It’s amazing how quickly technology changes these days…. even if its just the design of the product. I’m always blown away by how rapidly Apple products are changing…I got my MacBookPro less than two years ago, and I feel like it already looks old because of the new laptops Apple has come out with within the last year. I’m constantly wishing I could update my technology so that I would have the newest, most sleek looking devices.

I was thinking of these rapid technology changes because last night I by accident clicked on my old AIM icon on my dock…. instead of iChat. My old screen name logged on, and I heard the sounds of AIM which have now become almost foreign to my ears. At the same time, they brought back a kind of sentimental feeling, remembering early high school and middle school when that was the program I used at home when I got my first laptop, or on the desktop in the family room before my laptop.

Oh the good old days.

new, sleek, iChat

old, box, AIM

Today I had an interview with admissions officers from the Tisch program at NYU. Thank god for technology and the ability to interview over Skype, or I wouldn’t have been able to interview at all, which means I wouldn’t have been able to apply for the program in the first place.

When I was asked to interview, I got an e-mail that said: “please let me know your availability for an interview this Friday, or early next week. Are you able to interview in New York? I assume not, in that case we would prefer a skype interview if possible.” I was so pleased to see this, because I was certainly not going to be able to make it to New York… not without missing many classes and lacrosse practices, and falling behind in work.

I was nervous for the Skype interview, just as much as I would have been to interview in person. I mean, in many ways it was the same. I was still speaking to the interviewers and able to see them at the same time…. It is certainly not the same though as actually being in the same room and interacting face to face. For one thing, I could have been wearing pajama bottoms, because my laptop camera only captured me from the chest up.

I guess also, even though I was nervous to talk to the admissions officers whom I’d never met before, there was a certain amount of comfort knowing I was just sitting in the Middlebury library study rooms – a familiar place that I only needed to walk to 20 minutes before my interview started.

Aside from being nervous about what they would ask me to talk about, I was being obsessive compulsive about making sure I was hard wired into the internet connection, logged onto Skype properly, and had enough battery power to last through the interview. After all my preparations, the last thing I would want to happen would be to have technical difficulty and be cut off in the middle of our screen to screen interview!!

Different media allow us to change our appearance from an online perspective… this website for the Swedish broadcasting fee allows anyone to ….. well. you’ll see. Don’t ex out… the important part is just a minute or so in, and it’s only a couple minutes long.

http://en.tackfilm.se/?id=1268622236318RA37

I don’t really have anything academic or brilliant to say about this one.

I just love dogs, and think its cool that using slow-motion and particular music can make the most every-day experience just that much cooler and more emotional.

thanks to my friend sarah for showing me this. check it.

[youtube mUCRZzhbHH0]

Although we are all aware to some extent of our connectedness, through cell phones, e-mail, Facebook, etc. I think we are all reminded of it even more so when we spend time with people of other generations. My parents use many modes of media technologies for their work and everyday communication and they recognize how important these advances are in their own lives, but they still laugh at how connected my peers and I are. My parents were up visiting for the weekend, and my dad could not hold back from commenting on how often I checked my text messages. Nothing new. He comments all the time, and has been since I got an “unlimited” texting plan three years ago. I do text an absurd amount … but is it still considered ABSURD if most people my age text that often? Then shouldn’t it become the NORMAL amount? Then my dad should be considered the weirdo who barely knows how to use the T9 function. I don’t hold that against him… what I DO wish he’d realize is just how often he checks his BlackBerry. He says, “it’s work” or claims to have not been checking it at all, when I watch him take it out of his pocket during dinner. He used to not be able to do any business while we were on family vacations, unless he brought a huge briefcase of papers to read. Even then, he would only be able to do work early in the morning at the kitchen table. Now he just brings his BlackBerry down to the lake with his book, and stays caught up on e-mails. Although I wouldn’t give up my phone because I like to be in touch with my friends, I think Daddy’s connectedness should be cut off so he can fully enjoy his vacations like he used to, completely getting away from work for a week or two. Like the good old days when he used to have to leave a house number with his secretary…

When looking for an example of a “remix,” I wanted to try to find something different than just a mash up of songs, like GirlTalk or SuperMash Bros. I decided to look at videos on YouTube, and came across “David After Drugs.” I think this video is a good example of how someone can make a short work, (whether it be music, video, a play) that is very funny, but only because of the original work that came before it. Before “David on Drugs,” a dad posted “David after Dentist,” a short video of his son in the back seat of the car, genuinely confused by his feelings after being “drugged” at the dentist.

[youtube txqiwrbYGrs]

Because youtube allows amateurs to share their work or just funny home videos like this, people all over the world now know about David’s post-dentist escapades. When they got tired of laughing at the real David, people decided they would create their own remix of “David after dentist” to appeal to different audiences, and play off the original content. “David after Drugs” is just one of MANY examples.

[youtube vaIgt6TGhIA&feature]

Standing alone, this video may be funny … but really, a large chunk of its humor comes from the fact that we know it is mocking / remixing the original video of a six year old child, post dentistry.

I just got a text from my friend at Saint Lawrence University:

“I just saw the Midd Kid video and it made me think of you. How are you? I miss you!”

Point A: all of our social networks like facebook help link people across the country to new things like the Midd Kid video. Without the online world, the real world might not know about a video like this for a long time, or until its too late to be appreciated. But now we can send it around the world with the click of a mouse. Point B: Cell phone technology like texting allows us to all of a sudden be in touch with people that we haven’t talked to in weeks, as if no time has passed at all.

After receiving this text, I went online and told my friend Julie, via iChat, and she responded “my DAD asked me about it yesterday! Some ladies in his office were looking at it…weird. i know.”

This article reminded me a lot of my first blog post, “Facebook, for better or for worse.” First of all, it’s hard to believe that someone was sitting in their college dorm room on their computer, just like me, but came up with the whole system of Facebook. Incredible. Their lives are certainly no longer the same. But then again, none of ours are. We are always in contact with each other… we always know something about someone else’s life even if we weren’t looking for it, because we have our automatic “news feed.” I for one still do not like the news feed. Zuckerberg says he created it because Facebook was primitive before it. I don’t think Facebook and Primitive can be used in the same sentence unless there’s an “is not” thrown between them.

I don’t think I join Parr’s group demanding the news feed to be scrapped, but I definitely participated in the mass panic, aroused by the site of the new news feed. I guess I’m used to it now… I know it’s going to be there, and it’s visual design has improved to make it less cluttered feeling and confusing… but still I don’t find it necessary. If I want people to see something specifically about my page, I’ll let them know. Or if I want to find out what’s going on in someone else’s life, I look them up. I think the news feed adds to what makes Facebook such a good tool for procrastination. You can’t just go on and check if you have a message specifically for you… Instead you are given a page with hundreds of highlights, which drag you to other people’s pages even though you didn’t REALLY go on to do that. Also, as I talked about in my first Facebook blog and the Times article also mentions, is how Facebook can prolong relationships that need to fizzle out. The ex boyfriend. Facebook just allows bad relationships to end worse, because you can continue to play games and flaunt new budding relationships to the people of your past.

It is interesting to think about the point made, that Facebook actually may make us know ourselves better, or at least be more conscious of who we are. We constantly see how we are displayed in our profile and by what other people say about us, and we choose what we want to be shown and what not. But then, are we really becoming aware of who we are? Or just creating that electronic “avatar” of who we WANT to be?

Facebook has gotten to the point where it really does take over many of our lives, not just at the computer screen. When we’re out at parties or on a vacation, so many teens take photography’s strictly with Facebook in mind. They may even

It is scary to think that even if you finally get away from Facebook yourself and delete your account, you are still being defined by others in the Facebook community. They will still be there putting up pictures with you in them, and you won’t be “around” to see what they are.

I caught on to Facebook much faster than I am catching on to twitter. It seems that many people feel that way, and hate twitter at first. I can see though how it would be useful as a tool for finding answers to questions. I’ve already done that when I had a question about our paper project. I figured Professor Mittell was likely to receive a tweet alert on his phone, in his pocket, most all the time… So I tweeted and let him know I emailed with a question. Five minutes later, I had a response from him! But then back to the beginning again… I don’t feel the need to update people on what I’m doing throughout the day, nor do I feel the need to know what other people are doing. I still rarely use my Facebook “status” unless it’s to say something like, “home for break,” something of a longer duration

Okay. It’s time to admit that… for a long time I didn’t know that anyone could edit Wikipedia pages. AKA – I really had no idea what Wikipedia was all about, or why professors wouldn’t accept it as a citable source. Obviously I never paid attention to the tag line under the logo, “the free encyclopedia, THAT ANYONE CAN EDIT.” I’m realizing through this class that there is a lot about the Internet that I don’t know, even though I use it more frequently than any other technology. I may be using the internet at a very basic level, mistaking my vast amount of time spent on it, for my real understanding of it.

Now I am officially an editor of Wikipedia. I searched for “Lacrosse” and found a Wiki page full of information about lacrosse history, the differences between the men’s’ and women’s’ game, youth lacrosse, college and international lacrosse, and more. I decided to read the section about women’s lacrosse, since that’s what I know most about, and found an area I could add to. When I first read the page, it talked about differences from men and women’s lacrosse, mainly being about the physical contact of the sport – women can’t hit check each other’s bodies – only sticks – whereas men can slash each other’s bodies with their sticks. I added a tidbit about the fact that the fields are also lined differently for men’s and women’s lacrosse.

When we talked last week about editing a Wiki page I was not keen on the idea. For whatever reason I don’t feel confident posting my own knowledge on the web, knowing that other people might look it up and take it as fact. Even though I know what I said is a fact and would verbally tell anyone who asked about lacrosse, it made me question myself when I typed it and had to click “save page.” I think it was like Shirky said, that somehow the act of writing something down makes that something become a FACT in other people’s eyes. I’m talking in circles now, because I just said that what I wrote WAS a fact… hmm. I think another piece of it is that once I’ve become a part of something like this, COOPERATING with the online community of Wikipedia, some element of what goes on “behind the scenes” is taken away, and it no longer seems as true and real. It’s kind of like, when you hear about cast parties with Hollywood stars – then you go to one, and realize it’s actually not all that fantastic. It’s kind of just like a college party but with grown-ups and wanna be’s, and the drinks are in nicer glassware, (okay, yeah. It’s pretty cool too). Anyway, I hope my point maybe makes a little sense. Maybe not? I didn’t add that much to the page… really just a couple of sentences. So my edits probably aren’t that important to the larger project as of now. HOWEVER. Maybe my tidbit will encourage someone else to expand on the point I’ve raised. Maybe I’ll go back to Wikipedia and add some more details about the women’s lacrosse playing field, or maybe I’ll mention it on the discussion page and hope someone else can do the writing after I’ve provided the idea… then maybe I’ll Wikipedia how to put an image on a Wikipedia page. Ah, the never ending cycles of the internet…

Will I ever have to “grow up,” move out, and really be forced to do things on my own? Sure I’ll move out and live away from my parents…i’m already doing that… but will I REALLY have to do all of those “grown up” things on my own like our parents had to?

As Shirky and Mittell point out, it’s not really the changes in technology that matters, but it’s that new technology removes obstacles, allowing new social behaviors. THAT’S what matters. Right now I’m applying for various summer jobs and internships. With just my laptop, I’ve been able to type up my resume and cover letters and submit them all across the country via e-mail. Not only that, but I’ve been able to send drafts and revisions back and forth with my mom. We finally realized that instead of e-mailing drafts numerous times for slight changes, we could just use the screen sharing application on iChat! From 321 miles away, my mom was able to actually see my computer screen, read the current draft I was working on, and then make corrections herself. We could talk to each other  as well. Technology made it so easy for my mom to help me create my digital resume – I may not need to learn how to do these things on my own. No matter where I am, it seems like I’ll always be able to have Mommy by my side for some extra help.