Before this class, I hadn’t really considered the nature and significance of my interactions with technology. Looking back, however, I realize that technology has influenced what I do and how I think from a very young age. From playing video games and memorizing the keys on a computer key board as a child, to doing various projects in high school and college, to using an e-reader I have immersed myself in a culture of technology without much conscious thought. I think that many people have this same attitude of adaptation. They are introduced to and continue to use technology at least in part because their society expects them to have a certain level of experience with new media in order to be successful. It is a combination of this desire
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In terms of entertainment, my computer serves as my DVD player, my CD player, and my way to access social networking sites such as Facebook. Academically, I use my laptop to write my papers (most of which have to be checked for plagiarism by turnitin.com), as well as to do research and communicate with professors through e-mail. Whenever I start to feel a bit technophobic, I remind myself of what my life would be like if there were no library databases to look up articles or quickly locate books. In some ways, I feel that this type of technology has benefited me greatly. It has made me a faster, more efficient researcher and given me access to the most up to date and accurate information. On the other hand, I have to question whether people are becoming too dependent on technology to organize their everyday life. I know that if my laptop was broken, I would feel completely lost. Think of all the research papers that would disappear, all the e-mails that would go unread, all of the Facebook or Twitter pages that would go without new posts. We have reached a point in our society where constant access to technology is almost a requirement. Thus by using these new forms of new media as a student I am preparing myself for a job market in which technological literacy is crucial for
In terms of entertainment, my computer serves as my DVD player, my CD player, and my way to access social networking sites such as Facebook. Academically, I use my laptop to write my papers (most of which have to be checked for plagiarism by turnitin.com), as well as to do research and communicate with professors through e-mail. Whenever I start to feel a bit technophobic, I remind myself of what my life would be like if there were no library databases to look up articles or quickly locate books. In some ways, I feel that this type of technology has benefited me greatly. It has made me a faster, more efficient researcher and given me access to the most up to date and accurate information. On the other hand, I have to question whether people are becoming too dependent on technology to organize their everyday life. I know that if my laptop was broken, I would feel completely lost. Think of all the research papers that would disappear, all the e-mails that would go unread, all of the Facebook or Twitter pages that would go without new posts. We have reached a point in our society where constant access to technology is almost a requirement. Thus by using these new forms of new media as a student I am preparing myself for a job market in which technological literacy is crucial for