Today I accomplished some more research. I still ave lots more to do. What has been difficult for me is trying to explain things in a way that others will understand. I grew up around cows and food safety but I realize that not everyone has. So far there have been no major problems.
I’m still in the researching phase of my literature review paper. I’m having a tough time deciding whether to do it on digital litereacy or digital advertising/marketing. The hardest part of the paper is finding scholarly articles and finding the time to work on the paper. Tonight I will definietly set aside two hours for research and making an outline. Tomorrow I will finish the outline and start on the paper. By Friday the first rough draft will be done and by Monday the final draft will be done. I have other stuff to do for other classes so let the all nighters begin lol.
According to Brown foreign policy can’t be the same. Governments must pay attention to the bloggers who are writing about the problems of the world. This generation is the first with the power to organize globally to solve the problems of the world because we can communicate with the global society on a grand scale. This our generation’s great project. Brown’s ideas are realistic because technology is everywhere. Anyone can get tot a computer with internet access. Poorer countries can connect with the richer and the richer can invest in the poor countries and help them out. According to Brown, we have the means to create a global society and we need to march towards a more global soiety.
The article “What Defines a Meme” compares memes to genetics. The article states that memes are a cultural evolution. The author connects the evolution and replication of memes to the evolution of genes. The author also states that ideas evolve other ideas and that the same is true for genetics.
In the last few weeks I have earned that people have the same wants and needs as we always have, but we are learning to express those wants and needs in different ways then we have before. We want to have connections with people but instead of having human interactions, we connect on social media. Researchers have examined how many “friends” the average facebook user has and how that number correlates to our overall happiness and well being. One question I have is whether or not technology is actually benefitting us. Kids don’t go out and play in the yard anymore because they are sitting behind a computer. Pedestrians are constantly being hit by cars because they are paying more attention to their cell phones and/or ipods then they are to cars. Yes technology helps us to communicate but people have become so used to havig cell phones, ipods, and computers that they have become a crutch for some people. Some people (myself included) cannot be without their phones. This known as nomophobia.
I feel very empowered when interacting online. I have the power to determine who sees my profiles, who I am “friends” with, what pictures/information about me are/is posted, and how I act online. I can delete any posts, comments, or photos that I make or people make on my statuses or wall. I can also report anyone who cyberbullies me or anyone else for that matter.
Are people really who they say they are? How can it be known if soeone is being authentic or fake? Are peolpe who they think they are? In Charles Cooley’s The Looking Glass Self, it is stated that people act how they think that other people think they should act. Research has shown that this theory extends to people’s lives on the internet. For instance, in the online world of Second Life, researchers found that the appearance of the avatars mattered a lot. People can ake their online profile into something they are not in real life. When an employer performs a background check on a current or future employee they might find something that reflects the person in question in a different light than they are offline. But how wrong is it to have multiple identities? It is natural for our identies to be prismatic. I have an identity as a daughter, a friend, a sister, and a student- each of these being different but yet similar.
A person’s digital footprint is the trail they leave when interacting with their digital environment (television, computer, etc). I was a little curious to see what my digital footprint was so I googled myself. Apparently their are tons of other people out there with my name. When I googled myself I could not find anything belonging to me personally because there are so many other peole with the same name. Some of these people are financial executives, some are modles, and some are educators. These other Faith Reynolds live all over the world in countries such as the United States, the UK, and Spanish speaking countries.
When posting things on the internet you are telling your story to an audience that is much larger than anyone can really comprehend. Anyone can see whatever you put on your Facebook profile or Twitter account. When I post things on Facebook, I try to be just like who I am in real life. I do not use the internet as an alternative life to the one I live outside the internet. I would not try to change the way I present myself on Facebook because that is just who I am in real life. The way I tell my story online is the way I would tell it to someone if we were sitting down and having a conversation. That is just the way it should be because somone may get the wrong impression of another person if they have a different life online than they do in real life.
