"Pencils to Pixels"

"Pencils to Pixels"

1. The author says that the computer is a gateway to literacy. Although, I don't truly believe that people necessarily have to use their computers for literacy.
2. Writing is an engineering of materials to accomplish an end.
3. Pencil is a technology because it is made through an engineering process to put our thoughts onto paper.
4. Plato believed that it would weaken the memories stored in our mind.
5. Written word can be more accurate because people tend to think before they write. But, they are not very interactive. On contrast, word that is spoken is active but not very deliberate.
6. Thoreau thought pencils are better than other technologies such as telegraph, because he thought those technologies are just illusions.So he devoted 10 years to improve pencil technologies.
7. Telephone combined the aspects of speaking and writing situations in new way. The introduction of the telephone for social communication required considerable adaptation of the way we talk. Just like the writing, communication using telephones emulated the facial expressions and gestures so it changed the way we communicate.
8.Although it was considered to be too difficult at first, people adapted to the technology and use it for their writing regularly.
9. The computer has changed the way we write, and therefore has changed the meaning of literacy. Also, the technology is still developing rapidly so it will change the literacy even more.
10. The author defines literacy as an ability to adjust to new technologies for writing in such a developing world.

"Writing in the 21st Century"

“Writing in the 21^st Century”

1. developing new models of writing, designing a new curriculum supporting those models and creating models for teaching that curriculum

2. in spite of cultures that devalued writing, prohibitions against females and against blacks, and in spite of being too young.

3. We the people need to write more and we need to urge others to write more.

4. Reading can have a control on society, while writing is almost allowing a break of control.. People tend to involve reading with sensual and emotional pleasure and tend to involve writing with pain or isolation. I can relate to the reading, I love to read a good book in my bed or somewhere outside when the weather is nice.

5. People relate writing to hard work. It is not seen as good fun or an enjoyable break it makes you think really hard. It feels like your brain is being fried on a pan.

6. Process writing is a series of overlapping steps that most writers and authors use when creating some form of writing.

7. Self-sponsored writing is a writing that belongs to the writer, not to an institution, with the result those people- students, senior citizens, employees, volunteers, family members, sensible and non-sensible people alike-will want to compose and do- on the same page and on the screen and on the network- to each other. It is basically free writing and composed for absolutely anyone. I tend to follow this style of writing on the social media sites, such as Facebook or Twitter. That is all.

8. The 21^st century is the Age of Composition because people are starting to involve themselves more heavily and sometimes just for the fun of it. People, basically, are just contributing to the world of writing, even the lost ones. Apparently, this is the time for the Age of Literacy because we are all connected to it via Internet and such.

9. I think the “so what” to this entire article is that literacy is constantly being defined as something new, and it will always change. Now, we are a world that is defined through the Internet and social media. I think it is saying that literacy is everywhere and involves everything.

10. Literacy has a big relation to physically reading and writing text and how we should be able to do both just as the average person can.

Be Aware: Ambient Awareness

The main argument in “A Brave New World of Digital Intimacy” is about how Facebook and other social media websites can create a multitude of relationships among users. Mark Zuckerberg created the news feed to keep users updated with their friends and family members over Facebook. The news feed provides the most recent information that involves you, your friends or acquaintances. I believe that this definitely shortens our attention span, because right when we log on to the computer or click the app on our phone we are immediately exposed to social media. It is instant access, therefore we look and read data for a quick five minutes and then we lock our phones, or turn off our computers. I always enjoy the scrolling and the “quick data” kind of deal, but I do understand that it is probably not the best thing for literacy. We don’t read or analyze or dig deeper into anything, it is a quick scan and then we are finished.. until the next hour. The article refers to “ambient awareness” as being able to notice someone’s mood through his or her body language. I definitely do some cyber stalking myself sometimes, and if I see someone that I have never spoken to or met sometimes I will feel like I know them through looking through pictures or reading something they’ve posted. I feel as if I’ve got a good grip on who he or she is in reality, but truly I don’t. I do think there is a downfall to ambient awareness; you do not take the time to actually get to know someone, or ask someone about his or her day or their life for that matter because you feel like you already have a good idea of what is going on. Ambient awareness is slowly shutting out personal relationships with actual physical contact. An ambient update is an immediate update taken from social media. An example would be if you were sitting on your computer and your friend immediately posted something about her new baby brother or the amount of money he or she raised in a charity event. It keeps us closer to social media. The class discussions we have had on literacy often involve the connection to no analyzing and no deep structure digging, but only surface work. We are a people who are slowly being conformed into a life of slightly reading things… we skim; we read through it all so quickly, and forget that a deeper meaning exists. People in their 20’s feel pressured to stay connected to Facebook and other social media websites because they have to be on their A game for something that could be posted about them, or involve them in anyway. Things are posted constantly all throughout the hours.. constantly. I feel like this article follows very close behind the Gin article. I think it is an alert, notifying us to just be careful not to get sucked into a life of skimming and flipping without much involvement in digging deeper. We are being warned not to follow too closely behind cyber relationships and instant access.

New addition my vocabulary: Cognitive surplus

Cognitive surplus is the free time Americans have on their hands to engage in collaborative activities. The article is stating that although the Internet can be incredibly helpful with retrieving information, it is also damaging our cognitive process of making knowledge thoughts our own. Shrink is making the claim that our attention span is shortened now a days and our patience is fried. This article defines literacy as the intentional reading and writing done by a person that involves depth and pure focus and patience. The term “literacy” in this article relates back heavily to the previous articles. The terms are relatively the same. The article involves lots of repetition throughout, but one important phrase that caught my eye was “free time”. Coming into the article, I thought it would fall under the same categories as the previous articles and in a way, it did. But, it also provided new background on how Americans perceived free time and what cognitive surplus really is. The repetition reinforces that idea by using it time and time again. Americans use their free time to scrape the surface of information, and give no time into depth and deep comprehension.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

1. The article written by Nicholas Carr claims that the overuse of the Internet in place of reading print is changing the way we think. In the past, we have taken the time to analyze, discuss and store information. Now, we spend our time memorizing quick bits of information from the Internet. The Internet provides us with everything we want, but with all of that it contributes to a large amount of distraction. The Internet continues to grow and it is slowly wiping out our interest to dive into a book or article. We are turning into machines searching for the website source to help us process information.

2. The websites we go to every day have made it much simpler for us to find information, so our tendency to search through a dictionary, newspaper or encyclopedia is diminishing. The Internet is slowly tearing us apart from deep thought, comprehension and reflection; we are becoming uninterested. The Internet is slowly rewiring our minds from thinking deep to quick memorization.

3. Literacy is defined almost the same thing, but there is a stronger danger in print, not speech. Literacy is defined as being able to think about and analyze print over a generous amount of time as opposed to skimming and article over a few minutes.

4/5. The Internet has changed the processes of thought and reading. We are prone to skip over the depth and the meaning now and just look at the surface structure. This pulls away from the depth of the writing and just brings one to conclude that the simple words are all that matter.

6/7. The author uses older changes in technology to demonstrate what people thought about changes similar to this and how they actually turned out such as the transition to mechanical clocks. He also brings up how changes in medium change the way we write and read just like how Nietzsche changed what he wrote when he changed how he wrote. And finally he brought up HAL and how it was more emotional, more human, than the actual humans because the actual humans lost the reasoning skills of deep thought. This evidence was very effective for the reason that it showed relevance throughout different situations and examples. It was different but it all helped prove a different part of the same point.

8. The overall answer to the “so what” question is that the Internet is frying our brains and it is leading us into a world of full technology where we are slowly losing our ability to find depth and true meaning. The more we rely on this technology, the more we begin to lose depth. 

Miley Movement

I have chosen Miley Cyrus's Twitter account to analyze for Unit 3. I have chosen her account due to the fact that she posts very, very often and keeps the world updated on a regular basis with not only her music and her career, but also her personal life. She posts lots of pictures and retweets and responds to her fans on a daily basis. I want to analyze her account and digger deeper into how social media and fame has affected her life. I've always loved her music and she definitely is going on a spree of being kind of wild, but I still love her haha. I am excited to analyze her account and see how her life collides with social media!

ps. I am sorry this is late! I did not know we had a blog post Monday. Thank you for taking it!!!

a world of social media

1. I believe that I am a very modest person on social media. I love to post pictures on Instagram and I love being social, but I don’t think I put too much out there. I never post anything about my own opinions or personal thoughts or anything because I don’t care to offend anyone via twitter. That is just silly and I think people get worked up about that stuff way too often. So, I would say that I basically am an easy going, low key person on social media. I never really post anything that isn’t just normal behavior on social networking.

2. After looking at five of my recent instagram photos, I’ve come to the conclusion that they are very accurate with who I am. My past five photos are with me and another person or my family. I love being with people, I love my social life and sometimes that has a big negative effect on my studies.. hehe. Maybe I should cut down the social life a little more.

3. Well, I believe in modesty on social media. I think that people should have the freedom to do whatever they want on the social media, if they choose to offend people then that is what they desire. I do not think that I should put my entire self out there; you have to have some kind of boundaries. I have never felt pressured to do what I do; it is what I want to do. I want to keep myself to myself and have some modesty ya know.

4. Yes, considering I don’t post anything that isn’t appropriate for all ages, I think I would be fine! My pictures are modest and my tweets are usually a response to someone or something and they are pretty just not exciting, haha I am pretty easy on the social media. I am a sucker for it, it is very distracting.