Class Discussion

In class on Thursday we discussed many things about Reed and Tapscott. We talked about online identity, new technologies and equality, internet in our personal relationships, internet and politics, and video games.
With online identity we talked about how we represent ourselves online. On Instagram people can post pictures that look professional and they are strictly for showing the best parts of your life. Facebook has also become more and more professional as time goes on. We share less and less information about ourselves. Facebook is again showing more highlights and achievements more than personal stories. It is also used to share news articles and videos that you think are interesting. Facebook and LinkedIn are becoming very similar in a sense that companies use both to test for recruiting and seeing if they are potentially good employees by what they post. We know that online identity is important because we are constantly being watched so it is important to keep everything private.
With new technologies, the digital divide is a present in our culture. It creates problems with equality and socioeconomic classes. The book review that was on Tuesday really talked about the digital divide and how big of an issue it is. Some people can't afford internet or laptops so it is an important issue to bring up. I don't believe that the digital divide has much to do with gender as much as it did 20 years ago. More and more women are entering the workforce as engineers, accountants, and jobs that use to be a mans job. Gender is not as much as an issue as it used to be. I do believe that new technologies create the digital divide between socioeconomic classes because some people can't afford the latest and greatest technology.
The presence of the internet affects our personal relationships in a few ways. One way is that we are always connected. We can talk to our friends without having to see them. We can communicate to people across the globe and stay in touch. This is a problem though because we become attached to our phones. When I'm hanging out with friends they are always on their phones talking to other friends. That is where the presence of always being connected affects our personal relationships. But other than that I think that it is used for communicating and talking to each other.
The internet definitely helps with politics unless it is ignorant friends posting on Facebook about the election and taking their parents views and not doing their own research on the candidates. During the time of elections I always have friends that post their views about politics on Facebook and it is incredibly annoying as they don't always know what they are talking about. So I personally choose to avoid Facebook during that time. I do think that the internet is a great tool for candidates to spread their campaign. Obama was the first one to really use internet as a tool for campaigning. Instead of going town to town, candidates can say what they need to say online and the readers can feel closer with the candidate and the candidate can reach a wider audience. The internet is great to persuade an audience if they are really using it as a tool. Most of the democratic party is taking advantage of the internet as most of the younger generations are online and they understand that and they think that most of the younger generation is liberal, and they aren't wrong.
Video games was the last thing we talked about and we talked about if they make you less or more violent, understanding or learners. I personally think that if the person playing video games is violent before they started playing video games, then they will be violent during the game and after the game. If the person isn't inherently violent when they start video games they will come out without violence. The only thing that I can think of that is bad about video games is that it desensitizes people to things like war and violence. But other than that it is okay in the grand scheme of things.