The End (Blog 12)

The topics that have been brought up were fun to write about. Te Coddling of The American Mind was by far my favorite. It was my favorite only because it actually connected with me since I am a freshman college student. I've witnessed coddling in high school and on the internet and all I could do was laugh at them as they got upset. Then I didn't know, but now I do and I laughed harder. Technology was another I liked because I could bring my interests into it. So those were interesting. Happiness was probably my least favorite only because it makes no sense to ask a bunch of teenagers what happiness is and tell them to write about it, but that's my opinion. I might make sense to others but not me because I don't know how to explain it or understand it mainly because I went through probably the worst week of my life during the paper. Other than that, Comp 1 and Comp 2 went pretty smoothly and well.

Denmark: Why it's the Happiest place on Earth.

Denmark is ranked the happiest place on Earth because they have communal housing. Communal housing might not seem like much but it can mean a lot to someone who has nowhere to go. Communal housing is where multiple families live together under one roof in different rooms and take care of each other. Strangers living together, crazy. It might seem strange but that's because Americans are more likely to steal from one another because we are greedy bastards. In Denmark they have to rely on each other because they share the chores and cook dinner for everyone. These communal housing units can save someone from suicide because it gives them a purpose and the feeling that they are important. It also gives them the sense of belonging which is the highest counted reason that people commit suicide. It makes them happy because they are important to someone and if they left, it would make those other people who lived with them upset and no one wants to make others upset.

How Can We All be Happy?

Question of the century, am I right? How can we all be happy? People will say peace will make us all happy, or money because money can buy happiness. But money never buys happiness other than a split second of joy from the things you buy with it. And you can forget about peace. Peace is one thing that everyone wishes for but will never receive because we can never be at peace unless it's on our deathbed when we get the chance to say what we want because no one can do anything to us since we will be dead soon. If you really want to know my opinion, the only way we can be happy is if we all come to terms with who we are and what we have to offer in life. Who we are on this Earth is so significant because we might be the only life in the universe which should make us all happy to exist as a human race. And what we have to offer in life is what we are able to give to another. Whether it is love or a roof over someone's head. We can give someone a second chance at redemption or a better life. That might give us happiness but we just have to perceive it as a good deed because the human race needs to feel like they are doing it for something.

Sing! Karaoke by Smule

I found Sing! Karaoke by Smule. It is a karaoke app on the iPhone. I think it makes no sense to have a karaoke app on your phone because like when are you going to actually use it? On the train? Doubt it. People are too insecure about their voice to sing on the train and if they use it in their car, they'll either annoy everyone who is in it or become a hazard on the road. Leave karaoke to the drunk people at bars and for gaming consoles(rock band). It's ranked like 30 on Apple's Top Grossing apps which makes no sense to me at all. You're not going to use it with your friends because it would be hard to share the tiny screen. You can check it out yourself but I wouldn't waste my time with it.

A Girl and Her Instagram

I think that Esssna O'Neil, the popular girl from Instagram who posts pictures of herself wearing clothes from important fashion companies and gets paid for it, is having a mini crisis. She thinks that her whole life is a lie because she thought that likes on what she posts meant that she was popular. In fact she was and still is. Since a young age of 12, she has been posting pictures and getting paid to do so. If I did something like that and got paid, I'd continue to do it too. But now, after seven years she cracks from the pressure and blames it on the internet. She thinks that because of her posts and all the views and likes she gets on them, make her more lonely. She feels lonely because she tried to become one of the famous because she looked up to them and envied them and they were just as lonely. She started out with poor role models and ended up just like them.

Sources for Space and Technology

My first source is named How have Advances in Space Technology Helped us on Earth? from spaceplace.com. I chose this source because it has a lot of information on technology used to help humans on earth. It is from spaceplace.com, a site used by NASA to help teach kids and adults about space and technology. It talks about the technology used by NASA and other scientists to learn more about Earth and it's weather system so we can know when a thunderstorm or a hurricane will hit. It's reputable because it was created by NASA employees to teach students about NASA and space since we are surrounded by it.I will us it by talking about how technology helped us understand Earth.
I only have the one source for now.

Technology Affecting The Human Race

Technology is affecting the human race. In our education system, technology is found everywhere. There are TVs in the hallways and cafeteria at my old school, bringing us news and information about the school. They implemented chrome book tablets for class use. There were multiple computer labs and that was just the start. In other schools, they were giving each student their own iPad to keep for the whole year. And all of it is meant to help the students learn more and teach them about technology at the same time.
In relationships and families, technology is used to keep in touch with each other. But overuse can ruin relationships. If I'm on my phone too much while I'm with my girlfriend, she will think I'm neglecting her and eventually hate me. When I'm with my family, I purposely hide behind my phone to avoid conversations that can be uncomfortable. But it's also good to have technology in the family because you can keep tabs on each other and know where they are.
In government and politics, technology is used to help the citizens understand what is being talked about. In politics technology is used as graphs to show how the nations is going into debt and that it's everyone's fault but the governments.
In health and medicine, technology is used to advance how doctors operate with more efficiency and accurately. Technology helps us create new medicine that can fight off cancer and AIDS as well as teach surgeons how to save the life of someone with has cancer. Technology also can tell us if we have broken bones or cancer without killing us from radiation.
In nature, technology is used to help us better understand the world we live on and whats outside Earth's atmosphere. We have large telescopes that can show us the beginning of the universe and how it started and we have rockets that can send a man to the moon. There are new ways to grow plants faster and bigger because of technology and we can genetically modify those said plants to make them more sweet and healthy.

Technology, Good or Bad?

Technology has brought society into a new generation of living. Sometimes it was a revolutionary invention and other times it has no purpose. When the microwave was invented by NASA, people were skeptical at first but then they realized that it made cooking foods faster and efficient. Cell Phones are our generations microwave. People thought they were a waste of money and now everyone owns one. It's the same with all the new technology NASA is coming up with to give the human civilization a future. Each new invention NASA reveals to the world, is meant to give them a future. Sometimes it is a new rocket pod that can burn less fuel for a longer duration with more thrust, and other times it is a lighter, more efficient and less expensive prosthetic limb for those who have lost their leg. NASA created solar panels to harness the sun's energy to power the International Space Station and spaceships. Now almost all houses are being built with solar panels because they are cost efficient and environmentally friendly. They've created a land-mine removal device for the military to safely disarm land mines without putting soldier's lives at risk who used to have to disarm them manually. The technology NASA has created is used to keep the environment and it people who live in it safe as well as further advance us into the next generation.

Not all cases of technology was used to further advance the human race technologically. The first reported use of a rocket propulsion system was for the V2 rocket. The V2 rocket was the first intercontinental ballistic rocket created by the Nazi regime to destroy the US at a distance. When it successfully launched, The scientist who built it said, "The rocket worked beautifully, it was just pointing in the wrong direction." He originally built it for space travel and the Nazis used it for war. So a problem technology is creating is the misuse of the technology.

Critique of Turkle's TED Talk

In Sherry Turkle's TED Talk "Connected But Alone" her purpose was to inform and persuade the viewers about how being connected to our phones and the internet is actually causing us to be more secluded in life. She informs how being connected to social media such as Facebook and Twitter may allow us to interact with others through our phones, but it also inhibits our actual social skills such as communication in person. Having conversations is becoming less and less common as texting becomes more common. She also tries to persuade the viewers to think about how much they interact with others through social media and through actual face to face interactions.

I think she succeeded in the purpose to inform and persuade the viewers. She brought up specific occurrences on how social media and texting out ranks people's choice of conversation with others. She said shes been studying social interactions for the past decade to understand how new technology changes our lives.

I agree with her for the most part. She talks about how the internet and social media affects how people talk and how people use their phones as a shield from the outside world. I have to admit, I've used my phone in more than one occasion to hide from something I didn't want to discuss with my mother or girlfriend. And even though I got a social media a long time ago, I never actually used it as often as everyone else. My father got a Facebook account last year and I got mine when I turned 13, six years ago, and I'm pretty sure he has already used it more than I have. I've been working on my social skills by hanging out with my friends and talking to the customers that are at my job. My dad doesn't really go out and his main forms of interaction is through Facebook and emails. So yeah... I agree.

Connected But Alone Summary

Sherry Turkle did a TED talk about how technology can affect how we communicate with others, calling it Connected But Alone. She discussed how phones are psychologically powerful to us because we use them to get away from the real world. We use them to hide from each other at the dinner table, at board meetings, and even at funerals because we don't want to feel the grief from a lost one or have a decent conversation with our family and our coworkers that might involve talking about something you don't like to talk about. She uses a term called The Goldilocks Effect which means you don't want to be too close to another but not too far either. People don't like conversations because it is in real time and we can't control what we are going to say. When we text, we can delete choice words or completely start a new conversation. "We expect more from technology than we do from each other." We want technology to be able to understand how we are feeling and to listen to us when no one else is. It is a constant source of attention that will never leave us alone. It gives us the illusion of companionship without the demands of a friendship like understanding how the other is feeling. She wants us to reflect how technology is taking control of our conversations and to develop self awareness with technology and with each other too.

Research

I think research is a way to broaden your view on a specific subject and then to share that view with others. It's a way to help others learn about one side of a certain subject that they had no understanding of or the wrong ideas about it. It will help them and yourself get a better understanding on topics that may seem important in the world.

My past experience with research writing involves all of my papers from high school and up. I've had to do research on every subject to understand what I'm writing about. From writing my fifteen page I-Search paper in my junior year of high school to the three page research paper for college. All my papers mostly involve some type of research.

What I look forward to is to be able to write about easy subjects that I can agree with. And what I dread is writing about subjects that I don't agree with. If I don't agree with it, I won't be able to get into the paper. That won't help with my grade either. If I can agree with it, then I can get into the paper and be able to look more in depth to finding good research.