Big Paper Outline 1

Technology is a significant part of most teenager's lives. I know it is a big part of mine as it never leaves me, even when I am outside hanging out with friends. Based of many different point of views and ideas from class, as a teenager it is obvious that to some degree we are all addicted to the use to technology. We do not ever realized the negative effects or the positives apparently. Throughout this unit i was able to gain insights from help from different texts and discussions. I gained insights on how we are addicted and/or why and if it is destroying us or good for us.

My addiction to technology is basically the same as every other teenager. Although it was made clear from reading other peopl'es blogs that everyone has a different connection to each different digital device to a certain extent. For example I spent way more time being distracted by the television then for may Yazmin P is since all her attention goes to her cell phone. She made it clear in her blog that she spends way more time being distracted by texting on her cell phone. Although whether we are different in whatever technology we are sucked into with both experiences the same effect such as disembodiment (when your body is not in sink with what you may think your body is doing), being distracted from reality, and wasting time out of the day. Some other things that were established that are the negatives of technology personally on me is the lack of ability to communicate or improve social skills since I am kind of socially awkward, the idea of not being one with nature, being brainwashed by advertisements every second, how we are oblivious while things around us is falling apart like our environment, and our health. All are things that are negatively effected by our addiction to technology.

More on the negatives of our digital lives can be viewed from MT Anderson's point of view from his book Feed. From his point of view/allegory he portrays our technology technology from this device called the Feed. A tiny chip implanted in everyone's head in the story. There are many parts in the story that is a allegory and example of how our digital lives are destroying us as people and as a society. Some examples in the book include: the terrorist's message, Violet's conversation with the main character's father about killing the environment, shopping/ the feed is a brainwashing marketing device, and the idea of how ignorant we can be and teenager's need to conform to what seems popular or what is common. All of which are a mirror reflecting our daily lives in our digital lives.

After looking at the negatives of digitization with insights from my own experiences and MT Anderson's we then looked a little at the positives of digitization from Johnson's point of view from the excerpt Everything Bad is Good for You. From reading this some ideas/ main points from the most interesting part of this excerpt is how we are taught from digitilizationg or more specifically video games to notice patterns and improve our thinking and problem solving abilities. Also physically it improves our hand-eye coordination. After reading this i tried to take those points and reflect them on myself. I was kind of iffy on this idea. I play a lot of video games as well sometimes. lately I have been playing a PC game known as The Sims 3 which is a game where you create avatars or people and create families and control their lives by creating aspirations for them and families and goals and fulfilling them. I think this game is needed to be played with lots of patients. From Johnson's idea I would think that Sims 3 is one of the reasons I am able to teach myself to be patient and by unlocking aspirations and goals by playing out/ solving each avatar's "wants" it unlocks my ability to notice patterns in the game and being able to teach myself to be patient. Although is it the fact that I am a patient and good at noticing patterns in the first place is what helps me play this game so well??