Abstract - "High Tech Trash"

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/01/high-tech-trash/carroll-text/1

National Geographic posted a story on the environmental impact of all our technological waste. At one point during the year, there is a round up of all the technological trash that has been sitting around collecting dust. I couldn't even believe what I was reading as I read the details on the effects of the "high-tech trash" to these workers, such as the fact that they "feel sick in their chest" after, and get "feelings of the gas going to the back of their heads". This article also discusses "e-waste", what is going to happen at the end of the 20th century. According to the article, "70% of discarded computers and monitors, as well over 80% of TVs, eventually end up in landfills, despite a growing number of state laws that prohibit dumping of e-waste, which may leak lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, beryllium, and other toxics into the ground," which is very disturbing to hear. The areas where "disposals" are become very damaged over time, with chemicals released into the air and into your body, polluting the soil and air as well. Can you believe the world we live in has this many toxins in the ground, all due to US?Many people do not realize the process of disposing of technology, and after this article, it should hit you. Dumping electronics into innocent countries such as Africa is wrong. As much as I am not shocked that this is happening, it is just very disturbing. Enough is enough!

A "Smart" Phone Plan?

While browsing the "Verizon Wireless" website, I noticed that there are double the amount of 3G smartphones as there are simple phones. If I was to be doing this four years ago, this result would be the opposite. Phone companies are changing over in a few months to require every phone with access to the internet to be hooked up to the internet. In other words, if you have access to the web on your phone, you must pay for it, even if you do not plan on using it. As the technology generation grows older, the common man feels the pressure to purchase a smart phone to fit into the popular status quo, with the mandatory internet, even if he knows he will not use it.

Since when does our generation require us all to carry so many applications and informational phones with the internet on the tips of our fingertips? Why do we feel peer pressure to buy a phone with an extra $30 per month charge just to be able to check our facebook's and textsfromlastnight.com? Unfortunately, I cannot be a hypocrite in this circumstance, since I own the newest Blackberry Curve. However, I will be playing devil's advocate here, and fighting against societal pressure on buying a smartphone. Phone companies are making internet mandatory on internet-based phones, which is basically all phones. If you do not want to access the internet, you don't have much of a choice, except to buy a simple "cheap" samsung phone which is most likely pre-owned. Why is it that phone companies assume everyone wants a blackberry or other smart phone for it's internet usage? What if this one person wants a blackberry just for the use of the QWERTY keyboard and slim complexity? To get around this, you would have to purchase a simple phone, without the web. By simple phones, I mean ones that can make phone calls, send text messages, have cameras, VZ Navigator, family locator, and V Cast Music. Are all of those options really so "simple"? What makes a phone "complex?" Almost all of my friends own a "smart phone", which has full web browsing, along with many applications available for download, such as Google maps, photosharing via internet, applications only available from personal phone to the same personal phone, such as "bumping" for iPhones which syncs ones contact information with the click of the other iPhone, or "BBM" (blackberry messanger), blackberry's version of "AIM".

Ultimately, although I am a victim of the status quo of buying a blackberry, it doesn't make a right that every person wants the internet on their phone. Some can't afford it, and some just don't want it. This may not be such a "smart" phone plan afterall...

Toulmin Model of "Is Good Making Us Stupider?"

The article Is Google Making Us Stupid? by Nicholas Carr focuses on how online search engines such as Google are making us feel 'stupider'. Carr says search engines are spoon feeding us information linking us to other various links on the web. Carr's "claim" in this article is that the internet is blamed for our problems with concentration and surfing the internet. His "main point" is that Google is making us turn into lazy people. Google gives us different outlets to various websites which aids in the adjustments of our generation into a technologically advanced group of people, who require attention. Carr writes, as a reason to support this thesis, "A few google searches, some quick clinks on hyperlinks, and I've got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after". He knows that Google is beneficial even though it is making us feel stupider. Being lazy is not such a bad thing after-all. Carr also believes that technology is slowing us down while it speeds us up. He mentions Frederick Nietzsche's writing and how it began to change once he started using a typewriter. This agrees with the idea that technology changes us and how things get done. Nietzsche agrees that our technology changes the way we do things. We rely on technology so much that us as a generation are changing ourselves for "technology". However, even though this article is very intriguing and brings up many great points, I wonder if Carr wrote the article based on the belief if everyone has the internet available? Not EVERYONE in the world can access Google... so, who are the dumb ones here? The WHOLE world, or Google users?

Is Google Making Us Stupider?

Do I feel like Google is making us stupid? I was asked to answer this question after reading the article Is Google Making Us Stupider? by Nicholas Carr. Well, let me evaluate it. The world is at my fingertips. While I sit typing this blog, perhaps I want to open a side tab and read about an upcoming movie. Or maybe I'm interested in the calories in a specific food I like. Or maybe I could look at the lyrics for the song that is playing on "iTunes" in the distance behind my internet on my desktop.

There are so many advantages to using Google. I believe the most beneficial one is the act of saving time, instead of physically going to the library. The myriad of information searched through google is infinite, while I can basically have any question answered, plus more. Google extends through every single website on the internet, which is indefinitely awesome.

While this sounds like the best invention of mankind, I feel a little stupider than my parents did while they were in college. Well, maybe not stupider... because without Google I wouldn't be filled with the academic information I have in me, besides what I learn in school. However, Google makes me feel lazy. While I would need to get off the couch and go to the library to literally find a book, to find the page and then read, I would much prefer to type in the few key terms that I need to research on a website that is bookmarked in Safari. Pretty sure that back in the 70s, my dad could not type in "What is the state bird of Oklahoma?" on his Macbook, which I'm pretty sure he didn't know of either, the bird or what a Macbook was, when he was eighteen.

Although I feel "lazy" when I'm using google, and I hate to phrase it this way, but whose it hurting? I don't mind feeling lazy if it will get me somewhere, such as broadening my educational horizons. I will obviously learn more if I can expand my mind with the click of a mouse, instead of the turn of a page. The hyperlinks to hyperlinks will pull me to different sources of information, that I may not have even thought about reading and learning about beforehand. Google does ALL of our pre-thinking, which cuts out a chunk of activity that we would have been forced to do, if we were reading a book. Unfortunately, our generation is not exposed to learning through books as much, rather we choose to read online instead. But if we are producing students who are just as bright as they were before computers, and the infamous "Google", who cares how they got there?