YouTube will get me famous

My last blog I want to bring up the YouTube craze that is sweeping the Internet. YouTube has opened the doors for several online celebrities, and also cause several uproars with companies on infringement problems. Who hasn't spent hours watching ridiculous videos on YouTube? I want to investigate how YouTube has extended reach for future musicians and creation of online celebrities. Before YouTube the only videos that were around were music videos and blog websites to watch funny videos. Now google anything you want and more than likely a YouTube video will appear. Focusing on musicians they now have the ability to start a craze that will allow them to get views and hopefully looks from talent agencies. Now artist have a new venue to perform for and it may help create a career for them. Take Alexis Jordan for example. She was on America's Got Talent and then her YouTube videos became viral. That then lead to her being signed by Jay-Z's label RocNation. Alexis Signed to RocNation .  
Same goes for all new online celebrities. Several have had the opportunity to actually become famous because of the viral videos they have created. Look at Tosh.O he actually features some of the most ridiculous videos and invites those people in for redemptions. Also you can see various people getting a start by being featured on several talk shows such as Ellen. Then you have those who are making parodies of videos and getting many views off of that. My favorite group would be Songify and the hilarious musical flips they do.
So is this craze creating a new way for people to do outrageous things to become famous? I think people are starting to abuse YouTube in hopes to become famous and can cause several problems because some don't know what is right and wrong. 

The Positive Side of Indulging in Technology

Another student wrote a very interesting blog post on the affects technology has in making us lazier as human beings and increasingly dependent on the devices we use. The blog post touched on how we’ve become so consumed by our technology that it’s created ignorance to theses new novelties in life that we experience everyday and how our generation is creating a wider gap from past generations because of technology. This post had a lot of valid points and got me thinking a lot about how YES technology has it’s downfalls, but for the most part it has always had it’s downfalls from the beginning of time and that the pro’s always highly outweigh the cons. A media ecology approach to evaluating technology, within modern times, would be to look at our environment as a whole and historically. We then must notice that it directly reflects the way we communicate and behave. Ordering food via the Internet and online shopping are “historically” what’s modern and convenient in the 2000’s. Why waste time cooking or going to a mall just to find absolutely nothing of what you were looking for when you can do it all in a few clicks of a button? Isn’t this making us smarter consumers when time is so valuable?

Technology might make some of us lazier, but it is all about the individual’s usage of it. For example I have several health and fitness apps that actually encourage me to eat better and be more active. I never have time to watch the news the old fashioned way, but with news apps and breaking updates on my iPhone I am way more informed on current events. This medium has actually changed my environment and enabled me more intelligence.

I also really hate the thought of generation gaps because they happen in every generation with the older generation supposedly being more intelligent or as the student in the previous blog post said “blissfully ignorant”. My father recently got his first iPhone and has so much trouble with it. He’ll get so frustrated trying to upload something or navigate iCloud and I joke with him and say sarcastic things like, “Wow, you must of totally outsmarted the top paid programmers at Apple if you’re finding all these glitches in their software”. The man reads a new novel every week and is very intelligent, but for some reason has the hardest time working the simplest technology, which in my opinion is just another form of reading. You scan through everything until it makes sense and perhaps he is just “blissfully ignorant” to it.

I feel as if generation gaps are going to end with this generation. We have all been pounded into our brains the severe importance of technology and how understanding it, mixed with intelligence, gives you more of an upper hand on your fellow humans than ever before. We must all find our positive niche in using technology and embrace it.

Dear Technology, You are wonderful, but we are becoming increasingly indolent

Technology in general is doing one of two things to us.  It is making us lazier and inherently more dependent on it, as well as making us more specific and controlling.  Specifically, we are stuck in a generational  divide of being concise or careless consumers.  

The reason I say this is because it has never become easier to streamline your life through the technological advances made available to us.  Hungry in your night class and don't feel like cooking when you get home? It's no problem.  Just sneak on your laptop or use data on your smart phone to go online and order a pizza and have it delivered within five minutes of arriving home.  Also, we can shop and buy a myriad of other things online such as clothing, shoes, make-up, music, etc.  In fact, I haven't even bought an overpriced textbook out of the campus store in a few years.  The great thing about this is also that often times, there are reviews that one can read that have been written by our peers, for realistic feedback and anticipation on what to expect.  Websites such as tripadvisor.com and yelp.com are crucial to many people people in making distinctive decisions on where to dine and entertain oneself.  

The downside with the internet being such a cold medium is that we are losing our focus on how to productively spend our time.  This is what essentially what I mean by the fact that we have become careless consumers.  Our parents, the older generation didn't as readily have to worry about internet predators and trolling.  Not to mention that although we are connecting and communicating on sites such as Facebook and Instagram, is all of this extra banter really necessary? Or is it more of a narcissus syndrome and a need to validate the supposed awesomeness of our individual existence? Such seems to be the case on website such as fourchan, jezebel and gawker.  So many anonymous folks troll for the sheer pleasure of riling others up.  Also, many times when one is mindlessly shopping online, is that stuff really necessary, or is it ultimately more superfluous sartorial artifacts that we don't need, but still justify for our self esteems as we shop in our underwear at two in the morning.  

Overall, mass media is achieving its goal of improving the overall quality of our lives,  but we must be mindful of the other underlying costs associated with the penance we must pay to provide for ourselves these novel new ways of life.  One must be responsible and properly educated to reap the full benefits, lest we become oversaturated further, and muddle this mystery of our lives.  Some of the older generations tend to rebuke and renounce these new ways of life, and that is their own blissfully ignorant and or intelligent choice to make.

Attached is a cartoon from a website that I love about many social commentaries.

www.theoatmeal.com

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home

opening an actual book for research?? really??

    Due to today's advent of technology...and as we all know that is .. Google. the actual method of researching a idea , topic, or what ever it may be in a book is extremely rare. Rare because it may be harder to do ? time consuming? Mostly because the invention of the internet and it infinite database of info and online books made looking up actual info in encyclopedias a primitive thing to do nowadays. You will find that almost everyone if not everybody that is in school doing research uses the internet as their book to look up info .
    I remember that when my parents were growing up and in my early years of school , they used to help me look up info in the encyclopedias. this took hours and hours of our time and sometimes got nowhere. Often at times the encyclopedias were out of date and were not concurrent. This made things worse and increased the time of doing the dreaded research. The modern internet today stays updated at a fingertips notice and almost instantaneously eliminating the need for re publishing issues and newer versions of some books in some cases. What an amazing improvement now.
     For some of those who were born during and after the age of Google, the ease for them of researching info at a fingertip has been taken for granite. My little brother for example was born into the Google age. He has not experienced looking up info and doing research in the old fashioned text book style. To him its far-fetched and just senseless idea to do such thing. So why does he think this? Some people thinks its because of being lazy. i think in a way it is. However it is so widespread that it has become the norm for all . but does it make it more meaningful for people to look up info the old fashioned way? i believe so . For me it makes the material more meaningful and makes the understanding much better, you have the ability to retain the info much better and remember it more. Google has made the access of info a lot easier but the retention of all that info less memorable for the short term memory.

Googles Driverless Car

The innovative thinkers of Google have not only developed but engineered a technology that could change the future of driving. Google has developed a car that can drive itself using intelligent driving software, proximity sensors, and GPS data.

Imagine being able to inform the car exactly where to go using a GPS system, then sitting back and enjoying the scenery waiting to arrive at your destination. The advanced sensory system allows the car to sense all of it's surroundings. It may even be said that this sensory system is more advanced than human perception. So could these cars be significantly safer than a human driving car? Sebastian Thrun, one of the many people who helped build Googles driverless car, seems to think so. The car can drive itself day or night, on

highways or narrow back roads, and even in back to back traffic. You can view Sebastian Thrun's promising outlook for the Google Car in his speech at TED: http://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_thrun_google_s_driverless_car.html. 

It may seem as though the technology of this new car is cut and dry, but receiving it's full legalization is going to be a long journey. Google received it's U.S. license to test drive this new car from Nevada's DMV. This was made possible when the 2011 legislation in the state allowed the test driving of vehicles that were capable of piloting themselves. Google's self driving technologies have been put into 8 cars including the Audi TT, Lexus RX450h, and 6 Toyota Priuses. Don't worry, the car isn't all auto controlled. If the driver taps the break or turn the wheel, they are reverted back to manual controlling. So if you feel like the car may not be making the right decision, the option is available to do it yourself. 

People say that a human brain can never be as smart as a computer. Does the same hold true for this new technology? Could human perception never be as accurate as a self driven car? We use GPS to find our way around as it is, usually getting irritated about taking the wrong turn or driving miles in the wrong direction because we missed a direction or read them wrong. Having a car make these decisions for us could eliminate all the confusion. The car could sense the traffic ahead taking a different route whereas our human perception could only see the traffic as we pull into it. Imagine you are driving on a  back road at night and a deer jumps right out in front of you, our perception and reaction of this situation may lag and we may end up hitting the deer, either causing physical harm to us or our vehicle. We may not have our full attention on the road at this given time, we could be texting, talking on the phone, or changing the radio station. What if this same thing happened in the driverless car? The cars main focus is it's surroundings without any distraction. So, it would sense the deer right away stopping the car and potentially avoid a car accident. The same goes for surrounding cars on a road or highway. 

Does this car also give the blind the access to drive? Blind people have depended on others to drive them around for so long. Imagine if they could drive themselves from point A to B. Giving them back their independence and allowing them to do things on their own time. Steve Mahan, a blind man who has lost 95% of his vision, shows this is possible.

The Google Car can not only make driving safer for the population but also giving the blind and handicapped the freedom to drive again. This technology shows that it may be worth it to trust technology more than you trust yourself. Advancements in technology have saved the lives of millions of people, so why wouldn't we trust it to drive us?

http://techland.time.com/2012/05/08/googles-driverless-cars-now-officially-licensed-in-nevada/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE
http://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_thrun_google_s_driverless_car.html

IG seems more SAVY

 http://youtu.be/Pj73W_GUTPg

I was having trouble posting the video so here is the link incase you guys still want to watch. Thanks!

Destroying Our College Culture

In my previous blog posts I discussed the consequences of moving from traditional classroom education to online education. There is no doubt there are some serious consequences in making this move into a new form of higher education. There is clear evidence for the positive implications of internet education on society. It will offer global education to anyone with internet access providing the world a new and easier way to learn. I acknowledge the positive aspects of educating the world via the Internet but I am more concerned with the negative implications that arise in the transition from traditional college education.

The experiences and human interactions found on traditional University campuses are important to society and need to be taken into consideration before we replace it with online education. Universities help shape and define our culture and acts as a foundation for individuals. The environment of traditional Universities promotes the creation of individual values and identity. I am concerned with the Internet’s inability to produce this “student culture”.

Personally, I would not be the individual I am if it had not been for my attendance at a University with a strong culture and exciting campus. I am a student as well as an employee for the University of Cincinnati and my personal experiences has allowed me to find out who I am and build personal relationships with fellow students and faculty. These experiences and relationships would not exist if I had attended an online University and I would not be the person I am without them.