"Is Google Making Us Stupid"

In Nicholas Carr's article "Is Google Making Us Stupid" he mentions that it is very hard for him to concentrate when reading a regular book or article, becuase he is so used to the easy acces of information by using Google and other internet databases to give him the information the he needs at an instant.  Carr says that he loses focus after he reaches the second or third page of what he is reading, because he is so used to having that instant gratification factor.  I know what he is talking about, because when I go to read a long section in a book, especially one that I'm not interested in, I'm dreading reading those pages, and wish that I could just click on something to automatically tell me what happens.  Other people who were quoted in Carr's article have either completely given up reading books altogether, or  they can only read short passages of text at a time.  These people are putting the blame on their use of the internet.  When Nietzsche started losing his sight, he was introduced to the type-writer, and it changed his writing style.  So it was also thought, that our writing styles would changed based on what kind of equipment we were using, whether it was a type-writer, or pen.  In today's world you could say we change our writing styles based on whether we are texting or writing and english paper.

"Becoming Screen Literate"

In Kevin Kelly's article, "Becoming Screen Literate", he discussed how the media is changing and has changed over the years.  Things are deffinately changing for us as students, because even though we grew up in the age of books, now many people are forgoing paperbacks,and are downloading whatever they want to read, whether it is a magazine, newspaper, or novel, it can be downlaoded onto a Kindle or Nook.  It actually makes more sense to use a Kindle or Nook, because they can store many books, at a time and with a paperback you only have that one book unless you go buy another one.  Also, the language we use is changing too.  When text messaging people have a language that they tend to use, they will shorten words, and use acronyms. This sometimes gets people into trouble, because they want to bring their text messaging language into their school assignments, putting shorthand into an english paper isn't going to get you a decent grade.  You have to realize when to write correctly, and when your friends don't care if you spell something wrong, because they probably do too. 

Waiting and "The Wilderness Downtown"

During class on Friday we listend to "We Used to Wait" performed by Arcade Fire.  By listening to the song and really reading over the lyrics several times, I took the meaning of the song, to be that the writer literally was waiting on a letter.  Before we had computers to write e-mails you had to write your letters by hand, walk them to the mailbox, and wait on a reply from the person that you sent it to. The lyrics were interpreted in other ways by some of the other students in the class, such as that technology is replacing old-fashioned letter writing.  In class on Friday we also went to a website www.thewildernessdowntown.com that integrated the Arcade Fire song with Google, to show a man running down the street.  You put your address, or any address in the search box, and the man will run to your house.  I thought that this was a neat website, because it used different forms of media to catch our eyes.  It had music, video, and the pop-up screens that weren't annoying advertisements made it fun to watch, but you have to make sure that you are using Firefox or Google Chrome when watching the video, because it doesn't work well with Internet Explorer.

Welcome to the Future!

After watching Brad Paisley's "Welcome to the Future" video, we were asked to blog about what we thought the future was going to be like.  When listening to the song you can tell that Brad Paisley, had such an optimistic outlook on how he wanted his future to be.  When I was younger, I had no idea at how my future was going to pan out, I just knew that I wanted to learn how to drive and graduate high school.  Now that I have accomplished both of those things, I wish that I could sometimes stop driving and learn how to fly a helicopter or use a jetpack, because I have terrible road rage when traffic gets bad.  Looking ahead to the future that is ahead of me now, I hope that I will be able to graduate from Limestone next year and start a career.  Other than that I'm not sure what the future holds, as crazy as the world is today, you can't really guess what things are going to be like, you can only hope for the best.