A response to "Becoming Screen Literate"

This is a reading response to an article titled "Becoming Screen Literate" Screens, screens everywhere. Oh the glorious technology.

I don’t really believe we are in the era of screens just yet. As long as books and great authors are around with stories to tell and paper to print them on, I won’ be convinced. Even the part where Kevin, the author of this article, tells about how screens are everywhere, it’s not entirely true. I have only ever seen screens and movies on plane rides once, and I was in first class. ATM machines have screens sure, but they never show me clips of movies or anything. They are touch screens that get the job done. This Kevin, seeing as this is a New York Times article, must live in New York: a central hub city of the United States and one of the biggest and well known in the world. Of course there would be screens and other cool technologies there all around him. Those sorts of cities get everything top shelf first. Seeing as Richardson is mostly a residential area and not a city, it’s safe to say I won’t be seeing nearly as much technology in my everyday life as I would if I lived in New York City.

That’s not to say I don’t have plenty of technology around me: my tv, my many game systems, my beautiful laptop, my phone, even my digital clock. This amount fits me just fine. However, when the cities start to expand their reach to more residential areas and we start to see more cool technology more frequently, I’ll be ready for sure. I’m always up for the task.

A response to "Being Digital"

This is a reading response to an article titled "Being Digital" When bits replace atoms.

After reading the entirety of this article, which in my opinion droned on a little too much for my taste, I mostly thought about what the world and it’s media would be like when it is mostly digital. I don’t see things like books or magazines to be forgotten anytime in the near future. However, maybe one hundred years from now, when the “digital copy” of a book or written story will be the norm, things might not be so different.

For instance, there’s the deal with placing a tax on something that is digital or not. I don’t know if that’s still an issue, but I remember a while back when going to Gamestop to buy Microsoft Points for my Xbox, there was a fifty percent chance that the tax on it would not be on it. The deal was something like “can you charge tax on something that isn’t technically a physical object?” Sure, you can say the piece of plastic the code for the points was on is physical, but that isn’t what you bought. You bought it for the digital points so that you could buy and unlock games on the Xbox marketplace. When the world becomes mostly digital, I believe tax will be charged on everything. Unless of course our economy is back on track at that time, then maybe there won’t be any taxes at all. Who knows?

All I really know is, when the all-digital age is here, everyone will have bad eyesight from staring at screens all their lives. Except for me that is. I’ll stockpile all the cheesy romance novels in my attic.

A response to "What's New About 'New Media'?"

This is a reading response to an article titled "What's New About 'New Media'?" Basically, the internet and how awesome it is bringing our media together.

This article was mostly a discussion of things I already knew. However, the definition of the internet given as being the central form of new media today escapes me. Sure, I understood why the writer said it was, but I have a hard time seeing the internet as anything but that gate I use every day to look at all the stuff I frequently follow as a hobby. I do not actually acknowledge its existence often; I go straight for the contents on the internet rather than saying “Well, it’s time to open up the internet and browse stuff”.

The internet is the invisible infrastructure of all our electronic devices connected to one another. What is actually on the internet should be considered the new media. I think of the internet as a means to communicate and show off my creations and view other people’s creations, whether they are websites, art, videos, or music. If I were to consider the internet as a form of new media, then on its level, what would come next? There is not a single thing that I can think of to top the internet. If anything, its reach would increase from Earth to farther out into space when we all start terraforming other planets.

To me, new media includes things that can better themselves over time. The internet cannot better itself, but the content can and it always will. That is, until we all die out. Fortunately, that will not happen for a while. A discussion for another time while my head is in a jar.

A response to Steven Shapin's "What Else Is New?"

This is a reading response to an article by Steven Shapin titled "What Else Is New?" on technologies new and old. A great and interesting read.

This article made me realize how much my life depends on technology, whether I understand how it work or not. From the coffee maker I use to get by as a morning person every day to my laptop, which I could easily call “my everything”, I use technology everywhere I go. Thinking more on it, I also realize how much I take the simpler technologies for granted. They don’t even come to mind as even “slightly useful”, they are used so often, that they are forgotten. The various chairs and couches in the living room of our apartment for example, are almost ignored, (except for Adam’s ‘God Chair’ in the corner). Even the newest addition to our humble abode, a dark blue, pull-out couch found next to a dumpster on campus, has already fallen into the normality of the room, and I would never notice a difference until it caught fire or did something else to grab my immediate attention.

This brings the phrase “You don’t know what you have until it is gone” to mind. What would we do if emails didn’t exist and pneumatic tubes became the leading technology in sending messages and items of importance to one another across the globe? We wouldn’t know, because we are too busy in the here and now of this technological age to even care to think much into the subject. Even I don’t want to talk about how hellishly different and more difficult life would be with tubes and not my computer.

I need some coffee…

A response to "Why Heather Can Write"

This is a reading response to an article on literacy titled "Why Heather Can Write". It talks about how kids at a young age are using the world of Harry Potter to read and write fan fiction and improve their literacy to a certain extent.

After reading this article, I was driven to go find some good fan fiction to read. I remember way back in the day when I used to read fan fiction all the time of my favorite game characters and such. Those were good times. However, now-a-days, it is hard to find anything that is worth reading. Half of the stuff out on the internet is either horribly written or “troll-fiction” (fan fiction written by internet trolls, usually highly sexual and tastless). Fortunately, there are some good people still out there writing to their hearts content about the things that they like.

Oddly enough, the subject with the highest quantity and quality fan fiction out there now, I believe, is based around one of the newest sensations among men and women in their late teens and twenties including myself, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. However, as I previously stated, some of the fan fiction is tasteless, but I did manage to find some good titles out there on the World Wide Web. One managed to make me cry, and I was all too surprised to be feeling such heavy emotions from something I found so effortlessly. I have no clue who the person is who wrote that piece of fan fiction, but whoever it was deserves at least a pat on the back or a high five. Similarly stated in the article, the author’s identity is completely unknown. Perhaps it is a boy of 16 living in China or even a woman of 27 in New York. Whatever the case, they wrote something exceptional for an audience such as myself, and maybe even for themselves to escape for a while and bask in the fantasy worlds that surround our culture today.

I believe if a majority of kids began to read and write fan fictions such as this early on in life much like the kids in the article, literacy would be at an all-time high. Who knows, maybe people might have bigger imaginations.