HW 18 - Big Paper 1 Rough Draft

Tonight I went to a theater performance. Before the curtain went up, the announcer stepped out on stage to ask audience members to turn off their cell phones.
When the lights went down, there were hundreds of lights from I-phones and cell phones
and Blackberrys. I was in the balcony, and it looked like an infestation of fireflies down
below. The curtain went up and then came right down again, and the announcer had
to ask again that people turn off their electronic devices. I thought about how crazy it was that people would spend fifty dollars or more to see a show and then find it so hard
to be digitally unconnected for even moments in their lives. I also thought about the New York Marathon which took place today. At least the runners were having a few hours that were a time out from cell phones. It seems to me that in spite of the positive aspects of this technology and its instant communication, digital overloading can be physically dangerous because it is anti-exercise, mentally dangerous because it promotes a short attention span, and even a danger to humanity if companies take portability to the next stratosphere and implant devices in our brains.

(ARG#1) For too many kids video games take up too much after school and weekend time. For younger kids this use of time is dangerous because they are not developing the coordination that is necessary for team sports, individual sports, dance, or
even just recreational activities like throwing a football, swimming, or playing ping pong. They are also not developing the habit of exercise which is necessary for a healthy life. Kids should be encouraged to take time off from their computer games to go to the park. Having physical activity everyday is also important because it helps refresh the brain. It is important for kids and adults to get the blood flowing and ideally be outside breathing fresh air and absorbing vitamin D. What is more, lack of exercise in combination with too much junk food can lead to obesity. Obesity is a huge problem in this country in every state except Colorado, where outdoor activities must be a big part of everyone’s life. For poorer kids playing video games after school and on weekends can really be dangerous. These kids often do not have good playgrounds near them, and parents cannot afford to put them in after school sports or dance programs or other activities that can be expensive. Poorer kids are also more likely to have food that is not that healthy because many healthy foods, including organic foods, are too expensive. The combination of playing video games inside for long periods of time and eating too much sugar and fat is a deadly one. Some people like to think that games like the Wii that let you simulate playing tennis or golf give you a physical workout. Wii may help with hand-eye coordination and bring the family together for some laughs as players move about on the little square, but they are no substitute for real exercise.

All kids need to find a way of balancing their use of digital devices with at least an hour of exercise a day. Even in gym class at my school there are always some kids sitting on the floor playing video games during the whole period. We know that our minds and our physical selves are closely related. If we are listening, our brain is telling us that we need mental and physical exercise to be healthy.

(ARG#2) Another danger of digital overloading is that the use of texting, Facebook, and Twitter get our minds in the habit of writing in an abbreviated way. The aim is for speed so the thinking is off the top of our heads. Being asked to write a five-page paper with thought-out analysis is torture by comparison. If I were texting a friend to say “It was nice to see you,” I would write “It wz (smiley face) to c u.” The goal is to shorten words and sentences as much as possible to get a message out as fast as possible and get one back. The article, “British Researcher Says Facebook A Brain Drain” by Robert Mitchum, says that an Oxford neuroscientist thinks that online social networking could be dangerous for our brains and behavior. She predicts that "the mid-21st century mind might almost be infantilized, characterized by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathize and a shaky sense of identity." I have to say that my reaction was that this seemed like an extreme view, and I expected that the rest of the article would have scientists who disagreed. I was wrong. A UCLA scientist said that the social network sites carry risks for the brain, and a Stanford University researcher thinks that even if people knew for certain that online social networking was harmful to the brain, they would continue using it. Definitely, people play with their identity on Facebook to create a perfected self, and using Facebook can be an intriguing and addictive use of time. As for the mind becoming addicted to sensationalism and unable to empathize, that does not sound impossible since online networking does not promote deep thought. At least in the old days when people wrote letters and even postcards they were thinking mostly in complete sentences and developing some ideas. Whether or not social networking is proven to harm the brain seriously, the risk of shorter attention spans seems real and makes me think even more about how we need balance between time on and off the computer.

In the article,”The Effect of Video Games On the Brain,” Eleni Kardara talks about a study in Tokyo that showed that people who played video games a lot were showing a decrease of activity in parts of their brains (prefrontal regions) and that the under use of these parts of their brains might be the cause of their aggressive behavior and inability to concentrate, especially since this lack of brain activity continued after the game playing was over. The author wondered whether the brain is perceiving the video games as real. There are other studies that show how the games make blood pressure and heart rate go up the way they do when the body senses danger. People blame listening to violent rap songs, violent movies, and violent television for aggressive behavior because they have the power of suggestion. It seems to me that people who blame violent rap songs, violent movies, and violent television for aggressive behavior, should be more critical of violent video games because they involve the players in the dangerous action. The difference between what is real and what is make-believe gets murky. One thing that seems provable is that too much time spent on addictive video games and Facebook can also take away from time reading, even magazines and comic books that are read for fun. Since it seems that all the experts say that reading is a great predictor of success in life, all this digital time could be endangering the odds of a happy future.

(ARG#3) M.T. Anderson in his book, Feed, writes an allegory about what could happen to us if digital companies keep innovating to the point where the devices become so small that we don’t have to carry them at all because they can be lodged into our brains. The literal story is set in the future as he describes what life is like for a group of teens living with the “feed” implant, a combination of the Internet, television, cell phone and web games. Having a continuous digital feed means not only that people can get all the information they think they need without thinking, but they also live in a “material world” that is the dream of corporations which can run ads in their brains all day long.
In the symbolic story the author is showing what can happen when corporations have more power than the government and can control the media (like Fox Five news) and the people and ruin the environment.

To me Feed is more than a tragedy about what can happen if the digitalization of our lives goes too far, it is a horror story. Today, we are discussing the possible negative effects of too much usage of digital devices, but in Feed the teens' lives are already totally taken over by technology. For example, we know that there is a danger now of trying so hard to be cool on Facebook that teens give an unreal picture of themselves and spend too much time trying to impress others instead of developing skills that really would make them feel good about themselves. In Feed forget about becoming individuals and developing potential. Most teens seem to have been selected genetically by their parents, have their feed chips take over a lot of their thinking, and allowing the corporations that make the feed to control them. The main character Titus says "It was like I kept buying these things to be cool, but cool was always flying just ahead of me, and I could never exactly catch up to it." It's in the interest of the corporations which have all the power to keep teens feeling in an incredibly direct way that they have to keep making purchases to try to be cool. They can literally break in on teens thoughts without having to waiting to run an add during "The Simpsons." Then there is the horror that more than one-fourth of the population is not wired with a Feed because they cannot afford it and are at a disadvantage at school without the knowledge feeds and because the corporations are against individualist thinking that is against bombarding the brain with commercials. In the book Titus's girlfriend had an inferior feed implanted because her parents couldn't pay for a better model. She ended up dying because of her low quality feed and she wasn't in line for a transplant of a better one because she wasn't considered to be a good marketing target. I think this is an extreme of a problem today of teens whose parents can't afford a computer or maybe can't always make payments for their kids' cell phones. There is also the horror of what has happened to the environment. Atmosperic conditions have resulted in the development of artificial clouds because the corporations obviously haven't had to worry about pollution. In fact, the ocean is so dangerous that whales have to be covered in plastic to survive. Also, women can't give normal birth anymore, and all babies come from test tubes. It seems that parents can pay to have certain genetic traits for their kids. Nutrition also seems to have had a set back because Coke is the drink of choice for teens. This extreme in the book of what can happen when corporations don't have any government anti-pollution controls seems like a lesson for us today. As a teen using technology now, I don't always unplug devices or give much thought to the energy I am using. Also, I think that using my I-pod on the way to school and sports and other activities probably gets in the way of my thinking about the environment, for example recycling and other "green" actions like using fewer takeout cartons and cups.

Can a case be made that the dominance of digital devices in our lives is not a bad thing? Cell phones have been a great innovation for communication and taking away the worry about where someone is. I-pods are good for the environment because they store all the music we use to have on records and compact discs. I depend on my I-pod to pump me up before soccer games and also to wind me down after practice on the way home. Video games can be educational or at least informational. I keep up to date with sports statistics playing Madden 09 and other sports games. There was one Japanese game I played called Shenmue, which had amazing graphics and an intricately constructed story line. I think I enjoyed it more than watching almost any television program because I was so involved in the story. Facebook helps people helps people stay connected in a busy world. The problem with digital devices is that it is easy to get addicted to them, maybe even easier than television or even drinking alcohol because you can take them with you, and no one will mind (unless you are driving or talking loudly). Also, the computer is a one-stop place. It is where you do your homework but also where you go on Facebook. There is not the separation there used to be when you would do your homework at your desk and the television was somewhere else. To a certain extent we are all getting drunk on digital devices.

The only answer I can come up with to counteract the dangers of digital devices which are definitely scary is to count up the time we are spending on cell phones, on Facebook, on the Internet, playing video games. If we are not finding the time to exercise every day or even every week, if we notice that we cannot concentrate on a book with long sentences, if we are spending more time on Facebook than on homework, if we are buying a lot of stuff off the Internet, and if we never think of where old cell phones, old video games, and old computers and printers go, we need to worry that we might be going crazy on technology and that technology might go crazy on us.