Why Twitter Will Endure (Study and Response)

Upon Reading "Why Twitter Will Endure," by David Carr I have become very torn over this whole Twitter business. I have had a Twitter for a few months and I never use it. I see no point in it as a medium, I don't see the fun in it, or anything. I read David Carr's article and unfortunately agreed with a few of the points he makes about Twitter as a way of expressing your thoughts, and ideas with a large populous. I also agree with Carr when he says "All those riches do not come at zero cost: If you think e-mail and surfing can make time disappear, wait until you get ahold of Twitter, or more likely, it gets ahold of you. There is always something more interesting on Twitter than whatever you happen to be working on." I can definitely relate to this statement, but not because of Twitter, more because of Facebook. Besides that statement I have cast Twitter aside because in the end, or at least in my opinion it is absolutely pointless. Maybe I'm just not understanding the full use of this website, or maybe I'm just happy with my Facebook and my status updates on that.

Through my two days of following and tweeting on Twitter I feel as if I have learned nothing about it. I still feel that it is useless, and I cannot get in to using Twitter as a source for communication. The first day of being back on Twitter I searched random topics such as movies coming out, and bands that I like, just to see what people were saying. I decided to follow two of these bands, and I also decided to follow David Carr. I would have followed a classmate too but I don't know anybody from our class, or how to find them on Twitter. With that aside nothing really interesting happened while I was using Twitter. I didn't really have much interaction with other tweeters either, and that gave me more of a reason to not enjoy Twitter at all, at least on Facebook people talk to me when I comment them, or "like" their status and what not. I disagree with what Carr titled his piece, I do not think that Twitter will, or should endure. I think that Twitter definitely does fit in with Winston's ideas about new technology and society because for many people it is a way for them to interact with society as a whole. Twitter allows anyone, from anywhere to state their ideas and then tweet with other people who have similar ideas. The concept of Twitter is very innovative but at the same time it is still my least favorite social networking website as of right now.

Response to The Creation of the Media....

'The Creation of the Media': The American Information Revolution is an article by James Fallows on a book written by Paul Starr entitled "The Creation of the Media." Fallows asks questions such as "How can newspapers support increasingly expensive international coverage, when most keep losing readers? How can a television station afford not to trumpet disasters and scandals on its local news, when competitors that do get higher ratings? Does concentration of ownership really matter? Is there any longer such a thing as a broad market for the news?" He then critiques Starr's book by saying that it doesn't answer these questions, but it does provide historical information that is relevant to today's societal issues. Fallows says that the heart of Starr's argument is that Americans do not understand "what is unusual about their communications media and why?" Fallows also says "What Starr argues -- and, in my view, powerfully demonstrates -- is that every branch of the communications system reflects deliberate political choices made under particular historic circumstances."
I found this article to be kind of confusing at first but also very interesting because it addresses media issues that we face in America, and our understanding of the media as a whole. The entire article is pretty much Fallows discussing "The Creation of the Media" by Paul Starr, and he gives us a lot of information out of Paul Starr's book, while inputting his own information as well. The article discusses the telegraph and telephone and how those technologies impacted America, and the world. I feel that a lot of the article was almost common sense, or just stating facts about how the media has impacted society. I don't really understand why Fallows felt the need to write an article about this book when the book covers all of this information. One thing that really intrigued me about this article is the promise that another volume of this book would be released with new media. I was wondering if it ever was released and to what year this volume goes up until being that the last one ended in 1941. I think that it would be interesting to see what Paul Starr has to say about the media of today, and societies technology obsession.

Responses to Readings and Questions

1. The Geekapedia article gave me a lot of information and also some vocabulary that will help me with future discussions in this class. My vocabulary now has two new words, Sustaining Innovations and Disruptive Innovations, sustaining innovations are inventions that help to sustain the technological flow, such as the example in the reading which was a new version of Microsoft Word. Disruptive Innovations are little inventions that serve no real purpose such as text messaging replacing e-mails. I disagree with this because I think that text messaging is very useful for a number of reasons, but that is besides the point. The Geekapedia article also said that the iPhone is disruptive technology, and I think the answer to this is based on age, and generation. The iPhone is extremely creative, innovative, and useful. It has thousands of apps, and almost anything you could need is right there with a touch of your fingers. Now, that is from a teenage perspective, as with most of the youth of America who have iPhones. From the perspective of technological haters I would say that the iPhone is useless. The following is something my mother would say about the iPhone, "What is the point of spending all of that money on a phone? So what if it has the internet that is why I bought a computer!" I am disagreeing with the statement that the iPhone is disruptive technology 100%, the only time that the iPhone is disruptive is when it rings.

2. Winston would claim that the iPhone is "evolutionary, not revolutionary," and I could also agree with this statement. After reading the wired article about sustaining innovations and disruptive innovations, and in order to support Winston's point of view I would say that the iPhone is a sustaining innovation. It is a sustaining innovation because it is the upgraded version of the iPod, the upgraded version of a cell phone, and a mini-computer with WiFi all in one. It is a sustaining innovation because it will continue to get new apps, and upgrade to bigger and better things. As long as Apple keeps coming out with newer and newer iPhone ideas then the iPhone will only continue to sustain itself and grow. This relates back to Winston, the iPhone has evolved greatly since the year it was first released, it is an ever evolving machine with an ever evolving company behind it to back it up. I'm sure that people have said that the iPhone is a revolutionary form of technology, but what has it really changed that other phones don't have. If the iPhone was the only phone that had internet and apps then it would be revolutionary. Being that there are something like fifty other phones on the market right now that are just like the iPhone it is evolutionary not revolutionary.

3. I think that Winston would say that the iPad is innovative but not revolutionary because everything comes from something. The iPad is just like the iPod, iPhone, Kindle and Macbook all in one neat little flat screened square. It is nothing new, it is just a spin-off of other products. Yes it is all in one now, but if I already have a laptop, Blackberry, and iPod why do I need to get an iPad. I also see the iPad, yet again, as sustaining technology because it is an upgrade, or a better version of something else. I would be completely lost with technology, call it disruptive or not, I think that all technology is sustaining with each product that is a spin-off of another.

Frontline Response

Today in my into to media class we watched a Frontline report by Douglas Ruskoff  called Digital_Nation. The whole film was about how technology is effecting us  as a society and what we could possibly do to stop or change this. As a typical  American teenager I can say that I too am addicted to technology. I have a  Blackberry, I have a Facebook, and I love it. I think that it allows me to be  more socially intergrated as opposed to socially isolated like the film  suggested. I agree that I am more than capable of multitasking as well. If I am  sitting in class taking notes, that keeps my attention but then after a while I  become bored. If someone is texting me, and I'm taking notes, now I'm busy and  multitasking, therefore I am not bored. Video games definitely are addicting, I  agree with that. I loved the segment on World of Warcraft because I used to  play, and still play occasional. I am a level 22, undead warrior. I play in a  realm called Skullcrusher. Unfortunately I am still considered a noob, or a  newbie because being level 22 is nothing compared to my friends who are level  80. The game is very addicting, but when I played I used another program, called  Ventrillo, to communicate with my friends on the game. I felt like I was  actually in this world, running, jumping, and fighting! It was fun and exciting  too. There are kids I know that play World of Warcraft anywhere from 7-15 hours  a day. I was lucky enough that my mom wouldn't let me play video games for more  than 2 hours and now I don't play video games at all compared to what I used to  play. Now I feed my technogical needs with my blackberry, and facebook. I really  don't even go on facebook that much either though. I check it when I'm home, but  I'm never really home so its down to my blackberry (and my ipod) that really  controls me. But I couldn't imagine my life without it. The Second Life program  that the film discussed made me annoyed. I don't like that program, the fun in  video games is that it is an alternate reality. Playing a video game that mimics  real life is not as fun. It reminds me of the Sims, which is another computer  game that I hate. I like technology, I like that it is always changing and  growing, and I like that it impacts my life and gives us something to talk  about. I also like that all this technological banter on whether technology is  good or bad is influencing my generation, because in the future I can see how  much things have changed technologically through the next few decades. It has  already changed so much in the two decades that I have been on this earth.

technologically deprived

I didn't realize that the requirements for this writing assignment was to blog every day about my technologically deprived weekend. So I am going to write an overall about how my weekend went. I'd like to first start with a little bit about me, because I feel that it will make reading my blogs easier to understand. I'm going to school to be an English teacher, which means I do a lot of reading, and writing. Besides that I listen to a lot of music. I don't really watch that much televison, and I only really use my computer to listen to music, do homework, or go on Facebook. I knew that I couldn't give up Facebook for this assignment simply because I have a blackberry and the blackberry is connecting to a Facebook app. Meaning I get my notifications on my phone, so it would be annoying to disable the application. I decided to go with the next most crucial item to my existence and that was to spend this weekend without using my iPod. Friday was my first day without my iPod, which I locked in a safe box in my room as to resist temptation. Friday went by quickly, I worked in the morning so I didn't feel its absence. I did notice that my car ride to work was kind of boring without it, but it was fine. After work I went home and didn't even touch my computer because I knew I would be tempted to listen to my iTunes, which defeats the purpose of an iPod free weekend. So instead I went out to dinner with my boyfriend and then out with my friends. On Saturday I was home all morning until about 3:30. This was a trying time because I spent the morning cleaning, and organizing my bedroom, without my music. It wasn't so bad because all the silence gave me time to think, but around 2:00 I started to get antsy. I left my house at about 3:30, drove to my boyfriends, and from there we went to his bands concert. Going to see his band really helped my insanity out, I got to hear some awesome bands (his included) and it helped me relax without my iPod. The only thing that sucked about it was the drive to and home from the venue, because it was a very quiet drive. I got home from the show and went straight to sleep. On Sunday I had to work from noon until 11:30 P.M, which meant I had no time to listen to my iPod, and no time to spend with my boyfriend on Valentines Day. Now it is Monday morning, the final day, and the hardest day. It is the hardest day because I am going to be home all morning and afternoon until I go to work at 6 P.M. I still have not touched my iPod, iTunes, and radio. I also have barely touched my computer. Writing this blog is the second time I've touched my computer all weekend. I like this "experiment" a lot because it shows how reliable we are on technology. I spent the whole weekend music-less and it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I can only imagine how hard it would be to not have my blackberry all weekend, which I would have given up if my parents would have been okay with it. My mom didn't like the thought that she wouldn't be able to get in touch with me all weekend, so I had to choose my iPod, along with making my computer use very limited as well. I will be very happy to blast my iPod on the way to class tomorrow morning.

Without my iPod here's how I replaced my media deprivation:

My boyfriends band: http://www.myspace.com/portraythebetrayer516

Working: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Levittown/TGIFridays-Levittown/323605172027?ref=ts

and cleaning.

I do NOT want to go another weekend without my iPod EVER again.

Helllllooo!

So this is my blog. I'm Kaitlin, my major is adolescent education with a concentration in English. I love music, and I listen to enough metal to make your ears bleed. I like other music too, but metal is my love. I used to have an xanga account and write about all of the silly drama that happened in my daily life, but that was when I was 14. My opinions have changed a lot since then, and maybe this blog will be a little different than the last. But for starters here's a funny little video about blogging. I'm sure you've seen it already. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQJ2SegGWyc