In the PBS documentary “Digital Nation,” by Rachel Dretzin and her pal, Douglas Rushkoff illustrate the effects good and bad that technology and virtual worlds have done to us today. They chose several different areas the technology world to express how technology affects us, but also helps us in many different ways. One major affect of technology is the addiction. The video showed how many people specifically young kids in Korea suffer the dependence on online gaming. It’s so bad over there to the point where the Government had to make Internet Rescue School camps throughout the country to help fight this problem. However, that addiction only specified the gaming part of technology. In the Bronx, New York, the principal had a vision of how “technology is like oxygen”, you are not able to take that away from the kids. According to the principal, computer intelligence allowed the kids to “make school make more sense”. He proved that technology aided the violence at school and helped attendance by almost 90% as well as grade percentages. A teacher at the school in the Bronx quoted that “teaching kids to multi-task is important for future jobs”. Technology is kind of a loss/gain situation, you gain a lot of important information advantageous for the future, yet a lot of people seem to believe that the capability of a young kid is not as good as it was in the past before technology. Virtual avatars have been a new type of technology that is in use today so that people are now able to have virtual meetings without having to leave the comfort of their home. The documentary demonstrated how people don’t need to even ever meet in person in order to have conversations with each other or even start long term relationships. Towards the end of the film, military played a big role in this movie. The military is using army games such as Call of Duty and other online and physical gaming sources to persuade the young kids under 17 to get a taste of what life is like in the military. This adrenaline rush allows kids to want to be curious about the real life war situation. In the end, technology is changing many aspects in our life. We went from “horses to cars, letters to phone” so will technology be the new books to computers?
In my life, computers take up a lot of my everyday life. I use my laptop for many different reasons everyday. The most common is for social reasons, Facebook, email etc. I also use the internet a lot for research, I use WORD a lot to type up essays because teachers expect you to type them up now instead of simply hand writing them. My cell phone is something that’s hard to find me without. I carry it everywhere, I’ve had one since the 6th grade which is a little young compared to other students I know. My iPod is another one of my most valued item. Its hard for me to sit in class when we have quiet work time and not listen to my music. Even when I’m at home doing nothing, I plug in my iPod and everything gets better. I do also have an Xbox which I don’t use as much as I use to when I first got it but it does distract me from boredom. If any of those technology elements were to disappear, I would feel very lost. I would say my life revolves around technology and I’ve never been the reader type so it would be hard to move down to things that don’t involve computers or any sort of technology.
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