What I took away from the class

This class really brought to my attention how dependent we are as a country on technology and globally what we have done to ourselves. We can blame no one else but ourselves for constructing our society the way it is which is dependent on something that is going to kill us some day. The best way to describe it is a drug attic that is dependent on his drugs, that is what we have done is made it so our society (the drug addict) is dependent on technology (the drug). Before this class I guess it never really occurred to me how much of a problem this actually was. This class opened my eyes to the issue and honestly put some fear in me because I don’t know how and if it is even fixable.  The demise of our environment is certainly on its way unless we make significant changes.

Before you know it we will not care about reality we will be far more tied up in online worlds and our multiple identities or ourselves to care about how we appear in real life. We are so concerned with presenting our ideal selves online to other people that it is almost sickening. The reason we are able to do this is the amount of control we have over our presentations online we can literally post exactly what we want and how we want to appear. The study of these social networks and online dating sites has proven how common it is to show a false presentation of oneself over the internet. Seeing that we practically live in these online worlds this is pretty scary.

This class has really made me take a step back and look at myself in the mirror and make sure that I do not fall into the trap of becoming so in love and addicted to technology where I lose sight of what reality really is. After taking this class I am really going to try to change my approach to technology, I actually modified my face book and took most of the personal information that I have about myself on it off because I really don’t feel comfortable anymore with people constantly looking at my personal information every day. I also am never getting a new phone until my current phone is completely incapable of working anymore because there is no need to do so. I have severely cut back on my texting and when I am headed out to classes and to study I don’t even bring my phone with me anymore. It is actually quite funny to see people’s reactions when I see them and I don’t have my phone and they have been trying to contact me, people get pissed off and it just makes it more evident to me how much we rely on technology. I am glad I took this class because it really opened my eyes to a major issue and helped me learn about the up and coming of social networks and the power that lies within these different networks such as facebook.

Blog #3 about final paper

For my final I did question number 2 which dealt with Slade’s text “Made to Break”. After writing the paper I realized how hard it is going to be for not only our country to continue with the going green movement but how hard it will be globally. The arguments that are evidence that is presented in the book is only just a start to the reasons of why it will be so hard. After doing a little outside research on the topic and understanding the mindsets of other communist countries I really do believe that our environment is in serious danger. Although the only way to fix our environment is to go green I really don’t think it is logical or economical, globally we have gone too far and it is going to be very difficult to turn it around.

            I do also think that it can be done with recent research being done on how to eliminate so many of these different toxins to our earth.  In order to succeed with the movement we need people all around the world to by in and not just people in our nation because our nation is just a fraction of the whole equation. The part that is so scary to me is the rate that other countries are becoming so dependent on technology like are country. Slade has a brief portion of his book where he talks about how fast china, one of the most populated countries in the world, is becoming dependent on technology more rapidly than any other country ever has. Seeing that other countries that are far more populates are becoming so reliant on all of this technology that is available is going to make it even more difficult.

            Even getting people on board in the United States is going to be so hard. All producers are doing is giving the people what they desire so it is interesting to see how many people just point the finger at the producers when the people who are pointing the finger a lot of the time are purchasing these products that are producing all of this e-waist. If we really want to go green we need to stop cold turkey with purchasing products that have harmful chemicals in them that can potentially ruin our environment. The problem to this is it will be so difficult to control in other countries that are so rapidly forming such a strong addiction to technology.

Survey conducted for final

I decided to conduct a survey on the Rutgers campus in order to help me provide evidence for the question that I am answering. I am answering question 2 and I conducted a survey in front of Brower. I thought up a short question that would take minimal time to answer to attract participants. The question was made to show the dependence on disposable products in our society. The question was "List 1 disposable product that you use every day and rely heavily on?” I made the question short and the answer so it would literally take up about 10 seconds of their time and prove my point. I made sure I asked an even number of girls to guys, it ended up being 15 men and 15 women. The answers were very close to what I thought they would be. Every single woman admitted that they relied heavily on disposable razors, which was the most common answer for most women. For men a lot of them stated that they used disposable silverware, plates, bowls, etc. in their apartments in order to cut down on washing dishes and such. Some of them also states that they went through a new role of paper towels almost every other day. Some men also said that they used disposable razors as well. The reason that I conducted this survey was to prove how heavily our culture is on disposable products. Even though this is only a minor aspect of what the book talks about it still proves a good point seeing how heavily people rely on disposable products. I will discuss the findings to my survey much more in depth in my paper I just wanted to show how important products like this are to our society.           

This just shows you how hard it will be for our society to “go green”. Most people don’t really pay much attention to going green and only go green when it is convenient for them and would never go out of their way to help the movement. It is almost funny to me when I see water companies such as Poland spring trying to make their water bottles more “green” by using less plastic. Most people buying these products don’t even know that they are contributing to the movement of going green and could really care less. I am not against the movement I just think it will not succeed seeing how our society is run by technology and we are constantly replacing technology that we own with new technology. The motives in our society are far to money based for people to go green. If our country is going to change then it has to be a forced change that makes people go green instead of just hoping people will jump on the band wagon. I know from personal experiences that people are far too caught up in making money and having the latest technology to care about the idea of going green. People are actually more concerned of self promotion of themselves online than in real life which is another reason why I think going green will not succeed.

First blog on process of final

For my final I decided to answer the question that deals with the book “Made to break”. I personally found this book to be one of the most interesting ones that we have read. Another reason why I want to do this is because I am big on saving the environment and I believe that our environment within the next 150 years if we continue to stay at the pace that we are at with a disposable society will be completely destroyed.  Also the fact that we continue to throw out electronics that contain toxins to our environment is also going to contribute to the demise of our ecosystem. I am really interested to do some outside research in finding out what college students around Rutgers think of the situation. I also want to conduct some surveys to find out just about how much waist an average person generates. I honestly believe it is too late to try and start going green because people are far too caught up in their online worlds to even care. I think most people contribute to the going green movement only when it is convenient and most people would never think to go out of their way to contribute. Our society is far to based off convenience and accessibility to the internet to care about going green. The only way we would be able to save our environment somewhat is if technology was built to last for about ten times the time it is currently built to last for. I am looking forward to looking into this question much further in depth and learning much more about the topic. Hopefully there is not a set “death date” with our own environment.

Pg's 107-214 Facebook effect

            In pages 107-214 the author opens my eyes to some key aspects of how facebook took off and how many other businesses in our culture can take off. In chapter 5 the book goes into discusses all the investment offers that facebook was receiving and the magnitude of the offers. The author states “He had signed the papers to close the Accel investment.” (Pg. 127).  Zuckerberg took the money because this would allow his business to grow to the max potential. The real issue that was brought up for me was the importance of developing faith in your business in this culture. All of these investors had massive faith in Zuckerberg’s company because they could see the potential growth in it. In our culture it is important to develop faith in the people surrounding the company or else the company will fail because there will be no belief in the company and no one will want to invest in it. Most successful businesses have investors in their companies because that is what is needed in order to help the business grow. If no one believed in facebook and its users were the only thing pushing it is would be tough because there would be no money there to help the business grow. That’s why if everyone believes and has faith in a company then investors will show interest and the business will be a success rather than not.

            In chapter 6 the book goes into discussing how these investments which they talk about in the previous chapter made it seem like there was no limits on the potential growth of facebook. This makes sense to me because they received a lot of money in investments. In our culture it almost seems like when the money is there then there are no limits to what you can do, you can literally do almost anything. That just goes to show you how are culture is run. Where there is money there is power in our culture which is the sad truth. Our society in this country revolves around money. The book quotes “Facebooks first priority was hiring more people. Now there was money for it” (Pg. 128). This quote displayed an interesting message to me in terms of showing me what money was actually capable of doing in a society like ours. It is quite simple for me to see that money lets you do whatever you want in our society because it is what our society is based on.

            In chapter 7 the book talks about the step from the site just being a college audience to moving to just about every one having access to the site. The site now not only targeted college students but all students and also not only students but anyone who wanted to stay connected to their friends. The book states “This is astonishing customer loyalty for any internet service.” (Pg. 156). This quote just goes to show the importance of the users/customers of anything and developing that loyalty in them by providing a great service. You have to know you’re doing something right when customers are that loyal. Without this loyalty a business or a website would be absolutely nothing. It is important for business owners like Zuckerberg to realize the importance of keeping the users and customers happy. In any business that forms in our culture today should primarily revolve around the customers.

            Chapter 8 and 9 go into discussing the importance of Zuckerberg in beginning to think and act more like a CEO and the influence photos have on facebook. I find it really interesting that photos have such an impact on the website. It would have never occurred to me that they could be so powerful and could be everything the people wanted. The author states “…that made photos so successful.” (pg. 180).  The influence of photos was always a mystery to me and I always tried to figure out what it was that made them so powerful. I believe it’s the power of actually seeing something rather than reading or hearing something. You actually grasp the full affects of what someone was doing or what they did. When you just hear about it you form your own image of something but now people have images already made for them on facebook which is absolutely crazy.

            Chapter 10 which is the last chapter on this blog was the chapter I was most excited to blog about, it talks about the privacy of facebook. The book quotes “offer adult users a both work profile and “fun and social profile””. (pg. 199). I believe that our privacy is slowly diminishing to nothing. Although we choose what we want to post on facebook it is still a mystery to my where our privacy has gone and if we will ever get it back. I personally don’t really know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. I believe that people have 2 identities as well; an online identity and a real life identity and I think that our values have been totally twisted. I think our morals and values of our online worlds are relaying into our real lives and screwing up the flow of things.  

Midterm follow up blog

Wikipedia can absolutely not be used as a scholarly source. Here are the reasons why is shouldn’t be used as a scholarly source. Anybody can go on an article and write whatever they want weather it is accurate or not. A scholarly source needs to be perfect there cannot be any false information in the article and with Wikipedia there could be false information because anybody can write whatever they want. In our group findings we did find that most of the information was accurate and the factually stated information was 99% on the dime but that 1% that isn’t there is what makes it not a scholarly article for me. I found a lot of strengths for Wikipedia. The first one I found is that it is a great starting point to get a broad overview of a topic that you are studying. If you have a topic that you have no idea about hen Wikipedia is defiantly the place to start, with saying that you can’t rely on the full validity of it but it can help fill in a lot of blanks for you. Whatever you gather reading a Wikipedia article needs to be verified in other sources. The weakness is quite obvious; it is not 100% accurate of a source. This is a huge weakness but you can use Wikipedia for starting points and getting educated on a topic in a short amount of time.

            These strengths and weaknesses tell me a ton about American culture. Although Wikipedia is not a scholarly source it is used like one all the time in colleges and high schools. I actually catch friend’s writing papers off stuff they pull from Wikipedia all the time which scares me. To me Wikipedia is just sending out culture down a path of laziness and carelessness. In our society already we are far to spoiled with all of our gadgets that we carry around and how easy it is to access information no matter where you are. On a side note I felt it is necessary to mention that I was hiking last weekend with one of my best friends who has the new i-phone and we took a break and he decided to Skype with his girlfriend on his built in web cam. I felt like he ruined the hiking trip because I wanted to get away from this kind of stuff and I feel like this technology is completely invading my privacy. This is just an example of how easy it is to access others and information and now with Wikipedia you can literally type in just about anything and there is a Wikipedia article on it. Even scarier to me is that when these students receive their papers back they are receiving good grades on the papers that they designed around Wikipedia. Our future is a future of laziness in my opinion and I don’t think many can throw a valid argument back and say our future is not headed for a lazy and careless culture. Some might even argue that we are already a lazy and careless culture!

            I learned a lot from this midterm assignment. I can see now how biased sources can be not just Wikipedia. I learned how important it is that while doing research on a topic that Wikipedia can serve as a great starting point but it is very important to use scholarly articles while conducting research because it could lead to problems such as false information if you do not seek scholarly articles. The last thing that I can take away from this project is that it is so important not to fall into the trap of laziness that our culture is so destined for. Instead of just resorting to easy findings such as Wikipedia it pays off much more just to find scholarly articles and do the job right.

Facebook effect Pg's 1-106

The first four chapters of the book “The facebook Effect” was very interesting and went over some interesting points that brought in connections between the book and our culture of technology. Chapter 1 starts out just giving some history on Zuckerberg and gives us background information about him. The chapter just talks about how facebook got started and discusses some of his smaller web projects that he worked on before facebook. It talks about his experience at Harvard and the motivation behind his creation of facebook which was creating a directory based on real information about students. An interesting point that I took from this chapter that I can link into American culture is the way that Zuckerberg started is the way that most people get started on something like a business or a successful website. Our culture has such a competitive mindset that people like Zuckerberg even when they think that it won’t be successful continue to try to make a success out of something. I believe that this is one of the things that drive America to make it what it is which our competitive spirit is.

In the second chapter of the book it goes into discussing Zuckerberg moving to Palo Alto California for reasons of his newly created website. The book states “Zuckerberg and Moskovitz took about 5 minutes to decide they wouldn’t return to Harvard” (Pg.64). I drew an interesting tie with this quote to American culture. Every day in our culture you see people making sacrifices in order to become successful. For example you look at Bill Gates who is one of the richest men in the world; he dropped out of school to work on Microsoft. In our culture in order for people to survive people need to make sacrifices like Zuckerberg did in dropping out of Harvard, which I would say is a pretty big sacrifice. Technology has made it easy for us as people to be more ok with making such big sacrifices such as dropping out of school because it has opened so many more windows in online worlds for example like facebook.

In chapter 3 the book goes on to discuss in a nut shell the power of social networking and the internet and the capabilities that it has. The book quotes “Social networking has now extended across the entire planet” (Pg. 85). This quote just shows the power of a social networking site like facebook. It is crazy to think how powerful something like this is. This site is worth mass amounts of money and there are millions of users that can connect all over the world. The meaning of “location” is almost completely eliminated with sites like this. In online worlds there is really no such thing as location because weather your chatting on facebook chat with someone in China or someone down the street it doesn’t matter, because in the online world you’re the same distance away, it is absolutely mind boggling to think about this. I think that we as a culture are just getting started, I am just waiting for the computer to bring other sense in such as smell and feeling into the equation!

In chapter 4 the book goes into more depth about discussing facebook and the process it took to get where it is today. The book quotes on page 91 “You were asked to list your relationship status and weather you were interested in men or women.” The reason that this quote caught my attention is because I think that this is a prime example of how the internet is slowly eliminating our cultures privacy completely. I’m not saying that this is the only way because there are a million other examples of how it is reducing privacy but this is one example. Our culture is slowly handing over privacy little by little and eventually it will be completely gone. This site allows people to see when and where you were somewhere and exactly what you were doing at a certain time which I think is absolutely ridiculous. I personally do not have facebook for the sole reason that I would like some sort of privacy in my life and I don’t like to be stalked by people wondering what I was doing on a Saturday night and who I was hanging out with. This reduction of privacy is a huge issue in our culture today and it certainly needs to be addressed.

Blog "Made to Break" Chapters 7-9

In the last three chapters of the book “Made to Break” the author displays a lot of interesting points that really stuck out to me. He also poses some arguments in the reading that I can’t say that I agree with totally. In Chapter 7 Slade discusses the idea of chips entering society and at the start of a shift into an information society, which clearly has continued shifting and still is today when you analyze our society and observe how information based it is. The chapter goes into talking about the start of an information society was the start of what we know as e-waist. At this point (1960’s) technology was becoming smaller and more portable, thanks to microchips. The author states “…were driving the repetitive consumption of a variety of new products that now included digital watches, calculators, computers, and computer software.” (Pg. 198).  This quote really stuck out to me because even today I see this trend of repetitive consumption with things such as I-pods, cell phones, watches, and other electronic devices with microchips. You see this idea of product addiction as well come up because people constantly want the new models so even if their watches don’t fail they will still repetitively consume these products. The interesting part of “miniaturization” that they talk about in this chapter is products can only get so small. They can only make products so small before they have to start changing the ways that they market and sell the products, I believe that in the future the idea of repetitive consumption will be much harder because it is going to get much harder to change a product to the point where the customer feels they should by the new one.  The chapter also goes into discussing the slide rule. The book quotes “The obsolescence of the skill set that older generation engineers possessed.” (pg. 203). Although the slide rule is dead for the most part, if you look at this quote deeper you can see how crazy it is. When you think about it if there was only one person that possessed the skill to run a massive program such as the internet or a certain web site that people relied on this could cause huge problems if this person kept to themselves or something happened to that individual. It’s scary to think about this because our society is so reliant on technology so if something were to occur to someone that poses skill sets that no one else does it could cause huge problems for our society.   

In chapter 8 the book discusses the idea of “weaponizing” planned obsolescence. The chapter also goes into discussing the idea industrial espionage but the main thing I want to focus on for this chapter is a quote that I found intriguing was on page 228, the quote states “Throwing away… May soon lead us to feel that marriages (and other personal relationships) are throw away items as well.” (pg. 228). The fact that the book referred to marriage as an item totally caught me off guard. I cannot believe that our grasp on items of technology has gotten so lost where we can refer to a personal relationship as an item. This is a statement that I can agree with in a lot of ways which is even scarier to me. If you look at the value of marriage in the modern day it is not nearly as significant as it used to be. I blame this a lot on technology itself because it makes us loose grasp of reality in a lot of ways. The number of divorces in the modern day is significantly higher than the numbers of the past. The main reason that I personally blame this on technology is because technology invades physical interaction between humans. Technology over online worlds has increased significantly and interaction in the household because of this has certainly decreased because people are so caught up in their online worlds. The values and morals are slowly diminishing because of technology and its only a matter of time before the internet will control our children and make them socially illiterate in situations where they have to physically interact with people face to face.

Chapter 9 which is the last chapter in the book discusses cell phones in our culture. The life span on cell phones is note nearly what it should be and creates massive amounts of e-waist. It discusses that miniaturization, psychological obsolescence, and technological obsolescence are all factors in our issue of e-waist. The book talks about why e-waist occurs and shortly after it displays a fascinating quote. The book states “By 2002 over 130 million still-working portable phones were retired in the United states”. (Pg. 263). This is a massive reason as to why e-waist is a huge problem. People are throwing away perfectly good technology, this is a sign of our culture becoming steps closer to us all being technology addicts. Product addiction has everything to do with people throwing away perfectly good equipment for the sole reason they want the latest stuff. I am calling it now that eventually we are not going to be able to do this anymore because we are producing so much waist that the government is going to have to step in and put a stop to it. if people continue to buy and get rid of perfectly good technology we are going to have a huge problem on our hands and eventually our environment will be completely destroyed. Before you know it we’ll be sending people to the moon and other planets to live because the earth will no longer livable! This is a scary thought but in the future if we continue like we are going now I truly believe that we won’t be able to live on the earth because of all the damage we are doing to it. the end of the book discusses some solutions to e-waist and I can see where the author is coming from and I agree with his arguments but I also think the government definitely needs to brainstorm more ideas and put regulations on this because if they don’t then our earth will slowly be destroyed.

Chapters 4-7 "Made To Break"

In chapters 4 through 7 in “Made to break it discusses a lot of interesting points. In chapter 4 I took note of quite a few interesting points. The chapter discusses eliminating static on radio communication and our “electronic war” throughout World War 2. On page 91 the book states “…would soon make radio completely obsolete-the two could not co-exist on the airwaves, he thought.” (Pg. 91). I find this quote to be very interesting because it relates so directly to our culture today. This man Sarnoff did not even think it is possible to have radio and T.V at the same time because of the airwaves and yet he was so wrong. If you look at our culture today it is clear that T.V and the radio are still two huge industries for marketing and entertainment. I see this all the time in American culture with new inventions. People are constantly doing things that people never even thought was possible. For example in our culture today that no one ever thought was possible was having the internet on your phone and literally having access to the internet just about every moment no matter where you are. This really makes me question what the limit is on what we can do because there are things that I could think of that I could say would never be possible, but people 100 years ago said the same exact thing to the technology we have today. Another cool point I took from the chapter is the idea of miniaturation which is a cost cutting strategy during the depression. I found this cool because I also see cost cutting strategies all the time in America. Businesses and business owners are constantly trying to cut costs so they can make the most profit from their business.

In chapter 5 the book discusses the silk trade and the use of chemistry in our culture. The chapter also discusses the idea of suburban obsolescence and analog versus digital computing. In this chapter I could help but to take note of an interesting marketing technique that I see all the time in American culture. On page 126 the book states “…marketing campaign emphasizing voluntary silk deprivation, anti Japanese patriotism, and product superiority.” (Pg.126). Patriotism in America has always been a very clever technique in advertising for products in not only technology but in all aspects of buying and selling no matter what it is. For some reason this mentality of being “American” is very important to a lot of people. In our culture we always want to be better than all other cultures and I believe that this is one way that we as a culture attempts to capture this. So when people see products that are marketed in this technique people say I’m going to by the American brand because I want to be a true American. As dumb and stupid as it sounds it is true in so many ways. Take the car industry for example, I see people buying American made cars just because they don’t want to buy cars that are made in other countries and support other economies and cultures, even though the reality of it is foreign made cars may be much better than American made cars.

In chapter 6 it discusses the 50’s and the 60’s and a lot of interesting topics in these 2 decades. It discusses automobile obsolescence after the Korean War and the importance of the automobile industry. It talks about our societies growing lack of tolerance for waist and with planned obsolescence there is bound to be a problem. The point that I took that I found so interesting was on page 161 where it states, “The Waste Makers placed responsibility for waste on the consuming public itself” (Pg. 161). This book that was written during the time period flipped it around and put the issue of waist on the American public for constantly buying. This made me think back to the idea of product addiction. I can absolutely agree with the point that this book is making because the American culture is constantly buying stuff that they don’t really need. For example, my brother has a phone that he didn’t like and he threw it out and bought a blackberry just because he didn’t like it. This is a common trend with Americans because they always want better things. People aren’t satisfied with the 50 inch Televisions they want the 60 inches and so on.  Some people in our culture are literally addicted to buying new technology, I actually believe that people get a natural high when they buy a new product and get to use it for the first time. Just like a drug addict has cravings for drugs, a technology addict has cravings for new technology. My honest opinion is that we are all guilty of being technology addicts; I can’t say I’m innocent because I can say that I always want nice things such as T.V’s and nice cell phones. The part that scares me is where will put all of this waist when it builds up so much that we literally have no more space for it. With technology addicts running around, we as a culture will certainly have to find other strategies for storing the entire waist that we produce.

Chapters 1-3 "Made to Break"

Pg’s 1-81 of the book “Made to Break” written by Giles Slade covers the first 3 chapters of the book. Chapter 1 discusses the idea of repetitive consumption and how this is achieved in American society. There are a lot of brilliant ideas on how it was achieved in the past and how I can see it still being achieved in today’s technological reliant society in America. The first idea that chapter 1 discusses is the idea of branding and packaging both of which are still very apparent in today’s society. Businesses began marking their product with a distinct brand and packing their product in fancy packaging. I know that in today’s society brand for a lot of people means everything along with the nice packing that it will sometimes comes in. This is American’s mentality for always wanting the best. The next idea that was talked about I found to be the most brilliant of the chapter which was the idea of a disposable culture. This forces consumers for products to constantly be throwing their products away and buying new ones. The book quotes on pg. 13 “…demand seemed endless”. This is absolutely true; this creates an endless demand for these products such as disposable razors which they discuss in the book and also repetitive consumption which is the producer’s goal. The part of this idea that is so crazy to me is that when you examine our culture today you can see how far we have come. You look at so many different household things like Clorox wipes, paper towels, disposable razors, and so many more.

In chapter 2 it talks about psychological obsolescence versus technological obsolescence. A really interesting quote that I pulled from chapter 2 goes as follows, “psychological obsolescence was superior to technological obsolescence because it was considerably cheaper to create” (pg. 36). This portrays the American business sense perfectly because this is basically saying that business owners modify products in the cheapest way to renew demand for what is almost the same product. The example that this made me think of in our culture today is I-pods. Apple continues to come out with all of these new I-pods that look different and are more attractive to the eye when in reality they do the exact same things. People are always craving the most up to date products when it comes to technology. The book discusses cars and another quote from chapter 2 states “…as a characteristic of the very best luxury cars of the day” (Pg.43). Car makers are constantly coming out with new luxury editions to basically say to their buyer that their current car is out of date and not as good as what the latest edition is, and this goes with any technology. This brings into play product addiction which chapter 2 also discusses. The definition of addiction is to form a habit and be dependent on something; in this case it is technology. As a culture we have always been addicted to technology because we depend on it. If you look at today’s culture with computers you can see how dependant we have become on it and it is almost scary. There is no doubt in my mind that product addiction is still present today and will always be present, and if anything the addiction will only get stronger.

Chapter 3 discusses briefly the idea of advertising in American culture and also the idea of progressive obsolesce which is continuously buying products for up to datedness’. This chapter is based off ideas that are formed in the great depression. Progressive obsolescence was designed to stimulate the economy. The idea that I found most interesting in this chapter is the idea of adulteration. This is the idea of diluting a product in order to make more money. This was present during the great depression and is not necessarily present today but the mind set is certainly present in today’s culture. This shows that people will literally do anything for money and a lot of people in our culture are extremely greedy. The mentality of making money in our culture overrides just about anything and for a lot of people it is their number one priority. The idea of death dating is also very interesting to me. I pulled a quote from chapter 3 that goes as follows “upon roads that fall into immediate decay, upon motors that must be junked in a few years…” (pg. 78). This quote is basically saying that if we continue to make technology and keep buying new technology because it breaks that we will eventually end up with mass amounts of waist. Death dating is deadly for our country in my opinion and should be illegal. As I try to make out the future I can certainly see America completely destroyed by technology. I believe that people really stray away from the beauty of the earth because of technology. I find it funny that computers and the internet display all of these beautiful pictures of our earth when in reality technology is in the process of destroying all of the beauties of the earth. I believe that in the future we won’t have access to the beautiful physical features of the earth; we will only be able to view them in our virtual worlds.

Social Network

After watching the social network it really made it more clearly to me about the mentalities of Americans when it comes to business and money, and most of all technology. The movie was in my opinion a great movie.  The movie basically in a nut shell goes as follows, a kid named Mark from Harvard got broken up with by his girlfriend and he goes out and creates a web site that matches up undergrad female Harvard students and allows the user to judge the attractiveness of the female. On the blog that he writes he bashes his x-girlfriend. After talking his way out of trouble with the university he then goes on to create face book. This new online world grows rapidly and becomes worth more than anyone ever imagined. Shortly after it begins to blow up his best friend sues him along with two undergrads from Harvard.

                Face book is currently the most successful social networking site out there. After watching this movie it really made it evident to me that online worlds is what is certainly in our future. Mark had several big time investors who faith in this online world called face book. Investors would not invest in this if they did not believe that it would be successful and clearly they were right for investing in it because it is now connecting millions of people all over the world. People in America using face book and online networking sites are starting to become more involved with their online selves than there real selves in the real world. I know a friend who works at an insurance company who says that all he does all day is sit on face book and talk to his co-workers. This is crazy to me because he basically lives in two worlds along with the rest of the people at his work. The part of this that really scares me is thinking that eventually there will be no real world we will all strictly live in online worlds. There are very few things that prevent this from happening which are quite obvious our need to eat, sleep, drink, and have shelter. When you think about it these are the only things that really prevent this kind of thing from happening.  Are technology has advanced so much that it can even satisfy our sexual needs on line through videos. Our technology is moving so fast I believe that we as a society or even the government will have to put a halt on technology eventually. When I look at something like face book that took off so fast and is currently worth billions of dollars and people are suing each other for shares of it makes it so evident to me that eventually technology will have to stop advancing or else the real world will eventually be used to for nothing other than to eat, sleep, and drink water. You look at our currency system and everything is done online for the most part. We never even see the money that we spend for the most part which would make it so easy for our society to live in just online worlds for the most part.

Current Event Blog

                The article that I discussed in class called “The Many Faces of You” was very useful for me and I think it was also useful for the rest of the class in realizing how fast technology is actually moving and also how the norms of our online lives could quite possibly interfere with the norms of actual real life. The topic that I really want to discuss in this blog is the topic of our perception of oneself. Not our real life perception but our online perception. The article discusses a woman who has two face books, one for work and one for her social life. I had to ask myself why she did this and I wanted to break it down. I believe that our online self’s image is becoming more important to a lot of us than our actual real self which is VERY scary to me. I believe this is so because when you look at something like someone who has two face books they clearly are doing it to portray different images of themselves. People are far too worried about being seen in a picture with a beer than actually portraying there real image. So like this woman, people are portraying different images of themselves through the technology that is available to them such as face book in this example.

                The norms of these different online worlds are also beginning to really scare me. The article discussed actually having an online Thanksgiving and the norms of face book. As technology becomes more and more advanced people are going to be more involved with online norms then they are with real life norms. The norms online are definitely going to interfere with those in the real world because people are so caught up in their online worlds that it’s almost impossible to think that they won’t interfere. I also believe that online norms will be much more dominant than those of the real world and begin to shape real word norms because people are continuously becoming more caught up with technology. Especially in today’s world where I see 3^rd graders running around with cell phones and  just the other day I got a friend request on facebook from one of my best friend’s 9 year old brother. The fact of the matter is that technology is advancing so fast that people are becoming so caught up in it that these online worlds are becoming far more important to them than the real world which is absolutely crazy to think about and almost hard to grasp in a lot of ways. The thing that sticks in my mind is what comes next after face book and after all of the online worlds that already exist. There is no doubt in my mind that with the technology savvy people in this country that people are already looking at ways to improve these worlds to do bigger and better things. This also plays into the mindset of our country of how people always want something better and more efficient than what is already out there.

2nd half of "The World and Wikipedia"

In chapter’s 5-8 of “The World and Wikipedia” the author makes more valid arguments in my opinion. In chapter 5 he talks about why our society loves something like Wikipedia so much even though it is not even necessarily accurate. There are a few arguments that the author makes in this chapter, the one that really sparked my attention was when he talks about Wikipedia forming a militia in case some kind of emergency happens then they can keep it running. This refers to the “virtual nation” of Wikipedia. The author states that “Spoke of us as ‘the people’ then corrected himself to ‘the community’.” Pg. (120). This is CRAZY to me that this Wikipedia world could actually have a militia. Our country had militia’s way before real laws and such were formed in the 1800’s and before that. If these virtual worlds are just starting to form militias then I can only imagine how far they are going to come before they actually have armed forces! One argument that I do disagree with that the author makes is that everyone is equal through Wikipedia. If someone is known for posting great articles and is a prime contributor through the site then he will be on a higher status than someone who is writing false information.

                In chapter 6 the book discusses the chaos that Wikipedia can cause. The author discusses that people can have false biographies on Wikipedia. With this can come bad reputations and such. I believe this to be a dumb argument against Wikipedia for many reasons. Any person can put false information out there about you as a person; this is just one of the sites that allow it to happen. This is something that people have to deal with in our culture of technology today. You can’t do anything about it because there is far too many ways to do it. This is just one of the many ways that technology is affecting our culture today. The author states “For some, no doubt, and publicity is good publicity” (Pg. 165). I found this quote to be very true by the author because it is very true. This leads to a huge problem with Wikipedia because people can right about themselves or others with their sole purpose to get publicity.

                Chapter 7 discusses why people do not trust Wikipedia. Mirroring Wikipedia is one of the reason why people don’t trust Wikipedia and the fact that anyone can post just about anything. People can’t cite Wikipedia as a reliable source so it is tough to trust a source that when you say you got it from Wikipedia it is frowned upon by professors and teachers.  The author states “Anonymous and unsourced edits will be made.” (pg. 195). This is the biggest reason why I can say that people don’t trust Wikipedia. This to me is like trusting anyone because if it is unsourced then you might as well have heard it from someone that is completely uncredible. This to me is like gossip and the American culture loves to gossip and Wikipedia makes it very easy to do so in front of a huge audience.

                Chapter 8 goes into discussing why people will trust Wikipedia. The first argument that I found so apparent in our culture today is the ‘no censorship’ rule with Wikipedia. The author states “complained that too much Nazi symbolism was visible” (Pg. 198). With a site like this it does not censor out any details, you are going to get all the blood guts and gore of what happened in a certain situation. This is what our culture loves and this technology allows it to be done even easier.  This also connects back to people craving the most up to date information and if Wikipedia is providing it in the quickest manner then people are going to put some trust in it. I know in my personal experiences with Wikipedia, I follow soccer around the world and the most recent trades are always posted on Wikipedia before they are publicized. I can honestly say that these for the most part are pretty accurate so I have trust they are going to provide me with pretty legit information; clearly this is true with a large portion of other people in our technologically bound country.

Pg's 7-113

In the book “The World and Wikipedia” written by Andrew Dalby it discusses a lot of interesting pg’s 7-113. In chapter one it talks about many different “wikipedians” (people who edit Wikipedia articles) writing about different articles. A quote that I pulled from chapter 1 states as follows “Wikipedia is just like the real world” (pg. 14). I found this quote more interesting as I continued to read the chapter and read about the different rules and regulations of Wikipedia that it discusses that I actually referred to as laws for this “world” of Wikipedia. I find it fascinating that as a culture we are literally creating worlds within our own through technology. Wikipedia is one of the many worlds that we are creating; some other examples could be face book or MySpace.  All of these are run with rules or laws that regulate them and they are their own world.

                In chapter 2 how Wikipedia formed over the years. Encyclopedias started as books and slowly the goal was to eliminate print for a couple reasons. With books came bigger and bigger books which was much more money to produce. Also books made it not time efficient because this required people to flip through thousand page books which was far too time consuming for our time hungry American culture. They also had to revise these books which were difficult because it made it hard to keep facts up to date. As print was eliminated there came CD-ROM encyclopedias that you could by on a disk and slowly arose the idea of Wikipedia in January of 2001. Wikipedia was the idea that anyone could go on and edit a page. The success of Wikipedia skyrocketed and Wikipedia blew up completely. It even started writing articles in all other languages. In chapter 2 the author states “The growth from about 20 languages in late 2002, to 250 by the end of 2006, was perhaps to rapid” (pg. 44). This quote stuck out to me because I found it so interesting that like technology in this country is growing so rapidly that we can barely keep up with it and write laws for it, so is the websites like this that we can barely keep up with the world of Wikipedia. It is almost like our culture is overwhelmed in so many ways with not only technology, but keeping up with Wikipedia advancements and things of this sort.

                Chapter 3 talks about why critics and people of this sort don’t believe Wikipedia to be such a good thing. Reasons such as it has a track record for providing false information to its visitors and the fact that anyone can go on a page and write whatever they want to write. The author states “everyone is an encyclopedist” (pg. 71). Chapter 3 discusses this as one of the issues with this kind of encyclopedia using the idea of collective knowledge. This makes me really worry about the future of technology in this country because if anyone can be an ecyclopedist with absolutely no credentials then who’s to say that we won’t start having engineers and doctors with no credentials start breaking their way into these fields. This is another reason that our rapid development of these worlds within worlds scares me so much.

                Chapter 4 discusses with its readers why we use Wikipedia even if we know that it may not be as accurate as we want. The author makes a very valid argument in my opinion, he states “...Are now fated to click on the Wikipedia link almost every time.” (pg. 86). He is referring to the Google effect. With Google being the most popular search engine in the world it is almost impossible to dodge Wikipedia in any search you decide to go on in a particular topic. I believe that Google putting Wikipedia at the top of every search that someone does has a huge impact as to why people use it. Another argument he makes is that people use it because they want news quicker than it is already provided. The author states “who got the news and put it on Wikipedia so quickly was never clear.” (pg. 96). People are always hungry for the latest news and because Wikipedia can provide them with a brief synopsis of the latest news people are always going to use it. This is the mind set of most people in our country that they want the latest information and gossip as soon as they can get it, and now that this technology can provide it to them they are certainly going to take advantage.

"Technopoly" Pg's 92-199

                In the second half of the book “Technopoly” I found a lot of connections to the American culture and I also found statements from the author that I did not necessarily agree with. In chapter 6 the author discusses the character of American culture, he states “which I have previously discusses as being so congenial to the sovereignty of technology.”(Pg. 95). I found this very interesting because I believe that this statement is very accurate. American culture is without a doubt given royalty to technology and it is very important to many Americans, especially medical technology. Our culture is constantly donating money to cancer charities and other forms of charities to help develop a technology to find a cure for these diseases. The people that donate would not do so if they did not care about it. Another interesting point that stuck out to me in chapter 6 is the idea that ideas breed off other ideas. For example the stethoscope helped develop other medical technologies, the author states “ideas were amplified with each new instrument added to the doctor’s arsenal” (Pg. 100). I find this apparent in American culture all the times with ideas leading to other ideas. An example in our culture is in the car industry; new cars come out every year based on the idea of the car from the previous year.

                In chapter 7 they discuss computer technology and they also talk about a man of importance named Charles Babbage who was discussed in the previous book that we read. I found it interesting because this just shows how important he is to computers because he is talked about in both books when computers are discussed. The main concept I took from this chapter is the metaphor of human as machine and machine as human.  When the author discussed this I could really see where he was coming from, you cannot take the metaphor so literally but humans and machines do have characteristics in common. The book states “computers around the Arpanet network became sluggish” (Pg.113). This is very true, when a computer gets a virus or has something wrong with it becomes slow and is not as efficient, the same goes for humans, when a human become sick or has something wrong with him or her they are not as efficient and they become “sluggish”.  It also discusses that computers can have defective parts, so can humans, and in both cases some of these parts can be replaced. 

                Chapter 8 discusses “Invisible Technologies” that are used in our culture. Many of these technologies that cannot be seen I would have never seen as a technology. I do agree with the author when he says this because like a computer was developed, so was something as simple as language. The funny thing about a technology like language is it probably took much longer to create than a computer, but it is taken for granted in our culture today because it is already developed. Just like computers now a days are taken for granted because they are already developed and there imbedded in our culture. Invisible technologies go through modifications just like technologies like computers and TVs do. For example there are words added to the English dictionary every year because language is constantly changing. We need knew words for new technologies. I did find a statement in Chapter 8 that I did not agree with, the author discusses statistics at one point in the chapter, he states “statistics creates an enormous amount of completely useless information” (Pg. 136). Although the author does go on to say that only some statistics are useless and some are actually very important. I believe that any statistic can useful to somebody, and if it is useful to someone then it is not useless. You never know what an individual could do with a statistic that may seem useless to you.

                In chapter 9 the author discusses social science and how it links into technopoly. The author displays his idea of scientism which I found incredibly interesting, probably the most interesting peace of material I have read for this class. The author almost makes out science to be fantasy without many facts at all. He argues that science is very subjective and is technopolys biggest “illusion”. He states “Technopoly wishes to solve, once and for all, the dilemma of subjectivity.”(Pg. 158). I am certainly on the same page as the author. Technopoly is facts, it is not theories and there is no grey area in technopoly. Social science has too much grey area involved with it. Milgram’s experiment on authority that the author uses was fascinating to me. I have no doubt that authority has influence on weather people do what they are told or not, but there are far too many examples contradicting his experiment. This is not a fact, and this is exactly what technopoly is trying to eliminate. Social science never really proves anything as factual unlike other sciences and that is why it is not necessarily true. Maybe someday science will be able to prove the grey area in social science. Interestingly enough I believe that someday we will be able to answer questions such as, what is life.

                Chapter 10 talks about the deterioration of symbols in our culture. I can honestly say that I agree with what the author is saying in this chapter. I truly believe that over time symbols tend to lose their importance with technology. One example for me is the symbol for murder. When I was young the first time I heard of a murder on the news I was frightened and by the time I heard of several murders the symbol for murder became far less important to me. The quote I found very interesting in this chapter is at the end when the author states “the only symbols left to use will be an f-15 fighter plane guided by an advanced computer system?”(Pg. 180). This quote really triggered a lot of thoughts for me. With the inventions of all these technologies we are almost eliminating the purpose of humans. The example here shows perfectly what I’m talking about, normally you would need someone to fly this plane but with new technologies this is no longer necessary and it’s less risky for humans. I can see robots being invented to do tedious jobs and this could also eliminate jobs for people. This quote really made me feel like we are eliminating our purpose as humans by creating all of this technology.

                The final chapter talks about ways to put a stop to technopoly. The author suggests “going back to the basics” and teaching subjects like religion and the history of technology. I can agree with the author that the technopoly that we grow towards every day in the American culture is a serious problem. He poses a way to put a stop to it but I am not sure that it would be successful. In fact I believe the only way to put a halt to it is to stop production of new technology and quite possibly make some of the current technologies illegal and get them out of our culture somehow.

               

               

Pg's 1-91 "Technopoly"

After reading the first half of “Technopoly” written by Neil Postman, my take on technology really changed. The first half of the book talks about how technology develops in America. It discusses the damages that technology may have on a society in saying that “technology is both a burden and a blessing” (Pg. 5). This quote meaning that with every technology comes pros and cons. This relates to American culture because inventors are constantly inventing new technology replacing and making no use for the old. For example the lap top replaces the desk top. The lap top made a desk top much less useful than it used to be because lap tops are more convenient. The mentality of America has been the same since humans have lived here which is always trying to make technology better. I also took away from the first chapter that technology leads to technology. Meaning that one invention leads to the next, the example they used in the book that I found very interesting was that if they never invented the ship, then man would not have to worry about contacting the ones that they care about that are far away, therefore they would never have to invent the telephone. The main point that I took from chapter 1 is that technology impacts every aspect of our life and it effects what we are interested in, what we think about and how and what we think about it with.  This is still changing in today’s society. The newest technology is still going to affect what we think about and how we do it. A good example of this in the modern day is someone that has a handwriting disability. Someone that has this kind of disability is going to be inclined to use a computer to type so what they are saying is legible.

            I also learned a lot about tool using cultures and how they can interfere with religion in our culture. America is no doubt still a tool using country. We use tools for a lot of the same reasons people used tools in the past. I found it very interesting that tools that they invent can fuse arguments in the religious aspect of our culture. For example the telescope challenges a lot of religions theology hypothesis because with a telescope you actually have facts and not just guesses. I found this interesting because it made me think about how today we have a huge problem with religion and evolution. The more we study evolution the more doubtful people become of the accuracy of their own religions. It’s very scary to me to see people that I have grown up with my whole life become more distant from their religions because of the theory of evolution. 

            Another key concept I stole from the book is the transformation from technocracy to technopoly. The book explains that the reason we made it to technopoly is for several reasons. The abundance of resources and the mentality for efficiency in the United States are some examples of reasons. America was the first technopoly that developed with other nations trailing us. The competitive spirits is what drove the country to efficiency and success. I find it fascinating that the same competitive edge that drove our country in this period is still driving us today. This even ties into the last book we read, when it talks about the different computer companies coming up and different software companies. They were all so competitive that they actually drove each other to success. It almost seems like they would not have been so successful without each other.

One part of chapter 4 that I found fascinating is when it talks about “technopoly is a form of cultural AIDS” (Pg. 63). This stuck out to me the most of all in the whole first half of the book. I could relate this to so many things in our culture today of things just spreading through our culture like AIDS.  There are so many examples of this, such as the I-pod. When the I-pod first came out it was a massive hit. I can just remember it spreading through my highschool like AIDS. Technology spreads like AIDS along with many other things in our culture such as fashion and music. I can also tie this in with Chapter 5 because a lot of the times these kinds of technologies are out far before they are released so the companies are hiding information about new technology. I can only imagine what kind of information is still kept from us. The funny thing is that if a bit of information were to leak it would spread like AIDS.

                               

Pg's 85-149 Blog

After reading the second half of the book “Computers the life story of a technology” I came away with a lot of good points to make. Although the book as a whole was pretty dull I learned some good stuff from the book. In chapter five they discuss all the different computer and computer software companies. One thing that I took special note of is when they began to discuss computer games and how video games really got started; the reason being is I play a lot of video games and am interested in the topic. For kids and even for some adults video games are a huge part of the culture weather people realize it or not. It is obvious that video games are entertainment for customers and people that play them. This just shows how important entertainment is to the American culture; entertainment comes in so many forms of technology and will never fail to bring in mass amounts of money. The book quotes “The revenue in the game market surpassed the revenue generated by movies in Hollywood” (Pg. 105). I can only imagine the revenue of Hollywood and its movies which is also entertainment, but for video game revenue to pass that is amazing and really shows us what entertainment means to the American culture. The computer was never really meant for entertainment. It was always meant to organize and calculate equations and numbers faster than a human could ever do so. Who would have known that a computer would tap into the entertainment industry and be that successful?

            Chapter six talks about networking and the finding of the internet, this chapter I found to be the most fascinating. As it discusses the development of the internet and networking in chapter 6 it is obvious the relationship it has with our culture. Our culture has become addicts of the internet, they rely on it every second of every day, and it is mind boggling to see how dependent our culture is on the internet. It has almost allowed us to take off the label on a long-distance relationship. Although it doesn’t discuss web cams in chapter 6 it’s almost necessary to understand what networking has done to our culture and understand all the effects of it. We can now sit at a desk and see someone and talk to them like they are right in front of you. This has increased the amount of distance relationships that I have personally seen and I believe that newer technologies in the future are only going to make it easier and easier for distance relationships. This is one of the many that networking and the internet has had on our culture.

            Computers have undoubtedly become a part of everyday life for people in our culture as discussed in the final chapter concluding the book, “Computers and electronics have become pervasive in everyday life” (Pg. 131). Computers have even enhanced criminal activity for people such as hackers. The relationship to electronics basically runs through every thread of our culture because we have become so dependent on them. The invention of the computer and internet has single handedly shaped American culture and will continue to do so for as long as computers exist.

Pages 1-83 of "Computers" blog

After reading up to chapter 5 in “Computers the life story of a Technology” I came away with several observations and relationships between technology and culture. Although the first half of the book was not the most catching of reading material, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that it was actually quite interesting. In the first chapter of the book it really describes all of the work that has been put into developing these technologies that we have in our culture today, not only do people in our culture take the technology that we have for granted, it made me realize that we take for granted people like Charles Babbage and what they sacrificed for technology. I found Babbage to be the most influential person in chapter 1; this mathematician sacrificed what many would say his life. In his creations, he lost his family and his health severely declined due to his work in creating technology. “Babbage lost his wife, daughter, and father, and his own health deteriorated,” (pg. 15). This can even relate back to American culture today because I see people losing friends and distancing themselves from family because of technology. For example I see people all the time glued to their computers and T.V’s and not ever wanting to move or go out and be social. This can affect friends because people stop calling that individual because they never want to go out or move from their apartments. This can also affect health because people like this never want to go out and exercise which is a key part of an individual’s health, and I am quite confident that this was part of Babbage’s health decline as well. It is sad that people get so caught up in technology to lose friends and become distant from family.

 Chapter 2 talks about the advancement of technology through World War 2 and also following the war. A quote that I found very interesting on page 30 was as follows “World war 2 was a war of science and technology as much as it was a struggle between fighting men” (Pg. 30). The part of chapter 2 that really stuck out to me as a connection to today’s culture was the competitive spirit between all of these creators from different countries and companies. That’s what drove all of the creations through the war because countries needed better technology to give them an advantage. Just like in chapter 2 there are law suits often in our culture over ideas that people patent. This competitive attitude is still present today in the same way, scientists and inventors are constantly competing to develop the best technology.

The invention of the Transistor that it discuses in Chapter 3 I found to be the most interesting of this chapter and the easiest to relate to our culture. The book says “Vacuum tubes, constantly struggling to deal with excess heat, their bulky size, and their penchant for failure.” (Pg. 50). This was so interesting to me because you look at some of the technologies on the market today such as T.V’s and cell phones and people are always trying to decrease their size to make them more convenient for consumers. In my life time I have noticed a severe decrease in size of T.V’s from Box T.V’s that weight a ton to flat screens that are only about an inch in thickness which is amazing. The same goes with phones as well, my first cell phone was a pain to carry around because it did not fit into my pocket easily because it was bulky, and now that is never an issue. Cell phones are designed smaller and thinner to fit into your pocket conveniently. The mentality they discuss in the book and the mentality today has not changed, constantly reducing the size of technology and making it more convenient for consumers whoever they may be.

The last relationship that I found between technology and culture in chapter 4 comes from the characteristic that is so obvious in this chapter and the whole first half of the book. People are never satisfied with what they have, they are always trying to adjust things so they are better even they really are not better. This helped drive technology in the time periods talked about in the book and continues to drive technology today. For example on page 70 it discusses the invention of minicomputers. This is a smaller and more sophisticated technology that undoubtedly better than computers that are larger in size and less sophisticated. People being dissatisfied with the previous models of technology are what drove the invention of the minicomputer. The point being is technology can only get so good and so fast and do so much, but people will always be demanding something new and better when in reality it may not get any better. This could cause technology to get worst in the future because people will try to make something better that really cant improve therefore making it worst.

Blog #1

I guess I never really understood how the use of technology in my own personal life affected me. I shocked myself after the first day, in a nut shell technology basically runs my life. In order to keep in contact with my friends and family it is mandatory that technology in the form of a handheld phone be involved. I surf facebook nonstop and keep in touch with people all around the world. Technology is literally involved in every aspect of my life, and the sad part about it is I really do not have a choice seeing that friends and family are the most important part of my life, and if I want to maintain a solid relationship with them I need to stay in touch with them. I am also a member of the Rutgers men's soccer team and practice times and lifting times everyday get sent out via email or via text, without this it would be difficult for my coach to maintain the order of the team. Needless to say technology plays a major part in my life and my technology log that I kept over the past few days really helped me realize this because a lot of the time you take things like cell phones and computers for granted.
Truth be told this is my first time blogging. I can say that I am a fan, I set up my blogging account and I am able to display my thoughts very freely without holding back. Now that I have to blog for this class I will be able to express my full opinion in words so my professor can really no what I am thinking. Not only will he know what I am thinking but he will know what the rest of the class is thinking as well. I believe that blogging can really being out peoples true feelings and opinions and an honesty on certain subjects that wouldn't normally be expressed.