Reading/ Viewing Response #3: “Digital Nation”

In the PBS documentary “Digital Nation,” Producer Rachel Dretzin and her correspondent, Douglas Rushkoff analyze the pros and cons of our rapidly developing digital world. They choose many different areas of technology such as the workplace, school, gaming, and the military to emphasize the fact that the internet is becoming widespread throughout our society. While they do a great job of showing the drawbacks in this situation, they also show in some instances that the possibilities of our technological future could be put to good use. For example when they analyzed the prosperous school in New York that used computers to keep their students engaged, they showed how even though it did lead to some off task behavior, it greatly increased their test scores and kept kids in school long enough to graduate. By the end of the documentary you can weigh the good against the bad, but the main point that is conveyed is that we are going in this direction regardless and need to learn the limits of what are technology should be able to do and how it should affect our lives.
My life has been affected by the internet because I have been forced to become more accustomed to it as well as other digital mediums, because I have begun to acknowledge the fact that my future is dependant on understanding technology. I often times rebel against the idea of our modern day technology. I instead depend more on reading books, and contemplating a more natural approach to our way of living. Of course now I see that there is no way to stop the direction that we are going in. The kids in Korea from the documentary are all being taught at a very early age how to become accustomed to computers in preparation for our digital revolution which will make most jobs computer based. This reminds me of one of the quotes from the YouTube clip “A Vision of Students Today” in which one of the students holds up a sign that says “When I graduate I will probably have a job that doesn’t exist today.” This is a clear indication that despite my distaste with the way we are headed, I have to prepare myself for my future by putting aside my thoughts and changing the way I think in able to be involved in our digital nation.
My own situation reminds me of one of the characters in one of my favorite books titled “Feed” by M.T. Anderson. The story is set in a dystopian future when almost everybody has a computer in their brain known as the “Feed.” The character in the book talks about how he eventually gave in and purchased the feed because he was not hired at a job interview because not having the latest technology was a major disadvantage for him. While this story seemed at first to be only a metaphor for how our technology is affecting us in the present day, this occurrence could very well happen in our future. In Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” he mentions that some of the minds behind Google desire to create a “machine that might be connected directly to our brains.” What I once thought to be only a vague possibility may actually come true in my lifetime and while I feel that this not the way we should be living I have little choice but to jump on the bandwagon so as to establish my future in this new world.