Technology Narrative: My World Surrounded By Computers

My World Surrounded By Computers
“Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living,” Nicholas Negroponte once said those words that I strongly agree with. In today’s world computing is everywhere; it has become intertwined with our daily lives. My generation was fortunate enough to grow up with computers literally in our hands. From the time I entered school in kindergarten; I was using a computer and attending required computer classes to speed up my typing and such. From kindergarten until now I have always had a class that required me to either use the computer or learn more about a computer. As my mother has said, “I was born and raised in the computer era”.
I was nor will I ever be a complete computer savvy person but I have spent much of my life typing away on the keyboard. Whether I am sending a friend a facebook message, instant messaging my family members, or emailing my professors; I am almost always using a computer to “write”. I must admit that even though I have grown up with computers by my side I rarely take full advantage of them. I’ve never owned a website or written a blog or journal, or even posted anything on eBay or Amazon. As far as my contributions to the world wide writing web go; I’m only known on MySpace and facebook. I currently only have a facebook account because I dropped my MySpace account when it became “unpopular” my junior year of high school (now it’s all about facebook or twitter, which I do not have either). My facebook usage is limited to the occasional message or facebook “chat” with friends. Most of my facebook usage goes to leaving my friends comments on their “walls” or pictures, nothing too exciting. I also can sometimes be found writing a facebook “note” that seems to be popular at the time. I know that eventually I will have to do a lot more writing on the computer but until then I am completely content with my progress so far.
In high school it was a requirement to take a computer class in order to graduate. During my freshman and senior year of high school I had taken classes to enhance my computer skills. I learned many programs such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and I also got to learn how to make a webpage. As a freshman in college last year many of my classes actually required me to be able to use Word and PowerPoint and so I was very glad that I was capable of handling myself with those types of programs. As an English major I have found that computers are taken over my intended field of work. Newspapers and magazines are slowly but surely being transformed into online forms. Obviously because of the mass need to be globalized many writers and journalists are required to be very fluent in computer skills in order to survive this transformation from paper to screen. Hopefully with this class I will be able to enhance my computer skills and my interest in using the computer to write more.

Textpocalypse

Texting is literally taking over the world as we know it. Text messaging also known as texting are brief written messages between mobile phones over cellular networks. These messages are often called SMS (short message service). Now since most texts include images, video, or sounds a new term is called MMS (multimedia message service. People love to text but why? Just this month i've sent over 5392 texts (sorry mom and dad). For many people just like myself texting just makes life easier. You don't have to reply to someone right away like you would if you were on the phone and it requires little effort to pay attention like you would if you were on the phone. It also takes up less of my time giving me a better way to multitask since my life is constatnly full of things I have to do ever since I joined a sorority. I did some research and in 2000 17 billion texts were sent. Since this year that number has almost trippled (omg america)!!
*side note: if you were wondering mobile telephone companies are making over 50 billion dollars just for text messages a year!!!

The use of text messaging is mostly thought of as a usage of teens and college kids but many business professionals use it quite often. It’ purposes has grown significantly in the past 10 years. As companies seek competitive advantages, many employees turn to the new technology of texting. They use SMS for confirming delivery of products or other tasks, instatnt communication between a service provider and client (ex: stock broker and investor), sending alerts (employees signing up for the system and it sends an automatic reminder about business meetings and due dates). In fact, my sorority uses a system like this called chapterspot.com and the members just entered our numbers into the system and then our exect board can set up events and reminder dates and the system will mass text everyone reminding them of chapter meetings and other events on those days (it has saved my butt many times). Several universities and even high schools (including west chester) have implemented a system of texting students and faculty of campus alerts (thank you snow days :)).

The only problem is that the use of text messaging has changed the way that people talk and write, many people believe this will have harmful effects on future generations. In 2006, the New Zealand Education Board approved that students were allowed to use text language in the end of the year exam papers. As you could imagine many parents and teachers got upset because they thought the use of text language for school assignments would hurt the students quality of written communication later on in life. Some studies have shown negative effects of texting but others have shown positive effects. There has yet to be enough research done to prove either side.

Davd Crystal who wrote "Txting: the Gr8 Db8" says most texting is in English-based shorthands and that text messaging has Americanized some of the worlds languages with English (for example lol which means laugh out loud is the same in all 11 languages). He said “They shorten words by using symbols to represent the word, or symbols whose name sounds like a syllable of the word such as in 2day or b4” which are all English words. On the other hand some research done by Michael Rosen found that young adults who use more language based textisms (shortcuts like lol) in daily writing produced worse formal writing than those young adults who used fewer linguistic textisms. However, the exact opposite was true for informal writing. This suggests that perhaps the act of using textisms to shorten communication words leads young adults to produce more informal writing which may then help them to be better "informal" writers. A study by the New York times interviewed over 50 professors and found that the actual use of textisms in students essays was a myth. The article said that “students no the difference between texting and college papers, they aren’t stupid…in fact they’re learning a whole different language, the language of texting and that in itself is amazing". There really is not enough research done on texting to determine whether its causing a decline in the writing of students and ruining language.

So here are the pros and cons of texting

Pros:
• Ordering food (Papa John)
• Texting crimes (anonymously text a crime to your local police station)
• Emergencies for schools
• Snow days for school
• Participate in contests
• Companies send mass texts to users who have signed up when they have promotions
• voting for American idol or America’s Next Best Dance Crew
• scores of sport games
• reservations for restaurants
• mobile monthly billing statements
• banking services (reminders to pay bills)
• and more all through just text messaging
Cons
• Texting while driving (almost as dangerous as drunk driving experts say)
• "Blackberry thumb" aka a strain on the thumb
• Texting can hurt brain development and social development in young children
• Wasting life texting (we spend a whole hour in total texting each day)
• Cheating on tests through texting (yes cheating is a negative lol)
• Text bullying is also a concern (rumors and gossip spread way faster now)

Cya L8r.

Cause Wired: Chapter 7

Twitter or facebook? I still am trying to figure out what twitter really is and what the point of it is. To me it's stupid. If i wanted to know what someone was doing I would just text them and ask them or look at their facebook status. Yes, it's that simple. Anyway...spare the paperwork gave me another way to look at this social network. Watson talked about how Ritter used his "tweets" to send out mass information about the fires in California. His small little step literally flooded in over 350 followers who all added to his "flash causes". Flash causes are the next generation of news or demand of change for everyday citizens like myself. Blogs, facebook causes, online petitions, mass texts, youtube videos...all of it. We are transforming these little everyday online networking options into our very own broadcasting for change systems.

"One feed created by a human being with many sources"

I still feel like a pledge

I was initiated last week but I'm still so busy! Maybe i'll never get free time back. Oh well. I've been living in the library trying to study for these huge exams I have going on and then also juggling planning the sister social for wed (it's a little party the new memebers throw for the chapter). FML. I prayyy this goes well because if it dosen't then its a poor reflection on not only myself but my pledge class. Saturady get here soon! My first date party =) I can't wait!

No Longer A Pledge

It's been forever since I've written on here but its only because I was really busy during my last weeks of pledging. Anyway, after 8 weeks....i am an initiated sister! It's so weird not being a pledge. I don't know what to do with my life. I have all this free time. I don't like it. Haha.

PS here is a cool podcast about greek life
http://podcast.com/show/162608/Greekadvice-%7C-Blog-Talk-Radio-Feed/

My new favorite blog

Here are some posts from my new favorite blog. Read them =)

Going Greek! My Journey to Sisterhood
the scoop on sororities- week 2
the scoop on sororities- week 3

Withdrawl

Is it sad that i'm going through withdrawl and i miss my sisters because we haven't had any type of meeting in about 2 days? anyway just found out that we get to volunteer at the ymca next week! i'm so excited! we get to dress up and scare little kids in this big haunted house thing that they are doing! it's going to be so much fun AND we get to help put for a good cause =)
ps 2 more weeks before initiation!!!!