Reading Response #3

Part 1
In the documentary Digital Nation, produced/directed by Rachel Dretzin, Dretzin examines the effects that modern technology and more exclusively the internet is having on our society and especially today’s youth. Dretzin was prompted to explore this topic after witnessing the separation technology was creating in her own family. She enlisted the help of Douglas Rushkoff who has been writing about the internet for almost two decades and is the author of the book Cyberia. They began their search on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Dretzin states, “These kids are among the smartest, most wired people on the planet right now. They may hardly remember a time when they weren’t able to be online anywhere they went.” They found that today’s youth is dependent on their technology and it’s shaping the way they live.
Dretzin claims that this digital age is creating youth that no longer focuses on one thing at a time, but are constantly multitasking. Though students claim they are efficient in multitasking, according to Professor Clifford Nass who has conducted a study in its effects, “It turns out multitaskers are terrible at every aspect of multitasking.” Nass claims this digital generation is easily distracted, disorganized and “it may be creating people who are unable to think well and clearly.”
Dretzin and Rushkoff take their search to South Korea where the youth flock to Internet cafes known as “PC bangs.” The cafes are open all day and night and people play these games for hours and even days at a time. Rushkoff tells us people have actually died from lack of food and water while playing these games for 50 hours or more. Mrs. Shim Song-Ja, the mother of a 15 year old boy who constantly plays video games tells us, “I may lose my son. This is an addiction. Only an addict could act this way.” South Korea is starting to react to this problem with free Internet rescue camps to help this growing problem of addiction.
Seeking to explore the other side of the argument, Dretzin and Rushkoff find Jason Levy, a middle school principal, in New York’s South Bronx. Levy used technology to turn this school around. It had been wrought with violence and poor grades, but Levy had a vision of all students having laptops so they could do their homework on line. David Prinstein, Dean of Instruction states that now “Incidents of violence are way down… Daily attendance is up over 90 percent. In test scores we went up in reading 30 percent, and in math almost 40 percent.” Dretzin can see that something is working here, but she wonders what we are losing as a culture in this digital world. She tells us, “as we move on, I wonder what we’ll hold onto and what we’ll end up leaving behind.”

Part 2
When it comes to the topic of technology, most of us will readily agree that it has transformed our lives. Where this agreement usually ends however is on the question of: has it transformed our lives for the better or worse? I believe that the internet and cell phones make it easier to keep in touch. If I am thinking of someone I can pick up my cell phone and text them or sit down at the computer and send them and IM or an email.
Not that long ago I did not have access to the internet or a cell phone. At that time friends and family would go long periods of time without hearing from me. It wasn’t abnormal for me to not speak with my mother for months at a time. Now that I have a cell phone and internet access I talk to my mother at least once a week. I also have reconnected with friends I hadn’t talked to in years. I am privy to the day to day aspects of my friends and families lives that I never had access to before. So for me, this new technology has deepened the levels of my personal interactions with friends and family in a positive way.