Brave, New World of Digital Intimacy

The main argument that Thompson is making in this article is that social media has made a large change in the way people stay connected these days. He explains the pros and cons of this big change. Zuckerburg decided to create this "News Feed" as a way to stay connected with your friends and see all your friends updates in one spot. All your friends posts and pictures would all come up on one page. You could just keep scrolling and stream through everyone's information.This makes it really easy to become lazy and not go looking through your friends page to check up on them. Our attention spans are shrinking because everything that people used to have to do themselves is now able to do automatically through a little technology. The "News Feed" would probably be a bad thing because it makes us lazier, not wanting to dig deeper. Ambient awareness is like knowing all these things about someone through all the small details and posts but you may not know them. Yes, this is something that I have experienced before.The paradox of ambient awareness is seeing all the little posts someone posts and being able to see their "story" through all these short posts. At first, these posts seem insignificant, but when you look at the posts all together, it starts to create a story and make sense. An example would be "I'm feeling sick today."The article defines literacy as using the social media that has had such a big outburst in today's generation and use it to keep in touch with people.

"Gin, Television, and Coginitive Surplus"

If people actually are using their free-time to do something productive rather than just sitting on the couch watching television, then cognitive surplus occurs. Cognitive surplus is a good thing because people are not just sitting around letting their skills go to waste. He is saying it is always better to do something than nothing.This article says that literacy is beyond just reading and writing. They are saying that people still need to dig deeper and get deeper meaning behind things. Instead of just seeing what is on the surface, one must interpret and analyze what is being said to fully grasp what the writer is trying to say.Cognitive surplus is making use of your free time to do something productive. It is gaining something when doing something in your free-time.This article matters because it is informing the public that it is always better to do something productive in your free time, rather than doing something that is not productive.

"Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

1- This article is speaking about how the way people read has changed so much over the years. Years ago, it took a lot of researching and digging to find out information. Nowadays, everything is accessible with just a few minutes on the internet. The article speaks about how people have changed the way they think because of the way that they are intaking information. Now that people don't have to go out and research the facts about things, it makes it easier to just skim the surface and read what is right in front of you, rather than reading in-depth.

2- It has made it harder for him to sit down and read things that have a lot of paragraphs or pages of reading. It has made it easier to just graze over information rather than being eager to read and gather information about something.

3- He defines literacy as the way you take in information. Whether one lightly reads over something, or really reads in-depth what the author is trying to say.

4- They are both very similar.

5- It has made it easier to just pull up the internet and ask a question into google. It has made it harder for people to read longer paragraphs and actual books.

6-Studies show that most of the time people just click on different sites and read no more than a couple paragraphs to get the information that they are looking for. Another thing that backs up his claim is the story of Friedrich Nietzcshe and the typewriter. The last evidence is all the quotes that he includes.

7-Yes because I do the skimming too. I also experience the not reading as much part. I used to be a big reader and now that I have gotten older and used more technology, I do not enjoy reading as I once used to.

8-It matters because now a days people do not get as much out of reading as they once did. People do not take in as much as they once did and really get a chance to understand the reading if they do not take the time to go over it.

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