I had graduated from high school in
1980 and had signed up for college the following year. I did not have the internet or Google to help
me with assignments. I used whatever
reference books I could find at the library.
It wasn’t until after Corey returned home from his mission that we
purchased our first computer and added AOL dial-up. It wasn’t much longer before the Google
search engine was introduced.
I marveled at how quickly Corey
could find references without ever having to leave the room. Before that he had been a whiz at searching
the card catalogues and familiarizing himself with the library as though it were
his profession. Google seemed to make
life so much easier in some ways.
I had not familiarized myself with
the search engines or internet as quickly as he had. I’m still not nearly as advanced or well
rounded as he, but I have learned a lot more about how to navigate than I had
just ten years ago.
I went back to college and got my
degree in accounting. My courses were
online and I was required to provide references for not only my assignments,
but discussions as well. I spent more time on the internet than ever
before. I would normally turn to Google or
YouTube to assist with my research. I
did not feel manipulated so much as annoyed with advertisements and pop-ups and
YouTube’s suggestions of 60-minute videos on how to start my own business. Okay, maybe they weren’t 60 minutes. It just felt like they were as the
demonstrators would prattle on and on before I had the option of clicking “skip.”
The Facebook novelty wore off about
two months after I opened my account.
There was more than one time I thought about deactivating my account and
had even attempted to do so at one time, but could not figure it out. I remained on Facebook mostly to keep in touch
with family members living in a different state than I. Both Corey and my youngest son deactivated
their accounts. My sister is rarely on
and my middle son is never on.
In the beginning of the
pandemic there seemed to be more posts created than what gets posted now. That is a good thing that others have gotten
on with their lives by abandoning Facebook or rely on values that cause them to
realize that being on Facebook is not good for them. There are pros and cons to the technology
that we use. One pro that I really love
about Facebook is creating groups which allow sharing information with several
people at once (such as church activities or family events—depending on the
group).
Netflix’s Social Dilemma
provides a huge amount of cons (see trailer here). Those with ethics relate information about
how things are. They went into more
detail than what I had already observed.
Good and bad, but most of it seemed to focus on the market manipulation
and provided ways that we as users might protect ourselves. MIGHT.
Artificial Intelligence doesn’t
know the truth. Posts get shared and
reshared and sources aren’t being checked.
Trump is itching for another civil war (which has already taken place on
social media) pitting the red states against the blue. What the hell? We are NOT in a marriage contract. We DON’T have to vote for a certain
party. We are allowed to vote for (or
against) the issues at hand. We even
have the option of voting for a third party as I had four years ago. The mascots of each party are the elephant
(Republican) and the donkey (Democrat) as that is how someone had referred to
Andrew Jackson (according to this article) and Jackson ran with it. I think it’s now more appropriate to use for
the Republicans as Donald Trump is the biggest jackass the nation has ever had
in office. Still don’t know who is
responsible for having elected him in the first place. He’s a monster who is interested only in
himself—and actually so are many of his followers.
