Ping!
So we sit in a cave and wait to die?
“Tomorrow, I will post: How New Media Are Enhancing Our Lives”
Add to the list of “shortest books ever written”.
Media is a result of WHO posts WHAT on it....I am on FB....but most of what I post is Political or historical...If you are a narcissist, it will just be a reflection of you no matter how you communicate...ie...I refuse to participate in the Happy Birthday activities...and i do NOT have my real birthday or city of birth listed
It’s all about moderation.
I do despise TVs in restaurants unless it’s a sports bar. I dont want CNN pumped into my face while I’m trying to eat.
My smartphone is very important to me as a way to keep in touch quickly and get useful info.
Everything he says is true, of course. But there is another side. The new media are useful when used in moderation.
How would we know what Plato said about writing, if it hadn’t been written down? How likely would it be that we would have the Iliad and the Odyssey if they hadn’t been written down for us to read? Even if that makes it difficult to write more epics now?
Google search is probably bad for young people who would otherwise commit more stuff to memory. On the other hand, it’s very useful for an oldster like me, who remembers something vaguely but needs to use Google search to recover the details. You still need to remember enough to know what to look for.
Too much internet can be destructive, but without it, the MSM would be totally irresistible.
In other words, yes, there are two sides to the coin.
My goal is to one be rich enough to leave electronics behind and never be bothered again.
I for one find the enhancement of information availability almost exhilarating. I am ‘old’ school, from before we had TV. We had one phone in the house and it was on a desk and was powered trough a cord. I had friends in the country who had big old phones with a crank, and they were on ‘party line’ because there weren’t enough phone lines to go around for everyone to have one. I remember when we had to go to the library and search manually through volumes to get a few pieces of information. I remember when we had to use Strong’s Concordance to find a passage in the Bible that we could partially remember, but did not know where. I remember when the first McDonald’s came to Des Moines where I grew up, and it was amazing that we could get a decent hamburger for 15 cents. I remember my Granddad’s 1934 Ford V8 four door (four ‘suicide’ doors), and it had a ‘trunk’ on the back. I learned to drive on that car, btw. My granddad lived with us in Des Moines. He was native of Sweden, and as a teenager made his way to Nebraska with brother, sister and parents.
And I remember my first computer, dos based pc with a 30 Meg hard drive. I learned on an IBM pc with two floppies but no hard drive. I learned to do everything on that, and when I got my own with the 30 meg hard drive, a computer expert friend of mine said, you will never need that much hard drive!
It was not until the late 90s that I learned about the internet and web pages. Wow, information. And we had our own novel web page that helped find long lost cousins. How about that!
Also in the mid 90s I got my first cell phone. It was a bag phone. And expensive to use. But it worked unbelievably well as a communication devise. And after that I had various cell phones that were just phones! And then, finally, a year ago, I got my first smart phone. Yup, it is smart, and hope someday I will catch up with it. But I am learning to like it. Even given over to texting, but NEVER while driving! An accident waiting to happen!
Today we have, if we want it, information overload. And as a researcher, I am whole heartedly in favor of the availability of information. I thrive on information. And at my age, it is astounding that I can access information about anything! And I am an information hog. I have the capacity to remember much of what I read, and save it on my pc so can find it again with searches.
Wow, if I could have secretly had all this info at my fingertips, literally, I could have been a real boy wonder. No wonder kids are so smart today!
But I am a year and a half away from being an octogenarian, and I aint done learning yet!
So no, the new media are not destroying our lives, unless we are sheeple. I am not sheeple. I will never let all the technology control me. My plan is to control it to my benefit. I have clients who depend on what I know through my research. I will benefit those clients by my relentless search for knowledge. We can be masters of what otherwise would master us.
If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.
With all due respect to Plato, there is more stuff to remember now than there was then. It can't all be passed down orally. Someone has to take notes.
Besides, folks wrote before Plato. Was he being facetious?
Or we could go to the library and look it up. That option seems to be deliberately side stepped. Probably because it is the exact same thing you do with Google except now it is a bit easier.
Countless pointless arguments can be settled with a few keystrokes leaving us with more time to enjoy being with other people.
When the light turned red on us yesterday at a corner, the three other people standing there all pulled out their smartphones.
Cities were so much cleaner before the development of the horseless carriage.
I'm oooooold! And I'm not happy! And I don't like things now compared to the way they used to be. All this progress -- phooey! In my day, we didn't have these cash machines that would give you money when you needed it. There was only one bank in each state -- it was open only one hour a year. And you'd get in line, seventeen miles long, and the line became an angry mob of people -- fornicators and thieves, mutant children and circus freaks -- and you waited for years and by the time you got to the teller, you were senile and arthritic and you couldn't remember your own name. You were born, got in line, and ya died! And that's the way it was and we liked it!
Life was simpler then. There wasn't all this concern about hy-giene! It my days, we didn't have Kleenex. When you turned seventeen, you were given the family handkerchief. ... It hadn't been washed in generations and it stood on its own ... filled with diseases and swarmin' with flies. ... If you tried to blow your nose, you'd get an infection and your head would swell up and turn green and children would burst into tears at the sight o' ya! And that's the way it was and we liked it!
Life was a carnival! We entertained ourselves! We didn't need moooovin' pitchurrrres. In my day, there was only one show in town -- it was called "Stare at the sun!" ... That's right! You'd sit in the middle of an open field and stare up at the sun till your eyeballs burst into flames! And you thought, "Oh, no! Maybe I shouldn't've stared directly into the burning sun with my eyes wide open." But it was too late! Your head was on fire and people were roastin' chickens over it. ... And that's the way it was and we liked it!
Progress?! Flobble-de-flee! In my day, when we were angry and frustrated, we just said, "Flobble-de-flee!" 'cause we were idiots and we didn't know what else to say! Just a bunch o' illiterate Cro-Magnons, blowin' on crusty handkerchiefs, waitin' in lines for our head to burst into flame and that's the way it was and we liked it!
One of my biggest complaints for a long time. Various forms of media has caused us to become so completely dissociated as human beings, and addicted to "objects" that control us. Like a powerful tool, they should only be used for a specific purpose, and prudently.
Genuine, quality human interaction amongst friends and family has become such a rarity these days. Instead Facebook has taken over as the surrogate, because it's "more convenient." How very sad, and tragic. Humans were not meant to operate by "remote control" or electronically, but sadly, that is what has happened. The technology has been abused horribly.
BTW....nice to "see" everyone here again. One of the reasons why I curtail my "media"...too much of a good thing. Many of God's blessings to all on this Holy Pentecost Sunday.