web and technology

I'm in UR Internetz, Revolutionizin' UR Genres

 

“How many telegrams did you send when you had to dictate them over the phone to a  

   Western Union operator? How many emails do you send now that you can clatter them      

Recently, a new genre has been receiving the attention of internet users: the weblog. Using blogs, we can filter out the facts of our offline world and develop a new online external identity. This paper will discuss the nature, use-value, and appeal of this online external identity, discuss the importance of the consistency of the external self-both online and offline, review the relevance of the unverified information in blogs, and talk about how anonymity affects the way we perceive our own identity. Additionally, I hope to shed some light on the blog as an emerging genre and talk about what the blog's worldwide success reveals about human nature and psychology (and vice versa).

 

The Blog

I am a self-proclaimed convert. Not only did I come into college with a plan to avoid technology, but I also came supplied with an over active fear of computers and all the things that go along with them. In the eyes of academia I was the perfect student to continue the tradition of clinging to my ignorance of all things new, while memorizing dead languages I would probably never use once I received my diaploma. I lacked a facebook account and had a talent for avoiding communication through email, preferring instead to correspond with my high school friends the old-fashioned way, using paper and ink. This semester, two of my classes somehow found a way to change everything.

If you're up all night before a big exam, or if you sleep all day before getting up to go to a big event, can your doctor tell? Sometimes the brain makes mistakes, be it because of it sleep deprivation, lack of interest, or bad concentration. Sometimes we space out, daydream, fall into a zone other than the hard-at-work zone. These space-outs cause visible effects -- just look at the papers we forgot to file, the typo we could have avoided, the kid we should've picked up after school. Aside from the visible, though, how else can we tell when the brain is doing something wrong or something outside of the ordinary?