This chapter focused on how the digital age has change the way we function as a society. Everything is connected to the internet all of the time and the younger generations of America have been stimulated so consistently they feel they need stimulation all of the time, and multitask in everything they do. Students are multitasking in class and feel that they can do this so well, but in reality it is very hard to multitask when doing something that requires brain power, and students are doing more poorly than they should.
Chapter 2 Summary
This chapter is more focused on multitasking and shows a study on how well multitaskers actually multitask. The results were that people who multitask a lot are far worse at multitasking than they think they are, and when focused on one thing they do far better than we trying to bounce back from one thing to another. This video also shed light on the fact that being so connected to the internet may be bad for development in children, but studies take more time than technology and become obsolete by the time they are published. It may be a long time before we realized how bad the internet is for us, and even longer to do something about it.
Chapter 3 summary
This chapter is about the online gaming craze in South Korea. About 90 percent of South Korean children use the internet in their daily lives, and about 15 percent of those are at high risk for addiction to online gaming. There have been numerous deaths from extended periods of online gaming, and there are many kids needed treatment from over use of the computer. The Korean government is doing its best to try and put a stop to this, creating camps to help addicted kids find ways to stay off of the computer. They are also requiring students to learn proper computer etiquette in schools at a very young age, including the dangers of over-use of the internet.
Chapter 4 summary
This chapter is about technology in education. It talks about a school that did not use much technology and had problems ranging from poor test scores to violence in the hallways. They decided that the kids have technology everywhere but school and that needed to change. When they brought technology into the school lots of good things happened--test scores went up, violence went down, attendance got better, and so on. But with this also came other challenges. The main one being multitasking school work with other things that are "time wasting" type tasks. They are debating whether or not this multitasking is a terrible thing, or that it is something that is going to be a necessary evil.
Chapter 5 summary
This chapter is about "the dumbest generation". The video takes a look at how students today do not write as well as they used to. Essay writing has been shortened into paragraph writing. Long connecting ideas have been replaced with short bursting ideas. It then goes back to the notion brought up earlier that we are so distracted by technology that this multitasking is taking away so much of our brain power because it is not focused. A man at the end of the video talks about how the written word took away the power of humans to remember great lengths of poetry and this is just another step up from that, we will lose some, but gain more.
Chapter 6 summary
This chapter is about relationships in the online world. The first piece of it was centered around an elderly lady that has a popular web-channel on cooking. She in interviewed and talks about how the internet helps fill the void of lonlyness for her and others. She also talks about how her grand kids are so much better with technology than she is and sometime she does not like how they would rather email than call on the phone. The second segment of this episode is centered on world of warcraft and the relationships built through online gaming. It goes into a convention for players and interviews players who have met online and are great friends online and have never met in person. It also shows several married couples that met online. It seems that online gaming doesn't always isolate, but bring a new level of intimacy.
Chapter 7 This chapter's video is about how we see the way virtual reality changing life in ways that go way beyond simple pleasure gaming. People are now playing a game called Second Life to engage in business meetings and communications in the virtual world. This to, to me, seems practical for a reason or two, including cutting down on things such as travel expenses. But can one really experience travel in the virtual world to the fullest extent? However, each person, in addition to utilizing Second Life for communication, also maintained an alter ego, or avatar, to be visually “present” at the online meetings. To me this seemed totally bizarre. It came across as highly unnecessary, and probably even a waste of time. Also, people were then fretting about how their online persona looked and how it dressed. This seems to me to be a reflection of the self onto the avatar. It seemed like people were being vain, but not in the real world where things like hygiene and appearance may actually matter. Instead their vanity was projected out in a virtual world, in an atmosphere where such trivialities shouldn’t really be of concern.
Chapter 8
This Chapter goes over the conundrum involved in bringing the virtual world into deadly exploits, such as war. We saw people who were Predator Drone pilots, and how they were able to fight in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from 7,500 miles away, in the deserts of Nevada. This is the first time in world history where war is being waged with no danger being faced by one side in the fight, as the United States side is engaged in striking and killing enemy targets from unmanned aerial vehicles. I cannot imagine going to war and then going home every night. I feel there would be a loss of the survival instinct because you are only living the war a few hours a day, an edge may be lost. I am a little surprized that these Airmen are experiencing the same negative effects of war as other soldiers, including posttraumatic stress disorder. For me there are also interesting moral questions about the ethics of allowing machines to do our killing. Is it making us too detached from the horrors of war? Is it easier to justifiy engagment in war if we think there will be minimal US causalities? And will a time ever come when we try and remove the human element, and simply allow the computers to determine when to strike and who to kill? Death is becoming too distant for Americans, and these things need to be carefully planned before being put to greater use.
Chapter 9
This Chapter is the conclusion of the series. It shows a new age Army recruitment center in Philadelphia PA. In it, as opposed to traditional recruitment stations, there are huge banks of TVs set up with Xbox game consoles to make it so kids can play simulations of war for free. It allows kids to come in and see the “exciting” side of war, without having to experience the very real and horrific downsides of war. This place glorifies everything that is truly horrible about a military experience, and construes the reality of military services for youth. We shouldn’t be using kids love of technology to our advantage to attempt to make them think that war is somehow cool. If kids want to join the military they should be told what they are getting into, everything they are getting into, not just the fun parts. The life and death parts too. The video wrapped by showing a school in New York that uses video games in its teaching process. This seemed acceptable, but only to a point. We do need to meet kids where they are, but we cannot lose all of the “traditional” academic skills. There is much good to be had with technology in education, but to delve too deeply into it without questioning first could be a tall order for disaster.
Chapter 1 Summary
This chapter focused on how the digital age has change the way we function as a society. Everything is connected to the internet all of the time and the younger generations of America have been stimulated so consistently they feel they need stimulation all of the time, and multitask in everything they do. Students are multitasking in class and feel that they can do this so well, but in reality it is very hard to multitask when doing something that requires brain power, and students are doing more poorly than they should.
Chapter 2 Summary
This chapter is more focused on multitasking and shows a study on how well multitaskers actually multitask. The results were that people who multitask a lot are far worse at multitasking than they think they are, and when focused on one thing they do far better than we trying to bounce back from one thing to another. This video also shed light on the fact that being so connected to the internet may be bad for development in children, but studies take more time than technology and become obsolete by the time they are published. It may be a long time before we realized how bad the internet is for us, and even longer to do something about it.
Chapter 3 summary
This chapter is about the online gaming craze in South Korea. About 90 percent of South Korean children use the internet in their daily lives, and about 15 percent of those are at high risk for addiction to online gaming. There have been numerous deaths from extended periods of online gaming, and there are many kids needed treatment from over use of the computer. The Korean government is doing its best to try and put a stop to this, creating camps to help addicted kids find ways to stay off of the computer. They are also requiring students to learn proper computer etiquette in schools at a very young age, including the dangers of over-use of the internet.
Chapter 4 summary
This chapter is about technology in education. It talks about a school that did not use much technology and had problems ranging from poor test scores to violence in the hallways. They decided that the kids have technology everywhere but school and that needed to change. When they brought technology into the school lots of good things happened--test scores went up, violence went down, attendance got better, and so on. But with this also came other challenges. The main one being multitasking school work with other things that are "time wasting" type tasks. They are debating whether or not this multitasking is a terrible thing, or that it is something that is going to be a necessary evil.
Chapter 5 summary
This chapter is about "the dumbest generation". The video takes a look at how students today do not write as well as they used to. Essay writing has been shortened into paragraph writing. Long connecting ideas have been replaced with short bursting ideas. It then goes back to the notion brought up earlier that we are so distracted by technology that this multitasking is taking away so much of our brain power because it is not focused. A man at the end of the video talks about how the written word took away the power of humans to remember great lengths of poetry and this is just another step up from that, we will lose some, but gain more.
Chapter 6 summary
This chapter is about relationships in the online world. The first piece of it was centered around an elderly lady that has a popular web-channel on cooking. She in interviewed and talks about how the internet helps fill the void of lonlyness for her and others. She also talks about how her grand kids are so much better with technology than she is and sometime she does not like how they would rather email than call on the phone. The second segment of this episode is centered on world of warcraft and the relationships built through online gaming. It goes into a convention for players and interviews players who have met online and are great friends online and have never met in person. It also shows several married couples that met online. It seems that online gaming doesn't always isolate, but bring a new level of intimacy.
Chapter 7
This chapter's video is about how we see the way virtual reality changing life in ways that go way beyond simple pleasure gaming. People are now playing a game called Second Life to engage in business meetings and communications in the virtual world. This to, to me, seems practical for a reason or two, including cutting down on things such as travel expenses. But can one really experience travel in the virtual world to the fullest extent? However, each person, in addition to utilizing Second Life for communication, also maintained an alter ego, or avatar, to be visually “present” at the online meetings. To me this seemed totally bizarre. It came across as highly unnecessary, and probably even a waste of time. Also, people were then fretting about how their online persona looked and how it dressed. This seems to me to be a reflection of the self onto the avatar. It seemed like people were being vain, but not in the real world where things like hygiene and appearance may actually matter. Instead their vanity was projected out in a virtual world, in an atmosphere where such trivialities shouldn’t really be of concern.
Chapter 8
This Chapter goes over the conundrum involved in bringing the virtual world into deadly exploits, such as war. We saw people who were Predator Drone pilots, and how they were able to fight in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from 7,500 miles away, in the deserts of Nevada. This is the first time in world history where war is being waged with no danger being faced by one side in the fight, as the United States side is engaged in striking and killing enemy targets from unmanned aerial vehicles. I cannot imagine going to war and then going home every night. I feel there would be a loss of the survival instinct because you are only living the war a few hours a day, an edge may be lost. I am a little surprized that these Airmen are experiencing the same negative effects of war as other soldiers, including posttraumatic stress disorder. For me there are also interesting moral questions about the ethics of allowing machines to do our killing. Is it making us too detached from the horrors of war? Is it easier to justifiy engagment in war if we think there will be minimal US causalities? And will a time ever come when we try and remove the human element, and simply allow the computers to determine when to strike and who to kill? Death is becoming too distant for Americans, and these things need to be carefully planned before being put to greater use.
Chapter 9
This Chapter is the conclusion of the series. It shows a new age Army recruitment center in Philadelphia PA. In it, as opposed to traditional recruitment stations, there are huge banks of TVs set up with Xbox game consoles to make it so kids can play simulations of war for free. It allows kids to come in and see the “exciting” side of war, without having to experience the very real and horrific downsides of war. This place glorifies everything that is truly horrible about a military experience, and construes the reality of military services for youth. We shouldn’t be using kids love of technology to our advantage to attempt to make them think that war is somehow cool. If kids want to join the military they should be told what they are getting into, everything they are getting into, not just the fun parts. The life and death parts too. The video wrapped by showing a school in New York that uses video games in its teaching process. This seemed acceptable, but only to a point. We do need to meet kids where they are, but we cannot lose all of the “traditional” academic skills. There is much good to be had with technology in education, but to delve too deeply into it without questioning first could be a tall order for disaster.