HW 16 - Big Paper Outline

HW 16 - Big Paper Outline



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.

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, or dance. They are also not developing the habit of exercise which is necessary for a healthy life. Lack of exercise in combination with too much junk food can lead to obesity.

The use of texting, Facebook, and Twitter get us 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. Too much time spent on addictive video games as well as on Facebook can take away from time reading, and since it seems that all the experts say that reading is a great predictor of
success in life, all this digital time could be lowering the odds of a happy future.

M.T. Anderson in his book, Feed, tells a horror story about what could happen 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. 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. The dangers of this mind control by for profit companies are having people with “the feed” not be concerned about anything that corporations would not be concerned about like disadvantaged people who cannot afford it or, as in the book, have cheaper models that can end up malfunctioning and killing them.