Keisha Brent Essays (1997 words) - Digital Media, Technology

Keisha Brent Final Essay Is the Internet Really Bad What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains is a well written piece of writing by Nicholas Carr . Carr did a great job at exemplifying the exploration of the Internet's intellec tual and cultu ral consequences throughout his book. In fact I believe the internet has had a huge impact on society from many different standpo ints and even though Carr sort of touched based on most , there were a few I didn't quite agree with. I get the point he was try ing to make as far as technology advancin g and taking a toll on most I just don' t think it's a bad idea like he portrayed it as. I will further explain my reasoning to why I agree or disagree with each factor Carr could have elaborated differently s tarting with before the internet , the upcoming of the internet , the good/the bad, and the reality of how the internet influence others today. Before The Internet In the beginning Carr stated, "t he intellectual ethic of a technology is rarely recognized by its inventors. " (45) That statement is true, m ost of the modern day technology is remixed from past creations. We have come a long way in worldwide technological advancement. Computers are a way of living now but years ago everything was documented on paper and before then on stone. Being that I'm a private duty caregiver I am around a lot older people who got a chance to experience life before the internet. One of my clients Mr. Laudel is a 90yr old retired electrical engineer and I had the opportunity to talk to him about how the internet and new technology impacted his life. Mr. Laudel told me how he grew up on a farm and everything they ate and did for fun literally was outside. There were no phones, televisions, game systems, or computer just a marine chronometer they used to tell time. He then went on to say when he was an electrical enginee r things in that field were way more simple and less complex as the tools they use today. Towards the end of Mr. Laudel engineering career he admitted he did just enough to get by because of the new technology being brought into his company was becoming so advanced he wasn't able to understand how some of the tools worked and his position didn't really hav e to go too in depth with them. Although, Mr. Laudel said he did learn some of the basics of the new technology outside of work but his daughter was more into the internet and that even his grandchildren and great grandchildren use technology and internet way more than he could ever imagine. He also fe el like he lived an interesting yet eventfu l life without the internet but he always knew technology would one day evolve. "Quite a few people still listen to vinyl, use film cameras to take photographs, and look up phone numbers in the printed Yellow Pages." (89) That implication made by Carr is also true I was shocked to see one of my clients us ing a phone book to order pizza. When I asked her why she didn't just google the location she laughed and said , "That's for lazy people." Soon when she said that I thought about Carr chapter on google, The Church of Google and how he used this whole chapter to talk about how google is used and how it impacted the internet. " Without its search engine, and the other engines that have been built on its model, the Internet would have long ago become a Tower of Digital Babel. " (156) Which holds some type of veracity because most internet usage result in using some type of search engine, mainly google. The Upcoming of the Internet Indeed, the internet hosts an enormous informational base. Technology has made it possible for this information to reach far and wide. It would be almost unheard for the average American to go one day without the internet. Technology today is so advanced compared to when I was coming up. Just think

The Meaning of Other in Sociology

The Meaning of Other in Sociology In classical sociology, other is a concept in the study of social life through which we define relationships. We encounter two distinct types of others in relation to ourselves. Significant Other A â€Å"significant other† is someone about whom we have some degree of specific knowledge and thus we pay attention to what we perceive to be his or her personal thoughts, feelings or expectations. In this case, significant does not mean that the person is important, and it doesnt refer to the common parlance of a romantic relationship. Archie O. Haller, Edward L. Fink, and Joseph Woelfel of the University of Wisconsin performed the first scientific research and measurements of the influence of significant others on individuals. Haller, Fink, and Woelfel surveyed 100 adolescents in Wisconsin and measured their educational and occupational aspirations while also identifying the group of other individuals who interacted with the students and were mentors for them. Then they measured the impact of the significant others and their expectations for the teens educational possibilities. The results found that the expectations of the significant had the single most powerful influence on the students own aspirations. Generalized Other The second type of other is the â€Å"generalized other,† which we experience primarily as an abstract social status and the role that goes with it. It was developed by George Herbert Mead as a core concept in his discussion of the social genesis of the self. According to Mead, the self lives in an individuals ability to account for himself as a social being. This also requires a person to account for the role of the other as well as how his or her actions could affect a group. The generalized other represents the collection of roles and attitudes that people use as a reference to figure out how to behave in any particular situation. According to Mead: Selves develop in social contexts as people learn to take the roles of their consociates such that they can with a fair degree of accuracy predict how one set of actions is likely to generate fairly predictable responses. People develop these capacities in the process of interacting with one another, sharing meaningful symbols, and developing and using language to create, refine, and assign meanings to social objects (including themselves). For people to engage in complex and intricate social processes, they have to develop a sense of expectationsthe rules, roles, norms, and understanding that make responses predictable and understandable. When you learn these rules as distinct from others, the aggregate comprises a generalized other. Examples of the Other A significant other: We might know that the corner grocery store clerk likes children or does not like it when people ask to use the restroom. As an â€Å"other,† this person is significant in that we pay attention not only to what grocers are generally like, but also what we know about this particular grocer. A generalized other: When we enter a grocery store without any knowledge of the grocer, our expectations are based only on knowledge of grocers and customers in general and what is usually supposed to take place when they interact. Thus when we interact with this grocer, our only basis for knowledge is the generalized other.