Comm. 309

Dr. Popescu

December 5, 2009

My Letter to Hank

Dear Hank,

During this fall quarter at California State University of San Bernardino, I had to take a communication class about Digital Media and Communication. This course is about how technology has advanced so much that it has almost changed our world. We communicate differently to one another, do research faster and in ways we wouldn’t have 10 years ago, and frankly this may be a bother to a lot of people. Today’s society is a fast moving world with gadgets that do all sorts of stuff and if you don’t keep up, you could be thrown out of the loop pretty quick. Now that we have machines thinking for us, the older generation thinks that we aren’t “thinking outside the box.” That is pretty tough to argue when all of our thinking comes within a box, our computer. Then we have our cell phones that is basically having a computer in your hand. Most phone in today’s world can run a business. Cell phones are crucial in our lives. They keep us connected to the world via text messages, emails, instant messaging, and of coarse your good old fashion phone calls that hardly anybody does anymore. And with Blue Tooth’s you don’t even have to hold your phone to your ear. With all this technology coming at you from different angles, it seems like you don’t have to do anything anymore. GREAT! Or is it? Is this technology making us stupid Hank? Are we “not thinking outside the box?” How big of deal is this issue? I’m about to tell you Hank. Make sure you keep up because in today’s world, we move fast!

Hank I know your older and you have seen a lot of things in your life. The world has probably changed more drastic for you then it has for me. Its funny how things are getting smaller and smaller, but at the same time things are getting bigger and bigger. How are these geniuses doing it? Hank I’m sure in your high school days you walked around with a boom box right? On your shoulder and wearing some MC Hammer pants doing the running man with all your friends. Well look how that has changed. Then came the “walkman” which was a portable smaller tape player, but a personal one. Then next came the CD player. They were thinner then tapes so you could carry more of then. And finally that takes us to today’s world with an iPod that almost everyone has. According to Rob Hof from Business Week, Apple (the company that makes iPod) has sold over 100 million iPods. It’s small, light and it can hold thousands of songs. (Going smaller in device but bigger in information stored.) But is it making us more dumb then compared to the boom box in your days? Actually, the iPod may be making us smarter, because the new ones have 3G networks. You can go online and search the web. Find answers that you may have not known before. So while you’re listening to music you may be able to look at current event you may not have stopped to look at if you didn’t have an iPod. So you stop the music for a second and you read up on current events making you smarter.

I think that people always think as technology as a toy. That they are just video games and yes studies have shown people getting kind of dumb from playing video all the time. But technology isn’t designed to make us dumb. It’s designed to help us receive information at a rapid pace and exchange conversation all while being entertained.

The biggest technology that has improved our learning is the internet. The World Wide Web is virtually everywhere. Every company has a site, and almost every person has a place too, whether it be MySpace, Facebook, or a simple email address. Search engines are the biggest things sweeping the internet. What happens when you misspell a word? A thousand different options are thrown at you. Google, Good Search or the latest one Bing, will pop up and ask you something like: “Did you mean…”

How are these search engines making us smarter? Well for example: I’m pretty sure most people used search engines to write a letter like this one Hank. I mean, I did. The search engine just helps you. You wont use everything and in the end you will probably learn something that you weren’t looking for. Little knowledge like that goes a long way. I use Google for a lot of things just because I know it will get me to what I am looking for. But many journalists down to average Joe’s use Google. For crying out loud, they even have their own phone! Here is an example of an American journalist, Nicholas G. Carr, explaining new technology and how he uses it for research and personal use. This segment is from his article that was published in “The Atlantic” (a nationally known magazine that covers mainly political issues):

“For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets’ reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link…”

As you see Hank, Mr. Carr uses the internet instead of spending countless hours in a library. Its like having a library in our homes. I feel that it makes things a lot more convenient. You don’t have to take the hassle of going downtown, looking up the books. A project that may have taken you an hour or two at the least, now takes you a couple of minutes.

Although, there is a problem in the internet, and that there might be too much information. You may have gotten your answer but it was from 6 different places. Who do you believe? Also, some places will bend the truth. Fox and CNN will bend the truth to make their audience believe one thing, while it may not be exactly correct. Then you kind of have to stick to one gun and stick to what you believe. In a critical study in how other countries show different things in their internet then maybe the U.S might. It depends on their government and the freedom the citizens have. The report was “A Critical Study about the Impact of Internet on its Users in Pakistan.”  So basically, how can that technology make you smarter if it may be censored? You can’t win them all. Some countries are going to be communistic and some won’t. Technology has that ability to make people smarter but in this issue you can see that it actually prevents that audience to see the truth, (or not informing them on everything).

Not only do other countries go “one sided” on stories, they do here as well. Many times researches will not give all of the truth. Example: researches might do a study on violence from video games and they will talk to a lot of people and come to a conclusion that there theory is correct. But in reality, how many people did they interview? Did they put in all the facts? Hank, do you even believe what I’m telling you in this letter? How do you know I’m not pulling your leg just because you aren’t internet savvy and don’t have the resources to look up all the information that I have given you? Well for one, were friends, but I have included the document information, but other times people will believe people just because.

I came across another article about “You Tube.” You Tube is a place where videos are posted and other people can see. Billions of people post new videos daily, and they can be viewed, commented on and ranked. CNN did a study on young citizens and the 2008 presidential debate on you tube. “Not Your Parents’ Presidential Debates: Examining the Effects of the CNN/ You Tube Debates on Young Citizens’ Civic Engagement.” Performed by: Mitchell S. Mkinney & Leslie A. Rill. If you did a quick poll in a college class room on how many people were going to watch the debate, they probably might have some takers. But if you asked the same class how many of you will go on You Tube tonight, and you will probably get a bigger response. Well there is a big You Tube audience, (me being part of that audience) so this was a way for CNN to see if more of the youth would tune into the debate because it was on a source that they use often. The results were difficult to grasp because they were unsure of who tuned in, and voted in result to watching it on You Tube. But for those who tuned into the debate, the technology that brought it to them, actually made them smarter or else they may not have watched the debate and then they wouldn’t have had all the knowledge that they learned from it. I thought it was a good move from You Tube to grab that younger audience.

Also the technology is being helpful to professors Hank. They help them proof read papers and see if someone is cheating on a paper. In your good old days, the teachers read hundreds of papers a year and they may have their leg pulled by students who used work from the previous year from a former student. Now they have help on the internet for that. Or even just copy and past from different sources got passed to those teachers who weren’t so bright. But technology has changed to help as explained in this scholarly article from Gwo-Jen Hwang, Pei-Shan Tsai, Chin-Chung Tsai and Judy C.R. Tseng, is “A novel approach for assisting teachers in analyzing student web-searching behaviors.” From the article, I felt like it made the professors and teachers smarter. Teachers are more aware and attentive of students using others peoples work that may be passed of as their own.

You see Hank, I think that technology is improving our world for the better. I think that these great new ideas are helping us communicate faster and find information quicker then ever. Technology is definitely not making us stupid; in fact it is making us smarter. What I do think that technology is making us is lazy. We hardly want to do anything for ourselves. We have remotes for everything and visuals on the internet so we don’t make trips. We have a high population of people that are already obese, we don’t need that number to increase. I think that technology is doing a lot of good for our world but we cannot get lazy. That might be another issue we will have to tackle Hank. In a study done in London they said that 81% of people rather send emails then have a face to face communication according Helen Bruce in her article, “Email addicts too lazy to speak.” This is crazy Hank. We have to do something about that. We are getting smarter and wiser; let’s not get too lazy that we can’t walk to our supervisors desk for a conversation. Well Hank, take care. I’ll see you around at work.

Your friend,

Robert Vega

Works Cited

Bruce, Helen. “Email addicts too lazy to speak.” Daily Mail (London). August 20, 2008 Wednesday IRE Edition. Pg. 3

Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” the Atlantic. July/August 2008 retrieved: December, 3 2009, website:http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google.

Hoff, Rob. (2009). “100 Million iPods Sold, But How Many Are Still in Use?” retrieved: December 3, 2009 website: http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/ archives/2007/04/100_million_ipo.html.

Hwang, Gwo-Jen, Tsai, Pei-Shan, Tsai, Chin-Chung, C.R. Tseng, Judy. “A novel approach for assisting teachers in analyzing student web-searching behaviors.” Computers & Education; Sep2008, Vol. 51 Issue 2, p926-938, 13p

McKinney, M., & Rill, L. (2009). Not Your Parents’ Presidential Debates: Examining the Effects of the CNN/YouTube Debates on Young Citizens’ Civic Engagement. Communication  Studies, 60(4), 392-406. doi:10.1080/10510970903110001.

Rooh-e-Aslam, Ali, S., & Shabir, D. (2009). A Critical Study about the Impact of Internet on its Users in Pakistan. China Media Research, 5(4), 95-108. Retrieved from Communication  & Mass Media Complete database.

Tenner, Edward. “Searching for Dummies” The New York times, Published: March 26,2006 Plainsboro, N.J website: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/opinion/ 26tenner.html

WHO WOULD YOU PICK?

they should make educational interview videos more exciting so that way people have an easier time paying attention.
They should add some puppets or something like Mr. Rogers to each educational video………… those were the days!

well….. i’m me.

i believe that family, friends, and faith are the most important things in life. i like music, sports and having fun in whatever shape it comes in. i have a gf of almost two years and she is my best friend.

….. and i like dr.pepper and coronas

he had more of an intense energy live and through the bands music.

Cove is okay but old Saosin was best