HW 20 - revised draft pt.2

(now includes 3rd argument)

As if America doesn’t have enough problems to deal with, another small addition has been added onto our plates. Everyone loves Apple’s Macs or Microsoft’s Xbox, only we love them to the point where we are home all day playing with them until they decide to create a portable device. Video games and TV have come a long way when looking at Pac-man and Super Mario Bros. digital graphics compared to the infamous Grand-theft auto or Today’s television shows. There is no doubt that American Society has taken a rise for a newer profound take on technology, but it is too most surely that America’s technological rise will too be the reason for its fall.
M.T. Anderson, an award winning novelist for his book “Feed” too discusses the downfall that we as a society are leading too. Only he does this in a more interesting way, an allegorical sense that shows the same problems faced by us as a society only in the future. It seems no matter the day and age, from this point on, we will only live to see problems occur with us, while we continue to live superficial lifestyles and judge the next person in two ways, for looking down on those who choose to live this lifestyle and for not joining in on the superficial race to live this way. It is already proven that Human beings are shown as a much “dumber” generation compared to those hundreds of years ago. In Feed, it depicts a picture for us, an eye- opening picture at that, showing we are on a road to only becoming dumber. M.T. Anderson shows us how blind we are to the environment we have created for ourselves. Not paying mind to our problems or the next, we soon disregard the problems that we experience now. We are blinded by the exciting flashy objects things that capture our attention, technology.
“I didn’t know which to choose, because if I got an upcar that was too small, than Link and Marty might be like, ‘We’ll take my car instead, more of us can fit in,’ and then I would have spent these hundreds of thousands of dollars for nothing. But if I bought the Swarp, it was a little more sporty, and that might be brag, because the Dodge Gryphon was maybe too family” (pg. 122).
It is a race for us to be able to claim who owns what, helping to divide us between the powerful and the powerless, while these technological objects representing power.
Disney’s Motion picture “Wall-E” shows the tale of an only robot that remains on Earth 700 years later in the future, going from cleaning garbage to being aboard a spaceship vacationing all humans until Earth is cleaned. The storyline is more complex and a bit off track. But what remains to be seen in Wall-E is the problems that Humans will drastically go through if we continue to live carelessly not concerning our futures. Besides worrying about where garbage storage will lead us, Wall-E shows us the attachment and dependency we have onto technology. Technology is created to make things simpler for us, but when things get a little too simple, we tend to be less active and social. Being re-exposed to simpler things in life, such as swimming pools or activities less technical, is like being re-born. Movies like these, where scenes take place in the not-so distant future where we seem to have accomplished huge outbreaks in technology. They also show that one human who chooses not to join in on the rush for technology and chooses to live the much simpler life of easier laid back devices, making the character always seem rebellious. This connects to the real world as people constantly get swept into the rush of new technology. Those who choose not to get caught up are seen as left behind or just old-fashioned. This relates to the main idea of the powerful continuing to obtain as the powerless struggle to keep up.
“Everything bad is good for you”, a book by Steven Johnson that explains the social differences that take place between readers and video-gamest. Interesting enough, he discusses the negative effects that reading has on human beings in this day and age rather than the digital devices surrounding us. His argument for reading was that it encourages the discrimination that society has against those who are dyslexic. Johnson believed that today’s games are a better use for children to practice reading skills and practice strengthening they’re attention spans. Video games today involve mappings, text, storylines, facts, etc. Even reading has become a digital thing for most readers on the go, as a wireless reading device storms through stores and makes a run for the books on people’s shelves.
(http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Wireless-Reading-Display-Generation/dp/B0015TCML0)
Introducing the Kindle DX, a handheld device that allows readers to read on a “newer level”. It is size of a small picture frame, that represents one page out of a novel that the text appears onto. For those who have trouble reading, such as glasses users, there are features included such as zooming and lighting for those who are trying to read in the dark. The Kindle DX allows any book to be uploaded into the frame, the touch-screen device allows a simple touch with the finger to flip to the next page. Something as easy as reading, turning pages with your fingers, holding the book with both hands, can turn into something more convenient.