Pencils.

The gate way to literacy is what people use to help them write and comprehend the things they read and write. Writing is a technology because its how we share our knowledge and ideas with others, and past it on to the next generation. Yes, a pencil is a piece of technology because it is also a way people can share and pass on knowledge and ideas with others. Plato dislikes the written word because he thought it would weaken our memories. Writing allows us to communicate in ways that speech doesn't allow, but it lacks tonal cues that speaking has. Thoreau connects to pencil technology because he was a pencil designer who sought to improve the process by developing a cutting-edge manufacturing technology. The telephone helped shape communication technology because it showed us the pattern of it. The telephone also combined both speaking and writing situations. Baron's conclusion is trying to say that every piece of technology that has came to life was once not excepted or considered bad, but after they have eventually been excepted they changed the way we do things. This article defines literacy as having sufficient control technology to be able to use it to help them read and write in new ways.

Writing in the 21st century.

The three challenges/opportunities of writing in the 21st are developing new models of composing, designing a new curriculum supporting those models, and creating new pedagogies enacting that curriculum. Yancey explain writing as a technology that exists "in spite of" cultures that devalued wirting and of prohibitions against it. No matter what suppressed us we found a way to write. The kinds of challenges that writing has faced in history is the suppression of females and people of color. Yancey's main argument is that composing is a social practice and that we need to help students become citizen composers instead of good test takers. Writing hasn't gotten as much cultural respect as reading because through reading, society could control its citizens, whereas through writing, citizens might exercise their own control. Reading produces the feeling of intimacy and warmth. Some negative associations people make with writing is that it reminds them of pain or isolation.
Process writing is the process or invention, drafting, peer review, reflection, revising and rewriting, and publishing. Self-sponsered writing is a writing that belongs to the writer, not to an institution. This article "Writing in the 21st Century" defines literacy as the ability to compose on through social media, e-mail, or other electronic ways, and also knowing who your audience is and taking action. 

The Brave New World of Digital Intimacy

The main argument of the text "Brave New World of Digital Intimacy" is about how social media websites like Facebook can allow us to carry on more relationships with people. It can also help us increase our "Dunbar number". The ties that social media can make are in between weak and strong ties. Mark Zuckerberg introduced the news feed to modernize Facebook, so that people could easily see the changes in their friend’s page. Adding a news feed cuts down the amount of time a person would waste examining each friend's page, checking if anything had changed or been updated. Before the news feed users had the ability to spend more time searching for information of Facebook, after the news feed it gave the user no reason to spend extra time looking for information, it was just there. The article refers to "ambient awareness" as very similar to being able to pick up on someone’s moods through body language. "Ambient awareness" can cause us to communicate with people in real life because you feel like you know everything that’s going on from social media. According to Thompson people in their 20's feel pressured to stay connected on Facebook because the majority of their age group is on their and they have to monitor what people tag them in and say about them. This article defines literacy as the ability to use social media in the right ways.

The article "Gin, Television, and Cognitive Surplus" by Clay Shirky is about cognitive surplus and how its better to do something than to do nothing. The main arguments that Shirky is making are that when war world II came around people had to start managing their free time. The act or process of knowing, preserving, and remembering was seen as an asset rather than a crisis. The author argues that this surplus or free time people have could be spent in better ways then watching TV, it could be used to share information on the computer through websites like wikipedia. This article defines literacy as the  ability to use the Internet to spread information, but to also be able to dig deep in to things and not just take it for face value. Shirky says that this is something society grows into not out of. This definition is somewhat like the other articles we read. Shirky repeats the words free time and cognitive surplus in his article a lot which shows me that the two words probably have a lot to do with each other.

Is Google making us stupid?

The article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" if about how the ability for people has changed since the internet. The author talks about how he used to spend hours reading long books and passages, but now his concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. The article also talks about how the internet is changing how we think. Since the internet is a big part of the world now a days, and many people use it everyday, it shapes how we read and think. Literacy in this article is defined as the ability to read and comprehend what your reading, instead of taking it at face value. This definition is very similar to the definition of "Socrate's nightmare". This article says that the internet is causing people to read less and lose focus when reading. The author uses a few people, their blogs, and research to back his claims including Scott Karp's and Bruce Friedman's blogs and a study of online habits, conducted by scholars from University College London. Some of this evidence is effective but some are not since they could be considered opinions and not facts.

Social Media Account

After doing a lot of looking around and narrowing down my choices, I think I found a social media account to do my unit 3 essay on. Miranda Lambert who is a country singer and is also married to Blake Shelton. Miranda Lambert's Facebook page is filled with recent updates, photos and interactions. She has many photos at an animal shelter and many links for adoptable dogs. This shows that she loves animals and wants to help them. Miranda likes to put post on her Facebook about the cities she is visiting for her tours. This could just mean that she's a rock star or that she also likes to travel. Her biography on Facebook also gives you a great sense of what she's like. Overall I think/hope her account will be good for this unit.

Nothing goes away...

On Facebook I present myself as a college student. I have many pictures of the football games and the places around campus. I also talk about the stress I'm under. I think I also present my self as a family person. I have tons of pictures of my family and me. My cover photo is of two elephants, one is big and one is a baby holding its moms tail with its trunk. I think this say that I am an animal/nature person, which is pretty accurate. My more recent pictures before coming to college consist of my family and I. Both my dad and brother are in their uniforms. I think this represents someone who is patriotic and diverse. I also have a few pictures of me kissing a stingray in the Grand Caymans. This represents a person who is adventurous. I have a lot of posts about Auburn, which represents a huge amount school sprit. I think I portray my self very accurately on Facebook. I don't feel like I have a responsibility to maintain a social media presence. I do feel that I need to censor sometimes because I do have family on Facebook as well and if I have a future employer look at it, I don't want to be judged by the words I use to express myself, but it's not going to kill me to censor myself because it makes me a better person. If my future employer handed me a print out of my most recent Facebook post I would most definitely still get the job. I don't put anything on the Internet I wouldn't want my parents or grandparents to see. Its not just for employers its for me too, because no matter what you post or delete, it's never going to go away. It's better to be safe than sorry.