Artifact 4

I found the first video to be very interesting.  At the same time, it was kind of creepy.  The girl was so life-like with the eyes, skin, hair, teeth and mouth.  It is scary to see how much like humans they are.  It was also just weird to see that around the world people are making these Droids.  In the video they were going through somewhat of a test run on the Droid.  What will these Droids being doing for us?  Are they also going to take away actual communication between real people?  Will there be Droids conducting business meetings or teaching classes?  Will they be working assembly lines in factories?  Just seeing that short of a video clip on the Droids really makes you wonder all of the possibilities.  Will they soon be all around our world?  This may be the future we will see or our children will see. 

The second video was also interesting to me.  It should the manual pencil sharpener and the title was asking if this was old fashioned or not.  I believe in some ways this is old fashioned but in other ways it is not.  People use pencils every day so therefore they need a way to sharpen them.  Sometimes using this kind of sharpener is easier because they are small and silent opposed to the electronic sharpeners.  In the aspect of the pencil sharpener being old fashioned, there have been newer inventions for pencil sharpeners, like I mentioned the electronic sharpener earlier.  These sharpeners are a one-step process compared to the two-step sharpener in the video.  I think many individuals want the easiest way to do things and would prefer the one-step sharpener over this one.  Maybe in the future this will become very outdated like a record player or 8 track player, but for now, I do not think that these are old fashioned. 

Artifact 3

In this interview with Nicholas Carr, he discusses his new book called "What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains".  He begins his discussion talking about how he has been interested and involved in the technologies of the computer and the internet practically since they came out.  He goes on to talk about how he has sort of become attached to them and that when he tries to do other tasks like read a book, he feels distracted and that he needs to check his e-mail or click on links that only the web provides.  I agree with him that the internet has been a distraction when trying to accomplish other tasks.  If I am working on a paper or doing homework for a class, I usually tend to get on Facebook or look around on YouTube.  He later goes on to talk discuss the factor of multi-tasking.  All of the new technologies and the net have allowed us to do so many things at a time.  He says how being distracted and doing more than one thing at a time, this is harder for us to process new things to our short term and long term memory.  This is very interesting to me because I am the type of person that cannot read and listen to music at the same time.  If I do try to do that, the reading does not stick with me.  The more you are interacting with at a time, the less you are able to retain and understand later when you try to go back to it.  This is very true, at least for me.  I know it is a struggle for young adults and even any adults in general to stay focused on one thing at a time with all the different technologies we have at our fingertips.  We are attached to these things and they are the reason for distractions in relationships, school work, business tasks, and many other tasks and work.  This author relates to the author of "Hamlet's Blackberry" in the sense that these technologies are distractions and they force us to be disconnected from what is really going on in our lives.  Nicholas Carr talks about how because of the internet and computers that our reading and writing has changed.  I don't necessarily agree with this.  I still write the same quality of papers I would if I didn't have these technologies, I'm actually probably writing better because of all the resources and technologies.  However, even as I am working on this, I am getting distracted by my cell phone buzzing with text messages.  I would say maybe reading has changed just because of all the distractions, but for classes we read what we need to.. for the most part.  Overall, I agree with Carr because all of the technology we have today are all distractions in some way.  Wether it be e-mail, text messaging, Facebook, etc.  As technology advances, I believe only more and more distractions will arise and the more disconnected we will all be from the world around us.

Artifact 2

I found this video very interesting.  In the beginning of his interview, he mentioned that when he went through this park, mostly everyone was using some sort of gadget.  This is so true today.  Everyone is always using their different kinds of gadgets.. or multiple gadgets at a time.  You can be on your iPod listening to music while you're texting your friend about your weekend.    Then he goes on to say how paper has been around for over 2,000 years, and paper is still becoming more valuable and that he thinks paper is eternal, it won't ever go away.  That was very interesting to me.  I do think that paper is very valuable to our society but I think we are seeing less and less of it today.  In my English class my senior year of high school, we were submitting all our papers online; it was a paperless class.  This is the same with the class we are in now, we turn everything in via email.

The author was inspired by Thoreau, Emerson, and James and he relates it to his novel in the way those authors have discussed the challenges we face when we are adapting to new technology.  He goes on to say how this is what we are facing today.  This relates with our past artifact when we look at the fact that the younger generations are adjusting to the technologies better then the older ones.  We have to keep up with everything new that is happening and at sometimes it is overwhelming.  It was interesting when he talked about the important new gadget people used in the time of Shakespear.  These gadgets were called 'Tables' and they were used the way we use notebooks.  He says how people were very dependent on their tables, just how we are all dependent on your cell phones, iPods, laptops, etc.

He later talks about the last part of his book and how you need balance in your life between all the new technologies and just a normal lifestyle.  I believe that a lot of families are suffering like his family was because of how everyone has become so attached to screens.  I know this is true with my family, mainly just between my brothers and me.  If I'm at home my dad will yell at me if I'm texting in front of him and say things like "try to be in one place at a time", and of course it is a big No-No in my house if someone is texting while we are eating dinner.  When I do come home, I get mad when my brothers are spending more time playing X-Box Live then watching T.V or hanging out with the rest of the family.  Like everyone else, they are addicted to their screens as I am to my phone.  I do agree with the author and think that these things do put a damper to family time and relationships, which I try very hard to improve when I'm at home.