After reading the essay High-Tech Trash by Chris Carroll from National Geographic, I thought about all the tech devices that I have discarded in my lifetime and thought to myself, could one of the millions of old monitors, cell phones, CPU's the author saw on muddy track in Ghana be one of mine? I am guilty of adding to the High-Tech Trash the author writes about and saw with his own eyes. I really never thought much about where all the old tech stuff goes after it's short life in the consumers hands. I can remember one day at my old job when a company donated their old monitors to the school. We went through the building and replaced so many of the really old monitors with the newer ones we received. The old monitors were to be picked up and discarded, there must have been over 25 at least. I really didn't give much thought to how they would be recycled, I wished I would have asked. I hope that they went to the Creative Recycling Systems company mentioned in the essay that recycles High-Tech trash safely here in America but I fear that they could have ended up in Carroll's trash in Ghana.
The author writes that we ship off most of our tech trash in America overseas to save money as it is too costly to recycle here. The buck is most certainly passed out of here, but at what cost to the environment, to the thousands of people that have been exposed to very serious toxins, to our "Go Green" pride? Why is that we need to save a dollar on something so serious? I am surprised that the government hasn't imposed a "Tech" tax where you have to pay an extra tax for the purchase of a high tech gadget or even have the manufacturers pay a tax to off set the extra money it would cost to safety dispose of the products and stop shipping them off. We have to pay a fee for the recycling of rubber tires why not a tech fee?
Why did we not see this coming? Why is Microsoft, Google, IBM, all the tech companies who make trillions of dollars on the backbone of the High-Tech trash not coming up with solutions. Why do we not create more of the recycling companies Carroll writes about in his essay and give Americans jobs and at the same time safety dispose of the trash? I feel that I have so many more questions than answers.
Carroll's essay is eye opening and informative, I am unsure of how many people have read this, but I would like to see it on the front page of the newspaper and have our current Presidential Administration take a hard stand on this problem. Perhaps dumping a days worth of "High-Tech Trash" on the floor of the Capital would make a point. I see it only getting worse by the second, as technology advances at lightening speed. Just recently in the news, the iPad was launched and after reading the reviews, they very well may end up in the trash before we know it and tomorrow yet again another high-tech device will be launched and so on and so on...I will end this post by saying...I have to go and take out the trash!
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Small object, large subject- The laptop tops the world!
If we are what we consume, then what claim does the availability and widespread popularity of the laptop computer make about contemporary American society? Ah, the laptop computer as my choice from the list of products for this assignment was a no brainer for me as it is one of my favorite pieces of technology, next to my iPod.
As a Baby Boomer I can speak to this question and topic from a unique insight. The "laptop" as society has nicknamed the computer, has brought information, communication,and generations together into a neat & tidy package and placed in all into our "laps".
I saw laptops at their newborn stage and watched them grow into what I consider to be young adults at this point in time as they still have some growing to do. In their early years, the laptop would only be used in big business and by what we might consider "geeks" or the really wealthy. Even though it was a personal computer,the laptop was not accessibly to the the average Joe, but the average Joe did know of their existence and was intrigued by the possibilities. Over time they crept into education, small business, as the companies looked at the consumers they could target the product changed to fit that need. The heavy, bulky, laptop with no battery, no flip screen, and high price tag was transformed into a thin, sleek, lightweight, extremely portable, battery driven tool and would become a true personal computer and sort of a second brain in the human body. Laptops can be now found in the average Joe's home and then taking it with him to his school and business!
The laptop allows it's user to sit on their couch, ride a train, bus, or airplane, drink coffee at a cybercafe, all the while traveling the world in a blink of eye, googling a topic of interest, re-connecting with family members across the globe, continue or even start their secondary education via online college, listen to music, watch a movie, create a blog, upload photos and even pay their bills in just one tap on a touchpad. The laptop has consumed the American consumers way of life, just as the introduction of Television has. I believe almost every house in America must have some sort of a TV. Laptops are everywhere, and like TV, cross generational.
I come from a 3 generation laptop user family. I helped my dad purchase one, and I giggled when he went out and bought a wireless mouse to use as the touchpad was tough for him to learn to use! LOL We use them all differently but yet, we do come together for communication on a regular basis. I find it funny when my daughter is in her room,myself plopped on the couch, but yet I am compelled to instant message her to ask her a question, rather than get up and walk 2 feet into the room, a extreme sign that we have become reliant on "instant" everything! Children have them at a younger and younger age, even targeted at the toddler age! I am guilty of purchasing one for my granddaughter who is only two years old, of course it not connected to the internet, but yet a self-contained bundle of picture cards,keys, and sounds and she knows exactly how to use it.
The laptop is the tool by which we do it all instantly, quickly, efficiently, but yet at what price? In my first blog I wrote about this instant information and what it is doing to society as far as our reading habits or the lack thereof. Yes, it most certainly has changed American society in a big way, yes the PC tower type computer began the change, but the laptop is pushing it forward and upward, the tower PC will become a thing of the past and everyone will have a laptop completely personalized to their personality. On the HP website you will find the following advertisement: "Mobilize Productivity. Get performance that never lets you down, no matter where you are" This is a how I feel what encompasses a true laptop, it is the tool that increases what you do and does it no matter where you are. It is one tool that will be in every American home sitting right next to TV remote and then brought outside into the world and used on the go, bringing some of our home with us along the way.
As a Baby Boomer I can speak to this question and topic from a unique insight. The "laptop" as society has nicknamed the computer, has brought information, communication,and generations together into a neat & tidy package and placed in all into our "laps".
I saw laptops at their newborn stage and watched them grow into what I consider to be young adults at this point in time as they still have some growing to do. In their early years, the laptop would only be used in big business and by what we might consider "geeks" or the really wealthy. Even though it was a personal computer,the laptop was not accessibly to the the average Joe, but the average Joe did know of their existence and was intrigued by the possibilities. Over time they crept into education, small business, as the companies looked at the consumers they could target the product changed to fit that need. The heavy, bulky, laptop with no battery, no flip screen, and high price tag was transformed into a thin, sleek, lightweight, extremely portable, battery driven tool and would become a true personal computer and sort of a second brain in the human body. Laptops can be now found in the average Joe's home and then taking it with him to his school and business!
The laptop allows it's user to sit on their couch, ride a train, bus, or airplane, drink coffee at a cybercafe, all the while traveling the world in a blink of eye, googling a topic of interest, re-connecting with family members across the globe, continue or even start their secondary education via online college, listen to music, watch a movie, create a blog, upload photos and even pay their bills in just one tap on a touchpad. The laptop has consumed the American consumers way of life, just as the introduction of Television has. I believe almost every house in America must have some sort of a TV. Laptops are everywhere, and like TV, cross generational.
I come from a 3 generation laptop user family. I helped my dad purchase one, and I giggled when he went out and bought a wireless mouse to use as the touchpad was tough for him to learn to use! LOL We use them all differently but yet, we do come together for communication on a regular basis. I find it funny when my daughter is in her room,myself plopped on the couch, but yet I am compelled to instant message her to ask her a question, rather than get up and walk 2 feet into the room, a extreme sign that we have become reliant on "instant" everything! Children have them at a younger and younger age, even targeted at the toddler age! I am guilty of purchasing one for my granddaughter who is only two years old, of course it not connected to the internet, but yet a self-contained bundle of picture cards,keys, and sounds and she knows exactly how to use it.
The laptop is the tool by which we do it all instantly, quickly, efficiently, but yet at what price? In my first blog I wrote about this instant information and what it is doing to society as far as our reading habits or the lack thereof. Yes, it most certainly has changed American society in a big way, yes the PC tower type computer began the change, but the laptop is pushing it forward and upward, the tower PC will become a thing of the past and everyone will have a laptop completely personalized to their personality. On the HP website you will find the following advertisement: "Mobilize Productivity. Get performance that never lets you down, no matter where you are" This is a how I feel what encompasses a true laptop, it is the tool that increases what you do and does it no matter where you are. It is one tool that will be in every American home sitting right next to TV remote and then brought outside into the world and used on the go, bringing some of our home with us along the way.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Abstract Following Toulmin's Model: On Carr's Essay
In Nicholas Carr's essay titled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" the author writes "what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation." Carr is making his claim that he is feeling the loss of what he had by using the Internet for most of his reading rather than his past ways. The author is disturbed by the impact of the information superhighway on himself, and found that there were others that were feeling the same way.
Carr's uses the example in which the supercomputer HAL in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey memory circuits are coldly disconnected, HAL begins pleading "Dave, my mind is going," and forlornly says "I can feel it, I can feel it". Carr then writes, he is "not thinking the way I used to think" he can feel it too. "The Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind". He feels that utilizing the net so much, he is losing his understanding of what he reads and his level of absorbing it all has diminished.
"I'm not the only one." in addition to "...literary types, most saying they're having similar experiences seem to back up his theory that this phenomena is actually taking place in society, it is not just him. Types of experiences stated in Carr's essay include, "the more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing." Bruce Friedman, a blogger "described how the Internet has altered his mental habits." and further states that he now has "...almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print". Futhermore "They found that people using the sites exhibited "a form of skimming activity," hopping from one source to another and rarely retuning to any source they'd already visited" as part of a five-year research program. Skimming, hopping, from source to source seems to diminish what we are actually absorbing. Maryanne Wolf a developmental psychologist explains "We can expect as well that the circuits woven by our use of the Net will be different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed works." Carr writes " If we lost those quiet spaces or fill them up with "content," we will sacrifice something important, not only in ourselves, but in our culture" furthermore writing "That's the essence of Kubrick's dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence." Playwright Richard Foreman's states "I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the "instantly available." The instantly available is the what the author is most concerned about, perhaps need to search and be a detective while reading, makes us remember and retain more of what we are actually reading.
In Carr's essay he makes good arguments for his title but, I feel that it isn't just google, but all of the instant reading and shortcuts we do in our society from a ton of different sources. Examples being text messages, news feeds along the bottom of our TVs, electronic billboards, twitter, even blogs! Is it really making us stupid or really just so overwhelmed to the point where our minds need more RAM or a faster processor? Since there isn't chance of that happening, perhaps we should find the time to pick up a good book once in awhile, so we don't get to stooopid.
Carr's uses the example in which the supercomputer HAL in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey memory circuits are coldly disconnected, HAL begins pleading "Dave, my mind is going," and forlornly says "I can feel it, I can feel it". Carr then writes, he is "not thinking the way I used to think" he can feel it too. "The Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind". He feels that utilizing the net so much, he is losing his understanding of what he reads and his level of absorbing it all has diminished.
"I'm not the only one." in addition to "...literary types, most saying they're having similar experiences seem to back up his theory that this phenomena is actually taking place in society, it is not just him. Types of experiences stated in Carr's essay include, "the more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing." Bruce Friedman, a blogger "described how the Internet has altered his mental habits." and further states that he now has "...almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print". Futhermore "They found that people using the sites exhibited "a form of skimming activity," hopping from one source to another and rarely retuning to any source they'd already visited" as part of a five-year research program. Skimming, hopping, from source to source seems to diminish what we are actually absorbing. Maryanne Wolf a developmental psychologist explains "We can expect as well that the circuits woven by our use of the Net will be different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed works." Carr writes " If we lost those quiet spaces or fill them up with "content," we will sacrifice something important, not only in ourselves, but in our culture" furthermore writing "That's the essence of Kubrick's dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence." Playwright Richard Foreman's states "I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the "instantly available." The instantly available is the what the author is most concerned about, perhaps need to search and be a detective while reading, makes us remember and retain more of what we are actually reading.
In Carr's essay he makes good arguments for his title but, I feel that it isn't just google, but all of the instant reading and shortcuts we do in our society from a ton of different sources. Examples being text messages, news feeds along the bottom of our TVs, electronic billboards, twitter, even blogs! Is it really making us stupid or really just so overwhelmed to the point where our minds need more RAM or a faster processor? Since there isn't chance of that happening, perhaps we should find the time to pick up a good book once in awhile, so we don't get to stooopid.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Is Google Making Us Stupid? A Response
I find that for my first blog, this to be a most timely subject matter as I started the first of the classes towards my degree in Information Technology at the same time I started this class. I love that technology will be used for an entirely different class and it was so unexpected. My assignment is to respond to the essay titled "Is Google Making Us Stupid" written by Nicholas Carr. The author writes that he is not alone in his thinking that all of the information we receive via technology is actually "reprograming us" and "The Net's intellectual ethic remains obscure". There is no research really being conducted on the impact of the internet and how it affects cognitive thinking.
I will find it interesting to see how this essay is viewed by the other students in my class as I know that I am the oldest by far, my views and opinion has been 45 years in the making, so I feel that I am truly prepared to blog on this with a sort of interesting insight. I remember seeing the first computer while I was in 3rd grade. It was a huge thing and all we did was make pictures with it, that all looked like LiteBrite artwork. Everything was what I would call "boxy", you couldn't make circles. When I graduated high school we were not even on the internet yet. It was also around the time that I was introduced "dittos" as we called them, today they are called photocopies and done in less than a second. Usually the teacher would hand the dittos out just after they ran them off, the purple ink would still be damp so you could press your finger down on the paper and get a word tatoo! Of course the letters were ususally created from a typewriter only later in high school from a word processor and then only one type of font! I remember the first calculator, fax machine(with the rolled shiny paper), push button telephone, answering machine, word processors and then into computers etc. I bring my past technology memories into this to help explain where I am coming from. I believe that I am from the generation that saw the technology born and watched it mature into what it is now. You would think that I was around since the stone age, but no, I am 45 and a baby boomer. Most of the people who will read this and respond will be classmates and were born into the technology of today, they will be from a different perspective then of mine for sure. I used encyclopedias, and newspapers, had to take hand written notes,complete written book reports along with artwork done by hand, never printed. It wasn't until late in high school when they had highlighters and white-out yes, you would hate it when you would have to rewrite it all over again! When I did research, it was work for sure, you would really have to dig in and buckle down. I would go to the library if I didn't have enough information in the World Book Enclopedia set my parents bought. Sometimes still not find the right book there or low and behold, someone took the book out before me, argh the work. You may say that it sounds like I am complaining about it, but that would not be correct, I am thankful for it. I can still remember some of the book reports that I created in years of schooling. One that comes to mind is one that I did on Oceanography, I can remember having to create a menu for a seafood resturant and the funny menu items I created but yet true to life. If you ask my 2 daughters ages 22 and almost 20 about any of their reports I doubt they would remember any of them in the short time they have been out of elementary school. I learned and retained the information and have carried it into my adulthood. I have a favorite saying that I created and it is perfect for this topic, I call this society that we live in now, "a cut-n-paste society". People will just cut and paste information and plug it into whatever it is that they are doing at the time, no thought behind it, probably not even checking to see if it all spelled correctly. How can anyone remember and retain informtion if you are not taking it all in and working with it in your mind and hands, it must somestimes be tangible. Yes, you can argue that there are times that you don't need to retain information for life as for examples past baseball scores, movie stars and the movies they were in, I am guilty of settling many an argument by running to the laptop typing in my question and asking Jeeves, but what I am talking about is really geared towards other types of situtations where you need to learn and grasp the material that you are reading about. We are suffering from "information overload" as quoted by Playwright Richard Foremen in a recent essay and therefore losing complex thinking. It is all at our fingertips instantly rather than taking the time to read, and research, which I believe helps us retain the subject matter by the steps we take to get the information. We need to think for ourselves, rather then have it all done for us, which is how one learns to be self sufficient and be your own thinker. When surfing the web you do just that, surf. You ride the top of wave and then into the center, but you never really get into all of it and you are going to fast. Hyperlinking to the middle of an article rather then reading through the entire article, you could miss really important information that you didn't even realize you needed.
While reading this you may believe that I am not a fan of all the technology available to us while googling, not the case at all, I have a passion for it and embrace it whole heartily. I owned a computer that had floppy discs and a green screen and thought it was just the cats meow, I own an iPod, a digital camera, a laptop and a cell phone. I just believe that you have take it for what it is worth and use it to the total potential. For example try and google information and find out if the book is available in your local library or try and not focus on the ads along the sides while you are looking up a subject. Don't click all the hyperlinks and get off topic. Stay on a page and look around, scroll to the bottom, you never know what you will find. Print out pages and re-read, rather than save a copy on your computer. Take hand written notes rather than cut and paste the information, write down the website for future reference. The world wide web is just mind boggling, but don't let it boggle you stupid, boggle you smart. LOL
I will find it interesting to see how this essay is viewed by the other students in my class as I know that I am the oldest by far, my views and opinion has been 45 years in the making, so I feel that I am truly prepared to blog on this with a sort of interesting insight. I remember seeing the first computer while I was in 3rd grade. It was a huge thing and all we did was make pictures with it, that all looked like LiteBrite artwork. Everything was what I would call "boxy", you couldn't make circles. When I graduated high school we were not even on the internet yet. It was also around the time that I was introduced "dittos" as we called them, today they are called photocopies and done in less than a second. Usually the teacher would hand the dittos out just after they ran them off, the purple ink would still be damp so you could press your finger down on the paper and get a word tatoo! Of course the letters were ususally created from a typewriter only later in high school from a word processor and then only one type of font! I remember the first calculator, fax machine(with the rolled shiny paper), push button telephone, answering machine, word processors and then into computers etc. I bring my past technology memories into this to help explain where I am coming from. I believe that I am from the generation that saw the technology born and watched it mature into what it is now. You would think that I was around since the stone age, but no, I am 45 and a baby boomer. Most of the people who will read this and respond will be classmates and were born into the technology of today, they will be from a different perspective then of mine for sure. I used encyclopedias, and newspapers, had to take hand written notes,complete written book reports along with artwork done by hand, never printed. It wasn't until late in high school when they had highlighters and white-out yes, you would hate it when you would have to rewrite it all over again! When I did research, it was work for sure, you would really have to dig in and buckle down. I would go to the library if I didn't have enough information in the World Book Enclopedia set my parents bought. Sometimes still not find the right book there or low and behold, someone took the book out before me, argh the work. You may say that it sounds like I am complaining about it, but that would not be correct, I am thankful for it. I can still remember some of the book reports that I created in years of schooling. One that comes to mind is one that I did on Oceanography, I can remember having to create a menu for a seafood resturant and the funny menu items I created but yet true to life. If you ask my 2 daughters ages 22 and almost 20 about any of their reports I doubt they would remember any of them in the short time they have been out of elementary school. I learned and retained the information and have carried it into my adulthood. I have a favorite saying that I created and it is perfect for this topic, I call this society that we live in now, "a cut-n-paste society". People will just cut and paste information and plug it into whatever it is that they are doing at the time, no thought behind it, probably not even checking to see if it all spelled correctly. How can anyone remember and retain informtion if you are not taking it all in and working with it in your mind and hands, it must somestimes be tangible. Yes, you can argue that there are times that you don't need to retain information for life as for examples past baseball scores, movie stars and the movies they were in, I am guilty of settling many an argument by running to the laptop typing in my question and asking Jeeves, but what I am talking about is really geared towards other types of situtations where you need to learn and grasp the material that you are reading about. We are suffering from "information overload" as quoted by Playwright Richard Foremen in a recent essay and therefore losing complex thinking. It is all at our fingertips instantly rather than taking the time to read, and research, which I believe helps us retain the subject matter by the steps we take to get the information. We need to think for ourselves, rather then have it all done for us, which is how one learns to be self sufficient and be your own thinker. When surfing the web you do just that, surf. You ride the top of wave and then into the center, but you never really get into all of it and you are going to fast. Hyperlinking to the middle of an article rather then reading through the entire article, you could miss really important information that you didn't even realize you needed.
While reading this you may believe that I am not a fan of all the technology available to us while googling, not the case at all, I have a passion for it and embrace it whole heartily. I owned a computer that had floppy discs and a green screen and thought it was just the cats meow, I own an iPod, a digital camera, a laptop and a cell phone. I just believe that you have take it for what it is worth and use it to the total potential. For example try and google information and find out if the book is available in your local library or try and not focus on the ads along the sides while you are looking up a subject. Don't click all the hyperlinks and get off topic. Stay on a page and look around, scroll to the bottom, you never know what you will find. Print out pages and re-read, rather than save a copy on your computer. Take hand written notes rather than cut and paste the information, write down the website for future reference. The world wide web is just mind boggling, but don't let it boggle you stupid, boggle you smart. LOL
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