Crayola vs. iPhone Continued..

Just a note in regards to the Crayola vs. iPhone blog from earlier. Again while I was at work, these kids came in and instead of them paying with their parents iPhones, they now each have their own iPad. I think my jaw actually dropped; I can't imagine having a toy that cost that much when I was 9 or 10. And what made it even more annoying was that they were colouring and drawing on them, which I really think you can do on paper with a crayon just as well and for a lot less money.

SIM Card issues and Archiving

Okay, so as much as I love the idea of archiving, it does have one downside. What happens when you want something totally gone? I am not even talking about an embarrassing moment, or photo; what happens when you want a person completely out of your life?

After I had a very, very messy break up with my ex, I proceeded to do the right thing and delete every picture, email and text message I had that had anything to do with him. I have been having some trouble with my phone, and one of the biggest problems I have had is that my ex’s number is saved on my SIM card. I can’t seem to get rid of it now though, and with my new phone (borrowed so not really new, just new to me) I have to factory re-set it almost once a day. When I do this I have to upload my contact list again, and the third one down every time is my ex. It is really just annoying and frustrating to have to deal with deleting something over and over again. And it does make me worry about a possible pocket dial; that would be kind of awkward.

I know that there is a positive side to this kind of archiving, but it seems to be going to new extremes. For example the new facebook chat now merges your messages with your chat, so with one of my oldest friends I have messages that go back as far as April of 2008 suddenly linked with a conversation I am trying to have now. It slows my computer down a ton and I really don’t need to look back at that kind f thing. I feel like my say in the matter has been taken away without me having any imput as to what is important information and what isn’t.I mean, why is it that you can lose a massively important essay or project with the wrong click of a button, but it is like pulling teeth to really intentionally delete something? My computer shouldn’t get to decide what information stays and what gets deleted. 

Crayola vs. iPhone

I have noticed at my work recently that more and more children are inclined to use electronics. At first I started to notice that more and more children were asking o help their parents use the Debit/ Credit machine. They are very fast with the machine and already understand how they work. While a lot of older customers struggle with what buttons to push, most children are way ahead of their parents before they instruct them on the next step. It is like going through a self check-out at a store; most of the people who are above the age of 45 struggle with them and take much longer than a person in the twenties.

Then a more obvious thing caught my attention. The colouring books we provide for children at the restaurant sit unused on the table while the kids play with their parent’s iPhone. That happened the other day at work and the kid was screaming and carrying on until his parents let him watch his favourite movie on their phone. I suppose this is as good a technique to stop a fit as any other, but it is just a bit fascinating to watch this child play games and watch TV whenever he wants, wherever he wants.

This brings to light some very interesting questions regarding a possible disconnect between Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants and how entertainment works for the two groups. The digital Immigrants used to play with colouring books and essentially established their own entertainment. In the world of a digital Native, the entertainment is instantaneous and is provided for them with every demand. I think that technology has made such progressive leaps so quickly that we are not sure how to fully utilize it as of yet. Have we solved the problem of children being impatient while waiting for food at a restaurant or have we created a problem because they just don’t learn patience?

My Phone Knows Something I Don't...

Yesterday I had a very weird thing happen. Since I don’t have access to the internet on the weekend I rely primarily on my cell phone to look at my emails and Facebook. Facebook isn’t something I have totally figured out on my phone, mostly because although it is a smart phone, it is not all that user friendly.

The phone that I have is the Nokia N95, and although it was advertised as a pretty good smart phone, I have found that it really doesn’t compete. Despite having some interesting things like video calling and a 5megapixel camera, there wasn’t a whole lot else to think about. Well that and the fact that it still functions using a standard keyboard, which meant that I didn’t have to adjust and I can now text without looking at my phone. I am quite proud of that.

So now that we are all familiar with the Nokia N95, I will fill you in on the events of my Sunday night adventure. The Nokia N95 doesn’t really have Apps so I just use a bookmarking function on my phone to see Facebook. When I clicked on the Facebook home tab, it took me to some other person’s Facebook, It took me a few seconds to figure out that that was even what was going on I was so surprised. I had no idea who the person e was, and then I figure it out because when I hit the profile button, I was visiting some girl named Shu’s profile. Still not totally convinced that my phone had somehow inadvertently and without any knowledge on my part as to how, hacked some other profile I changed this poor girls status! I felt that she should know that this happened so I posted through her own profile “this is not my profile, but my phone has somehow hacked into it…sorry!”

This very surprising event really got me thinking though, because I have no clue how my technology works, how can I trust that it will work correctly? Just something interesting that I thought I would share.

Schooling the School

While I was reading the Tapscott article, his idea that the school system may be the problem really jumped out at me. This is something that I hadn’t really thought about before now, and suddenly it seems so strange that the educational techniques have not really changed in format. When you stop and look at how much the world has changed since say WWII, it is strange to think that the lecture and school structure have not changed along with everything else.

I have been thinking for some time how useless University is for example, and how so many people who graduate with degrees from Universities end up in careers that have nothing to do with what they majored in. This is just evidence that while we are driven to complete something, we have little opportunity to learn and use the knowledge. I think that this would be an interesting avenue for Tapscott to have divulged into. For example, I love the theatre, and I love film and stories in general, be it news, conversation or books, but there are limits to what I have to study, and what classes I can take. When Tapscott pointed out that this new generation may not be benefitting from this structured educational system I think he really had a good point. If the evidence is showing that we do not function the same way, why should we be expected to conform? I think that it would benefit everyone a lot more if we were allowed to spend our time on issues that we cared about, and then we could learn what we want to, and become experts on the subjects of our choosing. I know so many people who are really good at or know a lot about obscure issues, and now that we have so much access to information and apparently an ability to educate ourselves, we should explore that rout some more.

I remember when I was just going into high school I was having trouble sleeping, so I went to my doctor. She told me that this is a very common issue for teenagers as their sleeping patterns shift, and they can’t get to sleep until late and therefore they wake up later. She then went on to tell me that this was becoming a hot topic within some school boards because many people felt that it would be more beneficial to start school later in the day so that students would be getting proper sleep. It still seems to be a really bizarre concept that even though we seem to be aware of an issue, and how to solve it, we still don’t. This is possibly the trend with the Net Geners, and as Tapscott suggested, if the educational system was a business that lost 1/3 of their customers, it would need a major overhaul to survive.

What do we want seen?

I thought it would be interesting to look more closely at how I view my privacy, especially in light of the internet. In the article by Sherry Turkle, this lack of a sense of privacy is very clearly contrasted with the mail. This is interesting because I think that this example doesn’t really have the desired effect because most of the people who are unconcerned with the lack of privacy have probably never really received personal mail.

What I found to be most interesting is the thought of vulnerability that is associated with a lack of privacy; it is reminiscent of an intrusion and as a violation. I think this is what makes it less of an intrusion t be monitored over the internet, because everyone voluntarily puts their information on the internet. You are not one of a hundred people whose information is stolen; you are assimilated into a mass of other people who have done the same thing. I think that is why we are so willing; it is a type of social peer pressure to not care about what personal information is on the internet.

Having said this, I think that we now have a new idea of what is personal and what is private. Your address and your telephone number are not personal; they are almost public property now. What seems to make the list for something that is personal is your thoughts. Take Facebook for example; Facebook is an outlet for an individual to express their thoughts, and while it may not be totally “private” the information we upload there is only visible to those we want to see it.  Or, we are hyper aware of who could see it. I think this is an interesting intersection to look at because while we are free to say whatever we want, there is definitely an element of self censorship at work here. This is probably in part because we are open to criticism publicly on facebook, and so we are guarded. No one is going to use your purchases of candy or shampoo at Wal-Mart against you, but they could use your comment about the girl next to you in class against you.

I think that this brings to light a very interesting question; does the value we put on our external reputation and image more important than our internal one? Perhaps this is the whole point of facebook and such social networking systems. They are designed to cater to our desires, and it seems that instead of being what we want to be, we simply project what we want to be. Your social standing is now more in your control because you control what people see and what they don’t. I think there is a lot we could divulge if we held technology up to ourselves as a mirror and really got to the bottom of what we want, and what it is giving us.