Rolling Stone Sing Along

The interactive Rolling Stone video was entertaining and amusing! Watching the actors lip sync the words every time I changed the channel was so funny!! At first I didn't recognize most of the channels, but as soon as Girl Code from MTV came on (a show that I watch occasionally) it became even more entertaining. It was interesting to me that no matter when you clicked the channel button, the actors were singing the right words to the songs. I don't know how videos like that are created, but it's amazing. I tried to click through the channels really fast to see if I could mess the people up on singing the right words, but it didn't happen haha. The video was really cool!

Becoming Screen Literate

After reviewing the article "Becoming Screen Literate" by Kevin Kelly, I started to think about times throughout my day where there isn't some type of screen involved and realized there is barely any at all. Aside from at soccer practice and when I am sleeping, I either have my phone or laptop on me, or I am watching TV. The article explains that screens have now taken over many traditional innovations that we had. The article also illustrates how much work goes into what shows up on the screens for us. For example, Kelly describes how much work and hours go into making a film, both the traditional and digital ones we have today. While reading the article, one thing I thought of in the back of my head was an instance that happened to me the other day. We were in the weight room lifting and noticed that there had been I-pads installed on each of the weight stations and the article reminded me of it because everyday there are screens or technology being added to a different aspect in our life. Now when we lift weights, we will have an I-pad illustrating to us the exercise to do. Another part of the article that really stood out to me when when Kelly was speaking about how we used to have table of contents, index, and bibliographical citations, which would help direct us to certain parts of books, but now we have hyperlinks which just lead us to another text and help us understand more. I am excited to see what other developments screens will bring us in the future.

"Wilderness Downtown" HTML5 Experience

I watched/created the "Wilderness Downtown" experience about four times because I thought it was so cool! After doing my address of the house I grew up in, I had to show some of my roommates and do their addresses too. Getting to see pictures and video's of my old house brought back nostalgic feelings and made me think of so many good memories of my childhood that I had in that house. After I did my address, I showed by boyfriend his house back in Sao Paulo, Brazil and it still showed pictures and videos of his house. Knowing that technology can bring up pictures of literally anywhere in the world is amazing. Another small detail I noticed during the video was the running man on the view of my neighborhood/ house. As the man was running by my house it showed his shadow, which is combining the video and music with the Google Maps aerial view of my neighborhood. Then at the end, where you could write a letter to the old you, who lived in the house at that time, brought back even more memories. The font used to write was also very neat and then watching the birds from the video fly onto the words I typed was fascinating. The song was a perfect choice for the video showing that with all of the technology we have today everything changes fast. Many people can be creeped out by the fact that anyone can see what one's house looks like and other things around it, and it could be considered an invasion of privacy, I still find it awesome.

"Is Google Making Us Stupid?" -Nicholas Carr (first half)

When I first heard the title "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" an article written by Nicholas Carr, I  initially thought the article wasn't going to make much sense. How could Google, the website that gives us mass amounts of information at the click of a button, make us stupid? But then as soon as I started to read the article, I caught myself doing exactly what the article was talking about, which was losing concentration on what I was reading. I realized how long the article was and my mind started to drift off onto other subjects, and I really had to focus on paying attention to the words I was reading. Now with all of the technology that has been created, we do things the fastest, easiest, and shortest way they can be done. We have Google, which gives us answers to almost any questions we could have, which takes us away from the traditional ways of learning new information. For example, in the article it speaks about Bruce Friedman, who posts regularly about computers in medicine, won't read articles that are longer that a few paragraphs long. Is this allowing us to miss out on important information that couldn't be covered in just a few short paragraphs? Even when we are little we are taught to not always take the shortcuts to do things just because it makes them easier, because that often leads to things being done wrong. By having all of these shortcuts with technology, are we missing about on more information we could know? After reading the article, I agree that having all of these technological advances might not always be a good thing.

Reflection

I can't remember the last time I wrote a letter to someone, besides signing my name after a short note on a Birthday card. Writing a letter with pen and paper to my 10 year old self was definitely different than what I am used to. The only person that ever sent me letters regularly was my grandma, and she even sends me texts now instead. I am so used to just texting and emailing someone whenever I need to talk to them, that actually writing something down to someone doesn't even cross my mind. Growing up, technology, especially social media, has been such a huge part of my life, that it is almost impossible to imagine life without it. I have always been so interested in how social media broadcasts information with a click of a button & also how it effects different generations.