pencils to pixels

According to this article, technology is the gateway to literacy. Which is a strong statement considering only half of people would agree with this. Writing is a technology in its own right because it is a new way for us to store information. The pencil is considered a form of technology because it is how we produce. Plato argued that writing was bad for humans, because it could inhibit ones memory due to that person just being able to simply write something down. A pro of the written word is that it is a good way of keeping record. A con could be having the tone of the writing be taken the wrong way, or simply could be easily faked. Thoreau connects to the pencil technology because his family owns a pencil producing factory and tried many things to enhance the pencil itself. The telephone shapes technology because it has a lot in common with the other early technologies of today, it was looked at as impractical before. As it progressed it ended up proving to be very useful and ended up shocking society to how far it has come today. It changed the way people interact with each other, and now how often they meet up in person to talk face to face. Baron's conclusion is that even if you are skeptical about something, still see what its all about, don't just shoo it off. To be literate today, means to be able to not get out of touch with people, and only relying on technology.

Writing in the 21st century

1. Developing a new method or model of writing, coming up with a curriculum to support such methods, and then creating models to teach the methods.
2. In spite of cultures that devalued writing, prohibitions against females and against blacks and in spite of being too young.
3. That as a society we need to write more and encourage the people around as to write more as well.
4. Reading can kind of control society, whereas writing is almost allowing a break of control. Reading is usually related to emotional and enjoyable things where writing can be a lot more serious as times and more about pain.
5. People relate writing to hard work since it requires more energy than reading. It is not looked at as fun, compared to reading an enjoyable book in your spare time. I can relate to this because writing can sometimes stress you out so much you head starts to throb.
6. Process writing consists of invention, drafting, peer review, reflection, revising, rewriting, and finally publishing.
7. A writing that belongs to the writer with the result that people want to compose and do to each other.
8. Due to blogs and social networking sites, more and more writers are being created these days.
9. Yancey argues that the meaning of literacy has changed, so the education for writing should be changed too.
10. Yancey defines literacy as an ability to read and write and produce something not only on paper, but on social media sites as well.

Digital Relationships

In this article, one of Thompson's main claims is that social media like Facebook and Twitter has made us even more close and intent in our friend's day to days lives. He argues how society blames us not as close to our friends as we used to before all the social media, because it's all we do and care about now, but in reality we know even more things are updated daily on our closest friends. He also argues that the more "friends" and more people you "follow" thins out your relationships even more and more as you add more people and you can no longer hold anymore intimate relationships because you're keeping up with a huge number of people. Zuckerburg introduced the News Feed in response to the large number of friends people were gaining. People didn't have the time to go from profile to profile checking up on their friends every day, causing them to lose touch. So in response he made a news feed that included posts from friends in order of the time they were posted, having the most recent be first. Allowing it to be easier to access and view updates from friends; which turned out to be a good idea.
Ambient Awareness is the ability to infer what kind of mood the publisher is in by their use of words and sometimes body language. However, there is a downfall on being so aware of our friends lives without even talking to them. You may know what's going on in their life, and they may know what's going on in yours but neither of you probably tell the whole word all the little details. Which is what you would discuss having a face to face conversation and is what connected you and continues to connect you in the first place. Without the outside connection, you will grow apart, which is what has happened to some of my old high school friends that don't attend the same college as me. An example of an ambient update is when Thompson was talking about how one of his friends on twitter posted how they weren't feeling good, and every day he would see a new update proving how much worse they were getting. In the end, he was able to see the day they turned around, and were finally healthy again.
Social media updates are in fact skimmable. There is no need to look at every single tweet, read every single word in every single paragraph because most of the time you can manage your time more efficiently and still understand what is trying to be said. As for our "weak ties" on social media, I never personally thought about it, but they are in face hurting us. The more and more friends we get on Facebook, the more people we follow on Twitter, the more people we are putting between our real friends and the more we have to divide up our time evenly to check up on every body. You would definitely be more intent on your friends and people you follow if you compared it to 15 people rather than 50 people.
Fads go in and out but people still stay on their old networking sites because where else do they have to go? They don't want to seem weak or lame by deleting their profile because then there is a chance people will forget about them. This article defines literacy as having a network, friends and interesting strangers to follow. The ability to keep up with a large crowd and not get caught behind.

Couch Potatoes and Gin

This article by Shirky is about how our society used to and still has, loads of cognitive surplus. The argument Shirky makes throughout the article is how society has no idea how to use it. We spend it doing useless things like watching tv, rather than editing a wikipedia article online to better educate the society. However she makes a point with the ones who spend all their time watching tv, saying it's better to do something than nothing. Her definition of literacy would be determining how well people are able to manage their free time and what they do with their surplus and if they manage it efficiently or not. It's definitely doesn't relate to the previous definitions of literacy, but I think it's the most smart approach and one that I might end up using in my paper. A cognitive surplus is what humans have and use in order for them to have free time. Most of the time, it's cognitive surplus thats being wasted. This article matters because it can help open the eyes of our today lazy society, the one constantly making up excuses, being couch potatoes, procrastinating with their work, to get out there and actually do something useful and productive.
Similarities throughout this article include the words time and and surplus. Making them directly correlated because they are the main two things we waste to an extreme level every single day. It goes to waste right before our eyes and we even realize we're watching it, but we choose to continue sitting there on the couch and not do anything.

Goooooooogle

In this article, the author talks about how once a simple thing to do is now so difficult. The author used to love sitting down and reading long lengthy books and articles however now he finds himself trying to distract himself with almost anything. He goes on to blame the internet for changing him and his thought process and how he can no longer focus. With all the information we could ever need and think of at the tip of our fingertips, getting too focused on the information we're reading an article on never seems to happen anymore. With the many articles and sites telling us the answer to our question, we no longer have to think so hard, causing our thought process and work ethic to decrease in skill.
Literacy in this article means similar to the previous definition just print instead of speech. It means the deep thought processing when it comes to text or printed articles and how we need to more deeply analyze into things instead of skimming over them.
The internet has changed the thought and reading process of many people. People take half the time they do nowadays to read an article. The internet is broadening what people read rather than making people think deeper into what they read. The author uses older changes in technology to demonstrate what people thought about changes similar to this and how they actually turned out such as the transition to mechanical clocks. In the end, the author is cautioning us to be skeptical of the internet and its ever growing reach, but not to totally cancel it out, for improving technology can be good int the long run.

Miley Ray Cyrus

I am choosing to do my paper on Miley Cyrus's feed on twitter and instagram. Although she's not one of my role models or favorite celebrities, she sure does have a lot of stuff to say. Interesting at that too. Her twitter is not at all censored and she post literally whatever she wants. There is no one stopping her, thus giving great insight onto what she really thinks and is interested in. She is completely out of her shell on social media and I think this could provide a lot of great information for my paper. She gives a great deal of examples with her explicit tweets and pictures that I could use to ask the question, did social media turn her this way? Or has she always been like this and social media has been hiding her until now? I think there's a lot to go into investigation here and i cannot wait to go in depth in her social media accounts.

I wish I had a real tattoo

When I stalk myself on Facebook...well majority of my tagged pictures include me out at a party or concert with my friends. I would probably say that I go to a lot of concerts and night time events, but it's not over the top and it's not like I make it my first priority. My pictures on Facebook probably make me seem like a party girl who is going out every night when in reality I don't. But I will say I do go to my fair share of concerts and music festivals. The same image of me would probably be portrayed through my Instagram also. Not saying that these photos are inappropriate, but it does represent that yes, i do have a social life. However a different image would probably be portrayed on my twitter account. I would probably come off as sarcastic funny person that's constantly joking about the things that's wrong with the world today. Although i do feel pressured to censor myself on twitter because I'm a very outspoken person and I don't want my followers to get upset or offended.
I think if i was sat down on my dream job and handed my most recent activity, the only thing i would be worried about would be twitter. I would consider the others to be fairly safe because i have family on them and am conscious about what i post. Twitter is my go-to. Which is why it's private. However soon I'm going to have to start censoring 24/7 and being careful since I'm going through spring rush next year.