Feed

I found the book Feed by M.T. Anderson to be pretty interesting. At first, I wasn't sure what to think of the book and I was a little confused by some of the language, but I actually ended up enjoying most of it. I definitely would not want to live the way they do. It's too much to be constantly bombarded by things inside your head and never having to really think for yourself. Reading the book made me think a lot about the future. Anderson shows a very interesting perspective on what it could be like. At what point does technology stop? Hopefully the future won't be as extreme. When our society starts becoming too technologically advanced I hope there will be people like Violet, who resist the "feed."

The Dumbest Generation

Although I agreed with some points made by Dr. Mark Bauerlein, I feel that our generation is not really as dumb as he makes it out to be. Yes, it is true that we could be doing something more educational than using social networking sites, but it doesn't mean that that we never do educational things. With all of the technology and resources available to us, I feel that we are actually more intelligent than some people in the past. However, it is true that we could take better advantage of everything we have. In our group we discussed the generations below us and what it will be like for them. We personally don't feel like the dumbest generation, but I can definitely see kids in the future being even more dumbed down than Bauerlein feels we are.

The video clip we watched on Tuesday focused on body image and how ads and the media leads us to have an unrealistic idea of what we should look like. I completely agree that shoving images of the few perfect people in the world in our faces lowers our self-esteem and makes us worry entirely too much about what we look like. If it wasn't for the media, people in America would not put so much focus on body image. After watching this I started taking a closer look at the ads I see. In most of them, women are portrayed as objects. We can't change the things we see, but we can realize that the models we see are not reality and there is no need to try to look like them. The more women respect themselves and come to peace with the way they look, the more men will respect them and stop treating them as sexual objects, the way ads and the media do. In the clips we watched Thursday Hooks made some good points about racial stereotypes and white supremicy. I personally am not racist, nor feel above anyone of color, so I didn't really feel as though I got much out of the clips. However, I do think it's important to be aware of these issues in our society.