The desocialization of the world, courtesy of Steve Jobs

The iPod today as we know it is not what it was when it first came out. It has gone from being a mere music player to our lifeline. An iPod today can do things that were probably once ever dreamed about. It can the do the simplest of concepts like playing games to the most complex activities such as controlling the entire electrical system of your house. As much as it has made our lives easier, it has also made the world incredibly antisocial. We cannot however place all of the blame for this desocialization of thw world on the iPod alone. This trend has started long ago with the simple invention of headphones and walkmans and the concept of being able to immense yourself in a completely different world, shut out from everyone else. Music used to be a social thing when people would listen to records or the radio together. Today it has become more of an escape from the world. Most people today do not listen to music publically unless they are at a club or any other big event, its all enjoyed through headphones. Take NYC for example, whenever you are walking around or taking the subway, how many people do not have a set of headphones on? What is even worse are the noise cancelling headphones because they're purpose is to completely shut out the world around you and have you totally immensed in the music. Is our world that boring that we need to immense ourselves in something totally different? Or do we just not have the ability to handle a situation for so long without feeling the need to jump and do something else like Nicholas Carr mentioned in his article about Google? I personally own a pair of nosise cancelling headphones and find them extremely comfortable and great to use when I do listen to my music. My parents hate them because I never hear a single thing around me, but most of the time, when I put them on it is only to keep out everything around me and to just let me completely relax. As much as I love my headphones I cannot deny the fact that they do cut their users off from everything else. Perhaps all of this is a reason why ticket prices for concerts have become so incredibly high, because it is so rare to see people enjoying music publicly anymore. It's almost as those when artists come to town, some people are willing to sell anything to go and see an artist perform. A few days ago I checked on stubhub.com to see what the tickets prices were to see Jay-Z at the garden on March 2nd, I found that the prices ranged from about $80-$11,000. $11,000!!!!! That could be the price of someones college tuition and some moron is asking people to pay that for a front row seat at the garden. The last concert that I went to was Blink-182 at the garden this past october and I payed about $70 for my ticket and I thought that that was a lot. I am also going to see John Mayer in February and I paid about $90 for that and I still think that that is a lot but those were two concerts that I truly wanted to go to. I do however want to see Jay-Z extremely bad as well but I guess I have to wait until the next time he comes to town. My point is that ticket prices are so extremely high because since people do not enjoy music publicly anymore they flock to the venues to see these artists perform as though it was the last time they were ever going to hear these songs again. Take the Beatles for example, theyre last live preformance was not a sold out show in Madisoon Square Garden or any other famous arena, it was a speratic "concert" on the rooftop of the Apple Corps studio in London in the middle of the day. This is what live music is all about and should be, they just took their instruments and sang for the public, no tickets required. Paul Mccartney also did this right before his show at Citifield this summer. Except he performed on top of the marquis at the Ed sullivan Theater in Times Square and it also was completely random. It wasnt formal or anything like that, it was just the public enjoying the music like it should be. Paul McCartney's appearance in Times Square is extremely rare and probably will not happen again for a long time, if ever. That is how music should be though, not just plugging in and shutting yourself out from the world. Music should be public and not just used to shut out everything around you. Music like the Beatles and many other artists is meant to be enjoyed with everyone, not just the person with the headphones. Sadly this is what our society has turned into and what the makers of these products aim for they are selling it. The creators of the iPod had in mind that people will now be listening to music alone and not in public anymore. Granted they sell speakers for the iPod but the whole purpose around the iPod is to be personal, hence the "i" in front of it. Its not the "wePod" its the "iPod" and that is exactly what they are pushing.

"I think I know what's going on"

The article assigned for us to pick apart is entitled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr. His entire article (strange as this may seem) revolves around the idea that online search engines, namely Google, are indeed making us dumber than we once were. According to him this is all due to the fact of how search engines constantly feed us information and show us countless amounts of links to other websites. "I think I know what's going on. For more than a decade now, I've been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet", could Carr be anymore clearer in how he is blaming the internet for this problem?! The point that he is trying to make is that google is lowering our attention spans. By showing giving us outlets to different websites at the click of a button our minds have become more accustomed to a fast paced world, one in which if we are not satisfied in a matter of minutes with what we are doing, we give up and move on to something else. "Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of word. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski." Carr knows that he no longer has to focus and search for hours on end because google allow us to go from "link to link to link" to find what we are looking for. According to him our minds no longer have the mental capacity to sit down and focus for extended periods of time. We have almost evolved into this mind of an "Idiot Savant" one who cannot seem to focus for long without going crazy and often at times runs through his fast paced world, google, in search of that great answer he has been longing for before finding it and falling on the number "5" planted on the floor. Sifting through the books in a library has no longer become unnecessary, but primitive. In a matter of minutes I can pull up every article on the internet that I would need in order to write a report, where as in a library it could take day for me to do. "A few google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I've got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after", writes Carr. He knows that while google may be making us dumber, it is extremely beneficial to writers.
Along with this belief that the internet is slowing us down by speeding us up......?, he also believes that technology in itself has constantly had a damper on writers for quite some time now. He mentions how Frederick Nietzsche's writing had begin to change once he started using a typewriter. He "changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style", wrote Friedrich A. Kittler a German media scholar. This goes along with the ideas that technology changes us and how we do things. Even Nietzsche agreed that "our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." Sad as it is, we rely on technology for so much that we actually change ourselves for technology, shouldnt it be the other way around?
One thing that Nicholas Carr does assume which I can disagree with is that everyone has the Internet readily available to them. Not everyone in the world has the Internet even though it is 2010. This would alter his claim against google by that it needs to be more specific in stating who exactly is becoming dumber, the world or the users of google?

What has search overload done to you?

mele kamikimaka

Google, the world's new best friend and the mind's worst enemy. The article assigned to us was entitled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" and revolved around whether or not google was in fact making us dumber. Personally I feel that it has lowered the attention spans of countless amounts of people including myself. Think of the commercials from the new search engine developed by microsoft, "bing". Their entire advertising campaign is centered around the idea of search overload". This, I feel, is the perfect explanation of what google has done to people. It has merely overloaded our minds with infinite amounts of useless information. "The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing", this quote from the article exemplifies how from being shown so much information at one time our minds can no longer focus on one single thing for too long. We now want to jump from one piece of information to another and continually find a new link to click on. I can honestly say that more time I spend trying to accomplish an assignment on my computer the less I get done. This is because I'm constantly on the internet either on aim or facebook and just randomly looking for something to do online. I will say the internet is an extremely useful tool and google have saved my life so many times on projects but I cannot say that it has made me smarter. It has merely kept me from keeping focus on everything that I do. All google truly does is show us countless links to different things which most times do not have to do with what we searched for. This is why people lose focus, because they are overwhelmed with possibilities and links to totally unrelated sources.

Also, one last thought on google. It is impossible for google to make us smart in the first place because we do not learn the information which we may find. Google does the thinking for us when it pulls up related links. All we do is sit there like lumps and read what is fed to us. I hardly find that as learning or even remotely beneficial to anyone. All we are doing is reading what is handed to us, often there is no understanding f things that we find because we do not need to know about them. It is through these useless pieces of information that our mind can now no longer focus. It just wants more. Since we are spoon fed so much information our mind cannot process it all at one time and we therefore lose focus on what we are doing. These actions repeated so many times will cause people to naturally continue to lose focus because they just want more. This is why in the article they mention how more and more people are moving away from reading longer novels. Simply because they lose focus after so much time because of the fast paced and ever changing world which the internet and google has brought to us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSkaTcjDIMk

Here is the link to one of the commercials from bing. It perfectly exemplfies search overload in everway.