Big Brother

Although 1984 is very long and is written in very small print, I find the concept of this society to be quite interesting.  Our society has not completely taken away our right to privacy but when thinking about the process of getting on a plane and the new technologies like gps' and onstar it is easy to wonder when the line has been crossed. 

When we want to fly somewhere not only is our luggage thoroughly checked, but we are also checked.  Basically when traveling via an airline system everything that is going with you must be accounted for.  Some people consider this to be too far but I think it is quite essential to the safety of our society, considering past experiences.  However, I must admit if I flew  more often I may be singing a different tune!

On a different note, most people have a gps.  This technology is great because it not only tells you how to get from point A to point B but it can also take you home at the click of a button and tell you when you are off route and how to get back on route.  This kind of tracking information is very helpful, but how do we know it is not or could not be used for other purposes.  Onstar goes a step farther by giving you the access to a real person when you need help.  This is great when you have a flat tire or run out of gas on the highway, but don't these technologies sound shockingly similar to telescreens?  At any moment a party member can plug in your telescreen and see and hear everything your doing.  Who knows maybe Onstar agents or the gps companies can do the same thing, just not as openly as in 1984. 

Transported into the future

This future world is absolutely astonishing.  I thought people in the 19^th century were distracted and the people here in 2011 are constantly distracted.  It is as if their entire life consists of one distraction after another.  There are even some people who have never been in the woods, and would never want to.  If I weren’t here myself I would never believe this, it’s like a horror story!

Currently I am wandering on the campus of Shippensburg University.  There are so many people pursuing further education and yet almost everyone I am passing is on what they call a cell phone.  It’s a tiny device that you can apparently make calls to almost anyone from.  It gets “service” from these huge towers and somehow you can talk to people from miles away!  You can also do something called texting, which I am not quite sure about.  Apparently there is a keyboard that you can type on and send a written message to someone just as quickly as making the calls I mentioned earlier.  I find this so peculiar, if everyone is constantly talking what do they have to say to each other over dinner? 

I was able to stop a group of college students, only because they were walking together were they not on their cell phones, and ask them what all of the fenced off areas consisted of.  They informed me that the University wanted to connect the library to a recreational facility they called the CUB.  This was even more astonishing than the cell phones.  There was so much beautiful open space on this campus that was already taken up by buildings for classes, dining halls, a gym, and parking spaces for these very unusual cars.  Why on earth someone would want to take even more of the nature away so people can stay inside while walking from one building to another is just baffling to me. 

I also saw students walking around with a flat device with wires coming out of it and into their ears.  I thought maybe these students had hearing impairments but when I stopped one of the students to talk they pulled the wires out of one ear and I could hear noise just blasting out of the end.  The student informed me that this device was called an ipod and asked me if I was born yesterday.  How rude the youth can be today.  It is as if they wouldn’t know nature if it hit them in the face, and they are attending a University in the country! 

How these people get any sort of work done, I have no idea.  What would make a person of 20 years want to waste their life with their nose stuck to a technological device smaller than a deck of cards is beyond me.  I think there will be plenty of people who reach their elderly years and wish they had experienced half of the nature I was able to.

Life is normal again!

So today is my first day with technology again and I feel great!  Although it did take a lot of time to text all of my friends and catch up, I don't feel out of the loop anymore :)  Now that the experience is over I definitely feel like I have a stronger work ethic.  I will refrain from texting when I am doing school work because I do find that very distracting although I do love to!  I realized that if I am working on something easy having background noise actually makes me feel better without distracting me.  But, if I am working on a paper or reading I can focus much better in silence, even though it is awful to get started! 

The challenge did make me realize how much I depend on technology.  However, like many other people said, I think we have just adapted to the environment.  Our world is filled with hustle and bustle, in cities you can't have pure silence even if you want it.  So, radios, ipods, TVs, and cellphones are all adaptations we have become accustomed to fit in with out surroundings.  Personally, without a cellphone I can't keep in contact with any of my friends because I live so far away from them.  Even if I do want to go out and have a face to face interaction I need my cellphone to coordinate it!

Therefore, I will be using my technology again, the challenge didn't make me hate technology.  But it did make me appreciate it more and realize the most appropriate times to use technology!  I think I will encourage family members and friends to at least try to use technology as little as possible so they can come to appreciate it themselves.  I think you can read people's blogs from this challenge and think you understand the experience, but honestly I don't think you can fully grasp the concept of living without technology for a week without doing it yourself!  So cheers to everyone who has finished their week and good luck to those who have a little more time!

4 1/2 days without technology!

So, I thought this challenge would get harder as the days went on.  However, it's not as bad as I thought.  I am able to get so much more school work done, so at the end of the night I feel accomplished rather than stressed about how much I have to do.  When I first sit down to work I still feel a bit uncomfortable without any background noise, but after about 15 minutes I get much more focused than I would if I had the TV on in the background.  At night is when I miss TV the most, I had to work 5-1 this weekend so I always try to get to sleep earlier, but without tv I have had a hard time relaxing.

As for not using my phone, that's a bit harder.  Every time I turn around I feel like I have another reason to use it and have to remind myself this is EXTRA CREDIT!  But overall I think I am benefitting from not using my phone as much because, just like with TV, I am able to sit down without any distractions.  I think technology is great and absolutely essential in today's society; but I think everyone should have to experience a week without it just to realize the potential each day holds!

I thought the radio and my ipod would be the easiest to give up because I am definitely a TV girl, but it has been so hard to not turn the radio on in the car!  Also in the mornings on my way to work I find my mind wandering and my sleepiness being more obvious!

Overall, I think the lack of distractions has and will continue allow me to develop a stronger work ethic so when I do get my technology back I will make better choices regarding those devices!!

Living in the woods

"I went to the woods because I wished to life deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."  Henry David Thoreau
I think it is quite admirable that Thoreau went to live in the woods.  The solitude that you experience when you are emersed completely in nature I find to be pretty invigorating to be honest.  My boyfriend's family has a cabin in the mountains near Raystown Lake and when we go there for a weekend trip I feel completely cut off from the world.  I don't get service, so my cellphone is shut off all weekend; there is no interenet connection so the laptop stays at home; there is no cable so no TV; there is no running water, so yes we have to get jugs of water from a stream, shower at a neighbors house, and use an out house (which by the way is TERRIFYING in the dark with the thought of snakes and skunks!).  So, needless to say we have to create our own parties, which when in the company of friends is actually pretty awesome.  I wish there was running water, but other than that for a weekend trip Raystown is soooo relaxing.  You wake up whenever you want, eat what you want, ride fourwheelers, go to the lake, go for a hike, make a fire, and party the night away with great friends.  I feel like around here with all of the other ways to entertain yourself going into the woods would not be your first choice, but once you're there it's amazing how fun a deck of cards, four wheelers, a fire pit, and a radio can be.  It becomes more about the people you're with than what is on tv, or what is playing in the movie theater, or how much money you're going to spend at the mall.  This kind of weekend I feel everyone should experience at least once.
However, a whole year is a different story.  Yes watching nature is wonderful; going to the lake is super fun; cooking burgers and hot dogs over a real fire, not a grill, is awesome; partying with no one around but the friends you came with is great.  I'd say after a week at most for me this would get boring, I would miss the comfort of my own bed, my friends being a call away, my TV shows, and the horses.  The fact that I could only handle this for a week is saying one thing and that's with friends.  To be in the woods alone even for a weekend would be horrible to me.  I don't really enjoy being along for an extended period of time, and I don't understand what more you can learn alone in the woods as opposed to with friends.  What is the significance of complete isolation; human contact is one of our needs as human beings.  I would definitely get so lonely, scared, and depressed that I would be miserable even if I did go out and experience nature.  I disagree with Thoreau that living in the woods in complete solitude for a year would fulfill you to the point that when you died you would know you lived.  Family, friends, nature, horses, work, school:  all of these things do create some stress, however, they make life worth living.  When all is said and done I want to die knowing that I did the best that I could at everything I attempted, that I made a difference in the lives of those closest to me, and that I experienced every situation I desired. 
If I spent a year alone in the woods I think I would walk away from it feeling accomplished because I don't know if I could do it, but more so that I wasted a year being alone as opposed to being with those that I love.

1st day without technology!

Today I started the challenge of living without technology for a week.  To be honest so far it's not so bad.  In order to keep bills at a minimum when I moved out of my parents' house I decided I did not need the internet   I can go to my neighbor's or parents' houses to use the internet whenever I please so getting it myself was not really necessary.  Over the past year and a half living without the internet has saved me money and prevented me from getting addicted to facebook.  Also, having to go elsewhere to use the internet, can be a pain, but it gives me a reason to visit my family or neighbor while being productive!  So, since I am already used to using my computer for mostly school work that part has not been hard at all. 

I feel I will miss using my cell phone more in the next few days when I want to hang out with someone or when I'm bored.  I think a cell phone is somewhat of a comfort item; if I'm walking to class or waiting for class to start it's really nice to be able to catch up with friends.  It will be quite an adjustment to not have a friend a text away!  However, this morning I had to meet a friend to complete a class assignment at a local preschool.  I had about 20 minutes before I had to leave and since we have to read Feed by tomorrow I thought I could get a good chunk read before I left.  Let me just say, not being able to set an alarm on my cell phone was so distracting.  Every few minutes I kept looking at my phone to see how much time had gone by.  Also, I felt very uncomfortable not being able to find out where my friend was when our meet time came and went.  These are the reasons why parents get their kids cell phones in the first place!

I think giving up the TV and radio/ipod will be tough.  This morning it was VERY quiet when I was getting ready.  However, not being able to watch TV did allow me to focus more on reading Feed.  However, every time I got into the car today I caught myself turning on the radio.  It has become a habit, just like putting on my e-brake everytime I park.  Tonight will be the real challenge though.  I love winding down from the day by watching tv before I go to bed.  Falling asleep to silence has never been easy :/  Wish me luck!

Feed

I began reading Feed this past week and I find it to be an easy and interesting read if I can sit down and focus.  However, if I am not really in the mood to be reading I find it so hard to concentrate because the language they use is so very different from ours!  On page 4 Titus says "When you're going places with other people, with this big group, everyone is leaning toward each other, and people are laughing and they're chatting, and things are great, and it's just like in a commercial for jeans, or something with nougat."  When people start relating real life to a commercial, things have really gone down hill.  It makes you think, is this the life that we are headed for, where we relate real life to commercials instead of creating commercials to accentuate the best parts of life?
On page 5 Titus goes on to comment on how lonely he is:  "At parties, I was starting to get real lonely, even when there were other people around me, and it's worse when you leave.  Then there's that silence when your driving home alone in the upcar and there's nothing but the feed telling you, This is the music you heard.  This is the music you missed.  This is what is new."    I find it almost humerous how Titus says there is nothing but... then lists so much stimulation that if I were put in the situation I probably wouldn't be able to focus on driving.  How can someone say there is nothing while admitting there is so much going on.  This must be a type of plentitude that Lasn discussed.  He has so much that when he is immersed in all of the benefits that are meant to prevent loneliness he still feels lonely.  He has become so used to the overstimulation of this future world that he feels empty without 200 things going on.
I feel a similar issue is presenting itself with the youngest generation in our society.  There are now countless videos that are being advertised that promote early literacy or future success in school.  However, one of the first videos available for babies were Baby Mozart videos.  In my Early Literacy class we discussed how the corporation selling Baby Mozart videos offered full refunds to anyone who returned their videos because the American Academy of Pediatrics released a statement recommending that children under 2 should not watch any television.  The problem found was the speed at which television moves is much faster than any speeds an infant would naturally be exposed to.  Chronic exposure to this speed for infants was found to be correlated to ADD or ADHD later in life.  It's almost as if the exposure to technology from such a young age actually wires the brain differently.
Although technology has some great benefits, I feel it will take time to really be able to weigh the costs and benefits because we still don't know the effects later in life.