Month: February 2018

Clay Shirky’s “Laptops Away” article really hit me because distractions in the classroom are at an all-time high. I’m not sure there was one thing incorrect Shirky mentioned in his article. Shirky claims that multi-tasking degrades efficiency, especially for college students, because of the one key distraction all college students have while in class: a smartphone. He frequently mentions “the elephant and the rider” metaphor as a way of emphasizing classroom-smartphone tension. The rider is the professor teaching the class, or the “intellect,” while the elephant is the distraction, or the “emotion.” Whenever we get a notification or text message on our phone, it almost immediately takes most people out of the realm the professor had been taking all students throughout the class period. The one thing Shirky realizes is that because of the power of technology in the classroom, it’s impossible for him to grab everyone’s attention. He learned his lesson by banning all forms of technology, which has helped the classroom atmosphere for him compared to when he never enforced a policy that most professors require nowadays. “Some of the students will opt out, of course, which remains their prerogative and rightly so, but if I want to help the ones who do want to pay attention, I’ve decided it’s time to admit that I’ve brought whiteboard markers to a gun fight, and act accordingly.” That is perhaps the quote of the readings we’ve read so far. Everything Shirky said is true, and he seemed concerned about the future of the classroom. The bottom line is that he should be, because technologies are only going to keep expanding as the days go by and make it harder for him and other professors to keep students constantly engaged in their discussions.

Mostly everything with that Henry Jenkins mentioned in his YouTube propositions article is straightforward. We know it’s a interactive site with a ton of complexity. We also know YouTube is heavily relied on by journalists and the mass media, largely because of the ability we have to take a minute long video with our smartphone and then post it to potentially millions of views. However, the last two propositions were the most intriguing. The 8th propositions talked about how younger people are going to need to adapt social and cultural skills because of YouTube. A lot of information related to this can be easily found on YouTube, so Jenkins brought up an interesting point there. The 9th proposition, however, struck me the most because Jenkins claims that YouTube is not really diverse, and that most of the video views on YouTube are from white middle class males. That would be especially concerning if that was still occurring today, but because this article was written over a decade ago, I find it hard to believe that YouTube still isn’t a diverse community. YouTube has grown so much over the last 10 years and it is pretty much a news source for most people. All major companies now have a page because the content they post requires a lot of views, something that did not exist 10 years ago. Whether the videos are from news organizations, sports organizations, sports franchises, etc., a lot of the content those organizations share has a lot of diversity, especially in the sports world because of the significant diversity sports has nowadays.

 

The main gist of Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” article is that with all of the new technologies in our generation, our attention spans are gradually decreasing because of the amount of technologies surrounding us. Carr mentions all of these researchers who claim that it’s very difficult for them to deeply read an article or a book nowadays because of the new technologies distracting them, and that it forces them to skim and bounce around the readings. I’m not sure how much new technologies have influenced our attention spans to become much shorter, but I don’t think that Google, as Carr says, is making us more stupid. It’s all just a change in our attention spans, and I think we have adjusted really well to the change new technologies has had when we read something. It makes sense because 50 years ago, if you read an article that was just about one thing, you didn’t have anywhere else to look for another article related to a similar subject, except for the library. But the problem with that is because if you wanted to find another article or book, it required time for you to stop reading and look for a similar article among the massive collections of articles and books. With the technologies we have currently, there are so many articles related to one subject and new technologies makes it so much easier to bounce around and find another article if we don’t like the first one we read. Sure, our attention spans our shorter, but if we understand what the article is talking about, I’m not too concerned about the “stupidity” we’re developing from Google. If anything, I think it makes us smarter because of our adapted ability to look for various topics we enjoy to read.

I don’t think I disagreed with one thing Clay Shirky mentioned in his “Does the Internet Make You Smarter?” article. Throughout the article, Shirky basically emphasizes that throughout all of history, ranging from movable type to the Internet, humans have gradually and continuously adapted to the new forms of writing and technologies we have been presented with. The printing press led to religious revolutions across Europe, which eventually led to eras of literature movements, which eventually led to the new technologies we are spoiled with today. Throughout all of this, humans have increasingly developed new thoughts that spread to more and more people. This is essentially the same concept going on today. With the Internet, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, we have the ability to research millions of writers, articles, books, scientific journals, etc. at the click of the mouse or laptop pad. People did not have this luxury even 25-30 years ago. Another key factor Shirky mentioned was that in the ’80s, our main resource of information was TV and with less people reading books. New technologies have changed that significantly.

 

In “The Intimacy of Anonymity,” Tim Wu throughout the article discusses the various pros and cons online anonymity had had on users throughout its history. Wu goes on to explain that while online anonymity started in the ’90s, it really didn’t take off until recent years, and claims that Facebook had a lot to do with that because of how it was initially only to be reserved for Harvard chatter. But Wu also points out the negatives online anonymity has had, which includes all types of offensive and discriminatory behavior. To me, the whole online anonymity idea has never appealed to me strictly because of the dangers of cyberbullying. Yes, some people use anonymous online apps/websites to talk harmlessly between friends about various topics. However, we’ve seen so many cases related to cyberbulling and online anonymity, and it usually ends up in bad results. Wu even points out that racism, sexism, and other discriminatory behaviors have occurred several times because of online anonymity. Social media is meant for anything but harassment, so what’s so difficult about showing your name and using social media appropriately?

“One Name to Rule Them All” takes a little bit of a different twist as far as online identity goes, but authors Jessa Lingel and Tarleton Gillespie don’t seem to hesitate why having separate identities on social media is beneficial. Their article revolves around the issue drag queens had on Facebook because they preferred to having their stage names as their ID rather than their biological names, and that Facebook drew a whole lot of criticism because of their policy of having users’ profile contain their biological names. The authors emphasize throughout the article that with people having multiple identities, it is okay to have separate Facebook profiles. I personally don’t really have an issue with people having a separate Facebook ID or any separate social media IDs for that matter as long as if they use them appropriately, which includes showing your true face. I know a few people who use different profiles for different purposes, most prominently if a potential future employer decides to look at their social media pages. I personally only have one profile for each type of major social media platform because I find no need to have a separate profile. But, if someone wants a separate profile, they can go right ahead as long as it doesn’t stir any major problems, i.e. cyberbullying.

When reading the “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” article by Stephen Marche, it really took me back to what we discussed in class this past Thursday on whether Facebook and social media overall is making us lonely. It is very interesting because Marche brought up some excellent points why we are becoming more lonely, and it’s difficult to disagree with him on a lot of his points simply because of the experiences I’ve been through personally. Marche repeatedly emphasizes that social media nowadays have made us lonelier than ever because we are not communicating face-to-face as often anymore compared to, say, 10 years ago. He uses all of these studies explaining all these answers about loneliness and whatnot and a lot of it fits the bill. Despite social media making everyone more lonely, the popular people are the ones that will benefit the most because they have the most contacts, whereas lonelier people will turn to social media to try and stay out of boredom. This takes me back to what my life was like a lot of times last academic year when I was still in a dorm, because my roommate, who was part of a frat, would often to go his frat house just because, and I remember checking social media the most when he was gone because I didn’t know anybody else on my floor and everyone else I knew were scattered across campus, or even off-campus. I would periodically contact people to see if they wanted to do something and sometimes it worked out, and sometimes it didn’t. But the problem was that I didn’t have a slew of contacts at my disposal if I wanted to do something, compared to other people who always had a different contact no matter the circumstance. What Marche said in his article, however, is very interesting because it connects to things that have happened to me personally.

The second article, “Facebook Isn’t Making Us Lonely,” by Eric Klinenberg didn’t strike me as much because his article is basically about him denying Marche’s claims and not giving Marche any counter-evidence to why Marche is wrong. Klinenberg’s argument just did not make sense to me because yes, while we are all becoming increasingly connected,the problem is that social media is making us more isolated, something Marche pointed out frequently. Like I mentioned in the first paragraph, the people who have more interpersonal friends are the only who benefit the most anyways because they are going to have more contacts than less-popular people. It really doesn’t matter what kind of social media platform we use because when we do use one, say, Facebook, we want to feel connected with one another which is why we post our own status, like a post, comment, or share something. We expect interaction of some sort because we want to feel attached with one another because that is what human nature is. Same thing for Snapchat, whether we post stuff on our stories or send a snap to somebody. The willingness to feel connected is what drives human behavior, so for example, if we send a snap to somebody and it either takes forever for them to respond or simply opens it and doesn’t snap back, it makes some people go a little crazy because they temporarily lost that connection, which makes us feel a little more lonely before we sent the snap.

So if I had one choice to decide whether social media is or isn’t making us more lonely, and not both, I’d say that social media is making us feel more lonely. While I do feel it’s a mix of both, I feel that someone who is less popular with a social media account is going to feel less lonely than someone who is less popular without a social media account simply because social media is a major component of how society is currently shaped.