I agree with your argument that our society has become dependent on society. This is not new a new concept to understand. Ever since the invention of the wheel, society has adapted its lifestyles to new technology. One quote that we were both struck by in Parker’s reading was “the power of exchanging information quickly was evident back in times when the word tweet was something only birds did.” To me, that really opened my eyes up to just how long society was adapting to new technology and having a desire to exchange information. Long before Twitter, Facebook, televisions, radios or even modern newspapers played vital roles in everyday life, people still had a desire to exchange information – it just happened much differently than it does today. When I was reading over your post, I was reminded of something that I had forgotten about for the last two years. In my freshman year Theatre 100 class, we learned that actors would travel around to local villages to recite the news of neighboring towns or cities to people in the form of a play. People always had a desire to learn new information and be able to tell others about. It is vital to human nature to communicate with others. I have never understood people who consider themselves to be “loners.” Sure, I get in my moods sometimes when I want to spend a few hours by myself, but it actually defies human nature to want to be alone all the time. Since humans have existed, human interaction or communication with others has been necessary for survival.

I do think you exaggerated the danger of social media in your post. Yes, I understand where you are coming from in saying that anything we tweet or post on Facebook can come back to haunt us when it comes time to getting a job but that isn’t something you need to worry about if you monitor what you say. The Huffington Post’s senior editor Craig Kanalley actually wrote a guest column in today’s Daily Collegian (http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2013/01/18/how_your_online_activity_-_right_now_-_can_impact_you_years_from_now.aspx) about being careful of what you post. I think if you make guidelines for yourself, you don’t have to worry about getting in trouble in the future. Social media is such an important tool in learning what is going on by following news media outlets on Twitter and also being able to communicate with friends or even experts about a topic. Without Twitter, I would not be able to read all the diverse articles that I do now. It would take too long for me to peruse the New York Times, USA TODAY, Centre Daily Times, CNN, etc. on a daily basis, but if I see a story that seems interesting on Twitter, I will be sure to check it out. I do agree there are some dangers in social media, but it is so important that I don’t think it is something to be afraid of.

Response to Teodor Nikolaev Nihtianov

In a way, I feel conflicted by your post because I want to say that the internet and other advancements are a bad thing because of cyber bullying and our inability to interact face to face. It really is both a blessing and a curse. Since you focused on the positive, I’ll counter that with the negative.

My best friend goes to UCLA and lives in California so I don’t get to see her that often. We try to Skype each other as well, but there’s something that even the internet can’t replace; the physical experience of talking to somebody. It’s just not the same. We occasionally send letters because they, at least, are written in our own handwriting to make it a little more personal than the default font on Facebook. And though we Skype every few weeks, in reality, I only “see” my best friend once or twice a year. This is when I physically fly out to California to see her.

My mom’s side of the family lives in California as well. Two years ago, my aunt had a baby girl. It’s weird because she looks bigger on a computer screen. Every time I go to visit her, I can’t quite grasp how little she really is. When she’s on my laptop screen, her picture is blown up and she looks bigger than in real life. She doesn’t look like she only comes up to my thigh. And of course, she looks cuter is real life too!

There are also the dangers of people pretending to be someone they’re not. MTV has its own television program, Catfish, dedicated just to finding fake Facebook profiles. People use these fake profiles to manipulate the feelings whether it be intentional or out of fear of showing who they really are.

This leads us to an even more serious problem. If people can hide behind a fake profile, hiding behind the anonymity of the internet is even worse. My friend, Ari, is an actress with over 4 million followers on Twitter. Haters, like @ArianaIsAWhore, are constantly tweeting her, and though they may think that she doesn’t see these tweets, she does. They really get to her.

Jimmy Kimmel did a special about how users don’t realize that people, no matter how famous, still have feelings and they are still affected by the rude or insulting things that people say about them online. He called this “Celebrities Read Mean Tweets.”

You can watch them here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRBoPveyETc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hcmz74AaXHs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTix7FDHZcA

When you watch it, you can see how upset they get.

I was cyber bullied in middle school by an anonymous user who had written on my blog something along the lines of “If you come to school tomorrow I will kill you in the commons at 3:05 when school lets out.” I didn’t do anything about it because I didn’t really realize the severity of the situation. I thought it was just spam. It wasn’t until my friend reported it to our principal, and the police, FBI, and site moderators got involved that I realized how scary and serious the situation was. My blog was shut down, and the entire site and services were put on a 24 hour lock down. It was terrifying.

This is also why we are so scared to talk to people in a personal situation. Even at Penn State we all have to take CAS 100 in order to graduate. We’ve lost our ability to speak publically because of the protection of the computer screen. This protection is not only a crutch, but a shield so that people can say things they wouldn’t normally have the guts to say to a person if they were standing right in front of them.

I can definitely see where you are coming from in the fact that it would be easier for inventors back in the day because they didn’t have anything preceding them, but I’m not sure if I completely agree. Even though engineers and inventors have some much to live up to and build something above and beyond anything anyone has ever seen, they now have technology the was completely non existent when people were inventing the wheel. If in the modern world, someone invented the wheel, I don’t believe they would even do the physical work of building it, they would crunch a bunch of numbers in a computer and turn on some machine and the circular wheel would appear in it’s chromed glory.

I agree on your statement that we have pretty much run out of new things to invent, we’re just reinventing old stuff and making it bigger/smaller/shinier/prettier. I’m not to keen on the word “climax”, though. I think we’ve reached a technological plateau. Hey, somebody’s got to invent the time machine still, and that floating car! Put me on the waiting list for one of those, I’ll wait as long as I have to!

Like you, I also hate when I see a toddler playing on a IPad, it just drives me insane. The fact the this coming generation is so obsessed and immersed with technology is a bit frightening. I mean, so are we, but we adults, so it’s fine, right? But when a kid’s first word is “IPhone”, or something of that nature, that is when it really gets out of hand.

Just a quick comment to end my response, my friend is a journalist, and for one of her classes, she has to go without technology for 48 hours and write a story on her experiences. I think she’s going to die, but that’s just me. I would say I am probably one of the least technology attached people in my group of friends (I’m the worst texter, by far), and I know I wouldn’t be able to last without my computer, my music, or my phone for that long. A lot of people, if they had to take that challenge, would look like a meth-addict on withdrawal after 10 hours. That’s how she’s going to be, I guarantee it, and it’s going to be really funny to the rest of our friends.

This week’s readings both had to do with the history and evolution of communication. In the first reading, Thussu discusses technological advancements such as the telegraph, the telephone, and radio while also describing the effects that each advancement had on the world’s leading nations, specific wars, and the growth of news and news media. In the next reading, Palmer depicts how communication first came about in ancient times, focusing more on what could potentially be considered “stone age” advancements which relied on human actions more than electrical signals.

I found both readings intriguing in their historical context, as well as how they pertain to our current lives. As a potential journalism major, I also found Thussu’s information on the growth of international news distribution and prominence of news agencies especially relevant due to our current transitional state of news media. In this reading, Thussu describes how news agencies had been distributed “reserved territories” to report to, with only a few certain areas open to all news agencies. It shocked me that this was generally how things were done until the 1930’s, when the international news cartel broke and the Associated Press began to work internationally.

This shows the degree to which things have changed over the past 80 years or so. Today, large news corporations still do have a target area of coverage (for example, CNN and FOX are mostly prominent in the U.S. while sources like Daily Mail are prominent in the U.K.), but the internet has made any source of news available to anyone anywhere around the world (or at least to those who live in free countries and with an internet connection). This is interesting to me because it shows what could be considered as history repeating itself. What was thought to be a consolidation of international news in the past century now appears obsolete when compared to the rise of the internet and the tools it provides us with.

One description in the Palmer readings struck me as less relevant, but humorous considering what lengths they used to go through to communicate over distances.  Palmer discusses the “significant improvements in the courier system” that were made by King Cyrus the Great of Persia, which entailed people on horses stationed at several posts between two destinations. In relay-fashion, men would gallop their horses to each post, pass a letter to the man on the next horse that would gallop to the next post, and return. If only King Cyrus could see how his revolutionary communication system had diminished into a form of sport around a track field rather than a useful tool.

Although somewhat dry, these readings do prove insightful in understanding the history of our international communications systems and how each improvement has led us to where we are today.