The Power Of OFF

As a note, I would like to preface this blog entry that this is my final entry for my ITEC-333 course at American University. Since having been a member of the class, I have learned much, but rather than make an "academic" entry, I would am going to reflect.

This semester, I have done a great deal of reflecting. Much of that has been caused by the onslaught of my schedule. Not thinking, I decided to take 17 credits (the full course load at AU before having to pay extra for extra credits) in taking all the classes that I needed, and a 12 week internship (first 10 hours per week are for my internship, and the next 15 are for pay). I literally have little time and when I can find time to whatever, I am exhausted. I cannot function. The result? I followed many people of my sad generation and would buy an energy drink or coffee. Thus, I started my caffeine addiction. If colleges or professionals wanted to make buckets of money, they would offer caffeine rehab...sad as that sounds it is true because I can think of not one college student that "dopes up" on caffeine. My generation can be termed the ADD Generation because of our constant need to be plugged in to the Internet/other media vehicles and the expectance of instant gratification (usually via communication). If a text message, picture message, instant message, email, etc. does not come back within seconds, the sender usually gets alerted. But, they only get worried if their other 5 instant messages are unanswered, and they cannot load the current YouTube video they are trying to watch while playing video games, and...writing that paper. That's pathetic.

Now as I say how sad that is, I too do the same. If it were not for my roommate who was recording a project via audio, I would be blasting music, talking on the instant messaging function of Skype, AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, and MSN Messenger contemporaneously. That's not to mention writing this blog entry and checking emails, while sipping on a Diet Red Bull or likely substitute. Did I mention that I am currently receiving text messages 25 minutes before events onto my phone from my Google Calendar? This all bears the following question:

WHEN DOES IT SHUT OFF?!?!

Forget fancy technology, for a minute, let's look at another aspect of life: advertisements. How ironic is it that I am a marketing minor? We look around us and I think the number that I heard was that we see 8000 advertisements everyday (some steep number). We tune most of them out. How much more clutter can we put in our life?

Forget boyfriends/girlfriends/it-friends/spouses/wives/husbands/etc., when do we have time for ANYTHING? EVERYTHING seems to suffer as a result. We pay bills. I should know this best because that is one of the things that I do in my apartment for my roommates besides clean up their messes (not fun).

So liberal folks try to make a "no technology week" and the result is that kids say "we cannot survive!" PATHETIC!

Now let's look at the future: dismal. More distractions. More ways to take time. More of a chance for caffeine sales to sky rocket. Seriously, is this what we wanted? Social networking is nice, but at the expense of so many other things?

Great! Now I sound like some liberal, no shoe-wearing, pot smoking, dirty hippy (it is here that I would like to endorse the fact that I do NOT approve of the usage of drugs, not wearing shoes, being dirty, and most importantly, being a hippy). Me being the aforementioned could not be further from the truth. But I do believe that if someone does not stop soon, we could be in for disaster.

My trip to Israel in two weeks might be an amazing time, not because of the potential that it holds, but because I will be truly disconnected. I overbooked myself 100% this semester, which was my fault, but overbooking is a common thing to do because we are so used to being overwhelmed.

This is me signing off, to do 20 million other things all at the same time. As much as I just want to crawl under a rock and party like it is 1999 [BCE], I know that I will just have to suck it up and my Diet Red Bull...

St. Augustine's Two Cities [Revised, 2nd Ed.]

If The Digital Emperor Has No Clothes, maybe it is time that we find them for him (or being forced to be politically correct, "her"). Andrew Keen, Stephen Colbert, and myself are all "elitist" because we worry about UGC. As stated nicely by Keen,

"I’ll always trust the expertise of a Harvard professor over an anonymous blogger or a high school Wikipedia editor. And if that makes me a believer in an elitist meritocracy, then so be it."

I thought to myself a minute about that quote, and realized the implications: we are breeding a dumb generation. The reason for this is simple: knowledge is passed from one generation to the next (look at history, the winner's always [re]write the books). Living in the ADD Generation , we want our answers NOW, not in 10 minutes. We want to find them as quickly as possible (INTERNET). Wikipedia, though "outlawed" by many academic institutions, is becoming the standard for fast, useful information (that has potential to be inaccurate) [as a side note, I find it funny that this is being written right next to the "Wikipedia Widget" I have on my sidebar on my blog, and have purposefully titled -- as a joke -- "The ACADEMIC Search"]. We are heading to a dangerous place...

So where else are we headed? We are headed, like St. Augustine of Hippo wrote about, Two Cities (though not of Man nor God):

The Over-Idealistic City:
According to websites and blogs such as Changemakers and Fatdoor's Blog, social networking and capitol should be that warm fuzzy feeling that one gets when they realize that their Blackberry just connected to a place to donate money to a homeless organization (because they saw 7 people on a block looking for change). Then, I'll get a text message that Edna, age 85, who doesn't have enough money to provide for her medications, needs help moving out. So I will high tail it over there to help her out once I leave the soup kitchen, where I was working. Then, I can go to Rethos.com and use social networking to find non-profit organizations. Ah, the power of the liberals in us all! Let's all go make a difference!

The REAL City:
Are you serious? Let's be honest, this is America: we only care about our self-serving interests and needs and do not understand the economic ramifications of spending an extra 50¢ on guacamole at Chipotle instead of helping a homeless person to get a meal, which could save his/her life, and in turn who could possibly save another's life (and thus pay it forward mentality). What? Edna needs help moving out? Edna is not in my family and just had a hip and knee replacement? I'm not helping her out, but I SURE will help out Cristina, the 26-year old hot Mexican girl who is trying to move in and has a sexy accent. I'll even make her food for her moving in...and what? she doesn't have a boyfriend (and I'm single)? Then I am DEFINITELY helping her move in. Bye Edna...

Now that I'm done reflecting society while sounding like a self-loathing a-hole, it really is truly sad. Change is inevitble, and hopefully it is to a place where education, helping out one's neighbor (regardless of looks, etc.), helping out the poor (but the whole "you can feed a man for a day, but if you teach him how to fish he'll have food for the rest of his life...and sit in a boat and drink beer" philosophy). It might very well be that the Internet, UGC and social networking, as attractive as it all sounds, will be our very destruction. I'm interested to see how others feel...