Who Holds The Clicker, By Susan Blackmore

Trigger by Susan Vaught is a enthralling, powerful and emotional book that talks about the hardships that a seventeen year teenager faces after attempting to commit suicide. After attempting to commit suicide, Jersey Hatch is left with permanent neurological damage and a question that haunts him. A question that makes the reader so enthralled that they would not have the heart to put the book down until they knew the answer. At least that was the case for me. Why did he want to kill himself? What could be the ultimate reason that could drive a young happy teenage boy like himself into attempting suicide. He suffers an acute case of memory loss. Jersey starts to communicate with his friends and family from the past to look for the answer that

Humans who are being over diagnosed with disorders, causes the spending of too much money on drugs and medication that could be harmful and is not needed for them to take. The objective of this book is to let people become aware of what is going on around the world. The audience that this book aims towards is the public. The main objective of Dr. Frances is to alert the public, health care professionals and clinicians about the misinformed diagnosis of people and the misdirected treatment and medications that are prescribed to people who are “normal.” Everyday pains and suffering are being diagnosed as mental illnesses and disorders. Psychiatry has specified people with false labels. The first of many arguments is that people are very worried that when a new disorder is brought up, that they have this disorder or illness. Another argument in this book is the misdiagnosis between mental disorder and normality. Many people who experience completely normal grief could be mislabeled as having a psychiatric problem. The next argument is to separate the people who have diseases from normality. Allen Frances blames the internet and social networking for the over diagnosis of mental disorder. This book is also about the high percentage of people who are now diagnosed with a mental illness,

This can be seen in the title of the article. The title is “How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds.” The word “hijack” is a strong word. It doesn’t just mean to simply take something over but to illegally seize (a vehicle) in transit and force it to a different destination or use it for one’s own purposes. By using this word, the author is saying that these objects we use everyday are taking control and determining the way we think and our actions. To a reader, this may seem shocking that these small objects we use everyday are having this much power in our lives. The final way the author strengthens his argument is by emotional

Technology, the advancement of knowledge and productivity through the application of tools, information, and techniques to create an effortless process, has ultimately lead to the declination of our society and our future. In “A Thing Like Me,” Nicholas Carr addresses the development of technology from the day it was created and how it initiated an immediate impact within the lives of humans leading to an unhealthy dependency. Carr establishes how technology, what was intended to be a tool, has become the “pacifier” of our generation. This “pacifier” causes a loss of freedom, not through the laws of the government, but rather with the values of freedom one holds within themselves. This freedom is the individuality that distinguishes each person from the next, and forms a desire for the development of oneself through the experiences of life and the wisdom that is acquired along the way. Technology has blinded man from this pursuit of self-enhancement and with the advancement of technology occurring daily, there is no resolution. Each day people are confined within themselves and the pieces of technology that will continually limit them in their lives. Freedom is more than just a concept of laws instilled by the government, it is the thought process found within each individual person and their “hunger” to become more. With technology, social media was created and immediately immersed within our lives. The society of today has

In “The Victims” by Sharon Olds it describes a divorce through the eyes of the parents’ children. The first section is shown through past tense as the speaker is a child and the last section is shown in present tense with the speaker already being an adult trying to make sense of past events. The word “it” in the first two lines carries a tremendous weight, hinting at the ever so present abuse and mistreatment, but remaining non-specific. The first part generates a negative tone toward the father who is referred to as malicious by the mother who “took it” from him “in silence” until she eventually “kicked him out.” Through the entirety of the poem the children are taught to hate their father. Who taught them? Their mother showed them that their father was a villain and were taught to have no sympathy for him but “to hate you and take it” and so they did so. Although the poem never directly states what the father did to receive the family’s hated, the speaker gives examples as to why he is hated.

For my book report I chose to read, Trapped Between the Lash and the Gun, by Arvella Whitmore. The story was overall about a little African American boy that goes back in time to meet his great grandfather and realize how difficult life was in the 1700’s. He became a slave for the white men and would get punished abusively if he didn’t complete or finish a task. The overall mood of the book was pretty suspenseful and perplexing. In the beginning it was in the 19th century, but once he went back in time it changed some 200 years in the past.

ELIZA software was used in helping to treat mental illnesses: patients were able to talk to a machine instead of a psychotherapist. The outcome of this experiment showed that if the patient couldn’t tell whether he or she was talking to a computer, the computer is just a valuable as a therapist. Carr uses this to argue and prove that people can be easily replaced by technology.

Why acknowledge history? The solution is because we essentially must to achieve access to the laboratory of human involvement. In the essay “Haunted America”, Patricia Nelson takes a truly various and remarkably gallant stance on United States history. Through the recounting of the White/Modoc war in “Haunted America,” she brings to light the complexity and confusion of the White/Indian conflicts that is often missing in much of the history we read. Her account of the war, with the faults of both Whites and Indians revealed, is an unusual alternative to the stereotypical “Whites were good; Indians were bad” or the reverse stand point that “Indians were good; Whites were bad” conclusions that many historians reach. Limerick argues that a very brutal and bloody era has been simplified and romanticized, reducing the lives and deaths of hundreds to the telling of an uncomplicated story of “Good Guys” and “Bad Guys”.

In Killing the Black Body, Dorothy Roberts describes the history of African-American women and the dehumanizing attempts to control their reproductive lives. Beginning with slavery, to the early beginning of birth control policy, to the sterilization abuse of Black women during the 1960s and 1970s, continuing with the current campaign to inject Norplant and Depo-Provera along with welfare mothers, Roberts argues that the systematic, institutionalized denial of reproductive freedom has uniquely marked Black women’s history in America.

Yet whereas we are never left alone by our technology, we are increasingly lonely, alienated from our deepest selves. For we have lost touch with our own feelings, being educated to ignore them in order to function in a technological world. Like Bergman's "intellectual illiterates," we are so uneducated about our inner feelings that we only learn to talk about them when we "break down," and have to be repaired by the analyst, at the Group, or in the asylum. For, we learn, our feelings distort our "objective" perceptions, and thus prevent us from functioning like our machines. In this vein, Andy Warhol wryly recalls that he had always wanted to be like a machine, for then it was easier to get along with people. We thus find ourselves fragmented, our feelings alienated from our world, our lives as well as our literature being characterizable by T. S. Eliot's phrase, "dissociation of sensibility."

When Frances Cornford wrote “The Watch”, she must have been in an unbelievably dark place; the poem is downright depressing. However, regardless of the macabre nature of the poem, it is executed in supreme fashion, and creates a real sense of dread in the reader. Cornford, a granddaughter of Charles Darwin, was not a particularly popular poet. However, in “The Watch”, she manages to convey a powerful message to the reader, and demonstrates her poetic skill in stride. The theme of this intriguing poem appears to simply be ‘Memento mori’, a reminder to the reader that death is inevitable and inescapable. Cornford conveys this message to the reader using an arsenal of literary devices, most notably the mood, tone, symbolism, and epizeuxis.

Technology throughout its existence has improved the overall quality of life for many people around the world. Its impact is evident in our generation, where many people rely on technology to gain information on current events, increase work efficiency and even helping us understand ourselves. “Advances in neuroscience, technology and research sophistication have greatly increased understanding of mental illnesses and improved the treatment of these disorders.” (Wahl, 2011). Despite our knowledge on various mental illnesses, many individuals stray away from professional assistance due to the stigma that is attached to the illness; many individuals do not opt for help because they do not want a label attached to them. Social media is a huge platform that influences many people and the slandering that many media platforms do when they discuss the topic of mental illness is slowly increasing and is an issue that must be discussed.

However, society uses lack of control as an excessive excuse. In some instances, things do get out of control, but in most cases, humans plainly lack self-control. Society doesn’t know how to control their emotions. The population can’t control their anger and their fear. They don’t know how to control the need for power or control of others. In the community’s minds, being the best is a necessity, yet not everyone can be the best at the same time. It is a fact. Throughout Bradbury’s stories mentioned above and below, he says that the society, as people, lack self-control. In The Veldt, the parents can’t control the craving that their children and themselves have for the fancy technology, so they start depending on their technology excessively. The children didn’t have enough self-control to cease the unacceptable thoughts they were having. “They live for the nursery.”"I don't know anything," he said, "except that I'm beginning to be sorry we bought that room for the children. If children are neurotic at all,a room like that -""It's supposed to help them work off their neuroses in a healthful way.""I'm starting to wonder." He stared at the ceiling."We've given the children everything they ever wanted. Is this our reward-secrecy, disobedience?""Who was it said, 'Children are carpets,they should be stepped on occasionally'? We've never lifted a hand. They're

These people’s thoughts were buried in their bodies—maybe not even deeply buried—where they could not communicate them. Slowly, objects began to be created that could help them communicate. Now the two most well known objects for communication-disabled persons are computers and augmentative devices. Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) systems are “the supplementation and/or replacement of natural speech and/or writing using aided and/or unaided symbols . . . and the related means of selection and transmission of such symbols” (Lloyd, Fuller, and Arvidson xix). They are used when a person’s communication (or lack of communication) limits them socially (Yorkston, Beukelman, and Strand 523).

Since the beginning of time, the human population has strived to live simpler lives. We have spent generations, creating innovations within technology to ensure our lives would always be more simplistic than those who lived centuries before us. People now have the ability to update their Facebook status’, map the human genome to target strands of DNA that can be disastrous to one’s health, send out amber alerts nationwide, and create plants that are resistant to pesticides. Many fields, such as medicine, law enforcement, and entertainment have benefited greatly from advancements in technology which has inevitably changed the way society operates. However, with the abundance of technology available, society has developed an unhealthy relationship where we now rely on technology too heavily. Technology has rendered our minds incapable of the ability to play, communicate, and live our lives in the moment, despite its positive additions to our society.