Talking Point

This weeks readings all centered around Myspace and Facebook. THe article by Danah Boyd says something very interesting about comments on myspace being like cultural currency. i went on myspace this weekend and looked at my younger cousins page and the pages of her friends an i have to agree with Boyd. everyday someone leaves a comment, and they all seem to put "Comment Me" at the end of every bulletin they post. Really what does this mean? when you look at my page i get maybe three comments a month, usually someone telling me that i need to update my page or something, but these younger teens seem to think that if your friends dont leave you comments....well their not really your friends after all. Another one of the artifices, the only one to actually interview a teen, quoted them as saying "if your not on myspace, you dont exist." if this really is the attitude of teens in high school where does that leave the teens who do not have Internet access? does that automatically mean that they will never be part of a social circle in highschool because of something as silly as myspace? i hope not!
Of course the articles talk about the dangers of myspace, but what i found interesting was when Boyd said that teens are not creating these spaces as a way to scare their parents, rather they are doing it because they need a space of their own. but whatever happened to the days when teens...oh i dont know...actually went somewhere they called their space? is it really a good thing that teens are spending so much time on their computers on Facebook and Myspace instead of going out adn learning how to interact with people in person? this is a valuable skill which im sorry, you cant get through life without. I am the kind of person who would love to just conduct all my business on the computer...as you may have noticed i dont do that whole speaking in public thing to well, but even i know that in order to go through life, i need to learn to deal with people. Sure the Internet and sites like myspace are a way of creating social networks, but its not enough. you cant learn conversation skills from a computer.
the most interesting article was the one by Elia Powers about the class at Pitzer College about youtube. not only is the subject youtube but every class is filmed by a student and then posted on the site. in theory this is a great idea because you could watch classes again online if you have something missing in your notes of if you missed class. but at the same time, you are not able to get the classroom experience that you need. lets face it, we all know that there would be alot of people who would stop going to class if they knew that they could just watch it from their homes. but is this really a technological advance? can we really replace classroom experience with cyber class? i doubt it.