In this week’s class, we read one book, six articles, watched one episode of Black Mirror, listened to one podcast, and watched two Youtube videos. During class, we went over some of this material. We also talked about social media and how it affects us. Overall this week was about how the internet has changed the way our civilization thinks. By having phones on us or around us we can get distracted from the real world and lose touch with the things and people around us. 

Personally I found the readings very interesting and surprising. I use to read one book per night as a child, and as I grow older I became more connected with the internet. As I stopped reading I realized can not stay focused for long as I use to. In, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” my personal thoughts confirmed, by having access to so much information we have lost interest in having to look for an answer. “My mind would get caught in the narrative or the turns of an argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that use to come naturally has become a struggle.” This quote from, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” puts into words how I have been feeling. The human mind is almost infinitely malleable, so while the internet may be affecting it, it is not damaging our brains in any way. The internet has made our minds form new ways of learning. This is the so-called Google effect; Google nor the internet are not making us stupid instead it is changing how our minds are processing information. “There is no question that the new technologies are changing our lives. But here we need to remember: The more things change, the more they stay the same.”(Google Is Not Making You Stupid)

Now we will move on to social media. Do we really know what it can do to a person? The majority of us have at least one version of social media. The term social media is broad, but usually, we think of apps such as Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. There are all different types of social media ranging from Tinder to your Game Pigeon account. “In online sharing, we are playing to a crowd. On some level, we acknowledge this. The crowd consumes the content that we share and, if we a favored, it passes it on. The crowd honors the identity that we create by sharing this content.”(Foucault and Social media: life in a virtual panopticon) Social media can be positive and very negative. Some people can become obsessed with their profile and how many friends/ followers they have. “No doubt this satisfies a deep psychological need for recognition. Whatever it is drives it, it draws us back to share and share again.”(Foucault and Social media: life in a virtual panopticon) In the Black Mirror episode we watched, we saw an alternative reality where we can record our memories and play them back. We witnessed a man finding out his wife was unfaithful, and in the end, he was so hurt with be able to remember how happy he used to be he took out his memory device. Imagine your parents forced you to show the your entire day, would the find something that would break their trust? Or a secret you have been keeping?

I’ll wrap this up with questions for you: Have you been influenced by any online celebrities? Do you have over two different types of social media? Have you ever sent something negative or received negative messages?