Why I Blog

I think throughout the essay Andrew Sullivan makes many good  points about the advantages of blogging. I do not blog on a regular basis, but when I do I find myself thinking some of the things that Sullivan presents in his essay. He says, " Unlike newspapers, which would eventually publish corrections in a box of printed spinach far from the original error, bloggers had to walk the walk of self-correction in the same space and in the same format as the original screwup." I find this true. Blogging isn't like a book or any other piece of writing, where when a mistake is made it will be fixed before it is published. When a mistake is made in a blog it is there for everyone to see. It is posted onto the web for everyone. In Carr's "Is Google Making Us Stupid" we found out that many people get distracted by their work by searching the web, so who knows who will see your blog post? Someone might just notice as they are procrastinating from doing that english essay that they should be doing.

"Why I Blog" response

I thought that Sullivan made some interesting points during the course of his essay, “Why I blog”. He highlights the difference in the process of getting published, which, as a child of the internet, I had never really thought about before. The red tape, the editors and the publishing companies are no longer necessary for reaching a sizable audience which, according to Sullivan, simplifies the whole process. I never really took the time to appreciate this development, but after reading the article, I gained a sense of how revolutionary blogging really is. I also enjoyed learning of discussion-based projects, and how instead of undermining, the discussion actually helps to form and develop new ideas. I have never really spent much time on a blog before, but I still understood what he was saying. Conversation is difficult to have with a novelist, but with blogs, the feedback is instant. Sullivan really got me to think about blogs with a new perspective and after being exposed to his ideas, I think he makes a great point.

Why I Blog

I strongly agree with the points Andrew Sullivan makes in his essay “Why I Blog.”  I really love the quote on page 283 that reads, “Not all of it is mere information. Much of it is also opinion and scholarship, a knowledge base that exceeds the research department of any newspaper. A good blog is your own private Wikipedia. Indeed, the most pleasant surprise of blogging has been the number of people working in law or government or academia or rearing kids at home who have real literary talent and real knowledge, and who had no outlet—until now. There is a distinction here, of course, between the edited use of e-mailed sources by a careful blogger and the often mercurial cacophony on an unmediated comments section. But the truth is out there—and the miracle of e-mail allows it to come to you. “ I completely agree with just about everything he is saying here. He says that blogs are like Wikipedia. I thought this juxtaposition was well suited because blogs often define the subject matter and go deeper into its meaning just as Wikipedia does. Interestingly enough, Wikipedia itself it kind of like a blog because anyone can post edits to it. I also really like when he refers to brilliant kids whom enlighten the internet with their profound interpretations. It gives young adults a chance to interact with people older than them about a subject matter that perhaps relates to both age groups in either the same or a different manner. The one part of this paragraph that doesn’t quite work for me is where he says that the “truth” is out there. I think that the truth is different for every person. Some authors may have a particular message they are trying to convey with his or her writings but I think other options do definitely exist and sometimes may even prevail for certain readers. Truth is a broad term and I do not like the way Sullivan uses it here. 

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

While reading the article by Nicholas Carr, I realized that I have been thinking the same thing for sometime now. I didn't go as far to blame google for my problems but I certainly have noticed a change in the way I now think and read. I used to read all the time and now i can barely read more than a few articles even on entertainment sites. I try very hard to understand everything I am seeing but that is really hard when my eyes insist on wandering off the page and that is when my brain follows suit and I end up getting bored and the rest is history. I'm not sure if google is the exact cause, but something is definitely changing the way we think in this world.

Significance of Brick

Hallie Qiu (26459187)

The brick has a great significance throughout the story. I think it resembles several things aside from what was left of an uncle's bar. It showed how time had passed and how everything happened when it did; as well as the loss of what was important to him. The brick showed how he aged and became stronger. The brick was essentially him.

Hallie Qiu, Response to N.Carr Reading

Hallie Qiu (26459187)
Response to Nicholas Carr's "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

"That's the essence of Kubrick's dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world it is out own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence" (Carr, 66).

Selected Question: "Is the internet making us stupid?"

Carr claims that the internet "flattens" our intelligence. In some ways, I can see exactly why he would come to believe this -- however, on the other hand it doesn't justify all of the internet's purposes. Understanding his stance on the argument claiming that the internet makes you stupid has some truth. In some ways, people do not use the internet in order to broaden their knowledge, but for recreational purposes. Although we all learn something new everyday, Carr's stance is seemingly correct. People can use the internet for a variety things, and one of them is entertainment. People visit sites such as Reddit, Netflix, Youtube and even Tumblr. More likely than not, people go on site like these on the internet for entertainment and not necessarily for educational reasons. There are even people who take ideas from these sites and turn them into realities. This is where Carr's claim that "Google does make you stupid"--come to life. There are some people that are ridiculous enough to attempt certain stunts that they definitely shouldn't because it is dangerous. A modern day example of this is - planking. It was spread through the internet and became a phenomenon. Although planking is something as stupid as laying front, straight, flat on a surface, it costed someone's life. I guess you could say that everyone has the right to do whatever they want, but at the price of a human life-I think that the internet made him "stupid". If it hadn't been a phenomenon spread through the Net, there would be one more person in the world.

Nonetheless, one can argue that Carr's claim isn't true because how can something as intangible as the Net be hazardous to intellectual growth? To side with this argument, I also believe that although you can use the internet for recreational purposes, you can also use it to learn. You can broaden your knowledge in an instant by googling things that may be able to help you in life, information that you can use to resolve issues of everyday life. Although you can have fun and entertain yourself using the Youtube site, I know first hand that Youtube is actually quite useful for school as well. Certain topics such as math, science or anything you'd like to learn about is likely on Youtube, and essentially the internet. Therefore, learning for educational purposes isn't making you stupid. Using Google as a search engine can be the first step in finding what you're looking for- so, Google isn't making you stupid if you use it to broaden your knowledge.

Chicago's Brick

From D'Ambrosio's essay, I assume that there are many brick buildings in Chicago and that brick walls are very descriptive of the setting. I thought that D'Ambrosio imbued different meanings to bricks in his essay but one meaning that stood out the most for me was time. In the rapidly changing Chicago and passage of Chicago's numerous histories, such as the gambling, George, and Star Hotel, the author placed bricks as symbols for a constant entity. The bricks represent history, or bygone times of both the city and the author.
In the last paragraph the author mentions that he was gambling to salvage the past. I thought gambling was the opposite of bricks, in that gambling represents an event that does not last long or is unreliable and futile.
I thought the essay was very heavy and nostalgic, so it's hard to pinpoint the meaning of bricks, since bricks were so central to the story.