Technology in the Classroom is... frowned upon?

Not too long ago while I was in high school, my teachers taught me that technology and having laptops will be a huge thing within colleges and universities. I am only speaking on behalf of my experience at the university I attend, but this is not the case.

Some of my profs suggest "laptops are useless in the lecture hall unless you have a disability that requires you to use one." Professors prefer people to take pen & paper notes, which I also prefer.

It's no lie that laptops are distracting, to not only the person using it who is tempted to surf the web, but the person next to them gets distracted from the lecture as well, curious as to what the darting moving pages are on the screen. I can't directly quote which study this is, but professors of mine claim that there is a study that shows the people sitting around the person using the laptop are more distracted by the laptop than the person with the laptop.

Profs of mine hate cell phones as well, which is easily justified because they can be a nuisance if they go off. One of my professors even asks us to turn them off, and is very serious about it.

Technology has its place in the classroom, but I agree with my professors. It is distracting.

In my philosophy and english classes especially, tech is not as necessary.

The key tool I have learned is necessary in classes is complete and total attention. Some professors even ask for you not to take notes because they want you to be absorbed in the material and they upload their notes or power points later. This I agree with for the most part, other than the odd key point I want to jot down then and there to help me remember it.

The reason why I am pointing this out is because of the way people see technology as progressive, when some professors and I suggest many schools are against new technologies in the classroom. Of course, while writing papers or researching, they are very useful. But that is not what they are used for in lecture.

In lecture I bring a notepad and some pens and my iPad in case I need it/for break. I also bring my phone and I might check it once every half hour to see if my fiancé texted me. But in general I try to refrain from doing so. I rarely use my iPad during class. I usually use it before class to check my e-mails and then maybe play around with it during our break in our long lectures.

What do you think? Do you think laptops have a place in the classroom?

Arguably, I believe that they can, but most often are unnecessary. If a person works best with a laptop, then let them use it and maybe ask them to sit at the back or the sides as to distract as few as possible. Unless of course they have a disability or impairment, making them need to sit at the front with a laptop. As a student, the only problem I really have is when people are doing things on their laptop that are unnecessary, like going on facebook or playing a game. If you are doing that, you should be sitting at the back. I find that distracting.

The funniest thing about it all is that whenever a professor gives a talk on not going on facebook during lecture, I always see at least one person on their laptop on facebook.

Thoughts on censored Internet and the book "Feed"

I am reading M.T. Anderson's book "Feed" right now, and I love it so much! No spoilers please!

But what I want to talk about is the concept of an internal feed in your head, which is what this book is based around. Instead of computers or tablets external to your body, you have it in your head at all times so you are able to look things up just like that. 

I hate this idea! The Internet is so easy to censor rather than a book, so if we all learned everything we knew fom one large database, sure we would all know the same things but knowing things wouldn't be interesting anymore because there would be no fight to the facts, no bias, everything is just one way.

How boring would life be if historians didn't have to look at several sources, detecting biases and looking for the truth in past events? Just having the censored info there of whatever your government wants you to think or know.

If it's censored by the government, it is of course 10x worse, but still, in general, having some form of feed just internally does make things convenient but convenience can reach a certain point in which individual thought is ignored and life becomes super boring.

I would rather fight people with opposite beliefs to me on the Internet than have a Feed telling everyone what our beliefs are and what the answers are to our questions. I want to answer my own questions, not read biased answers on an external Internet or an internal feed.

All of this government censor stuff really freaks me out because you honestly don't know 100% what the government is doing and what they know. Everything seems fine, but you honestly never know. This is why things like wiki-leaks are our best friend. 

Whenever I read books like "Feed" by M.T. Anderson or even "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley I always get super paranoid, which I hate, but I love books like this. It's fascinating to think about this kind of stuff.

I think technology will go to far once censorship has taken over everything and information and education are perfectly standardized. This is when society will have reached its breaking point. 

What do you think about having an internal "feed" in your head?

Panhandling Confrontation

Today I was leaving the mall after purchasing a few random items from the Dollar Store and I was walking out to my car. A tall skinny girl with a neck tattoo in her early twenties came up to me and told me a story about how she is stuck and needs like $20 for gas and things and that she has 2 kids in her car and she is stranded and blah blah and then repeatedly said "I am not a panhandler".

I told her that I didn't have a lot of money and that I am a student but I'll give her some change and I gave her $3.

I have no idea what the hell she actually needed the money for, maybe she did need gas and had 2 kids in her car, who knows!

I am not a charitable person and I feel like I just gave her the $3 just for her to leave me alone. I honestly don't care if she's going to buy drugs or whatever, she asked for the money and I gave her $3, it's as simple as that.

I probably did get "scammed" but is it really scamming if you don't care what happens with the money? Essentially I see the transaction as me giving her $3 and that's all. I don't care what happens to that money.

Maybe I gave her the money because I really don't see the value in money. Well, I understand the value in money, but I really don't care about money that much. I am not a communist, I just think there are better things in life than money.

Part of the reason I bought my car was because I value time over money. Sure, I might spend $50 a week on gas and have to pay upkeep and whatnot, but now I have the ability to save time by driving places than waiting on a bus. I am saving time by spending money. I value time over money. It is as simple as that. (and yes, this was really the main contributing factor to me buying a car). Although I supposed another person could see this as useless because you have to spend time to earn money to spend money to earn time, but the money that I used to buy the car wasn't even mine, I got it from an inheritance. I did work and so that money will go towards gas, so I guess really I am just forming a stupid circle.

I could not ever work and just walk everywhere. That would actually be such a wonderful life and a terrible life. You would need money or something to trade to get some things like food.

I think it's weird you have to pay for food because food is natural and so are humans so denying humans the free things of the earth is weird. Although groups of people (companies) have claimed this natural source and combined several of these sources to make several unnatural ones and then sold it back to us.

Humans are real suckers. Squirrels don't have to fucking pay for their goddam food. Society has fucked up all natural things of the world and I HATE it. This is going back to my technology post from yesterday.

Sorry, I got sidetracked. I guess the main reason why I gave that girl the $3 was just to get her to stop bugging me and also because I really don't care. I had like $70 in my wallet at the time, it's not like I gave her all of my gas or food money.

I honestly don't give a shit about the less fortunate, about philanthropy, charity, etc. As I said, I am not a charitable person.

Technology is making us L-A-Z-Y

Lately, I found myself often pondering on the idea of technological advancement.

When will it come to a halt/standstill or plateau?
Will it lead to the downfall of the human race, or any other animal?
Why is technology bad?
Why is technology good?
Does technology help us or hinder us?


My personal belief is that some technology is good and some of it is bad.

Examples of Good Technology are things that help people as well as the environment, other animals or the earth or possible the universe in general.
- Reading glasses
- Books (yes I am claiming books are technology)
- Telephones
- The bicycle

Examples of "Bad" Technology:
- Any piece of machinery that has to do with whatever Monsanto or any other company because they are polluting the earth and the plants (which are IRREPLACEABLE) with genetically modified crap and then making us pay for food which should be rightfully ours as members of this planet
- Cars (Do we really need to travel THAT far THAT often? Basically everywhere we go is in walking or biking distance but people are too lazy)

Too lazy. Let's just dwell on this point for a while. The reason why technology is becoming a "bad" thing is because it's making people lazier. Instead of farming we are going to work at a sit-down job and then run on a treadmill later to burn calories so we don't become obese. Have you noticed how obese we are all getting? We don't need this much food in our bodies yet with the combination of fast-food chains and video games, we are making it so easy to become unhealthy.

We are killing ourselves. We don't care enough to put a stop to our misuses of technology because, well, we are too lazy too! It is so easy to think something on the internet like what I am doing right now, talking about technology or Billy-Joe is on youtube commenting on some video saying "ABORTION IS BAD".

Is this where we are at? A society of overweight people who are too lazy to do anything about it other than complain on twitter or eat ice cream with genetically modified ingredients to console our natural emotions? Apparently.

I have also been dwelling on the idea of creativity lately. I think the internet has removed the ability to be creative. About half an hour ago I was trying to think of a title for something I was writing and I wanted it to have something to do with sadness/depression and something to do with happiness. The first word to do with happiness that came to my mind was "bunnies" and then my brainstorm session was over. Why? I decided to google "happy things". I immediately stopped in my tracks.

I was so lazy to creatively think of happy things that I googled "happy things". Do you see how lazy we are getting? This is just a really small thing but I immediately caught onto it.

Our laziness is taking over our creativity and minds. We would rather watch a TV show than write our own. We would rather google "how to run" than experiment with running ourselves. We are a cautious, lazy, scared society and I honestly want to do something about it.

But I am too lazy. This blog post will most likely end my journey of trying to get people to stop being lazy.

At least I do better than the people on youtube misspelling "craitionism" (creationism) and aborshun (abortion).

That leads me to another idea, the way we compare ourselves to each other; I am going to stick a pin in the idea of comparison and write about it another time.

Society is Weird + When will technology be too much to handle?

I keep finding these little stupid things in society I find really weird/stupid while looking under the perspective of a pioneer.

The first one has to do with exercise and food. I notice this everywhere. People need to go to gyms, for runs for pointless exercise, and lift weights to have healthy bodies. In the past this wasn't needed. People would run where they need to go. People lifted things all day. People worked in farms. We didn't need these rooms of exercise equipment to be healthy.

It's really weird to think about.

I would literally run places, like to work and school except for the fact that it looks weird in society to be doing this, as well you get very sweaty and smelly so it is also not ideal to society.

We are told to stop taking the bus and cars and to walk places or bike places. Why don't we run places? That makes the most sense. But society will still stare at that weird person running and then be disgusted by their sweat.

We've stopped farming (well not all of us). We don't have farms so where most of our energy would be expended (on making our food) has gone away. We grew organically, healthily. But now only a few people do, and they do it with the help of a lot of technology.

We are told to eat organic and healthy, yet it is more expensive.

What? So we pay more money for the natural things in life? Yes, apparently we do.

Instead of growing and eating healthy things and working in the fields like physically active and healthy people, we are stressing ourselves out by stretching ourselves too thin: working 9-5, going to the gym, the supermarket (to buy expensive food) and then eating it.

This is so weird. Isn't it?

The only benefit is if during that 9-5 period of time you are doing a job you love. How many people out there are actually fulfilling their dreams to the fullest and love their job? Not many.

So we spend money studying for years and years until we get a piece of paper so we can get a job that we probably won't like anyways and then we go to the gym to get the body we would have if we just farmed our food ourselves.

But this is just the society we have evolved into. We are so stuck on being individuals, finding what you love and doing it. Which is perfectly fine, and it sounds amazing but don't you just think it is a little weird that we go to rooms and use machinery so we can be healthy. We could've ran to work instead of drove our $10,000 car which we just put $50 of gas in. Or we could've just eaten more food that we grew from our organic beautiful garden and save a lot of that money (which wouldn't even matter).

I think we should've stopped developing technology in the pioneer age. But then again we do have so many amazing things. The ability to Skype with people, is one. We can talk to someone on the other side of the world, in an instant. The airplane allows us to travel to that person.

Technology isn't that bad.

Will we ever reach an end to our technological development?
When will technology be too much to handle?

Think about it. We could soon end face-to-face contact. We may never have to travel if we just have computerized versions of ourselves. It'd be cheaper to ship little robots to other places to represent us and video-chat in on them.

I mean, just the other day the power went out and I actually got kind of excited because I just thought "Yay! No electricity for a while!" and then I soon realized that I had to do something with my spare time other than watching TV or going on my laptop. So I read a book. With pages.

Technology is astonishing though. Just think about this blog post. You are reading it from somewhere likely nowhere near me on a device. Anybody can click this link to my blog or share it or read it. Anyone with a device capable of going to my blog website. It's crazy how fast information like this can spread now.

But technology has generally sped up the lives of humans, in the way that we can now accomplish more tasks in one day. By travelling by car we can go faster than by foot, we can talk to more people in one day and we can play a game of solitaire on the bus on our way to work. Really, something that simple people couldn't do. They'd walk to work and they aren't just going to push along a table on wheels with a deck of cards to play solitaire with.

But this is also a bad thing. We have so many different things going on at once and our brains just can't handle it. Lives used to be like wake up, eat, work, eat, work, eat, bathe, read, sleep.

It's too much now. I know there were a few months where my life was literally this:

Wake up
Eat/Watch TV (the only time other than lunch at school I was able to relax during)
Get dressed
Bike to school
Bike to work (do homework at work)
Go to the gym
Shower
Sleep
repeat. x 2 months.

I quit my job in the end because it was way too much.

Technology is both good and bad. What do you think about technology? When do you think it will be too much to handle?