For this week reading, I am focusing on “Is Google Making Us Stupid” by Nicholas Carr. Before I even began to read the article, I said to myself is it really  making us stupid? I am on google most of the time researching for school, finding a recipe to cook or bake, looking up things that I need, searching for basically everything and anything. I honestly feel like google is making us stupid and isnt making us stupid.  Google is a major search engine that provides you with tons of information right at your finger tips. Why do you need to think back when you can just research something within seconds. But, then again this is bad. This doesnt help us use our memories to recollect information that we know. Our memories are literally disconnected because of google. I can’t read books through  a kindle or computer, I can’t focus, I get lost, i don’t take it serious because most of the time the computer is used for fun or school. I need to have a hardcopy of a book in order to read and understand and process the information. I kind of miss the times where we had to look up words in a dictionary or read text books in order to get information. Technology is good and bad.

For this week’s blog post I decided to write about “The Capture of Sound” by Brian Winston. In this article,  Winston talks about how the capture of sound and radio began. Sound is a hugely important part of life on Earth. Radio waves have the longest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum. They range from the length of a football to larger than our planet. Heinrich Hertz proved the existence of radio waves in the late 1880s. He used a spark gap attached to an induction coil and a separate spark gap on a receiving antenna. When waves created by the sparks of the coil transmitter were picked up by the receiving antenna, sparks would jump its gap as well. Hertz showed in his experiments that these signals possessed all the properties of electromagnetic waves. My husband is a Foreman (electrician) and when he brings home blueprints I look at them and I ask him how he is able to read them and understand them. Same thing with the capture of sound and radio. It happens without us even knowing. They compare the capture of sound to beach waves, the way they crash and make sounds is the same way they do for us everyday when we set our alarm clocks or the sound to our phones.

For this weeks blog post, I chose to write about “I’m an Addict” and Other Sensemaking Devices: A Discourse Analysis of Self-Reflections on Lived Experience of Social Media.” After reading this article it made me think about how much technology has changed over the years. I remeber having a flip phone when I was in high school and having free minutes after 9PM and free calls on weekends. I remember when dial up internet wouldnt work when someone was on the phone or when the phone wouldnt work when someone was on the internet. These small annoying things made you not want to use the internet or phone. It’s so weird how now we are all glued to our phones. Before I got a car I used to be the girl that sat on the bus and train glued to my phone to make time pass and forget about how long it would take to get home. I am married to a man that loves technology he always wants the latest phones, apple watches, go pros, fastest internet, eventually it rubbed off on me and I love technology. My husband purched the “nest” and now I can see whos at my door, I can hear everything, I get notifications etc.

All my life I was never good at speaking in front of people. I always get nervous, I turn red, I forget what I want to say. The hardest part for me was standing up in front of the class and talking, especially about something so close to my heart. I spoke very briefly about my families history in Albania. When I wrote about the story it was much more meaningful. I feel like I was able to write more then I thought, it just flowed much better. I wrote a lot more but I erased a lot because it would be a long essay. My uncle wrote a book on my families history and he is currently waiting for the editors to finish their part so that the book could be released. I get very emotional when I think about everything my family has been through and everything they have sacrificed for a better life. God Bless America!

https://voyant-tools.org/?corpus=c0a0a3ea74e2ded3f229055db1dc1244&panels=cirrus,reader,trends,summary,contexts

All my life I was told not to use wikipedia as a trusted source when it came to doing research and writing papers. I never had an issue using wikipedia as a place to get some quick information on something. For this assignment I posted an Albanian flag since there weren’t many pictures of it. I wanted to use a picture that I took of the Albanian flag myself. Wikipedia did not let me use it because it might have been someone elses work when in fact it was not. I started to get frustrated because I really wanted to use it but then, I gave up. It was so interesting to see how easily you can change pictures and information on a source that millions of people access every single day. I still trust wikipedia I think it takes a lot to put false information, there are guidelines and precautions that Wiki takes on what you post. I’m sure there is some information that is false or misinterpreted but for the most part I think it’s mostly accurate. I still wish I could use that picture because it is my own picture that I took in Albania this Summer!

For this week’s blog post I chose to write about Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan. This article struck my interest because I grew up in a time that technology was just starting to advance. Computers were starting to become smaller, laptops were being introduced, ipod and iphone was introduced, T.V.’s were becoming plasmas etc. My generation knew what it was like to go outside and play everytime there was a school break, computers were used once in a blue moon for homework only, schools didnt really use computers either. Now, technology is accessible for anyone at any age. I think it is important for the newer generation of kids to read about this or watch this. We have smartphones that can do anything with just a click of a button. You can research and find anything, you store your entire life in a smartphone. We have grown so attached to phones and computers that sometimes you get anxiety when you dont see your phone. This year alone I went to Albania two times each way was 12 hours then I went to Jamaica. I was so itchy to use my phone because I kill time when I am on my phone. I read the news, I go through my pictures, I go on facebook or instagram etc. It just shows you how much weve grown to be so attached to something so small yet its the biggest part of our lives.

For this weeks blog I will be reflecting on  “The Coming of the Microcomputer”, While I was reading all I could think about was the change computers have gone through over the years. I remember when I was little we had an HP desktop computer. It was big and has the huge piece in the back. I was born in 1994, we still had the old computers that when you turned them on the computer would take forever to load and all the codes would come up, loading, and reloading. If it didnt work you would have to turn it off, wait 30 seconds to turn it on again. Years go by and we save our entire lives in iphones and samsungs. Every year iphone comes out with new phones that doesnt really have any new features. It is just the thought of having the new phone with a better camera, a better program or new feature. Computers have down sized making it more convenient to carry it around. Technology has changed the world drastically through the use of cell phones and computers. They have completely revolutionized today’s society making life more convenient. Communication has changed because of the advancement that technology has made in todays day and age.

For week #7 I will be refelcting on “Email, The Letter, And The Post” by Mark Nunes. This article was basically about how writing letters turned into sending emails. We think that sending an email is just opening the computer logging into your email and typing away, what we dont understand is the process in which it takes to send the email.” The sender composes a message using the email client on their computer. When the user sends the message, the email text and attachments are uploaded to the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server as outgoing mail. All outgoing messages wait in the outgoing mail queue while the SMTP server communicates with the DNS (Domain Name Server–like a phone book for domain names and server IP addresses) to find out where the recipient’s email server is located. If the SMTP server finds the recipient’s email server,  it will transfer the message and attachments. If the recipient’s server can’t be found, the sender will get a “Mail Failure” notification in their inbox. The next time the recipient clicks “Send & Receive,” their email client will download all new messages from their own email server. You’ve got mail!” All of this work does not compare to actually hand writting a letter. I remember when I was in 4th grade and I had to write a letter to a penpal. I thought it was the most amazing experience ever. I got to write a thoughtful message with my own hand writting and then draw pictures around it to show how excited I was to meet my pal. I believe it is more thoughtful when you take the time to write something out in a letter rather then an email.

For this weeks blog post I will be focusing on Lisa Nakamuras Race In/For Cyberspace. This article basically talks about social media and how people “label” themselves when they sign up for group chats or different social medias. How people describe themselves, their gender, birthdays, the way they write is all classified by race whether your black, white, Spanish, Asian etc. You can literally be talking to anyone and it could all be a lie. People of all races and genders are basically stereotyped. People create there own identities based on who they want the world to know, this person can basically “catfish” you. My younger sister was harrased on social media by a man who presented himself as a women on social media. The person had a profile that made you believe they were very social and active, had mutual friends. When people started noticing weird activity they began reporting him and they blocked the persons account. People create fake profiles for many different reasons, it can be to fool people, to just follow people, to harras, to just to active, there are many different reasons.

Lisa Nakamura, “Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet” in Works and Days, Volume 13, 181-193, 1995