Me looking a little stupid...

In case by some miracle someone reads this who isn't related to my school, this video is part of an assignment for a class called Personal Political. I don't normally post videos of myself doing random things online.

Overall, I think that I look pretty stupid in this video. Of course, that's only because it's one-sided. If you could see the game that I'm playing you'd think that I'm seriously overreacting, but not necessarily that I look ridiculous. It's the same thing when someone gasps or laughs at something they just read in a book, or something to the effect.

People often talk about how it's common for someone to do activities like this a lot themself, but then not want their children to do it. Honestly, if I had a child, I wouldn't mind them doing the activities that I do as much as I do them. As long as they don't prioritize entertainment over things like education, I really don't mind. I think that games like this (I'm playing a game called Loco Roco by the way, about a bouncing fruit) are some of the less constructive digitalized activities, but I personally don't play them that often (that PSP is my friend's).

The contrast between myself and what's going on in the videogame is pretty stark. For most people though, I think it's even sharper. Since I don't play often I tend to massively overreact to what's happening on the screen, tilting my body in the direction that I want the character to go and screaming at the PSP (I actually did it less in the video than I normally do). Therefore, I think I have more apparent 'integration' with the game than most people. Somebody who plays the game more often would probably react less.

With games like the Wii, or the new Natal that Windows is coming out with, the situation is only slightly different. You're up and moving, so in a video like this there's no risk of looking like a zombie. On the other hand though, there's still the same one-sided integration.

In-person surveys about the digital world.

I first asked my mom, Paula, about technology. I started off with a very broad question, something like "what do you think about technology". I started this way both because I was curious if she would give a typical answer and because I was confident that she would not.

She began by saying that overall she thinks it is probably a good thing, because of how it speeds up communication. When pressed for more, she said "I think sometimes it outpaces us." When I questioned her on what she meant, she explained that the human race isn't really changing, but all of this innovation is occurring around us. She added that perhaps we are changing slightly, in terms of our expectations. We have come to expect everything to be faster and easier, she explained, and we have grown to have the sense that technology can solve anything. As she spoke she noted that both of these things are partially true and partially untrue (technology really can solve a lot of things). Here I asked her how she thought that we were adapting to the new technology if we weren't really changing as a whole. She said that really every generation has to start from a different point, which I interpreted as a look at history: if any of us had been born at a different time we would have worked with the resources in that time period just as easily as those in this one. She also mentioned that e may soon start "loosing history"; since the scale of innovation is speeding up so much, so are events, and there's only so much information we can hold in our brains no matter how fast it all occurred. She explained by saying: "If one generation goes from point A to point B, and the next generation goes from point B to point Q..." she went on to express that so much extra progress in one generation would fill up the space occupied by hundreds of years in a current textbook. She ended the conversation by saying that in return for all this innovation, that sense of a long history is probably one of the things we're going to be giving up.

For a friend outside of class, I asked Melanie C. I posed the question "What do you think are the best and worst modern inventions?"

She responded that the computer (specifically the internet) was the best invention, and the nuclear bomb was the worst. She admitted that the main reason that she favored computers as the best invention was because she is completely addicted to the internet and would be very bored without it. As for the nuclear bomb, she said that is was particularly stupid that we had gone to all that effort just to kill each-other. When prompted with the idea that the technology could have better uses, she mentioned that with everything that's going on in the world--like global warming--using this technology to kill each-other is not particularly helpful.

Comments

Amber

This is a very interesting post. You used a lot of examples to make your point, which I think makes it a lot stronger.

Your point was one that I hear a lot (that because we spend so much time with our electronics that we don't have time for more personal things), but you also introduced more uncommon aspects, like how we are literally addicted to our electronics.

I think that the majority of people would agree with you, even if they don't feel that it's necessarily a negative. Certainly our parent's generation usually thinks of technology this way. I personally agree with everything you wrote, although I don't feel that it's worth limiting our use of technology over.

While at times your grammar was a bit confusing, the overall content of your post was interesting. Usually when people refer to 'not being able to live without their electronics' they are joking, but this brought up the point that it may be somewhat true. Still, I don't think it's the oppressive addiction it's cracked up to be. Nothing's forcing us to stare mindlessly at screens for hours, we do it because we enjoy it. The main reason that we'd have trouble surviving without electronics for a day isn't because we've become so Dependant on them, it's because in the process of enjoying them we've completely destroyed our attention spans. I think that the most likely candidate for someone to take that brave first step would be someone who doesn't mind being really bored.

You have some interesting ideas, and I'm looking forward to hearing more about them!

Andrew

Andrew,

This blog really says a lot about you. Honestly, I've never really met you, but I kind of feel like I know you now. Nice job with showing your specific perspective.

Basically, you have a bunch of different opinions on a bunch of different types of technologies. You feel that the internet is a great way to connect, but most people take it too far. You think that TV is great, even if there's nothing to watch. And you love anything to do with music.

I think that the majority of this generation would have a response similar to yours. We're all a lot less passionate about things nowadays than in previous generations, and a lot of people would have a reaction something like "I feel this way about this and that, but it's not that big of a deal."

Your content really gets the point across, but at times it's hard to understand because of your grammar. It's not so much the actual sentence structure as the fact that at times you start to lapse into chatspeak, which is a bit ironic actually.

One of the points that I found particularly interesting was when you asked if the people following others on twitter had nothing better to do. I sort of think that, at times, they might not. If that's all that a person does online, They're actually probably pretty bored but convinced that they'd be more bored doing something else. Twitter is like the ultimate speed dating: You can meet 40 different people in a minute and then never see them again. Maybe people are using that to fill in for some lack of friends in other areas? Just something to think about.

This post really shows your own thoughts and feelings, and I'm looking forward to reading more from you!

Through electronic waves our hearts are connected...

I made myself a cell phone charm with that motif. I have it on my phone right now. It doesn't completely express my feelings about technology, but I think it's a nice sentiment (despite the bad grammar).

I personally feel that the influx of technology is a good thing. This is just my personal feeling, and I understand those that would contradict me here. My main reason for feeling this way is simple: I hate irony. I always have, as a plot device and in real life. And one of the most ironic things of all time is when something tragic happens for a stupid little reason, like say, not having the correct information. Romeo and Juliet died because a courier couldn't deliver the message. If they'd had cell phones, or IM, or email, or even a fax machine, they would've lived happily ever after and the whole thing would've been a hilarious prank on Juliet's parents. Lack of information is, in my opinion, the worst reason for a tragedy.

I think that, in general, information is the key to almost everything in life. The more you know, the better off you are. The more a soldier knows about their enemy, the easier they will find it to fight. The more an advertising agent knows about the business, the better they will do. Things like that. In the past, the easiest way to get information was to ask your friends. The way I see it, the internet is like having an infinite number for friends, all of whom know a little about something.

Everyone in the whole world is connected through the internet, and no matter how stupid we all are we have something to offer and someone to want to see it. Even if what we have is just a funny video of a cat, there are still thousands of people out there that will be happy because you shared it. People talk about things getting less personal when you use technology, and that is a little true. I don't think it's because the face-to-face diologue is lost, since really as long as the feelings come through it doesn't matter how. I think it's because sometimes online it's easy to forget that you're talking to an actual person, and disregard how they feel.

But once you learn to keep that in mind, I think that things actually become more personal in a way. Normally, who becomes friends (and enemies, to an extent) is random. The friends I will make this year I will probably make because we happened to be born close together, happened to go to the same high school, and happened to be put into the same class. Maybe we made some choices that led us there, but we could very easily have never met.

Online, it's different. Everyone in the whole wide world is in more or less the same place. The only thing grouping you together is your interests, and your personality. You can send out a little signal that says "hey, I'm here!" from any tiny corner of the globe, and hear millions of people echoing you back. It's like dropping a piece of paper on the street with all your interests on it, and hundreds of people run to look at it. And a few of them will decide that you're interesting enough to know, and so they'll come talk to you, and just like that you have more friends. You may only know them for a little while, and you may never talk to them, but for that time you connected with that person on their own tiny corner of the globe. And then someday maybe you'll ask them something, and they'll ask you something, and you'll both know more for it. No matter where you are in the world, you have a chance to meet anyone, anywhere, and peek into their life. You can help each-other, and give each-other new information, and come up with thoughts that you never would have had on your own. In your own tiny corner of the world, where you used to be alone, now everyone is there with you.

...phones are tie me to you