HW 26- Photos & Questions

Henry Guss, High Schooler

First off, some people say appearance is everything, so what would this say about you?

I am everything.

Do you ever see other people with this look when you're out and about?

No, I'm unique. Not really, nobody. Not many people are doing the button down shirt anymore.

How does that make you feel?

It makes me feel good, really good. I feel like an individual and different and not the same.

Would you say you're cool?

I'm quite warm actually. (Laughs) There's no such thing as cool.

What makes you say that?

Cool is whatever somebody makes it out to be and I make it out to be nothing.

Alex Simmons, Writer

So there is the old saying, appearance is everything. What would this say about you?

That I am a slob. (Laughs) I'm an easygoing kind of guy, I like to present myself well but I don't have to be fancy to do that.

Do you ever see other people with this look when you're out and about?

Yes, I do. There is what you call business casual and another level even, where people will wear a button down shirt unbuttoned with jeans when they work in computers or communications and don't have to worry about appearance as much.

How does that make you feel?

It doesn't bother me, I know who I am.

Would you say you're cool?

At times, I'm not perpetually cool nor do I think about being cool but there are times when yes, I think that I am cool. Cool is a state of mind and what I might think is cool, other people might disagree but I don't need their acceptance.

Do you think cool matters?

It's not really a yes or no question, it matters to some people but it shouldn't be how you judge yourself all the time, but it can be fun or it can be crippling if you let it overcome you and stop you from being who you are.

Name omitted, Art Student

First off, some people say appearance is everything, so what would this say about you?

Well, I think it's important not to look like a mess, because then people get a certain impression of you that may not be correct. appearance is how you project an image of yourself to the outside world, and I always keep that in mind when I get dressed in the morning. The way I look isnt precisely the way I want people to see me, but it's close enough.

What would make it precisely how you want people to see you?

Well it depends on the situation. Like on a casual level I wanna look laid back, but not like a slob, and put together but not too made up, if that makes sense. That reflects my general attitude but not really my 'inner self', mostly because my inner self is a huge freaking nerd.

Do you see other people with a similar look when you walk around?

Yeah, sometimes.

Do you care? How does it make you feel? Do you feel like you can connect more with them?

It doesn't really bother me. It's impossible to be entirely unique when it comes to clothes, and i don't really care unless people are looking at me and thinking "Oh my God HIPSTERRRRR" or whatever. Ugh, hipsters. I don't feel particularly like I connect with people based on appearance--mostly because I know I probably don't connect with them in terms of the way our minds work.

You mention "hipsters". What is it about them that annoys you? What would you call a hipster?

Hipsters. Pretentious, annoying, and nowhere near as intelligent or forward thinking as they think they are. The most irritating hipsters are the ones who have money yet insist on going to thrift stores and dressing themselves in secondhand clothes. They're a perfect example of people trying SO hard to be different that they just end up conforming.

So are you cool then?

(Snorts) Depends on your definition of cool. Am I conventionally cool, definitely not. Some people think I'm cool and a hell of a lot of people would say hell no.

Marco Gonzalez, Realist

Some people say appearance is everything, so what would this say about you?

I dress simply and efficiently to reflect who I am.

Is this a common look outside of yourself?

Not really, everybody seems to try to get a certain look but I choose my clothes based on how comfortable they are rather than how they look. I dress more for function than form.

Would you say that is a good way to summarize your mentalities in general?

Yes.

Would you be surprised to find this kind of function-first mentality in a more mainstream venue?

Yea. It’s easy to sell shiny shit, spin rims on cars for example, but it’s hard to sell something that just there to serve a purpose, and since corporations dictate what the mainstream says and shows they're going to display flashy pointless things that look nice but serve little to no purpose.

Do you think that the things the mainstream media promotes are cool then, by your own definition of the concept?

No, because things like skinny jeans may look cool but they're probably not that comfortable and wearing your pants "half-mast" can't be comfortable either, especially in winter so there's a lot of fads that may look nice but don't make sense logically to follow.

Do you think you are cool by your own definition?

To clarify, my definition of cool is someone who knows what they want to do, whether it's their purpose what they do for fun or whatever it may be. The attitude and “swagger will follow that”. By my definition I think I'm cool because I live my life the way I like it, I don't have to be an attention whore to be happy, I know what I like and don't like and I'm content with my life the way the it is, I don't need to dress it up in expensive shit to make it better.

Would the mainstream cool agree?

Probably not since I'm not dressed up in expensive clothes and I don't go to parties and get wasted or listen to mainstream music etc.

HW 25- Story Comments and Analysis

Part 1- Comments

Hannah-

Hannah, I liked your story. I felt like it was interesting to see how the girl thought she was cool and yet she tried to act cooler despite this. The boy complementing the girl and saving her is also pretty cool and I liked how you added in details such as the smell of his jacket.

Maggie-

Maggie, I like the simplicity of your story. Though you use no dialogue, you manage to convey a very surreal atmosphere that is like a waiting room of a hospital, with small talk and frantic personalities. I like how you convey cool by seeing through other people's fake faces and this is a common thread everybody is aware but rarely do you see this in the real world, which I think helped to add to the tone of the piece.

Rachel-

Rachel, I thought it was interesting that you pointed out bluntly what made her cool. I think that your story worked best when you led the reader to draw their own conclusions and left the girl a mystery. By having her ignore others and dismiss their opinions of her, I think that you made her seem like her own person, an individual, which is always cool. Adding in the copycats at the end was a nice touch to show the social impact she was having on the community and that others also thought she was cool.

Marco-

Marco, I found your story to really stand out amongst many of the ones I have read. Your more offensive look on what cool is helps to show that in fact, the narrator is the cool person, not those observed. By not selling out to some corporation to buy what's cool, you show that being true to who you are is cool. This is well supported by your talk of jocks and nerds and geeks, which I think was nice touch to show how cool is not one defined term and is different amongst different people.

Beatrice-

Beatrice, I found your story to be quite interesting. By having the girl simply isolate herself from everybody else, she has her individuality and that makes her much cooler than those around her who can't even work up the courage to talk to her. Music is very important here, because by ending and starting the story with music you show that Tatum is off in her own world, but a world of uncertainty and I think that this is an interesting thing to think about when one thinks of cool, how we can doubt ourselves or be unsure and still be cool. Good job.

Part 2- Analysis

Cool is not store bought, despite what the media would have you believe. Every story I read and even the one I wrote came to the realization that cool was in the way one acted, in their attitude. I think that this is a very key conclusion to come to, although it is a rather simple and obvious conclusion. If cool was truly store bought, why wasn't everybody cool? And if everybody did buy "cool" from the store, would it still be cool to have "cool"? No, cool is best when it comes from inside a person and they act like they don't care about anybody's opinion of themselves.

These stories all had another common theme amongst 4 of them, somewhat 5 depending on how you interpret Marco's story. This theme is that even if cool is not store bought, it can be enhanced. By having "cool" headphones or cool "jeans", somebody can have a "look" that makes them cooler. In the case of Hannah's story, the cool character fell into the category of bad boy/ladies man, even if not intentional. By having the "cool" character smooth talk and save the girl, he was also the typical hero of literature, saving the helpless damsel in distress. This is often seen as cool in many different representations. As for Rachel's story, by having the "cool" jeans and boots, the character was cool because she had copycats. While she was cool in addition to this, she was extra cool because of this.

I found it interesting that in none of the stories was anybody older cooler. I know the assignment was to discuss somebody around 17 years old who was cool, but nobody had any real interactions with older generations and none had anybody cool that was older than the protagonist. I think that while accidental, this does give insight in that people don't find older generations to be particularly cool. This is a pretty mainstream perspective and shows the effects of cool and the boundaries because nobody can maintain cool forever and nobody is cool in everybody's eyes, which connects to Marco's story about different groups of cool. All in all, cool is not all encompassing and is not eternal, but just something to fill the time between the actual meaningful activities of life.

Hw 24- Short Story 1

Have you ever seen an old western movie, where the cool new sherif comes in to a salon and takes names and kicks ass right from the get go? Yea, that's not the way High School works. The cool new sherif of our school didn't get over easily and didn't dominate from the beginning. Instead she walked into the classroom quietly, got introduced quickly by the teacher, and faded into nothing from the get-go.

I saw her in the back of the classroom, the green of her tank top complementing the purple of her mini-jacket, making her look the Joker fan-girl you knew she wasn't. Her jeans compressing her legs, she leaned back with her hand propped behind her head, a notebook out on the table with what seemed to be nothing more than just the Do-Now of the day and her heading. The teacher saw this too. I don't know if he saw this as an insult or a challenge, but whatever his reason, he called on her to answer the challenge problem on the subject he had just taught. The subject that the do-now didn't even talk about, so as far as I was concerned, she had no idea where to even start, explaining her lack of care in the goings-on.

I thought this was cold of him, to call on the new girl on the first day of advanced physics to go up to the board on a problem from a new subject everybody was struggling to complete. Eyes lifted from around the room as they watched her go up to the board. Not a word was uttered by her though. No angry retort that she had been called on, no whine that he was picking on the new kid, simple the tapping of her slight heels as she walked across the room to the board. She turned her back to us, wrote her answer, and sat down. Mouths slowly started to move again.

"Who is that?"

"I didn't even see her back there"

"Is that some college student here to learn how to teach?"

"I bet she doesn't even know the subject"

"This'll be interesting"

As the voices quieted, she chuckled to herself. I could tell she heard the voices, she didn't even care though. She went back to her former position at this point, as her own way of flipping everybody off. The teacher asked her to explain her answer, she told him simply and with an elegant flair like nobody else I had seen before, "I just did what you put on the board and used the formula's and wrote it down for you up there as I figured it out". He asked if she could explain it more than that and she said "Well I can't explain the way my mind works, all I know is that I was right and that you spelled his named wrong up there".

A hush over the room, all eyes stared at our teacher as he saw he had indeed misspelled it, and he went over how to solve the problem. Nobody looked back at her, but I had never stopped in the first place. She caught me looking at her and smiled a little smile, putting her head down to doodle in the void her notes would have inhabited if she hadn't already proved she didn't need any.

HW 23- 1st Constructivist Exploration of Cool

Cool is an interesting concept. It isn't something you can define properly or even hold onto for an extended period of time but it is something that most people recognize immediately. What is it about cool that is so easily accessible to everybody and yet so hard to maintain?

I think cool never really dies completely. Instead it fades from one group of people to another. For example, hippies were once very cool by mainstream society. They were everywhere you looked and they were the symbol of their times. They were in the mainstream grouping. However, as time progressed and people moved on with their lives and things changed, hippies left that group of people, being the mainstream, and moved on to form a smaller group of pure hippies that still exists today through the evolution of it's popularity. The same can be said about other concepts that expand past people as well. For example, in the 90's, Seinfeld was one of the top shows on TV and it was very cool to watch it and discuss it the next day. Now it has moved from this mainstream grouping into a lesser group of cool, the nostalgia group.

I think that cool is also dictated by the popular. I understand that this is not some grand new revelation, but those considered popular or cool do not take responsibility for their actions the way that they should. This changes the course of cool as well and makes it cool to be irresponsible and to not care about your actions. This is the general direction society has been heading in the last few years thanks to people like Amy Winehouse or Britney Spears who don't take care of anybody except for themselves, and even so they don't take tremendous care and often lead their lives into chaos. This is in right now and society heads down as a result.

Cool is not always about being popular and without a care though. Take for instance the 1986 hit song, "Hip to Be Square" by Huey Lewis and the News. This song is about being "square", or being a nerd. The song peaked at number 1 on the U.S. Billboard top rock tracks listings and reached number 3 in the overall U.S. Billboard category. With lyrics like "I used to be a renegade... but had to settle down" and "Now I'm playing it real straight", this song counters what makes most other songs popular and completely avoids what made other songs of the year such as "Addicted to Love" and "Greatest Love of All" so popular. This shows that cool isn't a constant, as I stated earlier, however it helps to establish a trend that can connect to today, such as love always being cool in some form, however where it was once the "Greatest Love of All" it is now "3". A very drastic change to be sure.

All links provided are via Youtube and may not be accessible through school connections.

HW 21- Art Project 1

My art piece is a mirror. It represents the viewer watching the screen, headphones on, blocking out the world. To the person in my piece, let's call him "You", his physical self is nothing. That is why You is hunched over, eyes glazed over with 1's and 0's. The only way I was even able to draw this picture was through actual imagery, of both people around the world (Via the internet) and myself in a mirror. If you ever see somebody like You staring at a screen, it is clear to you that it is a mirror. However, from this mirror much can be built through self-realization. By seeing the way You looks at the screen in front of his face, the way he lacks any presence with his physical self, shows that he is overly immersed and others can see parts of themselves in this and correct their own ways so as not to end up like You.

This piece can make people feel through themselves. You represents something that everybody can relate to in some regard and people can decide for themselves if they think this is wrong or not and if they need to correct their own ways. The piece should be a little off-setting though, meaning you shouldn't feel completely comfortable with what you see You doing and the way You acts in front of the screen. If people can take a second after viewing this to reflect on their own ways in front of screens and with digital-representational-devices than the piece has served its purpose.

What was most interesting while making this piece was that in order to get the expression of You, I had to take a picture of myself in a digital state staring at my computer screen. This worked out perfectly for me to use as reference, but the look on my picture was very difficult for me to look at. I felt very aware of myself while looking at the picture and it made me both disgusted by the expression but happy that it was not my natural state on the computer but rather an exaggeration. I do know many people that resemble You in this picture and that makes me slightly concerned over people's well being and on how they can express themselves in reality if they spend so much time like You, blinded and overwhelmed by the 1's and 0's of the screen.

HW 22- Big Paper, Final Version

The Digital Age

Introduction:

The dawn of the 2010's is right around the corner. Now is the time to reflect, to look back on what this decade will be known for. Where the 1960's had hippies, the 70's had disco, the 80's had rock and the 90's had funky colors on everything, the 2000's will be surely known as the digital age (or at least the start of it). In the last 10 years, everything from the internet to cell phones to video games has exploded onto the scene in ways bigger than ever before. In the end though, as with every decade before this one, a clear conclusion can be drawn. People are addicted to people. Every form of digital-representational-devices can be used to link people together in some form, be in direct or through a common bond over said device. The digital age is simply a new casing over the same product that is mankind.

Argument I:

Like Myspace before it, and Aim before that, and email prior to that (You can go back further to phones and even letters if you really want), Facebook is the top tool to connect the people of the world. Looking at the School of the Future graduating class of 2010, at least 69 different people have facebook accounts (Based on the friend list of myself, Henry Varona), and from that, a good 17 of those students were on it in the course of a 4 hour period (This is based on what they had posted online, they could have checked their facebook and not posted anything publicly). This is a common finding for American high school in New York City, and if expanded to the entire country similar ratios will be found to those on my friend list. So why do people go on it so often? Well I can't answer for everybody, but I go on it to connect with everybody I know online. I can talk through normal messaging, quizzes, notes (which reach a group of people), groups centered on a common thread, applications, pictures, and so much more. Facebook has changed the way people talk because you can talk in so many different ways. This is particularly attractive because it gives people the illusion of freedom, the choice to talk to their friends however they like and whenever they can. Facebook doesn't make you respond right away. Conversations that would take minutes in spoken word can take days or weeks on Facebook, making you feel like you are really connecting with somebody even if you aren't. You feel popular when you see how many people talk to you, you feel important in a way that you can look back on so you don't have to rely on memory. People can talk in such an easier fashion, it's no wonder that it's one of the top sites in the world.

Argument II:

The curse of the cellular telephone encompasses almost every American. With a phone on you, which many have or give their children so that they can be safe, you are never truly alone. You are connected to every single person in the world through a simple phone and thanks to this people can connect even more. Take a schoolroom environment for example, under the tables, in their bags, off to the side of the counter, cell-phones are used for texting, talking to people across the room, in the classroom next door, wherever. God-forbid anybody wait to talk to their friends or pay attention, everybody feels the need to be constantly connected to friends they want to be with now. Here's the kicker though, texting doesn't disappear once they go hang out with their friends. And that leads to the next example, a park. Imagine you are surrounded by 10 of your closest friends having a good time hanging out. You feel a vibrate coming from your pocket and you just got a text from somebody who couldn't make it, somebody who maybe doesn't fit into that particular group. So you text, and text and even with everything you need for social interaction available, you choose your phone over your friends to talk to even more. People are rarely satisfied by what they have ready for them at the moment and are constantly searching for more ways to talk to people and as a result more time face down at a screen. And that's not even including the applications they have now...

Argument III:

I love my XBox 360, I'm not going to lie about it or try and hide it. Having the range of games the system provides and the chance to play video games with people all around the world whenever I want to is a very special vice for me. Back in the 90's and early 2000's, video games were a staple of my childhood. When I wasn't out with my friends playing a sport or inside playing with toys, video games were king. I would invite my best friends over and we would play and yell and scream and have a good time. Now though, video games don't need a friend right next to you thanks to the internet. People can play from the safety of their own couch with their friend who is playing on their own couch. As a result, playing video games is a lot easier, but a side effect comes out of the situation. An online persona is created, reflecting your video game mentality. Like for me, I go from normality to a sarcastic shoot-you-in-the-back kind of guy, no respect unless you respect me. My friend who has the most insane temper in the world becomes a mellow, stay-in-the-back kind of guy. Everybody becomes a completely different person and this affects the way that certain people you interact with will see you, which is both good and bad, but in the end is not real.

Connections for Argument I:

This state that we are in did not come easily though. If you look at what I am discussing here, most of these things have been around for quite some time, so why is it that we now consider them to be such a big deal when grouped together (As they have been in the past by many other people)? Many reasons. For one, the graduating generation, AKA the class of 2010, grew up in a turbulent time for these digital-representational-devices. As we grew, so did the technology. Starting with dial-up as children, so that it was only a sometimes treat to go online, we slowly watched as the internet became more an more accessible as we became more capable of handling it. After dial-up came the Ethernet cord, which meant we could be on as often as we wanted as long as we had the cord plugged in, and we didn’t have to wait for the internet to boot up! After this, we had wifi, and suddenly as we reached high school, the typical point of rebellion, we could do whatever we wanted online whenever we wanted, not being able to be controlled and restrained by a cord.

As a result though, our key developmental stages where we become the person we are for the rest of our lives were assaulted by an onslaught of a new foe, the internet. Exposed to much more than we normally would be (In comparison with both previous generations and our natural world), many people were unable to separate themselves from the opportunities and experiences proposed to them. Take for instance, facebook. Facebook went from having 12 million users in the end of 2006 to having 50 million by October of 2007 (facebook.com). This surge took place during our grades freshmen and junior years, a time when most teenagers are starting to venture out on their own in terms of identity. Having so many people to be able to contact so much more often made people a big melting pot of selves, with depth being sacrificed for the quantity of friends. Reflecting on my early facebook days, nearly every conversation lasted less than 10 postings (Five each) and they were mainly conversations about what you had been up to lately and once wit was lost, the conversation was as well. 2 years later, facebook now has 300 million users, a grand leap given the span of time involved (facebook.com). Depth is still lost in the world of facebook, with only a rare conversation lasting, and even so it’s only because we are wittier now. This then affects how we interact with people in the real world and everybody winds up with a cocktail party mentality, walk around, mingle and tell funny jokes or stories, and repeat. Facebook has made this cocktail party spread to the world though, something we are much the weaker for.

This also leads one to wonder about future generations. Those younger than the class of 2010 will not have grown up with the gradual increase in the use of the internet, rather it will just be very in-your-face and they will be overwhelmed. This leads to a state much like feed, where everybody is plugged in all the time and eventually people lose the need or will to be an individual and thrive out on their own. This could be a major problem for the general success and evolution of society (At least American) and could result in a Wall-E like world.

Connections for Argument II:

Much like the predicament with the internet arose, texting and phone usage has undergone a similar chain of events. As children, we did not have cellular telephones on a large scale, but as we grew older, the popularity of them spread. Texting hit it big in the early 2000’s, right when our generation was reaching the later years of middle school and starting high school. Now, this has increased to the point where there are picture messages, video messages, and a multitude of full keyboards for constant texting. This has had much the same effect on youth as facebook has, with added convenience since it is a phone and much more common to find or keep with oneself. This too will then lead to future generations having a plugged-in state of mind.

Connections for argument III:

Significance:

In the long run these are all significant because they each have a tremendous impact on the foundation of the new society being built by today’s youth. The problem is not that people are addicted to people, but rather that it is quickly becoming an addiction that is worsening and harder to satisfy. If one person could be very close to you, you should be satisfied in yourself and your urge to know others. People in relationships can often support this (A functional, healthy relationship). However as people talk to an increasing amount of people on an increasing amount of devices they lose depth and connection, making hem crave more but then have even less depth, resulting in a circle that only worsens the situation and as a result causes future generations to be built upon a rotten bedrock.

Opposing Point of View:

I suppose you could disagree though, in many different ways. For one, there are those that would say people are addicted to the technology and not the people. The technology that people use is the focus of attention, not what lies through the other end of the screen. If people were indeed addicted to people you would see a state of chaos in which everybody is constantly running around talking to as many people as they possibly can or at the least they would be talking to multiple people at once. We of course do not see this in our daily lives, so how can people be addicted to others as proposed if we do not see this. The answer is simple; they never had the means to do so. No person can manage to maintain multiple conversations at once and do more than just add in blank filler sentences. However, these mediums provide something the real world does not, the conversation. By listing all that has been said it is much easier for people to talk to ten different people and feed their addiction.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the 2000's will be known for the surge of digital-representational-devices. The multiple forms of digital-representational-devices are used to interact with people as often as possible but they do not present others with the truth and they separate you from reality. With Facebook relationships grow ever more casual, through texting people grow separated, and through video games our identity is presented in a fractured state. The sad thing is, none of these forms dictate that they have to be used like this, we have the potential to use them the in the same manner that people would interact normally, but we choose to have them veer in this direction, to distance ourselves from everybody else in order to feel included. Why is it that people feel the need to sabotage themselves in order to reach acceptance? Is it not that the devices we use are flawed but rather that humans are? It would seem so, but if you dig deeper into the issue, I'm sure that yet another layer of these issues will be revealed that will point in yet another direction and that nobody will find who is to blame and will instead have to take responsibility and fix things themselves.

Works Cited:

"Company Timeline". Facebook. November 7th, 2009 .

Anderson, M. T.. feed. Candlewick, 2004.

Standon, Andrew. Wall-E. Walt Disney Pictures, 2008.

HW 20- Big Paper 1, Revised Draft

The dawn of the 2010's is right around the corner. Now is the time to reflect, to look back on what this decade will be known for. Where the 1960's had hippies, the 70's had disco, the 80's had rock and the 90's had funky colors on everything, the 2000's will be surely known as the digital age (or at least the start of it). In the last 10 years, everything from the internet to cell phones to video games has exploded onto the scene in ways bigger than ever before. In the end though, as with every decade before this one, a clear conclusion can be drawn. People are addicted to people. Every form of digital-representational-devices can be used to link people together in some form, be in direct or through a common bond over said device. The digital age is simply a new casing over the same product that is mankind.

Like Myspace before it, and Aim before that, and email prior to that (You can go back further to phones and even letters if you really want), Facebook is the top tool to connect the people of the world. Looking at the School of the Future graduating class of 2010, at least 69 different people have facebook accounts (Based on the friend list of Henry Varona), and from that, a good 15 of those students were on it in the course of a 4 hour period. This is a common finding for American high school in New York City, and if expanded to the entire country similar ratios will be found to those on Henry Varona’s friend list. So why do people go on it so often? Well I can't answer for everybody, but I go on it to connect with everybody I know online. I can talk through normal messaging, quizzes, notes (which reach a group of people), groups centered on a common thread, applications, pictures, and so much more. Facebook has changed the way people talk because you can talk in so many different ways. This is particularly attractive because it gives people the illusion of freedom, the choice to talk to their friends however they like and whenever they can. Facebook doesn't make you respond right away. Conversations that would take minutes in spoken word can take days or weeks on Facebook, making you feel like you are really connecting with somebody even if you aren't. You feel popular when you see how many people talk to you, you feel important in a way that you can look back on so you don't have to rely on memory. People can talk in such an easier fashion, it's no wonder that it's one of the top sites in the world.

The curse of the cellular telephone encompasses almost every American. With a phone on you, which many have or give their children so that they can be safe, you are never truly alone. You are connected to every single person in the world through a simple phone and thanks to this people can connect even more. Take a schoolroom environment for example, under the tables, in their bags, off to the side of the counter, cell-phones are used for texting, talking to people across the room, in the classroom next door, wherever. God-forbid anybody wait to talk to their friends or pay attention, everybody feels the need to be constantly connected to friends they want to be with now. Here's the kicker though, texting doesn't disappear once they go hang out with their friends. And that leads to the next example, a park. Imagine you are surrounded by 10 of your closest friends having a good time hanging out. You feel a vibrate coming from your pocket and you just got a text from somebody who couldn't make it, somebody who maybe doesn't fit into that particular group. So you text, and text and even with everything you need for social interaction available, you choose your phone over your friends to talk to even more. People are rarely satisfied by what they have ready for them at the moment and are constantly searching for more ways to talk to people and as a result more time face down at a screen. And that's not even including the applications they have now...

I love my XBox 360, I'm not going to lie about it or try and hide it. Having the range of games the system provides and the chance to play video games with people all around the world whenever I want to is a very special vice for me. Back in the 90's and early 2000's, video games were a staple of my childhood. When I wasn't out with my friends playing a sport or inside playing with toys, video games were king. I would invite my best friends over and we would play and yell and scream and have a good time. Now though, video games don't need a friend right next to you thanks to the internet. People can play from the safety of their own couch with their friend who is playing on their own couch. As a result, playing video games is a lot easier, but a side effect comes out of the situation. An online persona is created, reflecting your video game mentality. Like for me, I go from normality to a sarcastic shoot-you-in-the-back kind of guy, no respect unless you respect me. My friend who has the most insane temper in the world becomes a mellow, stay-in-the-back kind of guy. Everybody becomes a completely different person and this affects the way that certain people you interact with will see you, which is both good and bad, but in the end is not real.

In conclusion, the 2000's will be known for the surge of digital-representational-devices. The multiple forms of digital-representational-devices are used to interact with people as often as possible but they do not present others with the truth and they separate you from reality. With Facebook relationships grow ever more casual, through texting people grow separated, and through video games our identity is presented in a fractured state. The sad thing is, none of these forms dictate that they have to be used like this, we have the potential to use them the in the same manner that people would interact normally, but we choose to have them veer in this direction, to distance ourselves from everybody else in order to feel included. Why is it that people feel the need to sabotage themselves in order to reach acceptance? Is it not that the devices we use are flawed but rather that humans are? It would seem so, but if you dig deeper into the issue, I'm sure that yet another layer of these issues will be revealed that will point in yet another direction and that nobody will find who is to blame and will instead have to take responsibility and fix things themselves.

HW 19- Big Paper 1, Suggestions

Maggie-

Maggie, I am very disappointed... only an introduction? You could have just used your outline even, that was a good length and had a depth to it that I'm sure you could have easily re-worked into a paper, much like I did with mine. Working with what you have though, I have the following to say:

For your intro, I think you have a solid start. You mention a few aspects of technology that can be flushed out to accomplish your thesis that digital-representational-devices are addicting. I think that with what I read of your outline that you have good points, but I almost feel that for an introduction paragraph you throw too many of them in there. An intro doesn't need to go into detail about your internet habits and it doesn't need the quantity of examples you have provided so early on. I almost feel like you are rushing into this and that your arguments might fall flat because you threw their legs out before you got to their bodies. You are also a bit jumpy structurally and I feel like you can smooth this out a bit or at least make the examples transition smoother if you decide to keep them. On a last note, I think that you should copy this into word for some grammatical help, because some of the wording felt funky and it seemed to end rashly.

If these suggestions seem to be harsh, keep in mind I had to correct an entire paper's worth of problems from one paragraph, so every minute detail is emphasized. I think that you have a good paper on the way with what I know about your previous postings and I look forward to seeing what you provide.

Best of luck,

Henry

HW 18- Big Paper 1, Rough Draft

The dawn of the 2010's is right around the corner. Now is the time to reflect, to look back on what this decade will be known for, where the 60's had hippies, the 70's had disco, the 80's had rock and the 90's had funky colors on everything, the 2000's will be surely known as the digital age. In the last 10 years, everything from the internet to cell phones to video games has exploded onto the scene in ways bigger than ever before. In the end though, as with every decade before this one, a clear conclusion can be drawn. People are addicted to people. Every form of digital-representational-devices can be used to link people together in some form, be in direct or through a common bond over said device. The digital age is simply a new casing over the same product that is mankind.

Like Myspace before it, and Aim before that, and email prior to that (You can go back further to phones and even letters if you really want), Facebook is the top tool to connect the people of the world. If you took a survey of our entire class asking who has a facebook account, you would find that at least 95% of us do. From that, a good 80% of us are on it regularly. This is a common finding for American high school in New York City, and if you expand this to the entire country you will find similar results. So why do people go on it non-stop? Well I can't answer for everybody, but I go on it to connect with everybody I know online. I can talk through normal messaging, quizzes, notes (which reach a group of people), groups centered on a common thread, applications, pictures, and so much more. Facebook has changed the way people talk because you can talk in so many different ways. This is particularly attractive because it gives people the illusion of freedom, the choice to talk to their friends however they like and whenever they can. Facebook doesn't make you respond right away. Conversations that would take minutes in spoken word can take days or weeks on Facebook, making you feel like you are really connecting with somebody even if you aren't. You feel popular when you see how many people talk to you, you feel important in a way that you can look back on so you don't have to rely on memory. People can talk in such an easier fashion, it's no wonder that it's one of the top sites in the world.

The curse of the cellular telephone encompasses almost every American. With a phone on you, which many have or give their children so that they can be safe, you are never truly alone. You are connected to every single person in the world through a simple phone and thanks to this people can connect even more. Take a schoolroom environment for example, under the tables, in their bags, off to the side of the counter, cell-phones are used for texting, talking to people across the room, in the classroom next door, wherever. God-forbid anybody wait to talk to their friends or pay attention, everybody feels the need to be constantly connected to friends they want to be with now. Here's the kicker though, texting doesn't disappear once they go hang out with their friends. And that leads to the next example, a park. Imagine you are surrounded by 10 of your closest friends having a good time hanging out. You feel a vibrate coming from your pocket and you just got a text from somebody who couldn't make it, somebody who maybe doesn't fit into that particular group. So you text, and text and even with everything you need for social interaction available, you choose your phone over your friends to talk to even more. People are rarely satisfied by what they have ready for them at the moment and are constantly searching for more ways to talk to people and as a result more time face down at a screen. And that's not even including the applications they have now...

I love my XBox 360, I'm not going to lie about it or try and hide it. Having the range of games the system provides and the chance to play video games with people all around the world whenever I want to is a very special vice for me. Back in the 90's and early 2000's, video games were a staple of my childhood. When I wasn't out with my friends playing a sport or inside playing with toys, video games were king. I would invite my best friends over and we would play and yell and scream and have a good time. Now though, video games don't need a friend right next to you thanks to the internet. People can play from the safety of their own couch with their friend who is playing on their own couch. As a result, playing video games is a lot easier, but a side effect comes out of the situation. An online persona is created, reflecting your video game mentality. Like for me, I go from normality to a sarcastic shoot-you-in-the-back kind of guy, no respect unless you respect me. My friend who has the most insane temper in the world becomes a mellow, stay-in-the-back kind of guy. Everybody becomes a completely different person and this affects the way that certain people you interact with will see you, which is both good and bad, but in the end is not real.

In conclusion, the 2000's will be known for the surge of digital-representational-devices. The multiple forms of digital-representational-devices are used to interact with people as often as possible but they do not present others with the truth and they separate you from reality. With Facebook relationships grow ever more casual, through texting people grow separated, and through video games our identity is presented in a fractured state. The sad thing is, none of these forms dictate that they have to be used like this, we have the potential to use them the in the same manner that people would interact normally, but we choose to have them veer in this direction, to distance ourselves from everybody else in order to feel included. Why is it that people feel the need to sabotage themselves in order to reach acceptance? Is it not that the devices we use are flawed but rather that humans are? It would seem so, but if you dig deeper into the issue, I'm sure that yet another layer of these issues will be revealed that will point in yet another direction and that nobody will find who is to blame and will instead have to take responsibility and fix things themselves.

HW 17- Outline Suggestions

Maggie-

Points on your paper according to where they appear:

Thesis: I think your thesis is clear and concise and you just need to tidy up the Carrie and Henry examples you put with it.

Argument 1: I like your argument here, it is something that I have seen you talk about before in other blogs so I know that you have more to say than what you put here. I think that you need to clarify your example here with Lauren, specify how you had the conversation and if it included anything else. And would talking about how the conversation or other conversations on AIM and Facebook are always casual contradict the statement because it's a deeper topic? Also, you stray a bit too much for one argument, you range from AIM to Facebook to photos and other features of these sites, you should focus instead on just AIM and Facebook, if not just one.

Argument 2: I like how you start off by talking about the interview we did earlier in the unit, but I think that you should do more than just say (Interview) when you refer to it, because not everybody will understand the context. You do however stray quite far away from the main topic you start the paragraph with, that computers are efficient. You can still use most of your examples here, but you need to connect them back to the main point otherwise it makes them seem like random ramblings on technology. You should also do this when connecting to Feed, show the parallels between the book and our world so that it is clear what you are trying to get the reader to think about.

Argument 3: I really like the way you proposed your idea here through the examples provided. I think that all of these examples are relevant and could use a little expansion or connection to really make it work. You spend twice as much time developing Wall-E as any of your other examples, and they falter a bit as a result.

Conclusion: I think this is a fine conclusion, but you can fluff it out a bit to make it sound a bit more approachable and appealing to accept.

Overall: I think that you have a lot of great ideas here in your outline and I am genuinely interested in what you have to say in these postings that will come up. I think that in order for these to become really relevant and exciting you really need to smooth things together more so that it has flow. The way you currently propose your points is very "blurty", by this I mean you just throw stuff out there but there is no flow. If you can both expand on your points and get them to flow together more you will have a tremendous paper that everybody should read.

HW 16- Big Paper 1 Outline

Thesis: People are addicted to people. Every form of digital-representational-devices can be used to link people together in some form, be in direct or through a common bond over said device.

Example 1: Facebook: Like Myspace before it, and Aim before that, Facebook is the top tool to connect the people of the world. If you took a survey of our entire class asking who has a facebook account, you would find that at least 95% of us do. From that, a good 80% of us are on it regularly. This is a common finding for American high school in New York City, and if you expand this to the entire country you will find similar results. So why do people go on it non-stop? Well I can't answer for everybody, but I go on it to connect with everybody I know online. I can talk through normal messaging, quizzes, notes (which reach a group of people), groups centered on a common thread, applications, pictures, and so much more. Facebook has changed the way people talk because you can talk in so many different ways. This is particularly attractive because it gives people the illusion of freedom, the choice to talk to their friends however they like and whenever they can. Facebook doesn't make you respond right away. Conversations that would take minutes in spoken word can take days or weeks on Facebook, making you feel like you are really connecting with somebody even if you aren't. You feel popular when you see how many people talk to you, you feel important in a way that you can look back on so you don't have to rely on memory. People can talk in such an easier fashion, it's no wonder that it's one of the top sites in the world.

Example 2: Texting: The curse of the cellular telephone encompasses almost every American. With a phone on you, which many have or give their children so that they can be safe, you are never truly alone. You are connected to every single person in the world through a simple phone and thanks to this people can connect even more. Take a schoolroom environment for example, under the tables, in their bags, off to the side of the counter, cell-phones are used for texting, talking to people across the room, in the classroom next door, wherever. God-forbid anybody wait to talk to their friends or pay attention, everybody feels the need to be constantly connected to friends they want to be with now. Here's the kicker though, texting doesn't disappear once they go hang out with their friends. And that leads to the next example, a park. Imagine you are surrounded by 10 of your closest friends having a good time hanging out. You feel a vibrate coming from your pocket and you just got a text from somebody who couldn't make it, somebody who maybe doesn't fit into that particular group. So you text, and text and even with everything you need for social interaction available, you choose your phone over your friends to talk to even more. People are rarely satisfied by what they have ready for them at the moment and are constantly searching for more ways to talk to people and as a result more time face down at a screen.

Example 3: Video games: I love my XBox 360, I'm not going to lie about it or try and hide it. Having the range of games the system provides and the chance to play video games with people all around the world whenever I want to is a very special vice for me. Back in the 90's and early 2000's, video games were a staple of my childhood. When I wasn't out with my friends playing a sport or inside playing with toys, video games were king. I would invite my best friends over and we would play and yell and scream and have a good time. Now though, video games don't need a friend right next to you thanks to the internet. People can play from the safety of their own couch with their friend who is playing on their own couch. As a result, playing video games is a lot easier, but a side effect comes out of the situation. An online persona is created, reflecting your video game mentality. Like for me, I go from normality to a sarcastic shoot-you-in-the-back kind of guy, no respect unless you respect me. My friend who has the most insane temper in the world becomes a mellow, stay-in-the-back kind of guy. Everybody becomes a completely different person and this affects the way that certain people you interact with will see you, which is both good and bad but is not real in the end.

Conclusion: The multiple forms of digital-representational-devices are used to interact with people as often as possible but they do not present others with the truth and they separate you from reality.