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.