Blog #5

I think I could live in a cabin like Thoreau for awhile but eventually I think I would get sick of it. I am taking the challenge and have found that I do need technology for work and such. I am vice-president for one of the clubs I am in and I had to break the rules and make a few phone calls regarding a club event. I also found myself having to send emails. The reason I am bringing this up is because I feel that the only reason we are so obsessed with technology and everything is because we have to use it to communicate to people around us to set up events and things to do. You socialize to tell each other when you are going to dinner, what is going on the weekend, everything involves technology in a way. Its a way to communicate to each other without being in the same room. We are not used to going out and finding someone when we need to talk to them. That is why I feel like I could go without technology if I was in a cabin like Thoreau was because don't think it is technology that is distracting, it is the people that are behind the technology that matter to us. I really feel like going out to a cabin so you can "live deliberately" is not such a crazy idea. You might find out a lot about yourself that you didn't know about yourself. You may in a sense "find yourself" while you are out there. You might also discover what you take for granted, because when you realize that you can't or don't have something you discover its real value to yourself. I have discovered that I take the ability to talk to people back home and off campus for granted. I never realized what a privilege it is to talk to mom, since I have not talked to her in awhile. I find it really inspiring that Thoreau is so sure as what he wants. He wants "to drive life into a corner",that's a pretty strong statement. However I feel like he took the simplify paragraph to the extreme I like to eat three meals a day and don't think it is complicating my life.
As for Emerson I really like a lot of what he has to say. The sentence in his passage that stuck out to me was the "It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude..." I find this very interesting. I hope that in every aspect of my life I make every attempt of staying true to myself.
The quote from Emerson in the movie clip from Dead Poet's Society is a powerful quote. What will my verse be? I don't yet know but I have some ideas of what I would like to contribute to the world. I want to make a difference. I want to make my time here on earth worth while, not only for myself but others around me. I hope to be a friend to everyone, put my footprint on the world. I just don't want to be another set of bones and organs taking up space, I want to be of use and make an impact on people.

Blog #4

I really feel that we are not the dumbest generation. If we have to classify someone as the dumbest generation, it would probably be the generations that follow. Like we briefly discussed in class, I feel that every generation nit picks the generations that follows them, we blame things on the generations that follow, instead of laying the blame on our own generation. However I feel that generations are getting smarter over the years. I feel that although we may look dumb to older adults we really are intelligent. For my quote I picked the sentence from the article written by Sharon Begley. It said "First, IQ scores in every country that measures them, including the United States, have been rising since the 1930's. Since the test measures not knowledge but pure thinking capacity-what cognitive scientists call fluid intelligence, in that it can be applied to problems in any domain-then Gen Y's ignorance of facts (or of facts that older people think are important) reflects not dumbness but choice." This sentence in itself proves with facts that we are not dumb, actually our intellectual capacity is increasing. So why then do people think we are "the dumbest generation?" I feel the reason for this idea came about because we do not know facts that "older people" think we should know, therefore we look "dumb" in their eyes. The article by Begley mentions that "one quarter of 18-to24-year olds in a 2004 survey drew a blank on Dick Cheney, and 28 percent didn't know William Rehnquist." I honestly don't know who these people are and yes it makes me feel somewhat dumb, however I don't feel I should be looked at as being dumb just for the simple fact that I do not know who they are. I don't think it is fair to lay the blame on us for our lack of knowledge; of the facts that older adults think we should know. We can't know if someone doesn't tell us who they are, or no one mentions their names. Maybe its not our generations fault but our parents and their generation. Maybe they have not informed us enough about these people and things they think we should know. I don't think that we should be blamed for the fact that we don't know things that older people haven't told us. We can't know about something we have never heard of. I am not saying that Mark Bauerlein blames us because he doesn’t, in his video he agrees that he and his colleges are to blame. He does admit that it is not all our generations fault that we are considered dumb, however it the simple fact that he is calling us dumb that angered me. Reading through the chat with Mark Bauerlein I have changed my feelings towards the author and his opinions. In one of his chats a guy asked "I am curious as to how you are defining dumb? Is it defined as a lack of voluntary reading?." Bauerlein replied with "Dumb only in the sense of not making use of all the extraordinary opportunities, prosperity, schooling, culture, and, yes, technology, to become more learned, eloquent, and informed than previous , generations." I find myself now agreeing with him that we are dumb. I don't think that we do know as many facts as past generations do. We don't take the opportunity of going out and exploring the vast wealth information that is out there. We don't use technology in productive ways. Personally I think of Google and how many times I use Google in a day, most of the time I am looking up pointless things. I could be using it for so many other great things, but I don't. We don't explore culture like past generations did. I can't tell you whether I am German, French, Italian, because I don't know and it really doesn't matter to me. I bet most kids can't even tell you their great-grand parents names. We could use college as a way to gain knowledge and look at each class as if what you learn really matters, rather than just learning things so you can pass the test. Our great grandmothers and grand fathers would probably try and absorb all the knowledge they could in college. I feel past generations had a drive to learn things and make themselves more rounded and kids now days don't have that drive. We simply don't care. We want to pass classes, graduate and get a good paying job; who cares if we do or don't learn anything from all our classes. I think in Mark Bauerlein's sense of the word yes we are dumb, we don't take the opportunity to make ourselves more informed and more eloquent like he says. We don't know about issues that we probably should know about not simply for the fact that we don't want to appear dumb but in the sense that we want to grab every opportunity to make ourselves informed of what has happened, is happening and will happen in the world around us. I think that our generation needs to find a way to engage kids and young adults in learning things, we need to develop a drive in young people so that when we are 30 we are not still considered the "dumbest generation."

Blog #3

The movie Second Skin was very interesting to me however I do not agree with half of it. Maybe its not really that I don't agree but I can't relate to lives they choose to live. I have never played world of war craft so it might simply be the fact that I can't relate, however my opinion is that "synthetic" worlds are not "real" worlds." In order for it to be a real world in my opinion the world has to include tangible items. In World of War Craft you are not even "virtually" put in the space you are just staring at a computer screen. Which is not just true of World of War Craft but of practically all of the "synthetic worlds." I don't understand why some people would want to spend their lives like the way the people in the documentary do. Especially the guy that had twins, he was still obsessed with the game even after they were born. Why would he want to spend his life being obsessed with a “synthetic world" and a "synthetic life" when his "real world" and "real life" seems really good to me? I feel like playing the game occasionally would not be such bad thing, however when you take it the extreme like the people in the documentary did it's a little ridiculous, Don't you think?

There is a lady mentioned in Culture Jam who is a good example of how people can take it too far. You probably remember the passage I am talking about. She started using a chat room, which is perfectly acceptable. However she became obsessive. She lost weight because she literally forgot to eat. A friend of the author says "He saw the lady on the street and she had not showered in four days." The author states "Now she's a very smart woman, but her addiction-she calls it that herself-changed her. She grew so accustomed to typing her thoughts that her verbal skills suffered." I feel like when your "synthetic life" is seeping into your real life its a sign you need help and you need to realize what’s happening. I think that is the point which takes it from normal to an obsession.

When you are falling in love with people's characters like Heather did I think you have taken it too far. It's such a game and I think people need to realize that. I feel like when people are spending more time in a "synthetic world" versus the real world, they are avoiding living. Avoiding living for some people can be a very freeing feeling, don't get me wrong, but when you are trying to avoid living for whatever reason you are missing out on a lot of meaningful real life moments. I feel that one way a synthetic world can not match the real world, is that in a "synthetic world" you can force things to happen more, you have more control of what happens and if you fail at something you can just try it again and that is not always the case in real life. I feel that "synthetic worlds lack feelings and emotions that you just can't match to real world, face to face conversation. You can type something to someone but they may take it a totally different way than you meant it, you can't feel sarcasm through typed messages.

Yes I feel that the identities people occupy "virtually" have real significance, value, and meaning, TO THEM. To me it doesn't really make sense and I can't relate, but to them their characters probably mean a lot, they did to the people in the documentary. I however feel like they don't have real significance, value or meaning, because people are not always who they claim to be in "synthetic worlds" so how can a "synthetic person" have real significance in "real life." ? I don't think the real world and the synthetic world should intermix.

I don't feel that the "virtual world is a new frontier. I feel it is a wasteland. I feel we should not associate ourselves with these "synthetic worlds" because when people get lost in these synthetic worlds and synthetic lives, they neglect the real world and their real lives.

Blog #2

The first couple of chapters we read in culture jam really seem to illustrate the fact that we have lost our connection with nature and that our lives have become almost completely consumed by the media. There were a few sentences that really stuck out to me on pg 6 that said "Something has gotten into our brains. Now the most important task on the agenda is to evict them and recover our sanity."  I feel like those two sentences seem to sum up the 5 pages I had read before I got to them.  I also feel that these sentences highlight the larger picture the author is trying to get us to see: That the media is affecting us more than we realize. The author is trying to tell us that we are not acting like ourselves and we HAVE to do something about it. That sentence really made me think. It makes me think of the question "Are my thoughts really my own?"  "Is the media effecting how I think about things?" Those few sentences on pg 6 scared me a little, the choice of the word "evict" I feel really makes the sentence powerful. It makes me think of something crawling in someone's brain and literally taking over their thoughts. It makes me think of the book Prey by Micheal Crichton that we read in Biology class, which if you have not read is a book about nanotechnology taken to kind of the extreme. The technology they created was a "nanotechnology" that formulates a kind of camera that is inserted into the body so doctors can see inside small spaces of your body. However it backfires and the nanotechnology becomes a huge swarm that the doctors can't control and it starts to hunt them, takes control of them, kills them and uses their body as a sort of nest to create more nanotechnology. They are being hunted by the own technology they created. Both of these books seem to be somewhat related in my opinion. Both of these things, the sentences on page 6 and Prey, make me realize that maybe we do need to watch what we are getting ourselves into. I certainly don't want the media and things to come back and bite us in the butt like the nanotechnology came back and attacked the creators of it. Maybe we should think seriously about the things that we are "creating" in the media.

I believe the two sentences with the author's opinion in them from the previous paragraph can be backed up when the author says on pg 18 "Similarly, I have no hard proof that daily exposure to media violence shapes the way you feel about crime and punishment, or affects the way you feel about that guy standing next to you at the bus stop. What I do know is that my natural instinct for spontaneity, camaraderie, and trust has been blunted. I used to pick up hitchhikers; now I hardly ever do. I rarely speak to strangers anymore." The author in this sentence is reiterating the fact that the media is basically in this example manipulating the way we feel about people, how we feel in certain situations or how we feel when certain things happen. I agree with the author that we need to reclaim our mind. We need to get back to that place when we formulated our own opinions and thoughts on things and a place where we learn things in the real world rather than trying to learn things about life from movies, TV and such.

Another point that I think the author makes very clear is the fact that we have been detached from nature. For example he says: "Abandon nature and you abandon your sense of the divine. More than that, you lose track of who you are." That is a very clear statement of the author's opinion.  I agree with the fact that in some ways we have been detached from nature. However I feel like that it is not a complete detachment for all people.  For example, the author brings up the family that goes camping and basically doesn't know how to act in that type of environment because according to that author that is not virtual life but real life.  I feel like this is a generalized opinion.  I feel the amount that you are detached from nature depends on the way you were raised. My family and I went camping a lot when I was younger and we liked it a lot and were fine with the disconnection with technology and media. I also feel that the amount you are detached from nature depends on how much you were and are exposed to the media. Some people in the camping atmosphere may feel little to no dis-attachment with technology and media, where others may; that is why I feel like the book tends to make some generalizations. Despite those generalizations I feel that she makes some excellent points. 

Altogether in the first couple chapters the author is trying to make us realize the effect that media has on us.