Sunday, April 22, 2012

Article of the Week: 4/23/12

Please print out this weeks article (black & white), and show evidence of text rendering.  Instead of blogging your opinion this week, type your opinion in paragraph form.  Be sure to reference the article for support.  Due before class on Friday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/the-flight-from-conversation.html?src=me&ref=general

5 comments:

  1. The things discussed in this article are, in my opinion, very true and are continuing problems in the world today. The younger kids are when they start using technology, the more they'll make it a part of their daily life in the future. Technology is bringing people farther apart from eachother and closer to computer screens and cell phones. "We’ve become accustomed to a new way of being 'alone together.'" We can still communicate with eachother, but it's not a true, face to face, thing. It is also distracting people from school work and things that are important in life. Technology brings the world a lot of helpful things, but it also has a lot of negative impacts on people's lives.

    Karlie Komoroski Period 7

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  2. While reading this article in print, I watched a subbed music video of a recent Chinese song titled, "MAMA" by EXO-M (there is also a Korean version by EXO-K). The lyrics address the topic that was discussed in the article, mainly focusing on how people craft their ideal "masks" on the internet that are supposed to represent them while their true selves are sealed away within. Slowly, technology is stripping away the reality of emotion and personality and this has become more and more of a global problem. What's more is that technology keeps advancing nonstop because we consumers are willing to pay for these neat gadgets as much as we would for water, food, and utility bills. Switching over to normal face-to-face conversation, thus, is much easier said than done.


    The author made some good observations. Yes, we are isolated. Yes, we would rather confide in technology than people. And yes, we are more and more reluctant to even try to communicate face to face. But can we really just, "...look up, look at one another, and...start a conversation"? Just those three problems applied to the general majority of the people create a fierce barrier between ourselves, too tough to break. Because we isolate ourselves into our mini, handheld utopias, we craft the ideal image of ourselves to present to others. This image is fake, a lie. Therefore, everyone on the web is generally a liar. There is no one we can trust and if people can lie on the internet, why not in real life? It becomes a habit for the mentality, so surely it can leak from online to the real world. With that, we find alternatives to who, or what in this case, we can confide in. Robots and artificially intelligent smartphones are perfect substitutes with "larger databases than humans". It is a bit disturbing to think that this can happen, but it slowly is as we speak. In addition, distrust makes it even more uncomfortable to speak to one another as it already is.


    As I mentioned, how deeply immersed we are with technology is a problem everywhere around the world. Perhaps just getting up and out there to speak could solve problems, but the scale of the problem seems to be out of control. There is little hope in finding a solution unless large scale actions take place to offer solutions. I definitely do not expect laws to be made to limit technological use as we depend on it for work, learning, and making money, all vital pieces to a functioning society. With how well society is running in those areas, there is no turning back. But even if there is little hope, it isn't impossible to eradicate social tensions in real life. The author did write the article to spread awareness. All we have to do is become aware; we have to look at this as a problem and not as a poor habit/lifestyle. Only then would speaking to one another solve our issues of distancing ourselves from the cyberworld.


    By the way, if you are interested, here are the subbed videos of MAMA:
    EXO-M: http://youtu.be/vCjHdX4mmZc
    EXO-K: http://youtu.be/ec_RdJcTt8w

    Sidney
    Period 1

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  3. In this article “The Flight From Conversation” they talk about how phones and computer s are stealing are humanity as they become more advanced. I think this is true because people aren’t that open with others any more. They don’t talk to people or ask there families about things anymore because they think it’s easier and less awkward to just look it up. They also made a good point when they said that it is becoming more natural for people to hide them self’s and just to stay in a little bubble and not talk to people face to face.

    Austin Fries (period 7)

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  4. Very descriptive blog, I loved that a lot. Will there be a part 2?


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