Friday, February 24, 2012

The Lucky Ones

The speed that news travels occurs in seconds today. If anything drastic happens, the entire world will know in moments. 9/11 was all over the news the morning it happened, when the Giants won the Super Bowl it covered our headlines and television stations. Simple messages travel at such an incredible rate it can blow your mind away when you really sit down and think about it.
Hundreds of years ago messages and important news were delivered by men running from one place to another, by horseback, or even in a bottle in the claw of an eagle on rare occasions. Since then technology has advanced so much further. From the development of the telephone, internet, and instant message updates the time in between something happening and that information becoming public has slimmed down by such a drastic duration. 
It is truly an amazing thing to live in the time period that we do and I cannot even imagine how technology will advance further then it is today. We are so lucky to live with every important detail or event occurring in the world or at least having access to it when it would be unimaginable one hundred years ago.  

Thursday, February 16, 2012

So What Does Social Media Mean to You?

Turn on your laptop, click the browser...what's your homepage? What's the first site that you always go to? What internet functions do you have delivered straight to your cell phone? Most people answer these questions the same every single time: various forms of social media.

Social media controls us. It dictates and consumes a lot of our time and ceases to come to any sort of halt. How important is it to know what is going on with our friends from home every day, looking at their profiles for what kind of first semester they might be having? 

Sure, we can use social media to keep in touch and form a community with friends, I am by no means disagreeing with it. Facebook is based on keeping in touch with friends so you know where to contact someone if you ever separate. But how obsessed are we becoming with the very idea of people looking at us?

Putting up statuses and seeing who likes them seems to be so important to many people nowadays. It is absurd how I notice crazed people flaunting themselves around Twitter and Facebook looking to impress society. If you've never heard someone say "Who liked my status?" Or, "How many likes did it get?" then something in your life is almost abnormal compared to most high school and college students.

So what do these programs mean to you? Can you make it through one day without going on Facebook or  Twitter. Can you cancel sports and news updates sent right to your phone? 

Just how intensely has media taken over our lives?