And so it ends...

Well what can I say, this class, this semester, and this college career will be over for me (hopefully) in about 3 hours or so. So I guess it's fitting for me to finish up by talking about how I feel about the information age. Let me tell you, I'm scared. All this information being in the hands of corporations who seek nothing more than to make a dollar for their own bottom line, no matter the costs (and let's not kid ourselves and say that isn't how it is) is frightening. And in the end, I think that for the aware person, that's how it feels to live in this age. It's unsettling. Because the dangers that are out there these days aren't like anything we've really experienced before. You know what happens when a danger comes unlike anything you've ever seen? What about the movie Independence Day? Or for a historical example, what about the Black Plague? Now, I am by no means a crackpot saying all this information technology is going to kill 1/3 of the population of the infected area. But it could create a chasm between the haves and have-nots unlike any we've seen since those days. Or it could lead us to discoveries and prosperities beyond our wildest dreams. Who knows...not me. I didn't even get the first pick of the NFL Draft right, and that was supposed to be a sure thing.

So Dan and Thom, if you still read this, I apologize for the lack of posts. But I've enjoyed the class. It's been real.

What it really means to live in the information age

Two summers ago, my parents got me a cell phone. I was happy to get it, as I had to cancel my other one about a year before, and I missed being able to talk wherever and whenever I needed to. However, my parents were planning to use this phone in a different way, as sort of a tracking device. Knowing this, I decided to keep the phone anyway.

Why is this relevant at all? Because I believe in today's information age, we are asked to make more tradeoffs than we've ever needed to as Americans. Do we use Google and G-mail knowing they are keeping all the information we post on there, whether it be e-mail or searches, and tying them to us forever? Do we use cell phones despite the risk (however small) of conversations, perhaps sensitive, being intercepted by government agencies or information hackers?

It seems to fit the times in American government, as White House initiatives have forced Americans to choose between liberty and security. While at the moment we are working towards a good medium, there will be times, probably in the near future, when the American public will have to decide, and like most issues in America, it may serve to divide us further.

This is the first actual blog entry I have been able to post, and hopefully a lot of them will be lighter and self-righteous than this one. Unfortunately, as far as I'm concerned, this is the most prevalent topic of all for me, so I wanted to lead with this.

Start the Squashing

This is the intro post for this blog, where I will be squashing my beefs with technology since this is for my class T101: Living in the Technology Age. Should be interesting.