I try to make a conscious effort not to lie nor do wrong to others. I believe in”what goes around, comes around”. So, when a co-worker of mine hits me in my company’s parking lot. I in good faith believe he will not screw me over. This believe continued until my insurance adjuster told me in his statement he said I backed out of my parking spot and hit him causing him to hit another car.
I guess I have to start to have the attitude to look after myself first and foremost.
I have been on Second Life twice since signing up for my account. It could just me, but it takes a lot of focus and energy to navigate yourself in this personal world. It is fascinating to actually not be yourself for a small amount of time during the day, but it’s exhausting. Unfortunately, you can’t just freely move around. You have to remember what command does what. I’m just happy that I figured how to get and keep my clothes on. I know it shouldn’t matter if my alter ego Jade Zhao is clothed or not, since she doesn’t really exist and her nudity is only a virtual reality.
I know this world doesn’t really exist, but I’ve met more “friends” in my last two visits than I’ve met in the “real” world in the last two months. As with any new friendship, the bond of us being clueless is what brings us together. We all share a certain amount of fraility and it’s easier to show it virtually than it is in reality. In the “real” world, I hate to show any loss of strength. However, in both “worlds” I can admit when I’m lost. It just may take me longer to admit it in “reality”.
I’m not sure if, after our class meeting on Thursday, I will keep logging onto Second Life. I don’t want to get so caught up in my virtual reality that I forget about my “real world”. Oddly enough, living Jade’s life is currently more enjoyable than my own.
With the increase in communications technology, will users forgo conventional methods of obtaining information, like newspapers, in order to support their own way of thinking? In obtaining information themselves, it allows them to create their own world where nothing goes against their own believes.
One has the right to choose what news story they want to read in the newspaper. They can even choose the news story they want to watch on television. It’s what is great about the United States of America. The system of democracy gives us the freedom of choice. It gives us the freedom of how we take in news and what news we take in.
With the help of technology, we rely less and less on the conventional methods to get the news of the day. There are many young adults who have never even held a newspaper, much less read one. A Survey conducted by the Los Angeles Time and the Bloomberg business network found that only nine percent of teens 12 to 17 read daily newspapers (pressgazette.co.uk). By reading a newspaper or watching a newscast, one doesn’t have a say in content. The stories they want to know about are included with stories they have no knowledge of or find uninteresting.
With the Internet, one can control the information taken in and create their own world geared towards their own ideas and ways of thinking. Cass Sunstein refers to this as the “Daily Me”. By creating their own blogs, they can now share their world with others. On their blogs they can post their feelings, as well as links and information that support their ideas and/or theories.
Blogs created may not necessarily have a negative effect. Good things can come out of same-interest blogs and groups on the web. However, the user may be missing out on other things in life they might find interesting. Causes or other groups could exist that they could contribute their ideas.
Even though everybody has the capability to surround themselves with things they like or make them feel good, it’s not realistic. It’s like eating dinner when you were young. You might have something you like on your plate, like pizza. Then, your mom would ruin it by adding broccoli. You might not like broccoli, but in the long run it’s good for you.
Sources:
. 4, June 2001. The University of Chicago Law School. www.law.uchicago.edu/news/sunstein-internet.html
. 17, August 2006. Online Press Gazette
. 25, December 2005.
FoxNews.com http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,179723,00.html
Sunstein, Cass. “Demnocracy and Filtering.”
47.12 December 2004.
I can’t say it has been the worst week of my life, but it comes pretty close. My family member passed away, then my one gallon water pitcher mysteriously leaked in my refrigerator and all over my kitchen floor, I had a allergic reaction to a new medication, followed by a second reaction that covered the bottom half of my face in a rash.
So, yes, it’s been pretty bad! But I’m still going, despite the fact that all I want to do is stay buried underneath my covers for at least a day. I know that’s not going to happen. I have papers to write, projects to complete, and a job that needs to be done. So, maybe next year?!
With the hectic schedules people have today, trying to balance work and family. The question, “How to be in two places at the same time?” always, felt like a difficult riddle. It’s impossible to be solved.
Impossible until wireless communications was introduced in the 20th century. Now one had the freedom to communicate anywhere without the hindrance of a landline. It’s technology that has grown with the help of teenagers. This embrace of mobile technology caused a shift in generational power. Anthropologist Mizuko Ito believed mobile phones “freed youth from the tyranny of the landline shared by inquisitive family members, creating a space for private communication.” (Rheingold 4).
Not only did youth help increase the popularity of the mobile phone, they, also, introduced the convenience of text messaging referred to as SMS everywhere except the US. “Texting made it possible for young people to conduct conversations that can’t be overheard” (Rheingold 4). This created a trend that allowed people to “construct a networked alternative space that is available from anywhere they are” (Rheingold 5).
This alternative space is what now allows one to be in two places at once. Rich Lang and Birgette Yttri noticed mobile users sharing the same age group “were still available to their social network even when participating in another social event” (Rheingold 6). Jenna Lo Castro wrote about text messaging in the classroom. She found texting “is the easiest way to communicate when making a call is impossible” (www.carrollnewsonline.com).
This new availability has now been adopted by an older generation. It is not only allowing those in the workforce to balance family and careers, it is also allowing people to carry on simultaneous relationships. People committing infidelities are being caught by messages on their mobile phones at a growing rate.
Fortunately, texting is not only breaking up relationships, but it is also building relationships. Unlike the freedom texting gave Tokyo youth, it is bringing American youth and their parents closer together. According to a Cinuglar survey, “…parents who text message say they communicate more frequently with their children when they are away from home and 64 percent say that texting made their kids easier to reach” (textually.org).
Just in the last two decades what started as a trend in Tokyo and Finland’s youth has traded spaces in American mainstream. So, when you are trying to have a private moment and you get a phone call or text message, you have only yourself and the youth of Tokyo and Finland to blame. The technological trend they originally embraced has sometimes inconveniently allowed us to be in two places at one time.
Citations:
Rheingold, H. Smart Mobs. New York: Perseus, 2002.
Wireless News: Text Messaging. 18, March 2002. 10Meters.com 18, March. 2002
Mobiles Betray “Cheating” Italians. 15, September 2003. BBC News 15, September 2003
Survey Indicates That Text Messaging Improves Parent-Child Communications. 29, August 2006. Textually.org 29, August 2006.
Americans Get Texting As SMS Finally Catches On. Yea!. 30, August 2006. Textually.org 30, August 2006.
This week has really been hard for me. I thought the addition of my two Saturday classes was going to be an added strain on me.
Until reality set in and I realized there is more to life than work, papers, and classes. This week I’ve experienced a loss in my family and have found it extremely challenging to concentrate on the things I have committed myself to for the next year.
As much as I want to crawl into bed and shut out the world. I know what my family member has thought me will not allow me to do it. My respect of her life shall be carried on in my own life. So, no matter how challenging I find my life from now on, I know I can overcome it. If nothing else, I am a fighter. So, fighting is what I must do.
Licklider saw the promise of networking computers as a great opportunity to bring together intellectuals. “There will be plenty of opportunity for everyone (who can afford a console) to find his calling for the whole world of information, with all its fields and disciplines, will be open to him-with programs ready to guide him or help him explore” (40). However, it seems as those who log onto the Internet are not merely logging on to gain intellect.
In the last year, the online games audience has grown 16% – over four times the rate of the overall Internet growth (Nielsen//NetRatings). Are young people using the technology Licklider envisioned could save humanity to escape into a fantasy world? Worlds created by them, thus not allowing them the chance to improve on the real world they live in.
Hughes agreed with media historian Paul Edward “Edwards argues that these fictional closed worlds distill and simplify our anxieties and aspirations in the so-called real world” (106). Hughes continued to argue “Humans sometimes try to escape from the closed world into the green one. While rationality prevails in the closed world, natural forces, emotions, community, and even mystical, magic powers prevail in the green world. The space of flows and the closed world, on the other hand, are human-built, human-imagined worlds completely disconnected from physical nature and completely controllable”(106-107). This creates a loss of reality. Instead of the Internet bringing people together in a close-knit community, it gives them an opportunity to escape to their own created worlds forgetting about their problems and the problems of those surrounding them.
Licklider thought the increase of Internet technology would be “the boon to humankind. Unemployment would disappear from the face of the earth forever” (40). The current unemployment rate is 4.7% (Bureau of Labor Statistics). One really can’t blame Licklidder for his optimism.
The Internet grew faster and moved quickly into the mainstream community than anyone could imagine. Logging on is now so simple one doesn’t need a college degree to log on or surf the web. It’s a classic tale of something being created being used for everything but it’s original use.
Could it be as Hughes thought, “that large technological systems have subsystems and components whose original purpose has been forgotten and whose present function is no longer clear” (79). Has Licklider’s original purpose for computer interactivity lost it’s way with the big bright lights of online gaming, Internet porn, and user generated web sites distracting us. All may not be lost; Wikipedia is one of the top ten fastest growing Web brands, with a 181 percent year-over-year increase (Nielsen//NetRatings). Wikipedia’s is a free encyclopedia anyone can update.
Or instead of being lost perhaps Internet users exploration of nonintellectual activity is acting as a learning experience. Hughes believed “A new generation of “kids,” unconstrained by the need to be in geographic proximity, will collaborate over digital networks to increase global harmony” (108). Will people gathering in the fictional world one day gather in the real world? Bush stated “Presumably man’s spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems” (The Atlantic Monthly).
So, Licklider’s dream may not be lost. Maybe social growth just needs some time to catch up with the fast paced growth of interactive technology.
Citations:
Hughes, T.P. Human-built World: How to Think About Technology and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (2004).
Licklider, J.C.R. “The Computer as a Communications Device.” Science and Technology (1968).
Bush, V. “As We May Think.” Atlantic Monthly July 1945. .
Nielsen//NetRatings Site. 14 August 2006. Kids, Teenagers and Online Games. 14 August 2006 .
Bureau of Labor Statistics. August 2006. Current Population Survey. August 2006 .
At first glance at my blog title, one might assume that I’m an angry person or just plain crazy. I must confess it just might be the latter.
For a couple of years, I felt as if I had no direction in my life. I had become content in my job and needed a change. So, I decided to get my masters degree to enhance my career. This is where the “madness” begins.
Instead of settling for sanity and either going to school full time and working part time or working full time and going to school part time. I am working and going to school full time. Not to mention, I’m also working ten hours a week as a graduate assistant.
As of last Monday, my socially life now consists of cozying up to academic readings and papers. You might wonder if I will make it through the semester, much less the year. The only way to find out is to keep reading and checking up on me.
I’m CD! Welcome! I hope you will enjoy my writings as much as I enjoy writing them.
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