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.