Bloggers Paradise

After reading Emily Nussbaum’s “My So-Called Blog,” (Kline 349-261), It has made me develop an understanding of teenagers and their uses for blogs. Before reading this passage, I didn’t notice how much blogging really is used upon teenagers as more of a personal journal and place to write down their thoughts, feelings and emotions. Maybe I feel this way because I haven’t personally been using blogs as a way of keeping a life journal through friends growing up. However I don’t agree that parents should monitor everything that their middle school children write online. Before blogging most middle school children would keep a journal or secret journal that they would write everything they were feeling or things that have happened that they felt was important to write down, especially the girls. I feel that now with technology growing and more children being exposed to online that blogging is very similar to a personal journal and I know personally I wouldn’t want my parents going through my diary. So why would I want them to go through my online blog? As Emily states in  “My So-Called Blog,” “Many teen blogs are short-lived experiments. But for a significant number, they become a way of life, a daily record of a community’s private thoughts– a kind of invisible high school that floats above the daily life of teenagers.” I feel that this quote explains and supports my opinion of parents shouldn’t monitor what their middle school children do online. In the sense that their online journal is a way of expressing their own private thoughts and exchanging them with teenagers of their own age. I don’t feel that it would be right for my parents to listen to every conversation that carry, or me expressing my feelings to my friends. Overall I feel strongly that parents should be parents to the point where if their child was to get into online trouble they would then take action but especially as a teenager by that age you should be able to take responsibility for yourself.

After taking a look over the  social computing topics the three that I find  the most interesting are file sharing, (music, photos and videos), mash-ups, and social networking. I have chosen file sharing because I tend to use this the most often, between sharing peoples music, and looking at others photos. I haven’t experienced much file sharing of videos but find this topic very interesting. It is one of those things that you don’t think about you just do it without thoughts about the process and how it works. Another topic I chose is mash-ups. Before class on Tuesday, I didn’t know the name for what mash-ups although I have watched some before just never classified them. I find them very interesting and think it would be a fun topic to work with. The last topic I have chosen is social networking. I feel that there is so much that could be covered under this topic from face-book, craigslist, myspace, e harmony, and other dating services like match.com. Aside from being a social networking service relationship wise, I feel that there are a lot of job offers and ways of meeting people that can open up opportunities for your own life.

Empowerment of marginalized groups that I am most interested in finding more information about is, abuse survivors, nontraditional families, and poverty. I have chosen Abuse survivors, because everyday people go on with their lives and are so wrapped up into themselves without even noticing some of the peoples lives around them. There are so many people that would do anything to reach out to others and help them, but being unaware of the situation can cause it to be a lot harder. I find learning about peoples stories especially after the fact would be very interesting. Another topic I have chosen is nontraditional famlies. I don’t know a lot about this but there are so many different lifestyles and different ways of living. I just feel that it would be interesting to find out what the typical traditional family is and compare it to other families around the world. The last topic I have chosen is poverty. After traveling to many different areas from islands in the caribbean, St.Martin, St.Thomas, Bermuda, Tortola, Domenica, San Juan, Barbados, to Italy, and the Carolina’s, California, Chicago, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Boston ect. It has always interested me to watch the poverty and lifestyle of some people. Everywhere you travel or go to today has some sort of poverty and it is ashame to see this in such beautiful areas around the world. It fascinates me to watch certain areas that are possiably the most beautiful areas of the world and have so many people suffering who cant afford healthcare, housing, or any sort of lifestyle.

Geographic areas that I am most interested in are Europe and North America. I have chosen these two just because I know more about these areas then I would any of the others. I also feel that picking an area that I have traveled to before would help me relate my topic to.

After Reading David Kline’s, ” Therefore I Am”  I feel like he is consistently bringing up topics of which he is supporting blogging and taking situations and bringing up good points to really explain his feelings and different perspectives of blogging. However I don’t agree with some of his statements. On p.249, he states, ” The trust is that these are not just the tiresome ramblings of the boring written to the bored. Though for most part not professional writers, bloggers are often eloquent in the way that those who are not self-consciously polished often are raw, uncensored and energized by the sound of their new awakened voices.” If you go online today and look up blogs you can find a blog on just about anything and over half of the ones that are being looked up may get off subject or may not even be on topic. Although there are also many blogs that are helpful and informative to businesses, the public, and people all over the world. So although Kline may search for blogs of which are helpful and informative to him himself. There are just as many that are off topic and useless to the point of almost being comical. My question for Kline is if you where to look on the internet and pick a blog on a certain topic would you get the blog you are looking for right away everytime?

After reading David Kline’s essay, ”The Voice of the Customer” I found it fascinating that blogging really can have a huge effect on the businesses success and failure. One thing that was brought to my attention that I hadn’t realized before was that some businesses post fake blogs and stories about their product to try to get more people to use or buy this product. While looking around my room and choosing a product that I use often Crest White Strips it made me interested and wonder what they have to say about their product. Especially with the catchy phrase, “Crest White Strips a part of the crest dental plan, healthy, beautiful smiles for life.” So after visiting their main website, http://www.whitestrips.com/en_US/home.jsp and clicking on the heading success stories. It made me wonder if they posted any negative stories with all of the good ones. Obviously, you would think to yourself why would they? and it is true all of the posts are shown with people who have the perfect whitest teeth, and talk about the confidence and life changing results of this product. From my experience I have had very good results and continue to use this product. I would definitely recommend Crest White Strips to friends and family, and feel that overall I would write my own success story if I could.

I just completed reading David Kline’s essay, “Toward a More Participatory Democracy” The reading looks at blogging and the use through politics and the government. Before reading I hadn’t realized how much of an effect blogging has on politics, and how peoples opinions and support make a huge difference with results. People who debate on politics combine their thoughts with helpful information to try to persuade each-other. As stated in the book ”The truth is that many people don’t necessarily trust what they read in the papers or see on television anymore- in fact, according to a Pew Research Center poll taken during the contentious 2004 election, 45 percent of Americans said they believe little or nothing of what they read in their daily newspapers.” There are many different blogs out their and especially when  it comes to politics I would think that most everyone would have their own opinions and feel good about others, but when it comes to blogging false information is a huge problem. Many people prefer not to use blogging due to that.  Throughout this passage, it states how different people react differently to blogging and their way of getting their opinions or thoughts out. Some refer to anger and debate while others simply state it in a professional manner. Overall I felt that this was helpful to learn more about blogging through politics that I hadn’t already.

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After reading Dan Burstein’s “From Cave Painting to Wonkette,” I am able to develop a better understanding of blogging, where it came from and the main topics that are covered from politics, business, media and culture. Its amazing to think that blogging dates back to people paintings and sculptures that where displayed throughout the caves. They were depicted as continuiouse stories without any letters or numbers. To see throughout the years how people have developed differnt methods of blogs from pictures to writting in a notebook, and now using online is very interesting. What appeared to be the most interesting to me is one of the twelve key ideas that Burstein stated, ” Blogs are particularly interesting because they merry so much personality and attitude with this complex mix of software technologies.” It amazes me how many different topics are discussed throughout blogging and the amount of time that people put into some of these thoughts and ideas. I feel that using blogging can express a lot of personality and attitude that you would always be able to get across through speaking your thoughts aloud. This can also help create debates, new ideas, movement, and argumentation of which can be either positive or negative to businesses, citizens, government, media and culture. Not only within a class room or small group of people but locally, nationally, and globally. I myself havnt experianced alot with blogging aside from email, instant messaging and networking websites, but I am looking forward to creating my own blog.

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