Blog 5

In Emerson’s essay Self-Reliance he tries to show our society not to just go with the flow and do whatever everyone else is doing. He wants you to have your own thoughts and opinions on topics even if no one else listens to you or believes you. His quote “nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind” explains how important your own thoughts on opinions are and how your mind is special to yourself. I completely agree with what Emerson states I think we do need our own opinions on ideas to involve conformity. Without different opinions our society would be in complete chaos. Just imagine one person telling the whole world what to do and everyone agreeing, this would be madness. As Emerson claims that great people betray how society thinks and extorts their own opinions.

            In Thoreau’s book Walden, Thoreau goes and lives in the middle of the woods for a year with only the most basic necessities. He thought that technology was ruining society, and was not needed in everyday life. The quote “why should we live with such hurry and waste of life” is one of Thoreau’s many reasons the simplify life. I personally could not live in the woods for a year without technology. In today’s era we are so dependent on technology such as cell phones, laptops and televisions for our everyday activities and to receive news. I believe it would be extremely hard to get rid of our technology completely, but limiting it would be possible. I believe it would be good to limit technology when not necessary so we would not be as dependent on it and be able to have our own thought and opinions.        

Dumbest Generation?

I believe the statement that we are “the dumbest generation” is completely bogus considering all that this generation has accomplished. We are the technology era, before our generation we didn’t have the great technology that we take for granted everyday such as computers and the internet. Before we had these we would have to go through hundreds of pages in text books looking for answers to questions you may have. But now all we need to do is type the question in Google or another search engine and there the answer pops up in a second. Mark Bauerlein’s main point is “today's digital generation is becoming insulated in its own stultifying cocoon of bad spelling, civic illiteracy and endless postings that hopelessly confuse triviality with transcendence”. This necessary does not make us dumb it just means that we have been using your technology to help us. People rely on spell checker when typing a paper that they don’t care if they spell something wrong because spell checker will automatically correct if for them.

If Bauerlein knows for a fact that we are the dumbest generation can he please explain why IQ scores have been rising every year since the 1930’s? IQ measures your all around intelligence, and from this statistic we are actually the smartest generation. Bauerlein claims that our generation does not know as much history and politics as earlier generations. But the earlier generations had a much narrower education of mostly just math, History, science and writing. However today we have a much broader educational list including all the new technology and businesses courses. So instead of being focused on only a couple subjects today we know a broader range of information. I have no idea where Bauerlein has any room to talk about us being the dumbest generation, all I can think of is that everyone looks down to younger people claimer that they aren’t as mature and don’t know as much as their elders.    

Virtual World vs. Real World

 On page 46 Lasn writes “if you spend enough time in cyberspace, emote commands start taking the place of emotions”. This is what he calls an “emoticons”. In my eyes he is comparing people to acting like robots who have no emotions or feelings for themselves. I thought it was very interesting when Lasn was describing the young man on page 44 talking about how he had made many different characters on the Multiple-User Domains however none actually represented himself. But each of these characters has become as real to him as himself. This shows the power that such MUD’s have on people, making an imaginary world be as real as their own life. This video I found is about a teenager’s mom cancelling his World of Warcraft account and the kid freaking out. This video is ridiculous; I don’t get how someone could get so angry over a cyber game. I guess it just goes to show you how real these games are to the players and how it impacts their lives.

            In class we watched the movie Second skin which was about the lives of people who were cyber gamers. The people featured in this movie took these Virtual Worlds of gaming and made them their real world. This means that they spent more time in these virtual worlds that they actually felt like they lived in these and the real world seemed like a made up world. I completely disagree with them I feel like virtual worlds can never become a real world to a person. First of all it is just a video game, you cannot have complete control over the actions and what happens in the game and you can always start or stop playing whenever you want to. I also think its outrageous that real life relationships start from these cyber games. You may have a connection to another player in the game but a relationship outside game is way different. You have to be able to communicate, take care of and get along in the real world. Most of these players turned the Virtual world into their real worlds because they were uncomforted couldn’t handle the real world. This just does not make any sense to me how a virtual World relationship could possible work in the real world.     

Blog Post 2

Kalle Lasn’s book Culture Jam takes a different approach of the norm and discuses the other side of America culture that we don’t hear about. He goes on to talk about how media directly impacts the American citizens on their thoughts, fashions and actions.  On page 12 it states that “the commercial mass media are rearranging our neurons, manipulating our emotions, and making powerful new connections between deep immaterial needs and material products”. This goes on to show how something that you may think is harmless such as the media is actually taking over your thoughts and personality. A example of this that I thought was very interesting was on page 18 were he goes on to say that because we see violence on TV and we are so use to seeing it, that it makes us feel like violence is going to strike you throughout your daily life. He then goes on to talk about the true America being bought out by advertisements and logos. You cannot go anywhere without seeing advertisements such as in bathrooms, on gas pumps, billboards and etc. We are being brainwashed by advertisements every day you see 3,000 marketing messages. This advertising makes you feel like you need the latest products out there in order to fit in but really this is just the marketing companies brainwashing you from always seeing the newest products. This made me think of the Apple Iphone commercials how it makes you feel like if you don’t have an Iphone you are out of date and left behind from others who have one. Link to Iphone Commercial. The quote on page 24 “ads stretch the truth, news bites gives only part of the story, and the White House press releases are carefully tailored to make the president look good”. This really made me think more about how most people feel like they get the full story from the news but really most of the time it’s only the half that the media wants you to hear about. And you get even less of the story when the media is not diverse. This happens when big media businesses take over a big area and wipe out the smaller ones making the news only source of news for this area. However, so far from reading Culture Jam it has made me society in a whole different way.

Introduction

Hey everyone

My name is Kyle Adams and I am currently a Sophomore here at Shippensburg University.  Business Management is my major, and I am really enjoying studying it. I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and went to high school at North Penn. My interests include snowboarding, football, basketball, cliff jumping and going to the beach with family and friends. I am constantly listening to music throughout my day. Even though I like many types of music I mostly listen to rock and rap. Another entrainment form I enjoy is television. I am always watching NFL football games, Tosh.0, South Park and Criminal Minds. This class interests me because I look forward into learning more in depth about the books we are going to read and others’ opinions on events that take place. However, sadly the last book I read was The Glass Castle last semester in WIFYS. Even though I enjoy reading it is hard for me to start reading a book that is not assigned to me. I am hoping that this course will help me to see things in books differently and increase my out of class reading. Literature to me means forms of writings that make you express thoughts about the world in many different ways.