I love being home. As I sit here writing this post, I realize that this is the first time I’ve opened my laptop this entire weekend. Break is a time to enjoy time with family and friends, and that’s just what I’ve been doing. I’ve rarely looked at my phone either. At Midd, my laptop is a necessity for homework and other modes of procrastination. My phone is necessary to communicate meals with friends, homework meet-ups among other things. Being home has made me realize just how relaxing it is to be without technology (flashback to the media fast). Anyways, I hope everyone is enjoying their breaks and I look forward to seeing you all!

Hello,

When you are in class with you computer open taking notes, do you ever feel distracted by the surrounding applications?  Have you ever felt like you just can’t prevent yourself from checking a notification when it pops up? Well just know that this is very normal.  Computers have added so many easy distractors that it is almost impossible to not want to stray away from your notes and class discussion for a second so that you can check that Facebook post or even a unimportant email.  In my digital media class we are required to use laptops and other devices.  Is this a good thing or a bad thing?  Well personally, I believe it is a great thing, it will teach us to learn how to multitask on the computer not just because we have to, but because with the new notification bar we need to.  There are many different things that can help us focus whether you are in class taking notes on the computer or just doing an english essay in the library.  Multiple applications, such as self control, focus bar, focus mask, and time butler are applications that I use to prevent myself from getting distracted.  Honestly, none of these things can actually work unless you take them seriously, which means that you just have to come to terms that there will be distractions and you will need to learn how to deal with them.  What I find to be most effective is doing things in short intervals.  Telling yourself: “work hard on this for the next 25 minutes and then you can check your email” etc.  It may not work for everyone as the notification bar still makes it hard to not want to check email or other things earlier, but it definitely is worth a try.  Anyway, distractions will only continue to get worse, so start now and learn to deal with them.

Middlebury —–> Burlington —–> Philadelphia —–> Toronto —–> Home. I find traveling exhausting. Although, I’m not especially neurotic, impatient, or scared of flying, I, like most people, dread the song and dance that flying has become. As I write this, I’m on my flight home to Toronto, I still have two hours before I arrive home, and I’ve already been traveling non-stop for eight hours. When I plan a trip, I basically just subtract two days that I deem travel days. Days that inevitably get bogged down by hours or taking off and putting back on my shoes, wandering through terminals, and sitting in my seat listening to my iPod and making small talk and uncomfortable eye contact. (I particularly enjoy watching my neighbors facial expression change as he realizes that he’s going to be squished next to a teenager for the next couple of hours).

When I was younger and would travel with my parents and younger brother, I always really enjoyed playing with my GameBoy. Flying essentially turned into a period of unrestricted Pokémon training for me. Given that my parents were reasonably strict with how much time I got to use ‘screens, I absolutely it. As I got older and outgrew my GameBoy, I started to rely on the screen in back of the seat in front of me for my entertainment on long flights. Recently though, I’ve been flying out of smaller and more obscure airports that don’t have the jumbo-jets with the expensive media systems.

Flying today really got me thinking about my media usage while traveling. Flying for many people has become one of the few times in their lives where they don’t have access to communications technology. For those few hours while we hurl around the globe in that metal box, we’re almost completely isolate – that was, until recently. The policy that prevents us from fully taking advantage of our electronics during flights was created during the later part of the twentieth century when planes were far more rudimentary. Since the rule’s inception however, technology has advantages to the point where planes aren’t really affected by conflicted signals. Now, Wifi is being offered on some flights: for a small fee of course. Although I think that the fact that I can buy Wifi but can’t use my phone while on board a flight is inherently stupid and contradictory, I also think that this policy change is just the next step in the further integration of technology into our lives. Although overall, I’m definitely in favor of this change in policy, I can’t help but think that I’m going to miss the random conversation I enjoy having with strangers. Although, I don’t think that technology kills conversation, I also don’t think that I’m going to be the only one guilty of bury myself deep in digital world as soon as I get internet access. Although I won’t try to fight progress, I’m definitely not going to stop saying hi to the people on my flight.

Although I don’t know the name of the girl who I’m sitting beside, I like her. She works in adversing, graduated from UOIT in 2010 and has a 40 minute drive home from the airport. Maybe I’ll see her around – probably not though.

Just the other night I had to study for my Political Science Midterm. My political science midterm happened to be the first midterm I will take here at Middlebury college. It was also one of the only tests this semester that was not open book. My Professor gives his lectures in a speedy manner. This caused for me to study by finding the information need for his midterm on my own. What better way to do it than finding definitions and court cases by using the web… That was until the internet crashed.

The panic was never this real.

All that I could do was sit in Ross with my study buddy and sit in frustration. Using our iPhones was the only current solution. However, I didn’t know how much the cell service sucked with data plans until being without wi-fi. The time that I needed the Internet and I depended on it, it FAILED me. I have learned how clueless and frantic I turned. I really had no alternative. I had my books, but they didn’t have the necessary information that I needed. This really taught me a lesson on depending on technology. It was the worst night ever until the internet was back up and running again.

There is a term used in the athletic community called the “pain cave”. I truly enter the pain cave at least twice a week during our workouts. There are too ways to cope with the pain cave – you can let it swallow you and give up, or you can embrace it and use it to push beyond your preconceived limitations. Some enter the pain cave and exit a new person. They may be shaken for a bit, but are ultimately a stronger, more powerful individual. It hardens one’s character.

This is similar to stress. I have three midterms this week. Two tomorrow (Thursday) and one on Friday. I am currently in the pain cave of academia. I am stressed out. However, I try not to focus on the negatives of the stress, but rather let it push me through the week. When I am in the pain cave in the gym, I think about the outcome and I am pushed to continue fighting. I have applied this to my academic pursuits. For when the week is over, it is fall break, and I will be through my first midterms of the week, stronger and more wise because of it.

Stress is part of college. Stress will continue throughout life. College stress allows us to learn how to cope with it before the real world swallows us all. I, like most normal people, dislike doing the majority of my schoolwork, but I understand its importance and I try to think of the positive outcomes of my studies. To my classmates – keep calm and carry on.

-Murph

As I watched Disconnected yesterday – on a computer in the library, I must point out – I struggled with the purpose for which someone would ever attempt to go without a computer for three weeks. The students in the movie, I think, found that over and over again they were only frustrating librarians, teachers and friends alike. In the end they simply needed to rely on others to do their computer work for them. One of the kids’ boss had to log his work hours for him, the same person had to make a friend send out an email for him, the other guy made his classmate who works at the library look up the call numbers for certain books for him, etc. Perhaps going through the process of realizing that most systems are online has value in itself, but to me it seems impossible to live without computers while being a student. It is certainly possible to take a long backpacking trip or to buy a cabin in the woods where you live happily without computers, but in the modern university it is pretty much required to have your own personal computer.

In the end these three people found that even without computers, they depended on computer systems simply to survive as a student. If someone tried to do this today, it would be even more difficult. The students in the documentary  used the typewriters available in the library to type their work, whereas today typewriters aren’t even accessible. They are fully put away, shelved, or fully trashed by 2013. One of the guys registered for classes by paper, which probably wouldn’t be possible at Middlebury anymore either, unless you wanted to get the last pick of classes or make someone to register online for you.

It is important to understand that most of our systems to make a university work depend on computers, but trying to reject computers only puts yourself at a disadvantage and inconveniences everyone around you. You don’t need a smartphone, an ipod, a camera, or an ipad, per say, but you do need to be able to use a computer, and that will never change.

Last night, I watched the documentary Disconnected, which follows three Carleton College students as they attempt to live without a computer for a month. Having completed a 24-hour technology fast, I have an understanding of just how difficult it must have been to live on a college campus without a computer. With the increased popularity of iPhones, however, I think that life without a computer would not be as difficult for us in 2013 as it was for Carleton College students in 2008. In fact, I really only use my computer for homework, as it is more convenient to quickly check emails, Facebook, and the weather from my iPhone. That being said, almost all of my homework requires the use of a computer for writing papers, doing research, and running math programs such as “R”. Without a computer, I think my grades would decrease and my stress level would significantly increase. One issue that the Carleton College students complained about was their boredom. Assuming I would have access to my iPhone, I really do not think that I would be bored were I to simulate this study. To make it more equal to the struggles faced by the students in the documentary, I would have to also agree to not use my phone.

In a small cabin overlooking the sun setting on Lake Champlain this past Saturday, my family discussed the beginnings of computers and the internet. I casually asked my parents, “What was it like when computers and the internet were first starting?” They both rolled their eyes and were brought back to another world in which computers took up entire rooms. The first programming classes consisted of typing keys into a machine that would create stacks of cards with holes in them. My dad would bring stacks of cards in to the computer to be run, and the next day he would get a “print out” in his mailbox of what the program did. He would either get some sort of language that indicated the program didn’t work, or he got multiple pages of what the program accomplished overnight. The idea was that the holes in these cards allowed wires to make contact with the metal below the cards, which signaled zeros and ones. If you got your cards out of order? Man, you’re screwed.

“Back in the day…” my dad was working with bits. Eight bits to a byte, 1024 bytes to a megabyte, etc. Nowadays, a single photo is multiple megabytes. My iPod holds thirty gigabytes – that’s 257698037760 bits of information.

My dad reminisced about the day that Windows came out with their first software. His eyes got big and he shook his head caught up in the memory, “That was huge.”

I have no real point in this blog post other than HOLY COW! I can’t even begin to understand how small computer memory started out, let alone what it was like to see that happen. When my dad got out of grad school and started working, he was the first person in his office to have a computer. Company tours included going to see the “Harvard Grad With A Computer.” How incredible is that? He has seen computers develop from the beginning up to today, when he manages huge files on his touchscreen iPad using complex programs without even touching the zeros and ones.