Class Reflections I

Many of the things we talked about in class on Thursday were new to me. Phrases such as cloud commuting, media convergence, server farms or web credibility I had never heard of before. Most of the web pages the professor and other students referred to I had never heard of either.

It is amazing to me how much information and social media websites are available. Who has time to keep up with all this stuff? I thought the statistics regarding how many hours the average young person spends using entertainment media was sad. Yet, when I look at my own life, much of my time is spent utilizing some form of entertainment media. I spend a lot of time on the computer at work, communicating via e-mail and utilizing software of some sort. I go to movies with my sister. I get together with friends to watch the football game on a TV. I talk on my cell phone in the car and sometimes send text message while sitting on the toilet. I spend a lot of time on the computer at home. Often, a DVD is playing on the computer in my room while I’m falling asleep.

I’m just old enough to remember when our lives were not dominated by some form of technology. We had to wait till we got home to check our voice messages and receive and return phone calls. We wrote letters. When I look through my box or binder of important memories, not one of them is an e-mail. I have cards and letters from family and friends that are meaningful to me because someone took the time to think of me and write thoughtful words.

I guess that’s one of my concerns as we charge ahead into the social media driven future, that we lose touch with the simple things of life and that the power of the written word is cheapened. In our efforts to make things more efficient sometimes I think we make it more complicated. I’m definitely guilty of that myself.

All that said, the possibilities of media technology are definitely exciting. I think it is the wise person who takes advantage of what it has to offer. In the world of Journalism, or, really, any profession, we have to think this way because that’s the way the world is. And, despite my concerns, technology as brought a lot of good into the world. It simply needs to be redeemed and used wisely for good purposes.