Big Brother -- 1984

1984 shows a scary world where absolutely no privacy exists.  The only privacy that exists is in their mind.  It is scary to think of a world that is like that.  I believe today we still have privacy, not as much as people used to but at least an amount that it doesn't feel like we are completely trapped in our minds.  We have lost privacy in ways that probably don't really occur to people on a regular basis.  We go shopping and cameras in stores watch us, we go to the mall and mall cameras watch us, we go to the gas station and cameras watch us, its little things like that, that probably don't occur to us.  There are also things like tiny spy cameras that people can place anywhere and people will not be able to see them, there are even nanny cameras where teddy bears have cameras built into them, and there are tiny microphones that can be hidden, phone calls can be bugged.  It is crazy to think that we can be watched without knowing it, kind of like how Winston and Julie were being watched the whole time they were in the room and didn't know it because the telescreen was hidden behind the picture on the wall.  It is a scary thought that we are not realizing how much we are actually being watched on a daily basis.

Creative Blog

I try to think back to the first day I heard of this thing called the "feed", it seems like so long ago.  I remember the people saying that it will give our children an advantage, that they will have the encyclopedia on them at all times.  I didn't even know what to think, it was as if having computers in front of us wasn't close enough, the computers now needed to be built into us.  I was already feeling knowledge slipping away from younger generations but this felt like it was going to far.  I got a feed, one of the first, the oldest one that now made me look ridiculous.  I refused to let the feed change my view on teaching.  I still taught my students history, things that were important, but with the feed nothing was important to them other than what they could see and I couldn't.  Life without the feed was good, everyone seemed to care a little more about what was going on around them instead of what they wanted.  I gave in to letting my daughter Violet get the feed.  I knew she wanted one, all her friends had one, so I gave in.  I decided homeschooling her was the best idea, I didn't need her in those corporate owned schools, they didn't teach you history or anything going on in the world that was important, they just taught you about your feed, what the feed could offer you, and how to use it.  The feed has this way of making everyone with it feel super smart, when actually they are not, and I was not going to let my daughter rely on her feed the way others did.  People are all the same now, there is no individualism, what was left of it before the feed is now gone.  They seem brainwashed and self-centered, sometimes I doubt they even know what their kids look like.  People with the feed don't care about anything, nature is no longer existing in our world.  I regret the day I bought my daughter the feed.  Although she never abused the feed like others around her, it is taking her from me and there is nothing I can do.  When they invented the feed there was no time taken to think about the consequences of what would happen if things went wrong with someones feed, it was all about making things easier for the corporations to get inside our heads, now they have, and now look what the world has turned out to be.

A life of solitude?

Emerson and Thoreau both wrote about the solitude, and it makes you wonder what would it be like if we were really able to live in solitude, is there even solitude out there anymore? A quote from Emerson that I liked was "It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."  This quote makes you think about how much we all are living in a way that is not our own.  We live to please others by dressing the way everyone else dresses and doing the things that everyone else does.  The solitude that Emerson writes about is a place that seems perfect and that seems so easy to do but I don't think there is solitude anymore.  Solitude is gone.  Emerson and Thoreau made me think about what I read in Feed.  There was no solitude for the characters in the book, they had the world's opinion living right in there brain.  They didn't control what they saw anymore, the corporations did.  They were constantely being told what was cool, what everyone else was doing, and what they should wear.  It was sad to think that this is happening to us today, not to the extreme that its built into our brain but it somewhat is if you think about it.  The idea of solitude in the book made some of the characters cringe because they had no idea what a world without 'noise' would feel like.  Solitude is a great concept but today I do no believe there is any way to get to complete solitude.  I honestly do not believe I could live in complete solitude for a year, away from everyone and everything.  It would be hard, I'm sure I would learn a lot about myself and have the ability to reflect on my life but it would be too much to handle.  Giving up facebook for a year? I could do it.  But living in the middle of no where with nothing and no one is a great idea but would be too hard for me.

Dumbest Generation??

The article on the dumbest generation was pretty shocking.  I could not believe that are generation was thought of in that way.  A quote that really made me think about are generation being considered the dumbest was "we suspect that if young people don't know the Bill of Rights or the import of old "colored entrance" signs - and they absolutely should - it reflects not stupidity but a failure of the school system and of society to require them to know it."  This quote seems completely true.  I know what both of these are and it shocks me that there are people that are my age and have no clue.  I feel there are people being lumped into a category that do not need to be, not all of are generation doesn't know what those things are, so it seems unfair that a generation is lumped into one category.  Is it the school system that is doing a bad job? or is it just us as a generation being blind to the importance of these things?  I personally believe that it is both.  The school system may not be doing the best job but I believe there are also people in are generation that do not believe these things are importance.  It is sad to think that there are people that don't care about these things and that because of them we as a generation are being called "the dumbest generation."  Another quote that made me think was when he said "Gen Y will turn out to be not just the dumbest but also the most self-absorbed and selfish."  This quote is again lumping all gen y's in this category.  I see people every day that are self-absorbed and selfish, for example, facebook makes us self-absorbed, thinking we don't need certain history makes us selfish.  I believe people just don't think that they are that way. 
I believe every generation at one time or another has been self-absorbed and selfish.  It is a pattern and stage of life that you go through till you grow up and out of that stage, although I know some people will always be self-absorbed and selfish, I believe that this doesn't last forever for some.  Just because we may be self-absorbed and selfish now does not mean we are the dumbest, and it makes me feel sad to be seen this way.