today's news

Digital Nation

i found this and thought it very much related to what we watched in class on thursday. The film we watched in class was a documentary about the extremes of technology and its effects on our culture and society. It was basically entirely focused on the effects of technology on the youth of today and how they differ from adults who grew up in an entirely different environment. It evoked questions from the viewer such as "Is it a bad thing to be constantly in touch with your peers?" "Are we getting dumber because we can't focus on any one thing for a long amount of time?" and "Is it dangerous use technology for extended periods of time?"

I felt very much like for adults who didn't grow up with technology at their fingertips, they found the concept of technology everywhere more disconcerting. But for today's youth who are growing up to be constantly on their phone, accessing the internet, talking to friends, doing schoolwork, pursuing interests, it is just their normal life. It's what they do on an everyday basis and has become the norm for them.

Most of the documentary showed studies of students and how they do their work. One study took students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (known for its most technologically advanced students in the nation) who were hand-picked for their multitasking abilities and put them through a series of tests that measured if they were as good at multitasking as they thought they were. THe results were suprising to me because i could relate to those students who thought they were great at multitasking. I'm never focused on one media at once. If i'm on the computer, i'm on facebook looking at people's pictures, on iTunes listening to music, talking to my friends on instant messenger, texting, watching tv. Here i am thinking i'm doing a great job, just like those students. WHat the study showed was that the students reactions were significantly slower when multitasking and were more prone to wrong answers.

The study also stated some interesting statistics such as that kids spend 50+ hours a week with digital media- more han a full time job.
90% of kids use media and out of that 90%, 10-15% are at high risk for addiction to heavy gaming. THis is most obvious in South Korea where they have internet cafes for kids, or even adults, to pay for cheap internet service and play 24 hours a day. In one of these gaming places, one extreme incidence occurred where a teenager died because he played for 50 hours straight with no food or nutrition. Although it is probably the only case of this happening, or if not, a very VERY rare case, it has earned gamers a bad name with people who argue that gaming is a negative thing. South Korea has started setting up these Internet Rescue Camps where parents can send their kids if they feel their gaming affects their grades, or their health. AT these camps, the children aren't permitted to use computers for about a week. The organizers have the children participate in outdoor team activities in an effort to "recapture a childhood lost to the computer. "
Basically there are two opinions on technology- the good opinion, and the negative opinion.
The negative opinion basically says that students nowadays can't focus on any task for an extended period of time and aren't capable of the same level of work as former students who didn't have so much technology at their fingertips. Then you have those with positive outlooks on the influence of technology who say that shorter attention spans are the price of gain. It's the price we pay for a more advanced society, that students are smart, just not in the conventional topics that society holds so revered. The world has sped up so much from technology but the education system has not. We teach children to sit in their seats and be quiet, but in the future, no job will have there employees sit dopwn and be quiet.

I found this movie to be extremely interesting and brought up valid points for both sides of the Technology argument.

technology

The technology that i gave up for 4 days was tv. I pretty much regretted that immediately because i missed the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Even though i knew i watched a significant amount of tv i didn't realize exactly how much until i had to pointedly not watch. One the positive side, giving up tv showed me how much free time i had and i was able to use it to finish the art projects that had accumulated so far. The first day i didn't watch tv was the easiest i would say, because it was new and i was excited to start the assignment. I always had work i could have been doing and i was able to accomplish a lot more than usual.

the second day i was still excited but found it a little tricky to stick to my conviction. The way my house is set up, the first floor is a wide open space with my kitchen having a full view of the tv in the living room. Unfortunately, just because i gave up tv for 4 days doesn't mean that my family did too. So whenever they watched tv i had to leave and be isolated in my bedroom. My boyfriend, Aaron had actually come down from school this weekend for valentine's day so i spent a lot of my time with him. This, of course, made things much easier. <3 One the third day, it was Valentine's Day and I really didn't have much of an issue with staying away from the tv. I had some family come over during the day so most of my morning consisted of getting together food. My mom was happy though because usually my sisters and I are very distracted by the television and she's constantly reminding us to clean off the table, vacuum, etc. Then that night we went out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant where there were no TV sets so there was no temptation there. Afterwards however I felt a little sorry for my boyfriend. We usually enjoy watching a movie or Law and Order SVU on tv, but since i had given up tv and couldn't watch, he couldn't either. But he was a good sport and we enjoyed playing a sort of trivia game as a way to keep ourselves entertained. The change of having someone to give up television with me was very nice and much welcomed. Final Day This was our vacation day and i was the most tempted on this day to watch tv. I always saw tv as a way to shut my brain off and just be entertained and relax so it was pretty hard for me to stay busy when i would ordinarily be relaxing. But on the other hand i also saw it as unproductive time where i could be doing something else and accomplishing things in this spare time. I saw this more during the past weekend because i did more things in a more timely manner and did accomplish more, as i always felt i would if i hadn't watched tv. Although i saw a difference in my daily work when i gave up tv, i was still excited to watch and cathch up on the shows i had missed. I also found that my boyfriend who is really into sports and watched the winter olympics every night was a little upset that i wasn't caught up. Even when i got to class the next day and everyone was talking about the opening ceremony and the sports i didn't know what they were discussing and i felt very much out of the loop. It was interesting to see that tv was something that so many people have in common and that was very much emphasized by something as popular as the Winter Olympics going on during the time i gave up television. Giving up TV was a difficult thing for me to give up because i felt like it kept me in touch with my peers and gave me time to shut down.

catching up

so after looking at some other blogs from the class i see that i have fallen way way behind in my posting.
My name's Amanda Letteri. I'm an Art Therapy major here at CW Post. I'm a commuter, which i consider a bummer- having to wake up that 30 mins earlier when i know that people who dorm are probably still sleeping gets to me. I have a really tight knit family consisting of my parents, my twin sister(fraternal) and my older sister. We've had my dog, Cocoa since i was in the second grade and we adopted a stray kitten about two years ago donned Edward (i though he should have been named Jacob..) . Right now I've got a pretty killer workload as an Art Foundations student who is also in the honors department. I have a boyfriend of almost one year (feb 28 coming up quick!!) who attends SUNY Albany. I work at a card store in plainview doing the cash register, stocking shelves, lotto machine, pretty much anything that needs to be done. My birthday is august 21st and I've always had a chip on my shoulder about not being able to celebrate my birthday with the class in elementary school haha.

Questions:



1. If Marshall MacLuhan were still alive , how would he respond to the description of the social implications of Facebook and Twitter described by Thompson?

if macluhan were still alive i believe that he would find the constant status updating intriguing; to know your friends whereabouts and what they were doing at any given moment would be a concept that he was completely unfamiliar with. However, i'm not sure if he would see it as a positive or negative use of technology. From his perspective as someone who avidly promotes the use of technology as a medium of communication it would appear to be a positive advancement. But to an advertiser it would appear differently. Every tweet or status update would be an opportunity to market some object or brand that a person used in their daily life. As a user posting your daily actions, each post is an opportunity to catch somebody's attention and get attention. Socially, twitter and facebook would just give users the idea that someone was always interested in what they are doing.

2. Would you agree or disagree with the claim that Meyrowitz's theory about social space pretty accurately predicts the social effects of these new social web applications? Explain your answer.


3. Describe an example from your own experience with these, or similar applications,that relates to this phenomenon of digital intimacy.
In my experience with status updating my opinion is that i can't be bothered to update my status all the time, i don't always want everyone to know what i am doing, and i enjoy my right to make private plans that other people don't have to read about or know about. If i don't even want to change my status then i doubt people really care to read what it is i am doing at the moment when i change my status. In the past i have gone someplace that another friend wasn't invited to and when she saw pictures that were posted and i was tagged in her feelings were hurt and she was offended that i didnt ask her to come along. In my opinion, situations like those have become more common with social networking sites because everyone is so eager to display an image of themselves as socially active people. This amplifies normal teenage dilemmas tenfold, i can't imagine what new problems i'll have to deal with as a parent in the future when who knows what kind of social networking will be available.

First Post

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