Social Networking Websites and Teens: An Overview

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• That's a good assessment, Kevin.

• I heard about those hand crank laptops....
  <br/>Back to the topic, however, the same technological advances that are used to give the internet to remote areas is the same technology that have people around the world at the edge of their seats hoping a war doesn't go nuclear. I agree with the notation that people will always be afraid of new things and new concepts. Nevertheless, the natural concepts out there are the things that will never die. Using your example, Dr. Jerz, the oral tradition is making a comeback with an ironic technological boost.

• Kevin, in ancient Greece, the dominant intellectual culture was oral. But when the written word became more prevalent, many accomplished speakers decried the ease with which any inexperienced bozo could just read a pre-prepared speech off of a piece of paper, rather than come about the speech the honest way, but composing it in their heads in real-time while a debate was going on. Still, I don't think most people today think that paper and ink are doing our thinking for us. (Incidentally, we're seeing something of a resurgence in an oral culture, first with the telephone, then with talk radio, and now with podcasting.)
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  <br/>More humanists need to get involved in the design of the software we are all supposed to use, and get involved in the creation (authorship) of the internet that technology makes possible. All technology has a social dimension, and we are only powerless if we can't be bothered to learn about that technology. That doesn't mean everyone has to be a programmer, but educating yourself about open.-source alternatives to Windows is a good start. Technology won't solve all the world's problems, but at the moment we have a great gap between the haves and the have-nots. I'm excited about the One Laptop Per Child initiative, which promises hundred-dollar laptops for poor children around the world. These laptops won't run Microsoft, but rather free software developed by volunteers. These laptops won't even need electricity -- the idea is that they can be powered by a hand crank. And they will create their own wireless network, so there is no need to pay an internet bill.
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  <br/>Technology is controlling and limiting when the financial interests of powerful people require tight restrictions on content, but there are many techno-idealists out there who envision great things that can happen when the free sharing of intellectual ideas (which is embedded into the software that runs the internet) continues to spread.

• Facebook and MySpace is merely showing how technological experienced incoming classes are becoming. It is useful when finding yourself going head first into a paperless course like EL150 (Spring 2006. Academic blogging should replace the cumbersome effects of the three ring binder. Scary thought is it not? Technology is quickly forcing itself in to our everyday lives. When reading this blog I think of E.M. Forster's infamous story "The Machine Stops". Will we become so dependent on the support of computers and PDA's that they will do the thinking instead of us.