Reed, Chapters 1-3

This book is very much related to all of the other books we have read for this class, and I like this one the best. Reed makes some very good discussions in this book about how the new technologies and digital communications have changed the way people live their everyday lives. Sometimes we even ask ourselves and I am guilty of this, 'What would we do without the Internet?' because people who do have access to the Internet are using the Internet almost everyday. We use the Internet for a lot of important things such as research, communication, school work, business work, etc. and more and more jobs and classrooms are very reliant on Internet access or professional computer programs. Even the registers in grocery stores are touch screen computers these days. In my opinion we might be a little too reliant on computers because it has made us very dependent and also lose some human-to-human communication skills. Our Digitized Lives are a very big part of our living experience. Those who do not have access to the Internet however, are not getting access to the important things that make our lives easier such as easier access to information, research, communication, jobs, etc. The Internet has been a big help in the way we learn and communicate because we can research on the web anything that we want to know and we will find the answer. Also communication has gotten much easier and is very affordable especially for long distance because you can just make a free email or social network account and you can talk to whoever you want. These things have made our lives a lot easier but I think maybe it has made our lives too easy. I think these new technologies are also shortcuts that we have provided for ourselves for achieving things in life.
Reed makes and interesting point that we humans have created these awesome advanced technologies for ourselves which a lot of people forget. But he also says that a technology is a tool and they are only as advanced and effective as the user makes them. I agree with this and thought it was very interesting to think about it this way. "We are dealing with two ongoing processes, the human development of digitizing technologies, and the human use of those technologies. They are not the same thing because humans do unexpected things with the tools we create." This quote makes me realize how creative we are as humans and that we can create anything because we have very strong imaginations and ideas to help.

Grown Up Digital by Tapscott part 3

Part three of Tapscott’s book, Grown Up Digital was all about our generation today and how messed up it is and to be honest, it was sad. He said the net generation is inheriting a mess which I believe is very true, it is hard to keep up with all the new technologies, things happening with the government  are getting more intense and violent, and people are falling way behind. Not only are people falling behind because only a little more than half the population has internet access, but more and more people are going hungry/thirsty and do not even have more than a dollar in their pocket per day.  Everything that Tapscott talks about in this part of the book relates a lot to the position in which our current government is right now. The way our money is being spent is not the way it should be, and nuclear weapons are pretty much all around the world and could easily get into the hands of a terrorist. On a better note there was a quote that I read by the Comedian, Jon Stewart who was doing a stand up for graduate students. It is a fairly long quote but it is very true and puts some humor into our situation. He says “Let’s talk about the real world for a moment. I guess this is as good a time as any. I don’t really know how to put this, so I’ll be blunt. We broke it. Please don’t be mad. I know we were supposed to bequeath to the next generation a world better than the one we were handed. So, sorry. I don’t know if you’ve been following the news lately, but it just kinda got away from us. Somewhere between the gold rush of easy Internet profits and an arrogant sense of endless empire, we heard kind of a pinging noise, and uh, then the damn thing just died on us. So I apologize.”

I also believe that this new generation is making our education a little more challenging and especially harder for college graduates to find the right career for them when they are out of school. The education system has gotten so much more online-based where students need to have access to computers or their own laptop in order to turn in school work or even take quizzes for their classes. Even though things are more complicated, our generation is adapting to the new technologies very quickly, in fact the previous generation barley can keep up with the amount of knowledge our generation has for this technology. 

Grown Up Digital by Tapscott Part 2

Part two began to introduce the problem of both high school and college dropouts and that the reason might be because of the old fashioned ways of teaching in the new digital world. Tapscott says "Instead of focusing on the teacher, the education system should focus on the student." I think he is making very good points about an issue that I rarely hear/read about which is that teachers also need to interact and work with students instead of just lecturing them.
We need to be learning about more modern day technologies in school, and school systems need to do a better job of keeping up with today's new technologies and business strategies/tools. Instead of teaching us things that will never be useful by the time we graduate college and start searching for a career. As Tapscott says "We are now faced with the fast-paced world of the information age, where, as jobs change, you can't take the time to send workers back to school for retraining. We have entered the era of lifelong learning." I definitely agree with what this author is saying and I think college students today have a lot higher expectations than college students did in the 80s and 90s because of the fast-paced world we live in now that is hard to keep up with. The ability to learn new things is the most important it has ever been so that students can be ready for their careers they will pursue in the future. "Students need to expand their knowledge beyond the doors of their local community to become responsible and contributing global citizens in the increasingly complex world economy."