Ivan Illich

Illichs paper I had to read a few times!! It’s quite a scary view of professions, accrediting them with a huge amount of power and influence and the ability to manipulate society. He believes that professions dictate our needs, I think that this could be also put the other way, as consumers we expect and want more from our products, we want more intelligent products that can provide a multitude of functions and we will quickly replace what does not and spend our money elsewhere, therefore I guess that professions could be meeting increasingly complicated consumer demands.

Although to some extent you could agree with Illichs point that professions have made us this way, constantly upgrading and making products bigger an better, making a mobile phone bought a month ago out of date alreadys! However this is the way the world works, it constantly changes and evolves and technology is no different. Many changes in technology can hardly be defined as grave advances and have provided great benefits. Medical advances for instance have greatly enhanced the life of many patients who before would have suffered terribly or had their life cut short.