The Effects Of Digital On The Digital Age

A Book Review on The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future by Mark Bauerlein

1. Hockenbury, Don H., and Sandra E. Hockenbury. "Chapter 6- Memory." Psychology. 5th ed. New York: Worth, 2010. 282-83. Print

In "Remember", Joy Harjo uses figurative language, diction, and syntax to remind people of where they come from. For those who have forgotten their history, Harjo brings it back to the front of their mind. She wants to revive these lost and underappreciated memories and give them new meaning.

Memory is the faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information. memories of adversity in the past will amplify the positive experiences in the present. In the excerpt from the novel, “Ru”, Kim Thuy describes her first experiences as an immigrant in Canada. She is dazzled, blinded and intoxicated by the landscape and surprised by all the unfamiliar sounds and the size of ice sculptures. She is a refugee from Vietnam and has faced many hardships in her life.

Memory is an intrinsic and integral facet of human existence, crucially affecting every aspect of our character, actions, emotions and experiences. Furthermore, as Marita Sturken suggests, “…memory establishes life’s continuity…and provides the very core of identity….”5, furthermore cultural memory is “…memory shared outside the avenues of formal historical discourse yet is entangled with cultural products and imbued with cultural meaning…”6 Therefore, it would be logical to assume that American cultural memory innately presupposes American cultural identity. In the

Memory; our ability to encode, store, retain,and subsequently recall information and past experiences in the human brain It can be thought of in general terms as the use of past experience to affect or influence current behavior. Margaret Laurence shares her memories of her childhood and the connections she had with Canada. She represents Canada through her autobiographical essay “Where the World Began”. She explains how her small prairie town constitutes the way she has formed her views. Margaret uses the microcosm of her small town to show Canada’s growth as a country throughout her childhood memories, the seasons of her town and where your raised effects your perspective on the world.

During the discussion on memory, we deliberated on the difference between emotional, procedural and episodic memory, the correlation between identity and humanity, the perception of time, and the ability of self-realization. Firstly, we explicated the emotional aspect of Clive Wearing’s severe case of amnesia, but also realized his love for Deborah (his wife) and music were bittersweet. His raw emotional memory was left untouched, whereas his episodic memory was severely affected. Furthermore, we examined the parallels between identity and humanity. Some believed that being human means to display emotions, whereas others affirmed that emotions require episodic memory. Moreover, we concluded that memory is inherently altered through repetition.

In the first part of the text, he identifies the personal cultural memory as “cultural acts and products” of remembering personal events or acts regarding other people lives as well as the cultural context, in a certain time and place. He points out how people create

“… what are we recording? We use and produce digital texts and data in our work. We communicate via email. Individuals maintain blogs and websites, create podcasts, and post on social networking sites. Our lives are being captured in digital texts, electronic calendars, email, instant messaging, SMS (short message service, that is, cellphone-based texting). Artists are experimenting with digital art. With digital cameras, people are taking more pictures than ever, most of which end up on personal hard drives. Research suggests we seldom throw materials away” (Van House and Churchill, 2008: 300). These contemporary practices have implications for both individual and collective memory’s production.

Memory is a key part of everyday life in society, without the proper ability to remember it makes daily life practically impossible. Paul Connerton’s book How Societies Remember, covers a wide variety of the functions of memory. However, I will be focusing on Connerton’s approach to social memory, connections to historical reconstructions, and how memories are sustained. There are many different classifications of memory, Connerton uses theories from cognitive, personal, and habit memory to explain the different daily use of memory. I would have liked to see more input for my class discussion, in addition I would have liked to discuss the difference between habits and rules more in depth.

The film “ Digital Nation” is an exploration of diverse people's views on digital media, in today's world. Some of the most important topics were on the virtual world, and the pros and cons of technology within different groups like gamers, students, families, teachers, administrators, children, military and businesses, as well as the experience of general people. In the movie, Prof. Sherry Turkle said, “Technology challenges us to assert our human values. Technology is not good or bad, is powerful, and it is complicated which means first we have to figure out what they are”. Currently, technology has taken over, wherever one, goes one will find it. Over the past years, social media in particular have spread worldwide; from Facebook to Instagram. There is constantly something new, extra advanced and creative. Overall, the technology has evolved the way humans interact with each other. In particular, technology influences by motivating students towards learning, saving time, building literacy and communication skills.

In this century our culture is changing rapidly. Just in the last 30 years alone our scientific understanding, technological achievements, and fragmentation of values has transformed faster than in the previous 100 years alone. With our express style culture change, one has to wonder what will be said about our culture another hundred years in the future. What is the one thing that has defined us as who we are? A section on our slow ascent into socialism may be in order, or maybe a chapter on our obsession with going green. However, I would suggest that the first chapter in a humanities book of 2113 on our culture title “The Descent into a Digital Culture”.

Technology has changed so many of the ways in which we live our lives, from the invention of the wheel to the advanced systems we use and take for granted everyday. Technology was once taboo in most house holds while people still clung to the idea that life was built on life experiences. Nicholas Carr stated in, Is Goggle making us stupid? "Back in the fourth century, BCE, Plato complained that writing (then a fairly new technology) was destroying peoples memory, yet he wrote dozens of books. For half a century, television has been accused of rotting our brains and making us fat and lazy, but most people depend on it for info, news and entertainment." Technology has changed our understanding of the way things work and

Mason believes that the economic system has reached a pessimistic stage; the same social and economical issues still persist and might have worsened in some cases. Inequality keeps growing in the US; from 1979-2007 the bottom 20 percent experienced 44% change in average income, while the top 1 percent experienced a change by 314%. “Household debt in the US remains higher than it was for almost all of postwar history and student loan debt now exceeds credit card debt, auto loans, and other nonmortgage debt” (The Rise of Household Debt, 2016). NASA’s temperature data keeps showing rapid warming temperatures and the same data showed that the last decade has been the warmest on record.

The digital age has brought about many changes in the way we conduct business, education, entertainment and mental health. The trend to incorporate technology into our mental health programs, while in its infancy, continues to grow in popularity and use by both educational and private mental health providers. There has been a great deal of discussion on the methods, ethics, problems and benefits of this new technology, however little research has been done on the effectiveness of this method of counseling on clients.