Life on the Digital Frontier - Essay Example

ID 0171 Presented to….. .. January 30th, Summary, Analysis and Response Paper for Media Studies Digital Nation – Life on the Digital Frontier Frontline program of PBS Summary This program video is basically of a PBS channel program, Frontline hosted by Rachel Dretzin. It can be watched on the website of PBS (www.pbs.org). The main theme of this video is to elaborate the importance of technology in our life in general and importance of social media in our life in particular. In the start of the video students of MIT are shown are widely using internet and social media. These students of MIT are shown as saying that they cannot even imagine life without internet. It’s true that today, we are more wired than ever. Even laptops are allowed during lectures if respective teacher allows. Students even Google during lectures if they listen from teacher something unknown. It really is an information age where we are free t o learn without borders, thank to open course ware regime and free resources like Wikipedia, Khan Academy, etc. Prof. Sherry Turkle, Director, MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, says that MIT hosts brightest students in the world. But there’s something wrong with them as they think that multitasking can serve them best which is not right. Mr. David Jones, Associate Professor with MIT also says that students are multitasking and they are “distracted by everything” that’s why they are not performing as much as they should be due to these distractions that could be a laptop, a phone and etc. This attitude of students is also affecting the teaching method of teachers. A study conducted by NASA on chronic multitasking youths shows that at a time, people can do one task better than more than one task. Multitasking affects the productivity of individuals. Another concept is the affects of multi task to brain. Another study at University of California reveals that there is a 2 fold increase in use of brain while searching on Google than reading a book. In this video a chapter is reserved for providing information about the youth of South Korea. Gaming craze has resulted in addiction in South Korea that government is seriously concerned about the psychological changes on the youth. This video also emphasizes on teaching with technology. Technology has made it easy to teach students with state of the art technology. Although interviews conducted in this video shows students who believe that they can do multitasking with equal required attention but a teacher at MIT observed that the level of intellect is decreasing in new tech savvy generation. With a lot of types of entertainment in their hand, these students are not concentrating on their studies. Our mutual relations are also affected by digital revolution. Today we do not know each other out of facebook and twitter. There are many people around us who do not leave their room all the day. They do not even know what’s going on in the lives of their families. Every cloud has its silver lining and digital media has got too. Like I said earlier that there is no denying of the fact that digital media is also keeping us up to date with the happenings in the lives of people around the world. Analysis This video hails some of the concepts discussed in class lectures. While, it negated some of the concepts we discussed in class. Like we have studied that corporate focus is on maximizing profits and minimizing costs, not informing public. This is why digital world is attracting youths. Youth can easily be attracted thanks to their immature mind set. So today, kids and youth are playing in the hand of digital media giants. That’s why digital media industry is earning abnormal profits. We have discussed in a class that news organizations are not run democratically. This is also true for digital and virtual world technology based organization. These technology based organizations are not thinking about the impacts of vastly used technology products. These organizations are just here to earn profit and they want to grow bigger and bigger. Today there are many students, although intelligent, who do not study books. This cadre of students read each and every topic online on internet. We have discussed the important of media, internet and information technology. But addiction of these services led us to some psychological problems. While, there are many technology products that are addressing and treating the psychological problems with people who do not have any social life. We have learned that all press systems are based on the believed on free expression, although free expression is defined in different ways. Relationships are also suffering due to intensive use of digital gadgets. People are spending all the day on internet and in digital world. They do not even meet their house mates all the day. On the other hand there are people who get closer to each other (even got married) by virtue of online games. This video also tries to make us realize that virtual experiences are changing us. Where are we headed, is the question raised at the end of this video. Disadvantages of virtual world have long been emerging in the social lives of South Korea. In this video a chapter is reserved for providing information about the youth of South Korea. Gaming craze has resulted in addiction in South Korea that government is seriously concerned about the psychological changes on the youth. This video also emphasizes on teaching with technology. Technology has made it easy to teach students with state of the art technology. At the same time, students are also getting disturbed due to huge involvement of technology in their life. Last year there was news in media about a young boy from China who killed his mother only because of the reason that she was used to taunt him over playing games all the time. This is a worst example of addiction of games. In this video it told that some kids died while playing games in games shops because they continuously played games for five day with each other with out taking any meal. These events and other similar events force us to seriously think about the cures for this type of gaming addiction. A study conducted by NASA on chronic multitasking youths shows that at a time, people can do one task better than more than one task. Multitasking affects the productivity of individuals. So multitasking is not always best policy. Some sort of works requires complete attention of individuals. Otherwise all works would give worst results. Students of modern day world are of the view that they cannot even imagine life without internet. It’s true that today, we are more wired than ever. Response First of all I would like to say that it was a very healthy activity in terms of knowledge. The makers of this video have done a wonderful job. They have portrayed all important issues related to digital world. Although funded by many social and charity organizations, makers of this program exhibited a balanced approach to keep their neutrality intact thereby making it ‘free from influence’ program. I really liked this video and this assignment. After watching this video of Digital Nation program, I realized that wired life has become a really big issue every since it’s been adopted. Does it benefit anyone? Is it creating problems for new generations? Are we heading in wrong direction? These questions are raised in this video. These concerns are valid and must be dealt in earnest. One of the concepts presented in this video is that the young generation is getting more and more addicted to use digital media all the time. Even while watching TV, young adults update their status on Facebook and chat on their cell phone. The young generation is too much tend to do many things at a time. It is right to do this during entertainment time. But during studies and office work, one should be focused to a single task, in order to give it his or her best. Otherwise multitasking may result in less productivity of all work done at a time. Moreover, online games are getting viral in youth nowadays. There are many around us who stick to digital media 50 hours a week on the average. This is more than a work week which is new phenomenon. Playing online games all the time is not a healthy activity. Physical games are also important to take part in. On the other hand, there are some advantages of online games. It is connecting people around the world to a single platform: like the example given in this video of Second Life game. Online game developers and player are of the view that during last decade, technology took us apart from each other. But due to increasing popularity of online games people one again are getting closer to each other to play games together. This video hails some of the concepts discussed in class lectures. While, it negated some of the concepts we discussed in class. References “Disadvantages of Internet”, Online: Accessed: 8th Jan 2015 http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/spring03/mentzer/disadvantages.htm, “Disadvantages of Social Media”, (2012), Online: Accessed: 8th Jan 2015 http://www.shrm.org/templatestools/hrqa/pages/socialnetworkingsitespolicy.aspx Beals, Umasci Bers (2009) “A Developmental Lens for Designing Virtual Worlds for Children and Youth” IJLM, MIT, http://ase.tufts.edu/Devtech/publications/Beals-Developmental_Lens_for_Virtual_Communities.pdf Rachel Dretzin (2010) “Digital Nation – Life on the Digital Frontier”, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view/ Read More