Month: October 2018

Everyday I generate a lot of Big Data. I like something on instagram everyday. I learned from ” Your Social Media ‘Likes’ Expose More Than You Think” that my likes get collected as big data and can predict things about me. This is probably how they configure the explore page, which has posts the app thinks I’ll like. I also learned from “Big Data is Better Data” that I am generating big data just by owning my phone. I constantly have data being collected about where I am. For me, Big Data is only a good thing. I have benefited from it before by seeing ads about things I might like that and ended up buying what’s on the ad. It has also helped me find my phone when I have lost it before. I think it will only continue to help me and the rest of the population. Big data getting used for cars like the ways discussed in “Big Data is Better Data” will be a great tool. I can see how it could negatively affect people too. If it is used to predict crime, holding people accountable for something they haven’t done, it will be a problem for those people. It can also be a problem by eliminating jobs. I would not want to become unemployed because of big data. I can also see why people would not want so much of their personal data to be so available for people to access.

Today started just like any other weekday. I woke John up at 8:20 and, just like always, he ignored me  3 times. He shut me off and I waited until he was ready for me to show him Instagram before he went to class. During his classes, I get super bored and just want to be used. Today I was feeling lonely so I kept vibrating in his pocket to get his attention. There were a few times where I thought he was going to use my but as soon as I lit up, I got put back into his pocket. Between classes, I send messages to people on his phone or show him Instagram. After class, I’m just used for snapchat, Instagram, and Spotify.  Sometimes I feel underappreciated. I can do all these amazing things, but I’m only used for a few. I hope I finally get used for something useful.

Psychologist Jean M. Twenge discusses how technology has affected mental health in teens in the past. Her main claim on the relationship between the two problems is that more technology leads to problems with mental health. Talking about the correlation of these issues in her article “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”, Twege states “Teens who spend more time than average on screen activities are more likely to be unhappy, and those who spend more time than average on nonscreen activities are more likely to be happy”. Twenge makes it clear that there is an obvious relationship between the time spent looking at a screen and the mental health of the individual looking at the screen. While Twenge may be right about how there is a clear correlation between the two, she may be wrong about how they are related. Just because kids that spend a lot of time interacting with a screen are more likely to be unhappy, doesn’t mean the screen is causing the unhappiness. The relationship between the two could be that kids that are unhappy use their screens as an outlet from their unhappy lives. Screens can be used as a tool to take a break from reality. Kids that are unhappy could be utilizing that tool to escape from their stressful lives, looking at or watching things that make them happy or living vicariously through someone on the screen.

I can apply active reading in my environmental class when we are found our reading responses. Before every class, we have to read an article and respond to it in a 250 word blog. Active reading will help with my responses because I will have a reference to the things I found important or questioned.

RIP young John who first made his instagram account in 2013. He was hopeful to share his pictures and to see what everyone else was doing on the app. Your 11 followers thought it was weird to post random pictures with no caption.

Literacy Narrative Digital Project

I chose iMove for my medium because I have used it before and I knew I could accomplish what I wanted to do by using it.

• I had used iMovie many times in the past so I knew how to use the software.
• I didn’t spend much time drafting because I had a good idea of what I wanted to do before I started. All I had to do was type up the script and find the pictures I wanted to use.
• This project took me over an hour to complete because even though I knew how to use the program, it was hard to match up my audio with my video.