Warburton Blog Post #8

The future can be a concept that is absolutely mind boggling to think about.  Almost everyone at some point in their lives thinks about what the distant future will be like and how different it will be from the present day.  In the essay, The Machine Stops, EM Forester describes a future that humans live underground in cells and rely on a machine to supply them with all needs because the surface of the earth is said to be uninhabitable.  Eventually the machine ends up crashing and destroying everyone who lives underground.  The only ones to survive are the people who live on the surface of the earth and they must make sure that this never happens again.  George Orwell’s novel, 1984 offers a projection of the future where the world is divided into three nations and a mysterious figure known as “Big Brother” watches every move people make.  If people do not believe whole heartedly in Big Brother then they are arrested by a force known as the Thought Police and are mind washed.  The Thought Police monitor everything through large screens.  These two projections of the future are similar in that they both show man losing his ability to provide for himself and needing something else to help sustain existence.  Both of these stories portray a bleak view of the future and show a world where man is not as well off as he is today.  I personally believe that these accounts of the future are very pessimistic and that the real future will have many aspects of today’s life enfused with the new and latest technology that has yet to be discovered.

Warburton Creative Proposal

For the creative element of my project I plan to create a poster to share with the class.  My topic is education and I generally believe that education is an area the will see dramatically in the future.  I believe education will become a more online structured process in the future.  I also feel that it will also be more interactive and more engaging than the lecture style method of teaching used today.  For my poster I will illustrate the changes that the education system will undergo in the future and allow the class to guess and think about it before reveal my conclusions.  I will do this through the use of an interactive poster that has flaps that open to reveal what the future of education holds for the different areas of learning.   I will not reveal my answers to the class until they have thought about the topic and made meaningful guesses.

Warburton Blog post #7

Personal privacy is being able to be alone and work without the presence of anyone else.  It is being able to keep work and tasks unknown to others.  Similarly digital privacy is the ability to uses the internet and its resources without everyone knowing.  Personal privacy is defiantly more easily available because all a person needs to do is shut a door and they now have a sense of privacy.  Digital privacy on the other hand is almost nonexistent because anything that you do online could be potentially viewed by anyone.  From social network sites such as Facebook to online banking, there is a risk your information could be viewed by others.  I personally do not share too much information on Facebook.  I only share very generic thinks such as favorite books and interests but nothing that I wouldn’t want everyone to see.  I know that the best way to keep things private is to not put them online at all because once they are online they are very difficult if not impossible to completely remove.  I have my Facebook privacy settings set to show to my friends only but I know there are ways around that for people who are more technologically advanced.  My philosophy is that “they can’t find what is not there” and for the most part it is a very effective strategy.  I Googled my full name and did not get anything on the web search so I then tried an image search and found my current profile picture in a thumbnail sized version.  Overall I am not surprised that I didn’t get more results because my online presence has not been existent until late in high school.   I am just now using Facebook on a regular basis and starting to become digitally active.

in-class writing 9

The audience of this article is any person who uses Facebook social networking site.  The author directs this at users by telling them what Facebook does with the information they put on their profiles.  The author talks about how Facebook uses this information like merchandise to sell to third parties such as companies and governmental agencies.  The article cites one website that the reader has no background information as to the credibility of the site and how reliable the information.  The author doesn’t refute the other the other point of view as much as he pushes his position on the reader.  The author uses rhetorical appeals such as logos by making the reader feel as if there is something logically wrong with the current social network policies.  He also uses people’s natural fears to his advantage by in insinuating that individual privacy has been violated.  This source as it stands now, would not be an acceptable reference in a position paper because there is little background facts and statistics that prove the author’s point indefinitely.  As the reader I have no idea what the author’s credibility is and how accurate his writings are.  However the reader can assume that if the author had any honors or awards that he would make them known in the article.  The article seems current and is comprehensive despite its unknown credibility status.

In-Class Writing 8

My Top Five Movies/Books

1)      Pirates of the Caribbean.

2)      Of Mice and Men

3)      The Adventures of Huck Finn

4)      Titanic

5)      October Sky

Group’s Top Five + Bibliography

1)      Harry Potter (1^st Movie)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Dir. Chris Columbus. Perf. Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson. Warner Bros., 2001. Film.

2)      Toy Story

 Story. Dir. John Lasseter. Perf. Tim Allen, Tom Hanks, Annie Potts. Disney*Pixar, 1995. Film.

3)      Lion King

The Lion King. Dir. Rob Minkoff. Perf. Matthew Broderick, Jeremy Irons, James Earl Jones. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, 1994. Film.

4)      Pirates of the Caribbean (1^st movie)

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Two-Disc Collector's Edition). Dir. Gore Verbinski. Perf. Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom. Walt Disney Video, 2003. Film.

5)      Forrest Gump

Forrest Gump. Dir. Robert Zemeckis. Perf. Tom Hanks, Robin Wright Penn, Gary Sinise. Paramount Pictures, 1994. Film.

In-class writing 7

Glen Beck makes his case that video games are harming our society.  He states that the Grand Theft Auto video game allows players to do vulgar acts.  He then makes reference to the fact that it is not natural human instinct to kill; saying that in WW1 soldiers would not naturally shoot opposing forces.

He says that the video games of today do the same thing as combat simulators of the early twentieth century.  He makes it known that he is staunchly against the juvenile use of such games.

I see Glen Beck’s point of view when he is talking about the violence of new video games.  Some video games go over the top with the amount of inappropriate and violent acts.  They do not positively benefit children’s development.  However I believe that the way Beck delivers his information seems a bit extreme although his intentions are good.

In-class writing 6

I personally know very little about digital music and music piracy.  I have never downloaded music that was not from iTunes or a CD disk.  I know that iTunes can be very costly if it is used to purchase many songs but I don’t download many songs so it doesn’t bother me.  People have many different on the topic of music piracy.  Some believe that music is a form of art and that it should be free to the public while others believe that it is a profit making entity.  I read The Age of Music Piracy is Officially Over article by Paul Boutin.  In this article Boutin talks about how he believes that the age of digital piracy is over because the record industry is beginning to crack down harder on the illegally downloaded music.