blog source

A recent post from digital trends by Doug Mc Lean was rather interesting and interpreted his view on why he and so many others are dependent and addicted to technology.

http://news.digitaltrends.com/talk-back/27/dependency-on-technology

It was a great source because he explained that he realized how much people are dependent on technology. For example, on August 14th 2008, there was a blackout on most of the east coast of the U.S. It was questioned, how many people actually panicked because they didn't have access to their cellphones, computers, or tvs? The world has come to depend on something that rarely existed in previous years. The term face book or myspace didn't even exist. This blog was a great example to see how the youth (college students) of the U.S. have come to be so dependent on technology.

book source

The book that caught my eye had to be "Why do men have nipples?" by Doctor Mark Leyner and Doctor Billy Goldberg.

The book is simply a series of answers to a number of myths or questions people have been asking for years. The reason i chose this source was because i could see that it could relate to students as well as older generations. In the old days, there were always myths about what could happen to a human being depending on the situation. In the old days, you were given one opinion and one opinion only. There were no subjects of question. For example, during the salem witch trials there was no question whether you were a witch or not because if u were thought of being a witch, you'd be put to death.

In the old days there was no media, there was no technology, there were no ways of second to second communication. So in no way could these people ever be able to see or believe in a world that would allow such a new way of living.

There were a couple of humorous yet interesting questions in the book that these doctors were able to answer. For example there was a question that came from an old wives tale. The question was "Is it dangerous to hold a sneeze?". Naturally now, it is obvious that one's head will not exploded if he or she holds their sneeze. Yet because of technology with change in time, it was able to discover this finding and solve this old tale. This book is a great source because its an example of such a world we've come to live in. Because of technology, our doctors are able to answer questions that would most likely be looked at as witchcraft of blasphemy in past years yet we have come dependent on technology to answer these sort of questions that no one would actually depend on to survive.

research questions

I'd like to focus on privacy relating to students from social networking. Yes students from all over use social networking to get help, ideas, or just converse, is this why internet hacking goes up? because everyone is digitally connected as days go by? I'd also like to see the inside of why students sign up for myspace or facebook. There are people out there that just sign up for one day and never use it again. What is the real reason to sign up for these kind of networks?

when signed up to these systems, how far is privacy given away? Anyone can hack into your profile if they know how. Your name can be someone else's in an instant. People know this, see it every day, so why do they still do things online?
Does signing your name somewhere on the internet make you lose your privacy indefinitely?

thesis statement for essay 3

Thesis statement: As the world advances so does technology, yet as technology advances, citizens of the world are connected even further but their privacy becomes less and less existent. 

sources that would help prove this point would be recent events in general. For example, hacking, and identity theft increases by the day. Millions and millions of people join some kind of networking system every day. Watching the local news, even searching privacy and technology on google gives you a number of articles and news articles that tell you recent events. Indeed technology is a great advancement, but what price does it come to? The price that your privacy, your information is out there for anyone to see. 

wiki aim assessment

The beginning of this wiki site for aim already says "this site needs additional citations for verification", being said, this information from this website cannot be reliable enough to quote or gain information without further investigation from a different, maybe more reliable source. From already being a frequent user of AIM,  the terminology given seemed accurate enough to be true.

Most of the discussions consisted of which details in the wiki were accurate and which were useful. For example, aim seems to be updated every year. Having downloaded aim since the 7th grade, it seemed like my computer has gone through 7-8 versions of aim. Just like the latest gadget, as technology advances so do all of its many systems and features that come with it. One main argument was since there are so many different versions of aim, why were so many things of different versions of aim left out of the article.

The information that could be used from this article was accurate if the reader knew what they were looking for. If they were simply looking for an explanation of aim, it was there but they probably wouldn't understand what they were looking at because without basic use or knowledge of the product, it would be impossible to understand the discussion topics.

Aim Assesment

Aim stands for aol instant messenger. It was released by AOL in 1997 to aol subscribers but initially was only for its employees. It was originally released for Microsoft only but now is available for Mac as well as Microsoft. It was and to this day still is used mostly by teenagers. It is used to communicate by text over the internet in real time. Basically a "chat" one of the firsts of it kind. It was rivaled with yahoo, and messenger messenger as well. Aim was most likely chosen over the other two for a number of reasons. 1) Aim doesn't require to have or make an email address to have the messenger. It is only required to make a screen name without having to put all the information and time consuming as making an email would.  2) Aim allows more than 100 contacts to be added. 3) It takes away privacy information of the user that otherwise emails would allow. 4) It is easy to attain and has many features that msn and yahoo didn't have at the time.

Aim is efficient because it allows people to network with each other in real time, rather than face-book or myspace that is real time yet is leaving posts from time to time rather than on the spot communication. It is used by everyone from kids, teens to adults. Yet nowadays, it is mostly used by teens. From my experience, these types of communications have been labeled by age groups. For example, yahoo and msn is for adults, aim for youth, and skype for teens-adults. Just like myspace is for high school kids and facebook is for so called "college students and above".

Aim represents an easy way to communicate and stay touch with friends, do work, or just see what people are up to. It is very useful for almost any kind of office work. It is also great for working with someone else or another group of people. A feature called "direct connecting", allows 2 or more people to share documents with each other in the blink of an eye. I can send a class mate an entire power point presentation based on their internet connect in less than a minute. It now features such as group video chatting, status updates, and different sound alerts for different contacts.

When talking about privacy compared to the other chat systems, aim is probably the most private. For example, msn, yahoo, skype, all requires the user's information that is easily accessible to whoever is chatting with the user. For aim, you don't have to say anything that has to do with you unless you want to put it in your info. Also, unless you direct connect with someone that is strictly under your jurisdiction, no one can access the files in your computer.

If you want privacy and easy chatting ability, aim is probably your safest bet.

Assessing Technology Articles

Ad Nation by Wayne Grytting

The downfalls of public advertisement and how it has overall corrupt minds into believing the only way to get a message out is through advertisement is down right sad. A CEO of a major city believes that a city cannot be a city unless it has signs and advertisements. Monuments are no longer symbolic and he described some of the most raw and majestic cities of the world as bland. It seems that ads are only brainwashing people further and further as the days go by. If a person can make money of receive money from an ad, they will go great lengths to do so. Paying around $60,000 a month for an add, is ridiculous. Buildings that could be built for more important meanings are just being built to advertise.