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It's finally the end of the semester. It feels like the time went by really fast this fall, but at the same time it felt like this semester went by extremely slowly. There were so many difficult assignments for this class that I felt like I was always rushed and pressured to complete task after task. The last of these projects would obviously be the poster presentation.

I completed my poster presentation on the emerging technology called Nanomedicine. Nanomedicine involves the use of tiny machines to treat and prevent the spread of diseases and illnesses. It is thought that this technology might be used to treat cancer and prevent the spread of diseases such as AIDS all over the world.

My presentation itself was uneventful. I chose one of the middle aisles to post my posterboard and I used one of the boards closer to the middle of the aisle. This was not a good spot to choose because very few people actually walked down our aisle. There were a couple of people who admitted they chose that aisle because it was quicker to get through (because of the lack of traffic) so they could tweet their responses and leave class early. There were only around four people that walked down our aisle and most of them did not ask questions or seem interested in any of the projects. Professor Kisselburgh is the one who saw my poster and asked me about it, but even then she could not devote much time in asking me questions about my project because of time constraints.

Overall, I do not believe that I learned much about emerging technology from this assignment. I learned a lot about one certain emerging technology, nanomedicine, but other than that I did not learn much of anything else. Also, I did not have much of an opportunity to talk about what I had learned because of the lack of traffic down my specific aisle.

There is an abundance of information on the Internet about this emerging technology, its benefits to modern medicine, and concerns about potential ethical and any negative effects it might have on people. You can find more information at this website: http://www.nanomedjournal.com/.

Technology-Crazed Society

I know that we currently live in the age of technology where new technologies are being produced every year, every month, every day, and even every hour. I also know that my generation is supposed to be intrigued with these new innovations and their uses in everyday life. We are supposed to be the most technologically smart people on the planet. But what happens when someone does not follow along with this stereotype? What about someone like me? I simply cannot handle technology improvements in our society. The other day I was trying to switch from the cable option on my cable box to the DVD option and I simply could not do it. I had to ask my roommate to give me directions at least five times before I could figure it out. My roommates have no trouble with the TV, but for some reason I cannot handle it. I see people walking around town with their Blackberry cell phones, iTouch iPods, Zunes, etc. I also see people "tweeting," playing video games, and navigating so easily through the Internet and I cannot help but feel jealous. I feel like I repel technology. The term "technologically savvy" is definitely not in my vocabulary. I feel lost pretty much all the time. But where does that leave someone like me? In a world where it is expected that I know how to use Twitter, the cable on TV, an advanced cell phone, etc, what does it mean for me when I do not know how to use these devices? Am I going to be left behind like the older generations before us? Is it absolutely necessary that I learn how to use these technologies in order to succeed in life? Even in this class I am required to use Twitter, which I have never used before. I purposely avoided Twitter because of the addictions it has caused my friends. I know that I tend to get addicted to websites such as Facebook, PostSecret, etc and I was afraid Twitter would cause the same problem. However, now that the times have changed and most technologically savvy people think that these websites are essential to the learning environment, I have had to give in and create a Twitter. It seems that even though I try to avoid these advances, I get sucked into them involuntarily.

Is there any way to avoid the technology craze?

Geocaching - Interesting idea, but what's the point?

This past weekend I went back to my hometown, Indianapolis, to visit with my parents. I sat down with my mom one night and was talking about classes and such when I started telling her about COM435. I mentioned how I had received a Starbucks giftcard for my work with the Geocaching activity. She was intrigued with Geocaching because she had never heard the term before. It took some time to get her to understand what it meant, but she eventually caught on. Then she asked me a question I did not even think of asking after Dr. Miller's lecture on the subject: Why? What my mother meant by this was, What's the point? In today's world this question is not uncommon. Everything we do seems to need a purpose. So her question, in my opinion, is warranted. And I did not have an answer for her. I tried to make the idea of Geocaching appealing to her by explaining that it is a type of real-world treasure hunt and explaining how much fun it could be to experience. But she just did not seem excited about it, and the more she showed her disinterest in Geocaching, the more I wondered: What's the point?

The goal of Geocaching is to find a cache box with "treasures" inside of it, right? Well, what kind of treasures are in the box? What value would they be to me? What is the likelihood that I would find something in the cache box even mildly interesting? I will not be able to find out any of those answers until I go on my first cache box hunt. But now I'm not even sure if I want to participate in this activity. There is a safety issue involved that is of big concern. I am not very good at navigating to places, whether it is a county away or in a different country (hence why I was not in a navigation role during the Geocaching activity). So one question I would have to consider before participating in Geocaching would be: What would I do if I got lost? And what would happen if I was to get injured? If I go somewhere to find a cache box and it's located somewhere dangerous, do I go ahead and try to get it out or do I leave without accomplishing anything? There are several questions I would have to run through my mind before I would think about going on a real Geocaching hunt.

My main point in this blog post is, what's the point? What could I possibly obtain from Geocaching? I am not sure if the reward from participating in the activity would outweigh the possible negative consequences. I'll definitely have to do my research.

Video Games - Good or not so good?

I personally do not enjoy video games as much as most people. The extent of my video game knowledge consists of old-school Mario Brothers, a few games on the Wii, Mario Kart, and WOW (World of Warcraft). I do not even enjoy some of these games. The only one I continue to play now is Mario Kart and I have not played that game in at least four months. Most video games I simply despise. Past boyfriends and other friends have played video games around me and I usually walk out. I do not enjoy playing nor watching video games. I am not sure exactly why that is. I guess I am more of a person who needs to get up and move around. I do not enjoy sitting down watching at a screen for any length of time. I would much rather get cozy and comfortable on a couch, pull out a book, and read for hours instead of bothering with video games. I do feel like I have a valid opinion, though, since I have played a variety of video games.

I have a few friends and family members who have had their lives consumed with video games. That's probably where I get my negative attitude from. When he was younger, my cousin would sit in his room doing nothing but playing video games for over 10 hours at a time. He would forget to eat, would use the bathroom in his room (such as using a bottle), and only had friends over when they wanted to play video games. He became antisocial because of his addiction to video games and his social life suffered because of it. I also know of a couple other people who developed addictions to video games who led lives similar to this.

On top of that, there are less extreme examples of how video games can affect people. I have had a couple of boyfriends who would cancel plans with me (and other friends) because they were so caught up in a video game and wanted to finish a task, level, etc. I guess I just do not understand the enjoyment of these video games or how they could possibly seem like more fun than spending time with actual people.

In the case of the Henry Viscardi School (HVS), I can see why video games would be beneficial. The children that go to HVS have disabilities, most are severe, and the way they connect to other "normal" children their age are through video games. In this way, video games can be very empowering. However, in the lives of "normal," non-disabled people, I think video game use is detrimental. I've seen how it can take over people's lives and control what they do. And it's not pretty.

Cell phone use - yay or nay?

The readings assigned in class this past week for COM 435 brought something to my attention. The main reading was about the increase in the use of cell phones all over the world. This made me curious about how communication is being affected by the use of cell phones. Are we now creating more impersonal relationships? Or are our relationships actually more personal and closer than before? Do cell phones create a barrier in effective communication? Do they allow us to communicate more but with less eloquence?

I could not find any specific data on the subject, so I'm sure it's a fairly new research topic. Instead of presenting research, I am going to assemble my own hypothesis.

I believe that as cell phone usage increases, communication also increases, but with less efficiency. What this means is that people are more able to communicate (even over longer distances) and that people are more readily available to others. However, this does not necessarily mean that the efficiency of communication has increased. It is also assumed in this hypothesis that I am speaking from an American standpoint. This hypothesis would not necessarily be applied to third world countries where cell phone availability, while increasing, is still not as high as more developed countries. Back to my hypothesis: I believe that what people say to each other over mediated forms of communication is actually lacking in substance. For example, people text message daily. What they say is usually relatively unimportant and lacking of any special meaning. Also, when those two people meet face to face they might not have as much to say because they had spoken all day through text message. I have noticed this in my personal life. Many times I will talk to someone so much through text messaging that when I finally get to see them in person, neither of us know what to say. It makes for an awkward face-to-face conversation.

There is another side to this story, but I also believe that it supports my hypothesis. I have a friend who I have only seen in person twice. However, we have called, texted, and Facebooked each other so much more often. This girl considers me to be her best friend, but I do not consider her to be one of my closest friends. All of my closest friends are people that I talk to in person. The way this can go against my hypothesis is the fact that strong relationships can be formed over mediated lines of communication, but the way that this can support my hypothesis is that these relationships are usually superficial, at least in my experience. This girl thinks that we are the best of friends, but I know better. Therefore, the friendship is decently fake and worthless. I do not turn to her with serious problems. I usually just talk to her about things I know we have in common.

To wrap up, I would like to reiterate that I think communication over cell phones, as well as other mediated forms of communication, can increase the amount of communication between people but does not necessarily increase the efficiency of that communication. Superficial bonds can be created between people.

I thought that I would talk about something a little different for this blog post. I was doing research for another class, COM 320, about conflict management styles and thought it was very interesting. We have not yet started to work in groups for COM 435 yet but we will in the future, so it is good to know about group conflict and how it is handled.

I am going to use an example from the TV show The Office for this blog post. What happens in this scene is that Jim steals Andy's cell phone and hides it in the ceiling of the office so that everytime it rings, everyone can hear it but Andy cannot find it. The main point of showing this video clip is to discuss the different types of styles for managing conflict. Here is the link to the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wPn5JsZiMg&feature=related

There are five styles in avoiding conflict. They are avoidance, accommodation, competition, compromise, and collaboration. The only style I see portrayed by Andy in this video is competition. Andy knows that someone has taken his phone and hidden it from him, but instead of cooperating with his fellow office workers or talking to them politely, he yells at his coworkers and blames them for his phone going missing. He even punches a hole into the wall! Andy falls under the category of competition because of his desire to win the conflict, being defensive, and feeling adamant that he has the correct information and not allowing anyone else to help him. This might be a stretch on the definition of "competition" but I still believe it applies to this situation.

In this case I think Andy is frustrated because he is competing for attention at work. He has always wanted to be number two behind his boss, Michael Scott, but has never quite made it up to that level. Dwight and Jim usually have the upper hand on him, for various reasons. All of this combined with Andy not knowing the location of his cell phone builds up and makes him explode on his coworkers unnecessarily. Instead, it would have been better for him to use a collaborating strategy to find his phone. That way he could have felt better about the situation and not accused his coworkers of stealing from him. Collaboration is usually the best solution for managing conflict.

I think we have all been in Andy's shoes before and understand his frustration. I have been in situations like that before as well where I felt out of control and wanted to know what was going on. However, that does not mean that he should yell at his coworkers or punch a hole in the wall. There are much better ways to handle the situation. I have learned first hand that it is better to collaborate with someone rather to accuse them of something. When you collaborate with someone it keeps them from feeling alienated and builds cohesiveness and cooperativeness within a group.

Blog Post #1

I'm still not sure what I should be writing on this blog so I hope I'm doing this right. As I was looking over the powerpoint slides in lecture over computer mediated communication and relationship formation it occurred to me that I could relate exactly to what was talked about. My first serious relationship was with a guy that I met online in a chatroom. Most of the topics discussed in class reminded me of this relationship, such as asynchronous communciation, the trajectory of relationship formation online, and the difficulty of relationship maintenance. The reason that my first boyfriend and I were using the Internet as a mode of communication was because we did not feel as comfortable talking to people in person as we did online. The main reason for this was because communication online is asynchronous. Even though instant messaging and chatrooms are supposed to be synchronous, they can still be considered asynchronous since a person does not have to respond right away; they can delay their response for as long as they wish. That way you have time to think about your response so you can formulate the perfect one. You have time to decide whether you want to be funny, sexy, or simple. My boyfriend and I felt more comfortable in this type of communication atmosphere because we could think before we talked. Another thing that I noticed about our relationship was that we followed the typical pattern of relationship formation. We started chatting in a chatroom, then moved to a more personal form of communication (AOL instant messenger and email), then we started talking on the phone, and finally we met in person. I guess I never really thought about that progression before and it makes sense that that's how most relationships formed online would progress. The final thing I noticed from the lecture that I could relate to is the difficulties present when trying to maintain a relationship through the Internet. This relationship was even more difficult to maintain because it was formed online. I didn't disclose to most of my friends or my family that I had even met this boy online because I didn't think it would add up to anything. I figured we would just be online friends and that was it, but when our relationship progressed from chatting online to talking on the phone, I realized that it could be something more and it became more difficult to maintain the relationship. Even after we met in person it became more difficult because we could not be together as often as we liked. You have to know how to hold conversations online or on the phone that can measure up to conversations that would have taken place in person if they were able to. We started to get the hang of it but decided in the end that computer mediated communication and phone conversations were not enough to maintain the relationship. There were a lot of factors involved in this decision, mainly that of trust. It is difficult to trust someone whom you do not see everyday and who you do not have easy access to communicate with. Therefore, I can see why many online relationships fail. I know that many people still try these relationships, especially on dating websites like Match.com and others, but I cannot say that I am a strong believer in them. I feel that to have a truly healthy and trusting relationship it should be in person.