Brave New World of Digital Intimacy

Thompsons main idea in this article is that you can still connect with someone using these social media and feel like you understand them. With the use of social media, one can learn more about them than they do with a face to face interaction. Mark Zuckerburg created the newsfeed so that one can see someones information on one whole page rather than searching on that persons profile. I dont think this is a good thing for literacy because this takes out the whole process of researching and finding out on your own. Ambient awareness is being able to understand a friends mood and what is going on in their life. The use of social media can promote ambient awareness, but one may not want to know exactly what is going on every day in someones life and could become annoyed by the constant updates. An ambient update would be where someone talks about how their day went and how they feel about. Social media is more "skimmable" than an e-mail because in and e-mail someone is wanting your full attention and on a social media site its not nearly as important.

Gin,TV, and Cognitive Surplus

In this article Shriky is making the argument that we should do more create and inspire rather than just watching tv or movies. Cognitive surplus is the free time that you have to think.This time is the time that youre supposed to be deep in your thoughts and creating and sharing with others. This article matters because it might help to inspire people to start blogging more about their thoughts or sharing them in some way. In this article its a little different because it is talking about how the internet and its various uses could be used to our advantage, rather than just making us stupid. As long as you are receiving and giving information, rather than just receiving, then television and movies can be a good thought developer.

Is Our Cognitive Process In Trouble?

This article is talking about how the internet is helping retrieve information, but could possibly be hurting our cognitive process of making knowledgeable thoughts on our own. It says that the internet is a quick way to gain information and its training us to only be able to focus one one thing for a short amount of time. Many have even said that can't read a few pages of a book without seeming to lose their train of thought. Literacy can be defined in this article as being able to swim deeply in your thoughts while reading rather than just skimming the top of the water. The writer provides much evidence from interviewing his colleagues and asking how the internet has affected their thinking process. The evidence seems to be very strong and convincing and could provide further research into this area.

Jeremy Clarkson

Jeremy Clarkson is one of the hosts of the British car show called Top Gear. He is very active on twitter with posting pictures, interacting with people, and he also tweets freely and pretty colorfully. He also is very sarcastic and likes to speak his mind on certain global topics. This creates an interesting and very funny twitter feed.

Social Media

I am an avid twitter, facebook, and instagram user. With these social media sites I try to tweet mainly about sports, my family/friends, and a lot about music also. With this I hope to interact with family and maybe even introduce people to new music or other subjects. Many photos I have posted lately are about the Pittsburgh Pirates, because my whole family lives there and its nice to talk to them about our favorite sports teams. I also post a lot about the Pittsburgh sports teams on facebook, that way family or friends can start a conversation with about whatever I had posted. I also post videos of myself playing guitar, because I like express myself with music.

My social media accounts are a great representation of what kind of person I am. I dont like to think that they define me, because I am not always posting everyday, but it would be a great way to get to know who I am. I dont think I have a certain standard to uphold in social media, its not that big of a thing, its just nice to have something that helps you keep up with the world. I would still get the job, I usually try to keep it pretty clean on my accounts and I believe I would still get the job.

Don't You Forget About Me

My song is Don't You Forget About Me, by the Simple Minds. This song is mostly know for its major appearance in the movie called the Breakfast Club. To understand the song you first have to understand what is going on in the movie. The movie is about these kids who are in high school and attending saturday school, for various but important reasons. They all come from a different group of people, so this means that they would never normally talk to each other. This saturday school experience brings together the group of kids, from the deep conversations they have and also the fun that they have together. At the end of the movie one kid asks if they were going to talk to each other, come monday when they are back at school. Most of them are unsure that they will even look at each other again. As much as they want to talk to each other, they feel pressured by the peers in their group to avoid the ones who do not belong with them. Now with this explanation of the movie, the song blatantly says "dont you, forget about me", which could easily be seen as the kids in saturday school not wanting to let go of the experience that have they associating themselves with other groups of kids. Other lyrics such as "will you recognize me? Call my name or walk on by.", reiterate the fact that they may not converse with each other when the next school week starts. Now, looking at the lyrics with out reference to the movie, it could be seen as a different meaning. By just watching the music video and listening to the song, it sounds just like your typical British 1980's pop-love song. When he says the word "baby", it makes it seem more like its about a girl that he wants back, or one that he has not had yet.

Flapper to Rappers

I think the use of the modern rap music was great for the movie since it did come out in 2013. By this, I mean a lot of the younger crowd today will listen to this music just as young adults would listen to jazz in the 1920's. Another connection is how back in the gilded age jazz was looked at as the music that should be frowned upon, just as rap could be looked at as frowned upon in this era. For the movie, although it looked like it was in the 20's, the music made it feel like it was much more modern.

Process and Product

I think it was actually a good thing for me to get the drafts done early that way I can have more time to revise and read over my paper, this way I can catch grammatical errors and other problems with my paper. Considering, there were a lot of small grammatical errors with my paper it was less of a hassle trying to edit my paper last minute. So I would say required drafts played a big role in the way my paper is turning out. The group workshops were also a very good thing for me, because its always great to have multiple opinions from many different people. It also helped giving opinions to other people because this can help you spot errors in your own paper that you may not have given thought to before. Even if we did not have the required drafts I would have still started my paper early, but I may not have had the time to work on it that I do now. I really do want to emphasize the importance of these required drafts because this gives you an idea of how the process of writing a paper should work.

Crossfire Assignment

By watching the clip from the show "crossfire" I immediately knew what the subject matter of the show would probably entail. I knew because of the name that it was definitely going to involve some sort of heated argument or debate. Seeing that it was a political show, they had two sides which were obviously two partisan men who represented the democratic party and the republican  party. I really liked Jon Stewarts role as the man who stood as a problem solver who did not take sides, but he tried to show them how these theatrical debates were more or less "hurting America". Also, I think in his ability to get a major reaction out of the hosts was a great way of getting the audience to side with him and understand what kind of wrong was going on there. The reaction was so extreme at some points to where the man in the bow tie would actually begin to insult him, but Jon's quick sarcastic remarks definitely seemed to hold the other man in check. It was also a good thing for Jon Stewart to take action on a major political network, instead of Comedy Central, that way he can be taken more seriously and his words might be considered as something to begin looking upon and believing. Jon Stewart's actions might have also helped other comedians, or anyone that disagrees with what goes on any station to begin to take action and speak what is on there mind. Not necessarily a role model, but someone who can jump start a movement in the right direction. Jon Stewart definitely showed himself as the "smartest funny man" to the hosts of the show.

HW 1

Writing has never been too much trouble for me unless it is a subject that does not interest me. In high school I developed a habit of waiting out a writing prompt that I wasn't very fond of and writing the paper maybe a night or two before it was due. The paper would always turn to be a very high B or low A, but I began to realize as I grew older that I should develop a well constructed writing process that would help me with managing my time and also help create a much better written paper, no matter the content that I was writing about. My process begins with with reading over the essay prompt a few times and really try to get to understand it. If the essay has to be written about a book then I will read the book and develop my own sort of short analysis of the novel and then a quick and simple plot summary just to be able to have some references while I begin to write. Before I start the actual writing process I will construct a light outline that will develop a proper structure for my paper. I normally also try to develop a thesis for my paper that will fully approach what my paper will be about. Then I will write the opening paragraph where I try to give a brief overview and a quick look at the background on the subject matter. Next I will write the body paragraphs, however many it takes, and within these paragraphs is where the bulk of the writing will be located, including incorporated quotes and many facts. Lastly, I will write the closing paragraph which normally will not be too lengthy, but will wrap up the essay with re-capping what I had addressed in my opening paragraph and eventually creating the closing sentence. This is the process I would use if I were given a prompt today, but it will also may need to adapt or change if given a different sort of prompt, or if a different format is needed. Now when it comes to what environment I write best in, it usually is when I have some music playing, more specifically, some light folk music maybe. What I hope I will get out of this is that I can shape up the rough edges on my writing process and become an efficient college writer.