So this week in class, we continued the topic of technology. The article for this week was about google. The article talks about how the convenience of the internet is why we are so heavily dependent on the internet, and especially google. This is perhaps the most attractive aspect of google. With a company filled with researchers, developers, and engineers, google is making it easier and easier for its users to find informations just by typing in a few words on the search tool bar. As great as that is, google is more than just an online search engine. Its website, though simplistic in its layout with just a search bar, offers many other countless applications. Gmail, news broadcasting, live satellite, google sports, etc are all found on google. So now, instead of just relying on google as a search engine, other aspects of our lives are also taken over by google. This is both good and bad. Instead of paying for newspapers, we have free news on google, but do we really want to sit in front of the computer every waking moment of our lives? For myself, google has been a huge aspect of my life for the past couple of years. I admit, there are times when instead of going to the library and researching for articles and books, I would just type in a search word on google and get the information that way. Gmail, google's version of email, is another google application that attracts me to google. I had multiple email addresses in the past, but email was never really a huge part of my life until i found gmail. Yahoo and hotmail both carry decent email applications, but their emails are always bombarded with thousands of junk mail that it came to the point that it became too overwhelming to figure out which emails are actually from people that I know. I probably spent more time deleting junk mail than actually reading the ones that matter. With gmail, there is a filter that automatically blocks all junk mail. For the junk mail that does reach my gmail address, gmail provides a separate folder titled "bulk mail" to hold all the junk mail until I delete it all with just one simple click of my mouse. However, the biggest thanks I have for gmail is that instead of receiving phone calls from my parents every waking moment about something as small as remember to go to sleep early, they can just email me instead.
Google recently added another addition to their countless features, Youtube. Youtube is very interesting, not because of the the videos people post on there. Youtube ranks the populartiy of users based on the number of people that subscribes to a particular user. KevJumba, the 6th highest rank on youtube is going to be an incoming freshmen to UC Davis this fall. In one of his videos he brought up the subject of girls. He describes that even though he is so popular in this virtual world with a huge fan base and lots of girls who find him attractive on the internet, in real life he is having a hard time with the ladies. With that said, google is not making us more stupid, but is changing our lives dramatically.
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3 comments:
Hey dean,
Your post was very interesting to me, because when we were in class discussing if technology is actually is good for us or not. How the internet was conditioning us to think shorten our attention span, but at the same time giving us the opportunity to access a wide range of information. Like you have stated in your post Google has evolve and became more then just a search engine, we ca look up news around the globe, watch videos or anything on the web, and we can even get directions to destinations we have never gone to. I can not speak for everyone else but for me this is a nice way to learn and entertain myself. I am not the type of person who can just sit down and watch the news, a lot of things that they broadcast does not catch my attention so I tend to change the channel. However, on Google or yahoo I have the ability to narrow down my interest to news that are of my interest. Google again, is a time saver for research. We do not need to go out and look up an article at the library or in a book, we can type it in and it will bring it to me saving hours of driving and searching at the library. Having these types of resources available are useful for everyone. Also the email problem the spam also annoys me too, it is just random useless junk that I do not like to deal with since it is time consuming to delete then to read. Before I forget I did not know kevjumba will be at Davis next years. That guy is really funny in his videos. I’ve seen a few of them and it is hilarious and a big distraction.
I feel that I do heavily rely on many of Google's applications. All the websites that I find are are mostly found through Google. And its not just the search engine I rely on. The new Google Earth feature makes it easy for me to map out and measure my runs. Google Earth even allows us to view Beijing, China where the Olympics is currently being held.
I can relate to how you would search for information on Google instead of going to the library and doing your research there. There are a lot of websites with valuable information that can be found on Google by typing in a few keywords. It is just such an easy and convenient way to find what you are looking for. So why go to the library when for research when there are tons of more information that can be found through Google? Google's technology is no doubt changing our lives.
Dean, you need to alter dramatically the style of your posts. They are too informal and still read like journal entries or posts for your friends to read. For example, you should not begin with "So in class this week." "So" is not a proper introduction for a formal piece of writing. Also, I appreciate the specific, personal examples you provide but you also need to move beyond this as well, or at least more carefully confront these instances. You need to focus on something specific that is not as casual as the way you use Google. Or, if you want to use this as a text, then you should link to the Google home page and close read its various applications. Does this make sense? Finally, you need to be careful with your punctuation, "i" should be "I" and Google needs to be capitalized, for example.
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