work and media

Link to Huffington Post

As much as social media can be very entertaining, it can also be very distracting. According to the Huffington Post in Canada, most businesses are now restricting Facebook use to their employees. This wouldn’t be a big deal until in November 2011, a survey of 2,800 employed college students and graduate students showed that 56% of respondents would refuse to work at a company that bans social media. Half of the sample size did have a problem with this and although this doesn’t necessarily represent our actual population size, it does give us an idea of how dependent we are becoming on social media. 

Schools and Media

Kidwai, S. (2010). How to Mobilize Students Using Social Media. Techniques: Connecting Education & Careers,85(3), 8-9.

Link to article

Kidwai examines how beneficial it would be if schools started using social media for advocacy. She explains how the evolving nature of technology can work hand in hand with educational institutions, making social media a powerful advocacy tool for education. She indicates how the use of social media tools from various schools, have gained recognition from a number of campaigns. For instance in 2009 students across the country successfully used social media to advocate educational issues; organization like U.S. student Association (USSA) helped raise awareness of the SAFRA bill--budget issues in California. All in all, using social media as an advocacy tool can ultimately help educate students and help gain support for important causes to succeed. 

Facebook in real life

I know many you guys are hooked on facebook, but have you ever wondered what it would be like if Facebook, or twitter were ever played out in real life? Well, then your in luck; this video embodies the very nature of social interactions via Facebook. It probably never crossed your mind that Facebook behavior was considered odd, until you actually use it in real life. Normal displays such as, "pokes" to "friend requests" are easily accepted via the web, but surprisingly not as much through face to face confrontation. I guess in real life, "following" someone isn't going to be accepted anytime soon. 

Hollywood and innocence

Medved, M. (1999, June 16). Hollywood Murdered Innocence. Wall Street Journal - Eastern Edition. p. A26.

Link to article

According to Medved, social media influences all of us, one way or another. He argues that ultimately all media modes exert more influence towards violent and reckless behavior as glamourous, desirable and inevitable doings. Hundreds of studies demonstrate a correlation between vicious media imagery and brutal behavior. However, many skeptics argue that this mostly reflects on the child taste of violence rather than the influence of violent entertainment. Whether we’d like to admit our weakness towards distracting influences, in the end, not much is being done to lower the amount of excess violence being shown. Overall, don’t hold your breath for any industry adjustments any time soon. To protect are kids from this brutal pop cultural fiasco we must all strengthen our personal determination for this difficult task at hand. 

Possible epidemic outbreak

Peru is investigating the mystery of the thousands of Pelican and Dolphin deaths along the Peruvian Coast line.  According to PRI's The World, Stefan Austermuhle, a marine biologist with Mundo Azul shares with us how in recent months the deaths of Dolphins may connect with the recent Pelican deaths. Austermuble suggests that the morbillivirus outbreak epidemic (belongs to the same group as the measles virus in humans) caused the an estimate of 3,500 dolphin deaths. Currently there is no scientific information that may prove the morbillivirus switched to birds in other words this could be completely two different viruses. However, as we’ve seen through history viruses have the capacity of switching hosts from mammals to humans or vice versa. Peruvian’s have been eating dolphins for some time (its quite common); studies have shown that dolphins who die from this particular virus are the ones highly contaminated. In essence, if people are currently indulging themselves with dolphins, these threats can become a wide spread health risk.

How do we win the future?

This video shows President Obama’s presentation on, “Winning the Future.” He mentions how, “Maintaining leadership in research and technology is crucial to America’s success.”

I’m not completely sold on the idea that innovation will help improve America’s success. To be honest, I’m sure new technology can take us to the next level concerning global leadership, but I don’t think it will address issues that the world is confronting today.  For instance after reading Ishmael, we have the capability of controlling and innovating new ideas to capture our needs and wants however, we don’t use these innovations to ‘save the world.’I just feel as though newer innovations will distract or impede our development with the real world.

Coral's in Danger

Chetterjee in PRI's The World, discusses how the projected continuation of global warming, water pollution, and over fishing is affecting coral reefs. He considers the claims from two researchers that suggest how climate change can work against, or in favor in the protection and future development of reefs. 

For instance, he interviews an ecologist Terry Hughes of James cooke University who explained how climate change won’t necessarily cause coral reefs to become extinct, but will pressure coral species to become more resilient to rising temperatures. Marine biologist Steven Palumbi also agrees with Hughes and is conducting a series of experiments on a variety of coral species in hopes to gain a better understanding towards these issues. 

Nevertheless,  although both scientist identify how this can work in favor of the reef, its still unknown how this will affect the entire reef. For example as Hughes says, “Some of the more vulnerable species are often also the ones that provide the best habitat for other marine species. So losing them could hurt populations of fish and other marine species.” 

In the end both scientist suggest that we shouldn’t give up on protecting the reefs because the fate corals depend on how well we address the issues affecting them.

"Where I lived, and What I lived for"

Thoreau, Henry(1854). Where I Lived, and What I Lived for.

While rummaging through my backpack, I came across one of Henry Thoreau’s essays that I printed out a while back.  In "Where I lived and What I lived for," Thoreau offers us an explanation as to why he decided to leave mainstream society. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what they had to teach, and not, when I came to die.” Perhaps, Thoreau had decided that the best way to live life was by living fully immersed into it without the distractions of material goods. Simplicity of life was to be his means to gain, or grasp his purpose in life. I truly admire his efforts; finding a way to become much less dependent upon industrialization isn’t an easy task to do, but being able to live our lives away from the pressures of media, can really become a wonderful journey in finding ways to be more in tune with our senses.  

Group dynamic

Today’s discussion was great; being physically outside from our typical class setting, was relaxing. I really enjoyed the group discussions we’ve had the past two days, talking about ones feelings with classmates isn’t the easiest thing to do, but I appreciated the honesty. In all sincerity, I didn’t think this was going to end well, but I was proven wrong. I think this worked better than our normal group discussions, I’m not saying they weren’t good to begin with, but listening to students who normally don’t speak--especially myself--was unexpectedly rewarding. 

2210: The Collapse? - National Geographic Channel2210: The Collapse? - National Geographic Channel

WHAT LESSONS CAN WE DRAW FROM HISTORY?

Sorry guys for the late blogging,.......... but I finally decided it was about time for me to post something...anything really. 

Well, first off, we concluded the last chapters of Ishmael on Thursday, and it made me realize that one of the best ways to save the world is by looking into our past.  I know it sounds pretty dull, but bear with me here. While I was watching random videos on youtube, I came across a documentary from the National Geographic channel about the collapse of 2210--a story of which could potentially happen to us in the future. (I posted the video above)

While watching this, it reminded me of Jared Diamonds arguments about the past in,“The Ends of the World as We know Them,” and how the past may have answers into possibly saving our civilization from a catastrophic end. For instance, according to Diamond, history can teach us valuable lessons--two in particular. One lesson is about learning the differences between successful societies and societies heading towards failure. When it comes to historical collapses, Diamond gives five different groups of interacting factors that have been especially important: the damage that people have inflicted on their environment; climate change; enemies; changes in friendly trading partners; and the society’s political, economic, and social responses to these shifts. 

The second lesson he shares involves our willingness to reexamine our deeply, embedded values especially when those values change and are no longer making any sense, or are detrimentally hurting us in the long run. For example historically we’ve been taking the world for granted, we viewed the United States as a land of unlimited affluence, but that’s no longer viable in a world of finite resources. Thus, depleting our own resources as well as those of much of the rest of the world, can’t and shouldn’t be continued any longer. As both Jared Diamond and Daniel Quinn argue: humanities biggest problems today are entirely of our own making. In essence, I hope our global society today takes this opportunity--especially with the advantages we have e.g. historians, archaeologists, etc.---to learn from the mistakes of past civilizations. Now the real question is whether, or not we choose to use it.