Digitized Lives, Ch. 1-3

It is always incredibly interesting to find out how things transform through the ages. It is also intriguing to see how things end up being used even though they are created for something completely different. When the internet came out, it was intended to be used strictly for military and scientific purposes. This is a prime example of how through time and creativity something already big can be transformed into something even bigger with several unintended results.

The internet started with smaller intentions of just reaching two specific groups of individuals, but now it has grown to something much larger than ever anticipated. "The internet, to take a pertinent example, was designed with the needs of a small number of military personnel and scientists in mind" (Reed, 11). However, these intentions soon expanded due to a group of "geeks" in silicon valley. These "geeks" created user friendly internet browsers, which over the years ended up giving billions of people the opportunity to connect to one another. Internet was once though to be a phenomenon, yet now it is here to stay.

Internet has changed the way we do everything. It has changed the way we talk, network, spend our time, and one of the biggest things is that it has changed how we shop. E-commerce has decreased the number of people that physically go into stores. Fortunately enough, thanks to the internet we are now able to sit back at home and thoroughly enjoy shopping from the comfort of our La-Z-Boy recliner.

Further, it has completely altered the world of logistics. Before the surge of e-commerce retailers would have to have stock stored away at a fairly close location in order to restock certain items at a fast rate. Now manufacturers are basically making items by the order. This reduces storage fees and the item can be shipped directly to the consumer once the item has been created.

An invention once just created primarily for military and scientific purposes has transformed into a land of endless possibilities. Not only that, has had several unintended results. There was no way that the inventor of the internet could even possibly imagine completely changing the world of logistic and how people do their everyday shopping. The internet has grown into something bigger than ever imagined.

Tapscott- Part 3

Family has always been such a huge key component of almost anyone's life and almost always will be! Someone's family typically play a primary role in how someone grows up and how they perceive the world. At a certain point in any individual's life they tend to leave the nest and grow apart from their family. However, even though Net Geners will also leave the nest at one point in their life. Net Geners are now closer to their families than previous generations ever were, according to Tapscott. Technology is forever shaping and changing this generation's relationships with their families.

Technology is making it much easier for people to stay in constant contact with their family. Net Geners to have the ability to constantly share information and updates on their life, Tapscott says this makes them feel more connected with their family. Thanks to the constant progression of technology, there is a multitude of ways for families to stay in touch. Due to this, families now have the feeling of security of knowing what is going on even when they may be hours away from each other. Connecting with your family has gone to waiting a few weeks to a letter to waiting a few seconds for someone to return your text.

Thanks to technology, there is also a more democratic feeling in today's family environments. There are now more outlets that Net Geners can express themselves. It seems as if parents are picking up on the increase of younger generations expressing who they are. This has led to a growth in a more democratic environment in households. and Net Geners now have more opportunities to express their opinion with their family. This also plays on the norm of "freedom".

Tapscott- Part 2

With internet and devices getting faster and faster, so is the demand for getting information at quicker rates. "New Geners" are getting more and more impatient and now expect information to come faster and faster. We are so used to being able to search information so easily and efficiently that we get impatient and bored waiting for information that is presented to us in a slow manner.

The attention span of "new geners" is getting shorter as more technology is becoming available. Out of the eight norms speed could be the ones that stands out the most for "new geners". Slowly but surely, people in lecture classes get bored very easily and have the tendency to do anything but pay attention to lecture. You can find a large portion of almost any lecture where people are on Facebook, Pintrest, Twitter, and anything else that is more entertaining than lecture. We just can't focus on one thing at a time, we need to have multiple things going on in order to stay entertained.

Further, individuals are starting to get bored with waiting for the information. Google, and any other search engine, makes retrieving information almost instantaneous. The ease of obtaining information is making "new geners" impatient. Why sit in class and listen to a professor rant when Google can bring forth the information in 0.22 seconds*? While there are some classes that the only way you can learn is through hands on practice, YouTube and Google make it easy to learn or perfect almost anything! You can essentially become a professional at something without going through all of the trouble. With all of the things that are available now, the "new geners" are constantly hungry for more.

*How fast google found information on my last search

Tapscott- Part 1

Individuals that are included in the "new generation" are growing up with technology that will shape how they see the world forever. "New Geners" don't know a life without the technology that connects us all to one another. Even trying to comprehend a life without the type of technology that we always have available at the end of our fingers. The use of typewriters, cassette tapes, and landlines are becoming more and more of a foreign concept. 

The book brought up a very good point that individuals of this generations have not only been shaped by the technology that they are growing up with, but they also learn all versions of technology much faster than older generations. People of this generation are able to use technology easily and efficiently, so it is not hard for them to learn new technology. This also contributes to the fact that the individuals that create the latest and greatest technology know that no matter what technology they create there will be a large demographic of the population that will be able to learn the technology quickly. Also, if the group is able to learn the technology quickly, then there is a higher chance that the technology will be welcomed more. Overall, the population isn't a big fan of change. However, if the change is more familiar and an easier transition then we are much more welcoming of changes.

"New Geners" also help shape the technology that shape them. They help open the horizons of creativity and bring forth different perspectives that will help mold technological advancements. Older generations don't have the kind of understanding of technology that "new geners" have. They don't realize the kind of potential that technology has. "New geners" have the understanding that there is so much room for growth when it comes to technology and that there is a world of possibilities. 

Blogs are Boggling

Blogs are an outlet for any individual to be able to express themselves through the written word for the world to see. Blogs give anyone with the access to the internet to be an author without having to persuade someone to publish them. Even though the doors of expression and authorship have been opened even further, the lines between fact and fiction are quickly being blurred. With the vast amount of blogs available, you never know what you are reading is fact or fiction.

Blogs' credibility are always being questioned. With a lack of restrictions on what is being published anything and everything can be said or shown no matter how true it is. Due to this, there is a lot of room for people being fed wrong information and believing it. "Credible" and well-known blogs have the potential to be a breeding ground for potentially harmful and repetitional crushing rumors. Even though blogs are technically being "published" and could potentially be very harmful to someone's image, they are free from any potential libelous charges. In the Doe vs. Cahill 2005 case, Judge Steel ruled stated that "blogs and chat rooms tend to be vehicles for the expression of opinions; by their very nature, they are not a source of facts or data which a reasonable person would rely" (173). This ruling could tend to lead to a lot of trouble because of the fact that some people believe almost anything they read on the internet.

Reading the chapter on blogs raised a few questions. Even though Judge Steel stated that people don't read blogs as fact, aren't there a good portion of individuals who believe everything that they read on the internet? And if so, do blogs have the potential to make some people even more ignorant? I have a feeling that at some point blogs will have to become a medium that isn't free from libel laws. While there is are multitude of online outlets that anyone can publish on, there will have to become a time were libel law laws are redefined and apply to certain online mediums such as blogs.

Progression of Writing

Writing is just like technology, for it has progressed, evolved, and transformed how we live our lives. People have criticized and condemned it, but it has become a vital piece of our everyday life. Just like almost anything, people are scared of change and that is exactly what happened when writing came to be. Socrates wrote that writing would be ambiguous and deceitful. While this was one of the first records of a statement that says writing is untrustworthy, this mentality is still around today. 

Writing has gone through a roller coaster ride when it comes to it's credibility. Socrates stated that writing is very one sided and non-conversational. Socrates compared writing to a painting because they are basically both illustrations of what the author believes to be true. However, you can keep asking with an actual conversation to find the real truth. Due to this, Socrates believed that writing is a false medium and cannot be trusted. Eventually down the road, the ethos behind writing began to shift. Writing became more and more credible because of the fact that the individuals that could read and write were the most educated and typically the most wealthy. 

Nowadays, writing, whether it is hand-done or digital, is becoming more and more skeptical. In order to get trustworthy information you have to make sure that it comes from a credible source. Magazine and the internet are known for creating rumors and providing false information on a variety of topics. For example, anything on a blog or on yelp could be true, but there is a very good chance that it could also be false. You never know who is on the other side of the computer screen writing a review and whether or not they have honest intentions. People are always questioning whether something are credible or not, but there are always somethings that you have to have in official legal writing to know something is legitimate. For example, legal documents, contracts, diplomas, ect. anything that is worthy of recognition. 

The interesting thing about writing is the fact that it is now becoming two sided. With today's technology and social media, almost anything that is written you can respond to. Whether it is a tweet, article, blog, or recipe there is almost always an opportunity to make it a two-way conversation. So even though Socrates would have never of seen that coming and he definitely had a very valid argument, times are changing and is writing and how we perceive it. 

Chinua Achebe - Also a "Cool" Medium

John Walter wrote a blog post online just here recently defining hot and cool mediums. According to Walter, a hot medium can be defined as something that gives you a lot of information, but not much to do with it. A hot medium simply just makes you absorb all of the information that is thrown at you. A cool medium is something that give you just enough information to fill in the missing pieces. According to Walter's blog post, print is a medium that is a hot medium and all you have to do is take in all of the information that you are reading. However, I believe that there are instances as to where a print can actually be a cool medium as well.

Any book can be made into a cool medium by the reader when they do more than simply just read the book. For example, if someone were to just read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe they most likely would not understand or realize the underlying themes of the book. The reader has to make a conscious effort to think about the themes of masculinity and how language expresses culture, Achebe doesn't spell those things out for us in the book. I believe that mediums are what you put into them. An author puts a lot of information into the reader's brain to make the plot interesting but the reader has to work with the information that they are given to find what message the author was going for.

Not only that, Things Fall Apart have sparked some really interesting conversations in class. If we were simply to just absorb the information in the book, we wouldn't have had these additional, collegiate conversations. Since we are doing extra work with the information that we are given, our class is transforming what Walter classifies as a hot medium into a cool medium.

It totally makes sense as to where Walter was coming from, but I believe that with books like Things Fall Apart, you can't classify whether a medium is hot or cool until after the audience has done something with it. Walter's generalizations are a good platform to start with when someone is classifying mediums, but there are a lot of factors that can alter the final classification.