based society to operate according to their interests, not ours."