The Stupidest Generation? Eh, Probably Not.

In SPC 260 class on Wednesday we discussed the views of Mark Bauerlins article entitled Online Literacy A “Lesser” Kind. I found this article to be very true and interesting at the same time. Even though I am a fan and supporter of the Internet I feel that Bauerlins brings up some shocking points. Mark Bauerlin is very anti-internet. He feels that the Internet has made this generation the dumbest one ever. I don't agree with that of course but he does have his reasons for this statement and the reasons are not completely unfounded. He has several points but his main argument is that when people read things off of a screen from the Internet they do not actually read the whole article. Readers get lazy and just skim or scan the article often in an F like pattern.

I am guilty of this and so is everyone who has been told about this issue. I didn't realize it at first, I just noticed that I had a really hard time paying attention to articles that I had to read on my computer through the Internet. After learning about the F scanning pattern that we use when reading on-line articles I believe that learning and reading on a screen are not the best way to do things. I find it much easier to just print articles out and read them. That is if I am not too lazy and just don't get around to it. I know this is true for many other students out there. They find it much easier to read long texts when they are printed out.

Although I feel this puts a damper on the whole Internet as a learning tool I don't believe that it completely removes all education benefits of it or makes us the stupidest generation yet. The Internet is still a very important tool for researching. I think that our generations solution to the problem of reading on the computer could be fixed if we printed out things that were important to read and we would be doing better already.

Growing Up With the Internet.

I have often wondered what life before the Internet was like. What it would have been like to grow up with this amazing source of information, communication and entertainment existed. As a generation that has grown up with the Internet I have often heard people comment on the effects it has had on us. Some people say that the Internet is making us lazy. Some have said we are lucky to have grown up with the Internet because it is such an integral part of todays modern world and it is a huge advantage to be computer literate. Still another viewpoint on the subject might point out that we are hopelessly distracted and immensely less productive then we could be with the Internet right there in front of us well we work.

The Internet has certainly made some tasks easier but it is also making us lazier. For example I grew up with a dial up connection since I was around the age of six. My dad was the one who mostly used it but from an early age I realized that I could use the Internet to save me time. I would sometimes have to us a dictionary in my homework and I would try to get my mom to sign me on the Internet so that I could look words up. She wouldn't do it on the grounds that she thought I was just being lazy and that I should use the dictionary. I still used the dictionary on-line whenever I could and I think that looking words up in a book will soon be obsolete thanks to on-line dictionaries and peoples inclinations to take the faster easier route.

My parents and grandparents always say that I am lucky to have grown up with the Internet and computers because it gives me such an advantage over people who don't have those skills. I am inclined to agree with them on this one because the world around us is becoming more and more Internet centered. Although I consider myself lucky to have grown up with the Internet I also feel that it is detrimental to our work habits. Students now more then ever before are amazing procrastinators. I don't want to write my paper so I am just going to hop on youtube and watch a few videos instead. It will be interesting to see how growing up with the Internet will affect my generation in the future and how it will affect future generations also.

Exploring My Roots

Being relatively new to blogging I found this interview conducted by Rebecca's Pocket to be particularly informing as to how blogging started and why people blog. I had originally thought that blogging was a relatively new practice. How wrong I am it has been around for a good 8+ years so far. I did not know that blogging was started very early when the internet was first starting up. It didn't occur to me that computer experts had been publishing their own blogs and really having their own internet communities. Like the interviewee I had often wondered what the point of blogging is. Why would anyone want to read what some random person has to say about anything? I found out that it is often experts in the field publishing widely acclaimed blogs. People often publish blogs related to subjects on which they have a particular interest or specialty in. This interview also gave me some very general guidelines for being a good blogger.

Trine-Maria the interviewee stresses that you should be yourself and have a natural way of writing in order, to attract and keep readers. Blogging can make you money too but not in the traditional web-based way with advertisements. It basically gets your name out there and if you are writing a blog on something that you are an expert on people will contact you because they want you to work for them. I found this particularly interesting because it hadn’t occurred to me that a blog could be a type of online resume. She finds that humanization is a very important aspect of blogging. You can turn a very robotic company that only has press-releases and boring professional web-pages into a very human company by having a company blog in which people are allowed to discuss naturally about their work.

Reading this interview has been very helpful for increasing my understanding and awareness as to the reasons why people blog. I learned that although blogging can be a very successful practice one has to go about it in the correct way. You have to put in the time to make you blog well written as well as giving it personality and a human voice.