M Blog

After doing some informal research I was able to figure out what types of social computing I liked best, what types of marginalized groups interested me the most, and also what geographical areas I was most interested in. I decided that out of the many social computing categories, I was most interested by: texting, instant messaging, and email. I knew I would have picked those in the first place because I enjoy talking online and gossiping with friends! Texting and instant messaging I use the majority of my time and find them very useful in the real world today. Millions of people use texting and instant messaging to get instant communication with almost anyone! Email is very interesting to me as well, now we don’t have to sit down and write out long letters and mail them to friends; we can sit on the computer and type quickly to people and send it for free. These are great technological advances! I thought that out of all the marginalized groups I was most interested in: older people, women, and children. I picked these because I think that older people are very interesting and they hold a lot of knowledge and we could learn a lot from them. I picked children, because like older people, we have a lot to know from them and it is great to watch them grow and learn. With education being the way it is now, children are a big deal and a great success to our future. Lastly, I chose women because I am in a women’s studies program and have been focusing a lot on the oppression of women and it has interested me deeply. They are focused on greatly on trying to still gain their full equality with men; these three things completely interested me. Africa has always been a place that interests me, last semester I took a course about it and learned so much about this great place. The Middle East I thought was interesting because of the war we have going on and how much disaster and turmoil is going on. Lastly, I chose the US because I think the US is a great place to live, yet I haven’t even seen the majority of it, and would love to travel across the country and learn more about my own country. I believe these are all great and interesting places/things.