LS5533- ASSIGNMENT 4

INSTRUCTIONS

Please answer all questions below, including all parts of multi-part questions.

Answer short-answer questions using complete sentences and bold font below the original question.

Include internal citations and references in APA style for any outside sources used.

You don’t need to use full APA formatting. That is, no cover page, abstract, page numbers, or running head are needed.

Please simply type the essay portion of the assignment within this document. Do not submit the essay as a separate file.

Rename your document to include your last name and 1st initial at the beginning of the file name. For example, Jane Pioneer would name her Assignment 4pioneerj-ls5533-assignment-4.doc

Return to the Assignments area of your course and re-upload the newly renamed documents.

SHORT-ANSWER QUESTIONS

BLOGS

1. Use one tool from each of the 3 groups below, blog networks, blog directories, and blog search engines. That’s 3 tools total. Find blogs that discuss a topic of your choice. If your initial topic yields no results, try another topic more likely to have generated online discussion.

Group 1: Blog Networks

Guardian Blogs

ScienceBlogs

Scientific American

Group 2: Blog Directories

Academic Blogs Wiki

Best of the Web Blogs

Group 3: Blog Search Engines

Google Blogs

IceRocket

Regator

Technorati

a. What is your topic? My topic is Asperger Syndrome.

b. Which of the 3 types of blog tools lead to the most useful results? Give reasons for your answer. The Blog Directory, Best of The Web Blogs definitely was the most useful as it gave links to many websites dealing with Asperger syndrome as the IceRocket and ScientificAmerican only yielded a few relevant results.

2. Pick the best blog you found. Then, choose the most helpful post (entry) from that blog.

a. List the title and author of the post.

The title of the post is, “WHAT IS ASPERGER SYNDROME? WHAT IS AUTISM? WHAT IS AUTISTIC SPECTRUM DISORDER?” by Jen Birch

b. Is the author of the post an expert? How did you judge his or her authority? She is an expert on this topic simply because she has this syndrome herself and is a first hand source.

3. Find a blog that leads to a helpful new resource, such as an article, book, or Web site. List the blog and the new resource to which it lead.

http://www.aspergers.co.nz/index.shtml This blog lead to an autobiography written by Jen Birch, a woman with AS. Also on the website, there are links to other websites about Autism.

NEWSGROUPS AND SOCIAL NEWS

4. Search either the Google Groups or Yahoo! Groups discussion group tool to identify two key groups relevant to your topic. Which tool did you use and what are the two groups you found? I used Google Groups and found the following two articles:

A) The OASIS Guide to Asperger Syndrome Group: alt.drugs.psychedelics

B) Asperger’s Syndrome- Is There Real Cure For It? Group: Publish These Articles

5. Pick one of the groups you found and search within that group.I chose B.

6. Describe two relevant discussions turned up by your search.

Symptoms of Asperger's and Therapies were two relevant discussions that furthered my knowledge about Asperger’s.

7. How useful are these discussions to you?These discussions were very useful. It gives a brief, subtle, and easy to understand article that practically explains the disease and treatment.

8. Search the same topic in Reddit. Did you find this social news site more helpful than the Google or Yahoo! discussion groups above? Please explain.

Reddit had more open discussions with better results. Whereas Google had more spam than information and Yahoo’s discussions were not open to public.

PHOTO-SHARING SITES

9. Search two of the following image search engines and identify one image that supports your research topic per engine chosen. That’s two images total. Please paste the image beneath the name of the search engine you found it in.

Google Images

Bing Images

Ask.com Images

10.Do the same for two of these photo-sharing social media sites:

Flickr

Photobucket

Pinterest (Pinterest doesn’t have a good internal search. It’s best to search Pinterest form the outside using Google and including the keyword pinterest in your Google search query. You don’t need to create a Pinterest account!)

11.Describe your process of developing each of these four searches.I just typed in “Aspergers Syndrome” and looked for pictures with the most relevance towards the subject. I looked for pictures that had to do with isolation, outstanding memorization or academic ability.

12.Which tool provides better results for your topic, the image search engine or the photo-sharing social media site?

The Image search engine provided better results for my topic.

COPYRIGHT

13.Locate and describe the copyright information for each of the four images above. For each image, explain what the copyright statement says, where you found it, and whether or not you would feel comfortable reproducing the image in your work.

I was only able to find the copyright information for the photo from Photobucket. The photo from Photobucket states that one may copy and distribute the work, but may not use it for commercial purposes. Any alter or transformation may be distributed with the same license. I found this information above the picture. I would feel comfortable reproducing the image in my work because I wouldn’t use it for commercial purposes and would site the work.

ESSAY

EXPLORING SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ISSUES

In his article Is Google Making Us Stupid?: What the Internet is doing to our brains, Nicolas Carr claims that the bite-sized nature of the Web is impairing our ability to perform the high-level, big-picture thinking one normally associates with reading a book or long article. In a refutation of this claim, Bill Thompson suggests in his article Changing the Way We Think, that gathering information on the Web

presents a new method of gathering information and making connections, but it’s not necessarily inferior.

14.Write an essay of approximately 1,500 words offering your reflections and/or reactions to these contrasting viewpoints. Base the essay on your readings and research so far in this class as well as the two articles above. In addition, to support your argument, please include one new resource located on the visible Web. Be sure to cite your sources and include a References section.

Is Google Making Us Stupid by Nicolas Carr brings up concerns that I once addressed

myself with. Being an avid reader, I used to spend hours on end during my free time reading

books cover to cover. Lately, no matter how intriguing a book or article is, I can’t seem to finish

it cover to cover without getting distracted every so often. My attention span isn’t what you

would typically call short; it’s decent to the point where I can concentrate on a single task for

hours on end. Yet lately, I have come to find that it is harder for me not to get distracted. Every

so often, I pause to check my Facebook or Twitter account; get distracted by headlines, videos,

funny posts, etc. I may have intended a short five minute break but those intended five minutes

end up becoming an hour of useless, trivial distraction. I found myself wondering why I couldn’t

focus on a task like I was once able to. Why is it that I couldn’t concentrate on reading lengthier

texts like I used to before?

As written in Nicolas Carr’s essay, the answer is simple. Technology has become so

fused into my life that my dependence on it providing me with dense, concise information

has short circuited my love for deeper reading. It is not to be mistaken that I no longer read as

I once did, but instead, understand that I find it more challenging to read in depth literary

works as each new day dawns. A character count of 140 or less per tweet, so little is said but

so much of my time is dedicated to reading them. Many are insignificant tweets yet I still

read it as if they were my morning newspaper.

Facebook, on the other hand, sometimes has lengthier statuses which God forbid, I have

to press “See more” to read the whole update. I have found myself deliberating whether I

should put in the effort to press that button and read the whole status. When I realized what I

was doing, I reprimanded myself for becoming so lazy! Technology has handed us

information on a silver platter and given us the ability to dine on it anytime. Extending the

metaphor, we just choose to dine on a bit of the food that has already been cut into sizeable

pieces despite the extravagant array sitting before us. So much information crosses our path

every day, yet when it comes to choosing what we are going to read, we become pickier than

toddlers. We stay away from lengthy articles and bland articles. A lot of information is

found, less information looked at, and even less information remembered. Nicolas Carr is

mostly correct in that we become “mere decoders of information”(Carr, 2008) yet as adaptive

of an organ as our brain is, I do not believe that it rewires itself in such a way that our ability

to analyze heavier literary works are diminished.

Our brains are an amazing organ capable of adapting, rewiring, and changing. As

definitive as the human brain seems, it can easily be tricked with illusions. The brain is

continuing to constantly redefine normality. In Beau Lotto’s TED Talk, he discusses how the

brain is always continuing to redefine normality. He claims that the brain cannot see life as it is,

but only as it was useful to see in the past. Beau went on to illustrate this in the simplest manner

he could. He showed a sentence with letters omitted from words within the sentence. He asked

the audience to read the following statement, “Ca y u rea t is?” The audience read aloud saying,

“Can you read this?” Half of the letters in the sentence were missing but yet people still

interpreted it. This is because the brain saw those familiar words and placed letters where they

were not written. The brain read the sentence the way it would have proved useful to see in the

past. Yet, in a later series of illusions, Beau also proved that our brain is continuing to redefine

normality through a series of spectacular illusions. What we can understand from Beau’s lecture

is that although our brains are continually redefining normality, it sees in the way that it was

useful to see in the past. Because of this, I do not believe that our brains are slowly becoming a

big decoder despite the fact that decoding is much of what we do. As Bill Thompson said, “The

impact does not have to reflect a change to neuroanatomy or a fundamental shift in our way of

engaging with the world of words. It could just be that search engines, RSS feeds and Tweets are

western culture's informational drug of choice, the intellectual equivalent of LSD in the 60's,

cocaine in the 80's and ecstasy in the 90's, a temporary obsession” (Thompson, 2008). Thompson

beautifully illustrated his belief while still acknowledging Nicolas Carr’s original argument. In

Maryanne Wolf’s new book, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain,

she says that “reading is not an innate ability for humans but something we have to learn how to

do, and there is no reason why different forms of literacy should not emerge as new technologies

do” (Thompson, 2008). Wolf might call it another form of literacy. Screen and print based

literacy are indeed different but both are nonetheless forms of literacy. It’s a matter of

convenience and interest. Any topic to which the reader takes a liking to will have effort put into

it without the preconceived notion of “tedious work”. Decoders of information or not, the human

brain will always be capable of analyzing anything given to it. It is the sole purpose of our brain;

to assign a meaning to everything that it encounters. At the fundamental level, the brain will

always decode and analyze simply because that is the sole purpose of the brain. The degree to

which a piece of work must be decoded and analyzed vary according to the task given. Nicolas

Carr’s essay said “Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts

“efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of

deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and

complex works of prose commonplace” (Carr, 2008).

In an age where everyone is busy, there is not time to waste. Any answer to a question

should be answered efficiently, immediately, and precisely. It is because of our choice and

preference that we look for such answers. Our brains are certainly capable of reading and

interpreting longer texts but do our capabilities and potential hold a candle to the grasp laziness

has over us? The new generation is wired for distraction. Dedicating ourselves wholly and

completely to one task is nearly impossible. After all, that Facebook notification can be so

tempting. While Nicolas Carr states that our brains are rewiring themselves, Thompson states

that it’s a matter of luxury. With today’s technology, we have the luxury of knowing what we’d

like to know. We have the luxury to ignore what we don’t want to know. The slightest nuisance

can be dismissed from our screen at our bidding. The short texts are simply part of a “collection

of search engines, news feeds and social tools encourages us to link to, follow and read only that

which we can easily assimilate” (Thompson, 2008). Why is it that we no longer have the same

amount of patience we once had with long texts? Why is it that we constantly keep checking our

phones, hoping for a distraction? Why is it that concentrating on one task is so much harder than

it used to? According to Bill Thompson, the answer is very simple. We like being distracted by

all of the buzz circling around us.

As the internet grows to become the drug of the century, it can be rest assured that

there will be side effects. Whether this drug is medicinal or harmful, we cannot yet say. Internet

has furthered our world by leaps and bounds. It has given us the gift of countless information at

our fingertips regardless of where we go. From desktops to laptops to tablets to smartphones, the

amount of information running though our fingertips is hardly numerable. People like Nicolas

Carr will always be there, weary of what could come next, and what side effects it will bring. If a

shorter attention span is a side effect of current technology, what possibilities could further

developments hold? Change is the only thing that will never change, and as for the intelligence

of the human race, it will change. For better or for worse, cannot be predicted but to answer the

questions of skeptics and optimistic people, nothing comes without a loss. It is in the hands of

the future generation to weigh the good and the bad and ensure that in the end of things, Google

will not make us stupid.

References

Carr, N. (2008, July 1). Is Google making us stupid?. The Atlantic. Retrieved from

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/

306868/

Lotto, B. (Producer). (2009). Beau Lotto: Optical illusions show how we see [Record]. Available

from http://www.ted.com/talks/beau_lotto_optical_illusions_show_how_we_see.html.

Thompson, B. (2008, June 17). Changing the way we think. BBC. Retrieved from

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7459182.stm