Week Two

This class has a wonderful balance of lecture-style type learning and hands-on experiences. This past week, we had a reading written by Intel a decade ago. It was weird to have it illustrated how much the digital world has changed in a relatively short time span, but also very eye-opening. Then, of course, the hands on part was there as usual, with an interesting exercise in data transmission with neon bowling pins as our messages and as a group had to get all the messages sent in just the right way. Even more interesting, however, was the basic magic trick involving treating squares of paper as the ones and zeroes, and you could guess which piece had been turned over while your back was turned.

This past Tuesday, we watched a video for the class period  about how digital our society has  become. I agree and disagree with many things in the videos, but the first thing that pops to mind is how wild I thought it was that people have met and gotten married via the game World of Warcraft. But I mean hey, I'm not one to judge. I was raised on live and let live, and whatever makes people happy is okay with me. I do, however, think it's a rather broad assumption to think we are all becoming that way or even should be that way. I agree that there are people far too addicted too video games to a likely unhealthy degree, but there are also people addicted to drugs, alcohol, and a myriad of other things. Just like I don't do any given form of drugs, I also am not a video games person. I played Pokemon when I was little, and can play a mean game of Pacman in an arcade. But it's a little unjustified and a little insulting to say my generation has no attention span and we all like video games too much. Maybe I'm becoming the minority, but I'm much happier sitting on a comfy chair with a really good book over playing a video game or getting on Facebook. I didn't like the brash generalizations that treats teenagers as a separate species instead of simply a different age group.

Will we treat the next generation the same, even if these huge changes in society continue? I hope not. Then again, I'm perhaps a bit technology impaired myself, but I found it hard to see those kids in South Korea that addicted to computer games. I wasn't even allowed on the computer that much when I was that age. My mom would come in and kick me off and I'd go back outside or read.

Anyway, though, to wrap this up, I did very much enjoy the movie on Tuesday. It made me think and I hope we see other things like it.