Bread crumbs through a forest, to digital footprints.

In the children's story Hanzel and Gretel, bread crumbs are left so the potentially Hanzel and Gretel can find there way back home. In our society today some parents would like if their child left digital footprints to be left. Not for the child's sake, but for other people(who may be searching for that child's)sake. Will Richardson the author of "Footprints in the Digital Age" says he would like his daughter to be Googled well. He believes that someone in her future will search for her and come up with unimpressive results(if in fact she isn't well Googled).  This idea of his gave me a somewhat unsettling feeling. I don't necessarily think that at young ages children should be exposed to so much that they are Googleable.  It takes away that simplicity and innocence of childhood. Parents shouldn't want their child to be Googleable, especially when there are so many creepy people out there on the web. I know that Will Richardson's daughter is 11, but that's still young.  I realize that in his article he talks about older kids. Being well Googled at a certain age is great. When I meet some one new I often find myself "Facebook stalking" them. "Facebook stalking" may be the younger generations version of the Google search. 

Will Richardson also makes the good point that whatever we write on the internet is able to be copied and sent. People can twist our words any which way they want to. This is one of the main things parents and educators find so hard to understand. They didn't grow up with kids texting there friends all day and night. Nor were they updating their status on Facebook with every new thought. This constant writing and posting of copyable information leaves a lot of room for cruelty.  

My favorite part of Richardson's article  was when he used the analogy of children driving a bus with teachers in the back going any where they please without any direction. Richardson points out how this generation, my generation, are the first children ever to lead such a huge technological shift. We need help and direction, but where can we get it if we're the leaders of this shift? Our elders can give us some advice but we, the children, have to figure out this new way of life. This lifestyle is allowing us to become the most connected generation in history. It's not our parents or educators job to make us "Well Googled." It's ours.

H2O; Have it. Keep it. Clean it.

Energy, we're always hearing about ways to conserve it & transform it to fit our needs. The article "Light is the Bright IDEA for Transportation" by Josie Garth Waite, is all about conserving energy in transportation. We hear about hybrids all the time, they're a pretty common idea in our 21st century world. Yes, hybrids are modern and cool looking, best of all Eco friendly. Yet even hybrids have there downside. They cost a lot of money, especially the larger ones. Bright Automotive is the company creating the "huge" hybrid van they named IDEA.  Bright has been working on this project for a couple of years now. Back in 2008 they asked the Department of Energy for a loan of $450 million. That was before the economy started going down. During the time of the low economy Bright set aside the IDEA project for about a year or so. Finally they are picking up the IDEA, and starting to work on it. Though they have started working on the IDEA project, research analyst Jacob Grose says "even if they have the best technology around, it's a long road ahead."

I agree with many that making our planet eco friendly is essential to making sure later generations will have a world that can sustain life. The industrial revolution of the late 1800's & early 1900's started this "pollution era." Before the Industrial  Revolution we were much more agricultural as a whole. Now we depend on planes, buses,& cars for travel. For food, we depend on processed & factory created foods. We're in the process of destroying the natural resources that Earth has. We need to focus and ideas like IDEA, naturally grown foods & cleaning up the debris we have littered all over our planet. Ecologists have been working on getting this message out to us, the public, for a long time now. We need to "Save our planet." I know how cheesy and sometime annoying the Eco-fanatic slogans are, but they have some truth to them. The truth in them, is the scarines. The theories of Global Warming and the Ice Caps melting scare me. I'm afaid for later generations, we're destroying their world. My children and grandchildren will have to live in what is left. We are selfish, we're living the way we want to and not thinking of the future of the world. Will our successors know the beauty we have the opportunity to see every day? Or will the just see the piles of rubble we've left behind. I'm scared that our planet will end out looking like the Earth shown in the Disney movie Wall-e. There was nothing there except loads of trash. Does a load of trash sound like something you would like to leave your great-grandchild as a home? We need to come together and be green to save our planet.    

Destroying or Creating

"As we come to rely on computers to meditate or understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence." That final sentence is the ending point in Nicholas Carr's article "Is Google making us Stupid?" 

This article made me think, a lot. I believe that the way we are using, maybe even abusing the Internet is going to ruin the way we think, read and write. I know technology is progression which is mostly good, but not always. We aren't reading anymore to immerse ourselves in the words or the meaning of the story, we're reading to make sure we're informed about whats going on in the world and peoples lives. I'm not saying that informational reading is less important than reading novels or other stories. I don't think that we have to "dump" one way of reading for another.

We're loosing the richness in the way we talk because of the way we communicate over text and aim. In Shakespeare's time the way words were cherished made them beautiful, ever day speech was almost poetic. We're so lazy now we definitely don't cherish our words, most of us use slang words on a regular basis. Texting and other forms of typed conversation have made our brains want to get the information out as quickly as possible. We don't take the time to say talk to you later we just write ttyl, that's a prime example of laziness. 

Google is promoting this robotic almost mechanic way of thinking and processing information. We're loosing our depth. I'm sure Google would love to see our desire for leisurely reading and concentrated thinking to be diminished. This is already happening in newer generations. How many kids would pick up a book over their Nintendo? Very few. We're going to start relying completely on technology. I think that would alter our society in a really big way. The same connections and relationships we have will cease to exist in their present form because of email, facebook, text message and skype. The way we read and think is already being changed by online resources like Google. The only reason this is happening is because we're lazy. We've lost live the drive to be scholars and poets and further our thinking process. Many say why care, we have google to research then ponder our questions instead of our own minds. What will happen to our children and their children? Will books become foreign objects to them? Will paper and pen become forgotten tools? What level (if any level) of thinking process will future generations have? Yes, technology is helpful but in the long run will it ruin us or create something that?

The Future

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11218802 "Alien oceans could be detected by telescopes" by Pamela Rutherford
 Our generations has ideas or dreams about what the future may be like. The future can often seem far away, out of reach. Other times the future seems to lie it the palm of our hand. The future seems within grasp now. Scientists say that the next generation of telescopes  could be able to show the existence of oceans on planets twenty to thirty light years from the milky way.
  That idea is almost mind boggling to me. The fact that our technology is so advanced that these studies are even ideas much less that they are becoming reality is incredible. Think back to ancient Rome, what would there philosophers  have thought of the idea of seeing so far out into space? Think back a shorter distance to the beginning of the 20th century the reality that is today was a far off dream to them. We are living in the future. The technology and knowledge that we have today will lead us to unimaginable ideas and creations. Even though we are constantly progressing we should remember that progression takes away what forever took to find. We don't want to ruin our world with the technology we create in order to find another far away one. 

Technology and Students

Michael Wesch, in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University, created the video called A Vision of Students today. It shows real studenta telling how they feel about this new age of technology. It is really interesting that the job I could have in the future may or may not exist today. It makes me realize how important technology is today. Without it where would we be? Anytime I do research I look on the internet. When I listen to music I go on itunes, and when I send any mail it is over email. Without technology I feel as though I would be completely lost. I think that America has always been a country of progress, we created factories and have made many inventions. AOL stands for America on line, it is a sign that our country is about progression. Our jobs have also grown in the tech world and will continue to do so. So, as a student I have to know how to use technology if i want to succeed. At the end of the video it says, that some people suggest technology can save us... and some say technology alone can save us. I think technology has made our live easier and I think we are the most connected generation, but what technology will save us from I'm not sure.