High-Tech Trash (abstract) by Chris Carroll

It wasn't surprising to hear about how much trash humans produce, but I don't think about e-trash when I hear the word trash, I think garbage from the bathroom, kitchen, etc. I believed that all the phones we recycled were recycled safely- not shipped to places like Asia and Africa for people to sift through and sell for money; while increasing their chances of dying sooner because of all the toxins. THIS is a new "all-time low" I've heard about people, and it's disgusting. People are so greedy for money, that although they know the harm it does to sell electronics to under-developed countries, they go about and do it anyway.Someone told Carroll "All you can do is sell it to scrap people. What they do with it from that point, I don't know nothing about it." That's the problem with us, we don't care about how others are effecting our world if our hands aren't dirty in the end. Another man said "They said this stuff was all going to be recycled and put back into use. It seemed environmentally responsible. and it was profitable, because I was getting paid to have it taken off my hands." It seems as long as we benefit, we should only do our part and not worry about what happens elsewhere. Yes, some people don't know what's going on after they're done with their part, but it's our responsibility to be conscious of what's going on around us. If we are ignorant like this, it's only going to make our world worse. "It's not all that surprising things are coming full circle and now we're getting contaminated products back." Said Weidenhamer, but how far do we have to go before we realize that something is really, really wrong?

Lita*

Everybody, Please Shut Up

To shut the world around us up...that's the use of an iPod. When all we want to do is relax and not hear anyone but our favorite artists, we put on the tiny ear buds or humongous headphones and drown out reality. You can see it either as blocking your own thoughts, but I think of it more as keeping my thoughts in. The tiny, purple 3.6" x 1.5" device that's usually in my pocket holds more than just music. If it could record what I was thinking, it would need more gigabytes. The simplicity of ear buds is that you could easily pull them out of your ears when someone taps you back to reality, or if you just want to take a break from it just press pause. If someone calls your name...well how would you know? The tiny, "boredom-preventer" has entertained me for almost five years now and I plan to update the little bugger as it starts to wear itself out.

I have my iPod on wherever I am; walking to class, walking from class to class, walking from class to lunch with friends, walking from lunch to class, from class to my room…break…then back to my ears whenever I go and run or exercise or just take a walk outside. My iPod is on always if I am not inside. Why? Am I afraid to think about all that I would think if I didn’t have anything to occupy my brain? I can’t just listen to the birds chirp or cars drive by like I used to, now it sounds weird to me if I don’t have some sort of music reeling in my mind. I’ve become obsessed with my iPod, and it all started when I got my first iPod after high school graduation- I was never without one since then.

So I was literally devastated when I forgot my iPod at home this past week…I had to wait until I got home for the weekend to get it- thankfully it’s here with me now but do you know what I had to do this past week to get to class without silence? - Put some songs on my phone and blast it as I walked. Yup. Whoever I passed by, found out a little bit about me if they listened. Whatever, it was nice listening to music coming from the air basically (it was on speaker in my pocket), not just inside my head. It kept me occupied none-the-less and it allowed me to listen to my songs.

Apple has given in to what people want…for us to be in our own worlds when we want. We could drown out the voices of others calling us; our moms telling us to clean, our siblings annoying “the- you- know- what” out of us, and all the other people you just want to zone out on. People love music, and Apple knows that. So the Geniuses make devices that give us what we want, while making millions and feeding off of us. Still, if we pay for a place to get away to, why wouldn’t we be treated as cash cows?

"Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Abstract

We want to get straight to the point, don't get into all of the details if it's not necessary. We don't have time to sit down and read a whole page, when all we need is a couple of the sentences in the paragraph anyway. As Carr said "My mind isn't going...but it's changing. I'm not thinking the way I used to think....Immersing myself in a lengthy article used to be easy....That's rarely the case anymore." People rarely have time anymore to sit down and read long articles and lengthy research- so Google shortens the reading time, readers get the information they need and bam, they're done. That's it, next article. A con about all this agility and impatience, is that the readers are not able to stay on one article for a long time without being distracted- hyperlinks to other websites, pop-ups and ads. All of these barriers block us from staying focused on one thing, and one thing only. Google has influenced other traditional media as well. "Traditional media has to adapt to the audience's new expectations. Television programs add text crawls and pop-up ads, and magazine and newspapers shorten their articles..." Readers do not want to be bothered having to read everything, when they could be doing other things, and only want the main point anyway. This, in result, is turning us robot-like. We don't have our own ideas, we just take from the Internet because the information is readily at our fingertips. "As we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence." Carr believes we're getting so stupid, that we can't even see that artificial intelligence is becoming more intelligent than us humans. Think about it...

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Is Google making us stupid? - I don't think so. We can't be stupid if we have so much technology in this world- people came up with the new gadgets- we invented these things with the intelligence that we have. Are we becoming more lazy?- Yes, maybe we are... I can't lie about that. Let me tell you though, when I don't know an answer to something- I Google the facts as soon as I'm near a computer. For example, today my friend Andrea was telling me and our other friend Ronald about how her father is from Spain- "Which region?" he asked, "I'm not sure..." hahahah. She didn't know where her father is from, so I suggested we Google the regions, and maybe if she saw the map and the names of the regions, something would come up. Bing!...Aragon. That's where her father is from. What I'm trying to say is that, so much information can easily come up in seconds when you Google something you want to know. Of course there are things you need to be wary of when you look up information, but think about it- if you Google, say, what appendicitis is, then link after link, a definition will pop up, and you could easily believe it. It's a fact from a legit website- dictionary.com? Princeton,etc. Now, if you want to go and Google something about your favorite celebrity and want to know if it's the truth- well...that's a little iffy. You can't believe everything you read. Where am I getting at with this? Information is easily at your fingertips whenever you have a problem, that makes you more knowledgeable. If you have a question that you're probably afraid to ask someone, you can bet there have been other people who have/had the same question, and you could find the answer. But you have to know, that what's true to one person might not be true to another. But this only makes you more intelligent because you learn that people have different opinions on topics, topics that are not as fact-driven such as what appendicitis is. For those of you who are wondering why I used appendicitis, well my baby sister is in the hospital for it and had surgery. I knew what appendicitis is, but whenever I don't know what a word means...shhh- I Google it on my phone. I don't have internet on my phone, nope- I text Google "What is...?" and I get a reply from them, and the word is usually from the Princeton Web dictionary. If I ever hear a word a person says that I have no idea what its meaning is, I discreetly look it up. We're learning, even though we do skim texts online here and there- we're still learning if we understand what the text means- it's just that we get the information faster and easier. I love Google; it's my homepage, my go-to for facts I want to find out, and very helpful with homework. If we're reading the screen, our brain is reeling- and if our brain is reeling we're using it and not becoming stupid. We learn everyday, don't worry.

'Til next time,
Lita*