Journal 1: Thoughts on Technology
The internet is an incredibly vast and interesting place. It is essentially its own galaxy with millions of rest stops when traveling between “planets” (websites). Technology is now at the tip of everyone’s finger, an essential part of life as we know it. You can’t get a job without a phone number for a call back. You can’t contact your professor without an email. While a lot of these practices have become normalized luxuries, I believe that there has also been a great deal of harm towards society as a whole, just as much as there has been “good”.
Beginning with harm: there is a great disservice being done to people as a whole, especially children, regarding our ability to be connected at any time. My niece, who turned four this weekend in January of 2024, is what’s known as an “iPad kid.” She gets cranky when she doesn’t have her tablet to watch mindless videos or play non educational games no matter what the time of day is. It takes her minutes to return to reality once she’s done playing with her technology. An experience I never thought to be heartbreaking was watching her slowly realize who I was after ignoring my existence, being too distracted watching a show. The warm and fuzzy feeling of her wanting to be around me was contaminated, thinking about how a device made my existence a fleeting memory for her. My siblings and I had a rule regarding no phones at the dinner table when we were little. After my parents split up, that rule disappeared as we no longer had family dinners. When I travel home for the weekend and eat dinner with my siblings, I am greeted not with conversation but with earbuds and the backs of phones. The communication is nonexistent in those moments, and it’s disheartening.
As much as technology has damaged the ability to communicate in real life it has also opened up worlds that would otherwise remain as a deep and undiscovered ocean. Knowledge is very easily accessible and has opened my eyes to so many new experiences and has allowed me to develop a much stronger sense of empathy for others. For example, if not for the internet I would have no idea about the genocide that’s happening right now in Palestine. I would be incredibly uneducated on the state of America and a lot of history in general. I pride myself on being knowledgeable in areas that support my views because it’s important to be able to back up your opinions with facts. To understand is to learn and grow. Technology has also allowed conversation to keep happening despite distance. My partner and I can still have meaningful conversations because of how easy it is to get in contact with them. One of my closest friends and I have been friends for over four years because of the internet. The chances that I would have met her otherwise were very slim.
Truly, technology has the ability to be whatever you want it to be. How you use the internet is how it will reflect your views. You can be stuck in an echochamber, leading to isolation and loneliness, or you can find yourself in a whirlpool of information. A conversation is between two or more people sharing thoughts or ideas with one another; technology has simultaneously given the ability to enhance conversation and shut it down completely.
Journal 2:
The internet is an incredibly vast and interesting place. It is essentially its own galaxy with millions of rest stops when traveling between “planets” (websites). Technology is now at the tip of everyone’s finger, an essential part of life as we know it. You can’t get a job without a phone number for a call back. You can’t contact your professor without an email. While a lot of these practices have become normalized luxuries, I believe that there has also been a great deal of harm towards society as a whole, just as much as there has been “good”. While the line between them may be fine on occasions, it is crucial to view all various aspects of technology.
Beginning with harm: there is a great disservice being done to people as a whole, especially children, regarding our ability to be connected at any time. My niece, who turned four this weekend in January of 2024, is what’s known as an “iPad kid.” She gets cranky when she doesn’t have her tablet to watch mindless videos or play non educational games no matter what the time of day is. It takes her minutes to return to reality once she’s done playing with her technology. An experience I never thought to be heartbreaking was watching her slowly realize who I was after ignoring my existence, being too distracted watching a show. The warm and fuzzy feeling of her wanting to be around me was contaminated, thinking about how a device made my existence a fleeting memory for her. My siblings and I had a rule regarding no phones at the dinner table when we were little. After my parents split up, that rule disappeared as we no longer had family dinners. When I travel home for the weekend and eat dinner with my siblings, I am greeted not with conversation but with earbuds and the backs of phones. The communication is nonexistent in those moments, and it’s disheartening.
While I want to believe in the integrity of my fellow classmates I also tend to fear the use of technology when it comes to our future field workers. With how easy it is to connect at quite literally any given time, there has to be an additional stress on academic integrity in regards to cheating. I am fearful of the doctor that my nieces and nephews may go to in the future because their doctor used ChatGPT to write their essays and they had their phone under their thigh during their exams. Another scary aspect of this is the more liberal art/“non-manual” jobs that will be put at stake. My friend Mia, who is currently getting his degree in art, is struggling immensely because of the use of AI art and how mainstream it is becoming. He is spending thousands of dollars to learn techniques and skills to create art, while the machines around him are stealing his and his fellow artists’ livelihoods.
With that being said, one of my professors once asked me what was the point of going to class if you have all the answers at your fingertips? Why go to college when you could teach yourself anything you wanted to know about biology on your own, apart from the degree? I think a lot of it boils down to the humanity of it all. Humans are not supposed to isolate themselves; we as homosapiens crave the presence of others. To be present is to be real. I could very well teach myself how to write a better essay or how to do calculus problems, but the motivation would not be there. The internet is made to distract you, for starters. Any site that you stumble upon will be filled with advertisements and redirections, not to mention the mass amount of misinformation that needs to be weaved through. Being in the classroom and using technology as a tool rather than a teacher is what will truly further education. I have a strong aversion towards assignments, specifically in the STEM field, that boil down to “read the chapter” because that doesn’t help me learn. As Professor Miller has stated on multiple occasions you have to be present to grow and to actually learn. Technology cannot force us to be present, matter of fact I have seen it do the opposite and create mindless husks of friends and family, before being snapped back into reality.
As much as technology has damaged the ability to communicate in real life it has also opened up worlds that would otherwise remain as a deep and undiscovered ocean. Knowledge is very easily accessible and has opened my eyes to so many new experiences and has allowed me to develop a much stronger sense of empathy for others. For example, if not for the internet I would have no idea about the genocide that’s happening right now in Palestine. I would be incredibly uneducated on the state of America and a lot of history in general. I pride myself on being knowledgeable in areas that support my views because it’s important to be able to back up your opinions with facts. To understand is to learn and grow. Technology has also allowed conversation to keep happening despite distance. My partner and I can still have meaningful conversations because of how easy it is to get in contact with them. One of my closest friends and I have been friends for over four years because of the internet. The chances that I would have met her otherwise were very slim, despite living a mere few hours apart. While connections can often suffer because of the screens, they can also bloom.
Truly, technology has the ability to be whatever you want it to be. How you use the internet is how it will reflect your views. You can be stuck in an echochamber, leading to isolation and loneliness, or you can find yourself in a whirlpool of information, or even a lobby in a video game where you’re meant to come together to solve a goal. A conversation is between two or more people sharing thoughts or ideas with one another; technology has simultaneously given the ability to enhance conversation and shut it down completely, a feat that nothing really bears resemblance to.
Journal 3:
In regards to chapters two and three of “They Say I Say” by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, the two come up with some very interesting tips and tricks when it comes to improving your writing. The sections “the art of summarizing” and “the art of quoting” each provide (mostly) helpful pieces of advice.
To begin, I found it incredibly helpful that we are provided with a list of verbs that help introduce summaries and quotations, with different sections such as verbs for: making a claim, expressing agreement, questioning or disagreeing, and making recommendations (p. 43-44). As a matter of fact, while I write this journal I will be using some of these verbs to agree and disagree with the book itself! In just the page prior (second to last paragraph), Graff and Birkenstein talk about thinking BEYOND the “main idea,” instead focusing on the evidence and perspectives the author is relying on to convey their message (p. 42). To write more effectively in the future, using these words following the summary will be greatly beneficial to me and my fellow writers.
I was curious about the point that they were attempting to make on page 47, when the authors claim that “Some writers quote too little – perhaps because they don’t want to bother going back to the original text and looking up the author’s exact words or because they think they can reconstruct the author’s ideas from memory” (Graff and Birkenstein, 47). Perhaps this is a slightly extraneous perspective on this paragraph, however I do bring into question the immediate defense on the matter of “quoting too little.” From my understanding, a lack of quoting comes from a misunderstanding on how to quote, rather than a lack of initiative to do so. I am curious to see if I will recognize any instances of the former in papers that I will look at/even write myself.
The passage I found most intriguing would have to be the first paragraph on page 48. Graff and Birkenstein state that “…the main problem with quoting arises when writers assume that quotations speak for themselves. Because the meaning of a quotation is obvious to them, many writers assume that this meaning will also be obvious to their readers, when often it is not” (p. 48). While I have never directly thought about it this way, it makes a lot of sense. I myself have without a shadow of a doubt fallen victim to this (though, it may not be apparent to me) as I’m sure everyone has at one point in their life. The idea that a quote cannot exist on its own without explanation seems like one that shouldn’t be foreign but isn’t an idea that typically crosses my mind while writing. This paragraph will definitely be something I keep with me as I write my future essays.
The last passage that caught my attention in these sections fell on page 51 regarding framing quotations. This is a concept that I don’t think is really taught, and when it is, it is not explained in a great enough detail to actually be useful/applicable for most students. Having this notion be laid out with examples really encapsulates the information that they were trying to convey effectively. Again, this is without a doubt a mistake I have made in the past; however, now that it is something that I am looking out for (because it has been brought to the forefront of my attention), I hope to use some of the framing techniques in my own writing.
Overall I believe that these chapters had insightful advice that any writer, especially students, can use. I hope that with this knowledge any of my future papers will be improved (at least in respect to my quotations and summaries).
