Month: February 2018

Our readings for week 4 addressed the way that we get information much quicker. In Is Google Making Us Stupid, Carr makes a great point in that he just quickly looks for information instead of learning the subject. I’ve done the exact thing that’s he done where I know I can just quickly look up information if I have a question. I barely remember the question I answered because I know I can just look up the question again if I forget. We don’t think anymore as a society because we allow the internet to do it for us. That was another point that Carr brought up which I agreed with because we don’t actually do research. Instead we let search engines tell us how to think. Clay Shirky disagrees with Carr by stating in his article, Does the Internet Make You Smarter, by stating that it’s human evolution to get things quicker. However, I think that by slowly researching topics, you’ll learn more about them.

The other readings focused on multitasking. Even though the YouTube article didn’t specifically discuss multitasking, YouTube can be the reason why people multitask. In his article, Henry Jenkins points out that YouTube is the meeting point for everything to come together. However, combining this with the article by Clay Shirky called, Why I just asked to Put Their Laptops Away, shows all of the negative effects of multitasking. One of the reasons why multitasking is so hard is because of all of the distractions that occur and nobody can focus on just one thing. If YouTube is where everything comes together, then how can we focus on all of it at once?

After reading the articles about humans being possibly detached from one another, I believe that we’re more attached to people’s profiles then the actual people themselves. People still care about one another, it’s just we seem to now just look at other people’s profile to see how their doing. In  “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?”, Marche argues that we’re getting disconnected from our close friends. This isn’t true because when I see my close friends, we engage in actual conversations and don’t just look at our phones. However, Marche is on to an idea because I only look at someone’s profile to see how their doing instead of just asking them.

Even though I look at their profiles to see how people are doing, that still isn’t the best way to judge someone. People act different online then they do in real life. In the Facebook article with the drag queens, sometimes people want to have a separate profile because them online is different then how they act in real life. I try to use my profile to make my life look appealing to the outside world. However, I don’t want to overshare on Facebook, but some people share more on Facebook then they do in real life. I don’t want to overshare on Facebook because I don’t want to let out information about me that my close friends barely even know about.

There’s not a whole lot of privacy online and that’s why I don’t share very much. I see other people that share way too much information online whether that’s personal information or non personal information. Future employers also look at what’s been said online and I don’t want that to hurt me in the future. People aren’t authentic online which I why I really don’t trust anybody online. We just don’t know who we’re talking to and it’s really easy to scam people. Facebook profiles have been hacked by people all around the world and that’s why I try not to share my information. I don’t want it used by some random person across the world that’s using my information for their personal gain.

 

After reading the article, it’s going to be very tough to escape our past thanks to all of this technology. With how quickly bad press can get out on a company, why would they run the risk of hiring someone with a bad reputation? I think with all of the information out on people, I think its a right amount of information online because I think people should have the right to know things about things that they might not want to tell me. People will have the right to post what they want online, but it doesn’t protect them from the consequences. It gets brought up a lot with freedom of speech which protects people from being thrown in jail by the government. However, people often forget that it still has it’s consequences. With the ability to look at a screen and figure out what exactly to say, people shouldn’t say something that could jeopardize their future. Before people hit send, they should go back and reread what they posted and think, “will this post come back to haunt me in the next 5 years?” However, I understand that times change and so does people’s opinion. People shouldn’t get crucified over a post they made about 5 years ago. People make mistakes and we should learn to forgive for mistakes. We shouldn’t forget their mistakes though, instead we should learn from them. I think this new technology has allowed humans to become better at crafting statements online so that way they can’t get haunted by them. People will just have to stay smart online and don’t do anything that would affect them in the future.