Stay Connected

For this project I will be focusing on the connections that the web provides us with. These days people feel the need to stay as connected as possible to everyone and everything. Social sharing sites like facebook, twitter, and myspace lets us stay connected with our friends, family, and co-workers. We also stay connected through emails or skype to talk with family or friends who may live in another country. We also feel the need to stay connected to our society with the news, music, celebrity gossip, and so on. Without the web, how would we stay connected? Of course we have phones and sure, we could write a letter, but who does that anymore? The web is rapidly growing and we are becoming more dependent on it and I think it's interesting how dependent we have become and how adaptive we are to this new-found web-based society. I plan to look at an assortment of sites which we live by and how they help us stay and feel connected to the world. In my trailor I plan to show the web in many of its forms (i.e. computer, cell phone, etc.) and the various things we use it for (i.e. directions, social networking, searching, etc.).

Brainstorming for a Project

I don't know what would be something interesting to do this project on, involving multimedia writers/writing and the web. Maybe how social media networks are not only connecting individuals, but also groups (i.e. businesses, organizations etc.). Or maybe something to do with music and how it's distributed across the web with different sites like playlist or pandora--even illegal music downloading. Maybe how the web lets us stay connected to everyone and anyone, even if they live 3, 000 miles away.

Tenner and Lethem

These two authors speak about how technology is constantly changing and evolving over time. In Tenner’s “Rise of the Plagiosphere,” he talks about how there is new technology that can catch plagiarism in someone’s paper. For example, a teacher can insert a student’s paper electronically and the computer/web will find phrases, words, or sentences that match the student’s phrases, words, and sentences. While this may be sound like a great idea, at the same time it may create a sense of “writer’s block” as Tenner writes.

This correlates with the class research project in that the web is evolving so fast that it may one day become impossible to not plagiarize, in one way or another, even if it is not done on purpose. Could the web slowly become our enemy instead of our friend?

In Lethem’s “The Ecstasy of Influence,” he talks about how the web is influencing us every day. From the time it was created up until this day, we are influenced by the web and what we come across on it. We look to it for quotes, books, or when we want to research a specific person. Dylan is influenced by writers such as Shakespeare and Fitzgerald. We are also influenced by the internet and the writers on it—this blog is a perfect example. Correlating this idea to the class project, how much does the web really influence us in our every day lives?

Using the Web

Why do you use (or not use) the web? What's your relation to the web-love it, hate it, fear it, rule it...?

I use the web to stay connected--with family, friends, work. I use the web for research. When I need an answer to a question I have, the first place I look is the web. It has just about everything. We can do almost anything on it--shop, virtually travel or test drive a car, stay connected with our friends and family, find out news, watch videos, share photos, etc.

My relationship with the web is love-hate. Sometimes I love it because I find everything I need in a short amount of time and sometimes I hate it because it doesn't work when I need it to or I can't find what I'm looking for. In good times and in bad, I will forever use the web.