To blog or not to blog?

 Hey bloggers!

Here I am on blogger writing a blog entry about blogs.

What are blogs and why do people write them?       There are many types of blogs.

 

Aside from the standard informative blogs, there are 'art blogs' which of course are artistically based, 'photblogs' resembling Instagram, video blogs called 'vlogs' and audio blogs known as 'podcasts'. In education, blogs can be used as instructional resources. For instance, my blog would be referred to as an edublog, as it was assigned for the semester to engage the course content. I think this concept was a great idea, as blogging turned out to be a very effective way to engage the course content. It forced me to think critically about issues while outside the classroom, and knowing that I have to post responses, prompts me to research the topics to then state my views.

Before creating my first blog in the spring, I thought one needed to have computer coding HTML knowledge to post on the web. Lucky for me, there are user friendly sites such as 

that allow even non-technical users to post for FREE!

 Had it not been a class requirement, I would have still chosen to blog as I've always been better at expressing myself through writing than speaking. I am always multitasking, so I find that I have to make reminders of things, or else I run the risk of totally forgetting. When I was younger I would keep a diary to write down a day's worth of adventures as I was determined to write an autobiography. At fifteen I was convinced that my life could be a movie, so I transferred my experiences onto a laptop. Unfortunately I lost access to that p.c. and at the time I did not yet own a flash drive, so majority of my memories are lost to me. If I knew about blogs then, I could have created my very own; diary style and posted my story. Who knows, maybe i would have published a book.

A very successful blog is the insanely popular TMZ site, which boasts 30 million monthly visitors!!!

"This blog is popular for a reason...we are curious about how the elite live with fame and fortune – sometimes a life to which we aspire. TMZ feeds this desire for such information while feeding and sustaining the desire for more content on the subject. The headlines – specific, salacious, and appealing – pique curiosity." http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2015/05/learn-popular-blogs/

This is clearly an effective strategy as evidenced by the fact that TMZ's visitors are in the millions. If I had a blog, I would take this lesson and run with it. I would grab my readers' attention with intriguing headlines and offer exclusive information in my blog to keep them coming back for more.

Is Technology Destroying Language?

Technology can be a great thing, and it definitely is, when not abused. Like technology, language has evolved to be more informal, and as people progressed, we continued to adapt to the changing tech world. Those convinced technology is destroying the English language points to online jargon as the blame. There are many ways to describe online language, but in this post I will use the term "netspeak". See link http://technologyandlanguage.weebly.com/destruction.html. 

In my opinion, technology is not the blame. As texting became a more popular form of communicating, people incorporated netspeak in their regular and professional lives. My view on netspeak is that it shouldn't matter what form of communication is used, as long as the desired message is conveyed. I myself have been guilty of taking short cuts in my writing. I got so accustomed to certain perks such as auto-correct, that I stopped proofreading texts before hitting send, causing me to go over and edit. If I had slowed down to look it over in the first place, i wouldn't need to go back and fix a typo. Most resort to netspeak because it is convenient and allows us to express ourselves more quickly rather than to write out entire sentences. However, people should remember that everything has an appropriate time and place.

Netspeak has become an epidemic with teens as they even have conversations speaking in the acronyms. In others words, rather than saying the actual words, they spell them out as they would in a text such as omg, jk, lol, wtf, wth, ttyl. In this way teens prove to be the biggest abusers of technology. In closing, if people think technology is destroying language, they should remember that it was people who created it in the first place. 

Connected, but Alone?

 

In TedTalks "Connected, but Alone?" Sherry Turkle discusses the negative impact that technology has on how people connect. She argues, "our little devices, those little devices in our pockets, are so psychologically powerful that they don't only change what we do, they change who we are."  What I think Sherry meant is that it is as if our cellphones are in control of us. That our devices have a hold over us to the point where it is as if we are the machines, as we interact less and less with other humans and spend more time with our devices. I know people who actually look forward to red lights while driving, as it means they get to pick up the phone and click play on another ‘epic fail’ video. Not to mention texting, as if its a proud skill to avoid a crash as they text and drive. An ideal quote to explain this behavior was best expressed by Sherry Turkle, “we are letting it take us places that we don’t want to go.”

 My views on computer-mediated communication technology are mixed. On the one hand, with face-to-face interactions, you can see facial expressions and actually hear tone of voice, which makes for better understanding. On the other hand, I find that conversations flow easily through texts, as people tend to express themselves freely when they don’t have to face you. Overall I do feel like people are letting technology take away from the need to be with people in person. There was a time when getting together for events like class reunions was a big hit. Now that there is Facebook and other computer mediated technology, the need to reconnect with people is taken away. Thanks to these sites, we no longer have to meet up in person to catch-up. You just check-out their online profile. You can see how they look, if they went off and got married, if they have children etc. It can be intrusive, if you let it.

Turkle goes on to claim, "Human relationships are rich and they're messy and they're demanding. And we clean them up with technology. And when we do, one of the things that can happen is that we sacrifice conversation for mere connection. We short-change ourselves. . . . Over and over I hear, "I would rather text than talk." And what I'm seeing is that people get so used to being short-changed out of real conversation, so used to getting by with less that they've become almost willing to dispense with people altogether."  Personally, I prefer talking than texting but there are cases where texting is more suitable. While I agree with Turkle, I cant say texting is all bad. I will say that there is a time and place for everything and people just need to know how to determine when that is. I found it funny when Turkle said an 18 year old boy, who was an expert at texting told her “someday but certainly not now, I would like to learn how to have a conversation.” When I heard that I thought it was a joke. My friends and I could go on and on having debates about any and everything. It would seem that my generation is slowly loosing the ability to have meaningful chats with their peers.  This really bothers me. I worry for what future we will have.

Being alone feels like a problem that needs to be solved

War Games

“War Games” is a movie about computer whiz kid David Lightman whose hacking skills puts him on the FBI's radar. This unwanted exposure occurred after David unintentionally gained access to the supercomputer of the U.S. military. The machine had its own name, the WOPR, which stood for War Operational Plan Response. The purpose of the WOPR was to predict possible outcomes of a nuclear war. David is prompted by the machine to select a game he wished to play and, believing it was just a game, he selects Global Thermonuclear War.  WOPR then runs a nuclear war simulation, which almost causes the military to prepare for DEFCON 1, which would have been WWIII.

 1.      Passwords

David was always hacking into computers. He misbehaves in class so that he would get sent to the principal's office, a tactic to retrieve the latest password to the school's computer system. They were always changing the passwords, so he had to be inside to open the draw to where the passwords were scribbled to write down the latest one. Despite how smart he was with hacking, he was an underachiever in school. He goes home on his smart pc and hacks into the school's system and changes his failed grades to passing. This was in the 80's, yet people still to this day use passwords that are weak and easy to guess. Knowing this makes it easy for hackers to gain access to personal and private data. 

 2.      Connecting to computers              &             3.      Gaining Access

While searching for the number to ProtoVision, David stumbled on the phone number to the NORAD computer. In the movie, dial-up was used to access the internet. Which was an early form of internet access to connect to the internet by dialing specific telephone numbers. Today most people use high-speed internet to connect to the web. After failed attempts to gain access to the NORAD computer system, David turns to his hacker friends who suggest he use a “back door”. As the hacker explains, back door is using a simple password that only the user knows so as to bypass any new added security. Back doors are still used today for if a person forgets their password, they will have an alternative way of gaining access. Examples of this are security questions, finger-print scanning, eye ball scanning, etc.

  4.      Computer Hardware                &               5.      Human-like Computers

 The WOPR was a room-sized computer with flashing lights on it that played Global Thermonuclear War. The acronym WOPR stands for War Operational Plan Response. David’s personal computer would communicate with him as if he was talking to a real person. This was possible because of voice box installation, which interpret music from the computer and turned it into sound. Also, like computers today, his pc did what it was programmed to do.  Computers with this ability exist today. An example is a computer that is programmed for the visually impaired. Much like the pc in the movie, I know a fellow who is blind and his computer talks to him, reads to him, etc.

  6.      Futility of the Game

To learn the futility of the game, David invites WOPR to play tic-tac-toe. WOPR only plays to win, but tic-tac-toe is a game that could not be won, instead it crashes while trying to test different strategies. Using the knowledge gained, WOPR comes to the conclusion that "The only winning move is not to play". It finally learnt to lose.