Continually Adapting

The world is always changing. Now that we have access to the digital world, things change even faster. New trends, inventions, businesses, digital tools come and go faster than ever before. It is hard to get used to these changes as they come more quickly each year. As the race to be better designed, faster, and more popular quickens, companies continue to produce, produce, and produce. I think a new iPhone comes out every year. We have to become more adaptable.

But this isn't new. We are used to change. New car models come out each year and we are used to this. We get older and experience new things at each crossroad in our life. We experience new things every day. Our existence is always changing so that we can grow. So that we can improve ourselves. With this quickly changing society, we have the chance to improve ourselves at a faster rate. But it is also important that we keep principles and regulate our changes.

In Jan Pinborough's article Keeping Safe and Balanced in a Google-YouTube-Twitter-Facebook-iEverything World in the February 2012 Ensign she acknowledges the fast pace of our digital world. She explains that while there are apps for everything, there is still a way to stay grounded while using all the new effects of digital culture.

And, like a nuclear reaction that can power whole cities—and level them—they [digital technologies] have vast powers for good and ill.
They can keep us in touch with loved ones far away—and isolate us from those in our own homes.
They can save us time in paying bills and reading the news—and consume it in answering e-mails and posting status updates.
They can help us study and share the gospel—and cause us to idle away our time and drive away the Spirit.
They can mobilize us to serve others—and keep us self-absorbed, focused on an unending stream of meaningless minutiae.
They can educate, energize, elevate, and inspire us—and they can distract, enervate, addict, and destroy us.
Around the Church, members are using digital technologies in innovative ways. They show Mormon Message videos in family home evening, reach out to ward members via social networks and text messaging, and work on family history via the Internet.

Through acknowledging the power of our digital technologies and keeping ourselves grounded with a few of her suggested rules, we can really empower ourselves through the use of digital media. I plan to outline a lot of her suggestions in our discussions with families in our webinars and fireside. Setting principles of safety and regulating use can help the family to use digital media in a positive way. Maybe the best way to set rules of safety would be to go through her article as a family in Family Home Evening and outline and highlight the rules that will be kept as a family.

Love+

My friend shared this article (Google+ Goes Looking For Love) with me. This fascinating article explains that instead of going for a billion users, Google is looking to "harness [the] emotion" of its users through creating quality attachments. While many people still do not use Google+, those that do are very attached to it and even passionate about it.

Google explains that they want to spark passion in the people that they reach; they want to change the lives of the people who use their product. Google's senior vice president, Vic Gundotra, states:

If we step back and look at the core problems humanity faces, people just aren’t connected to their passions. But if you can somehow connect a 16-year-old to their passion, get them deeply engaged and excited--that’s how you solve something like poverty,” Gundotra says. “One of the things people love about Google is that we’ve made the impossible an ordinary part of people’s lives.

This article is fun because I feel that it highlights the interconnectivity that we have been discussing in class. It discusses how a yoga instructor teaches yoga through google hangouts, and how presidential candidates have conducted google hangouts to connect with people. The web provides a place for people to connect. It provides an extra more available space for people to connect with their passions. Google is trying to make the impossible a part of people's everyday lives. While this is a very clever marketing scheme for google to use (harnessed emotion lasts much longer than passing fads) it is very endearing. I want to use an internet system that I can trust. I like the ideas of family, passions, and interconnectivity that are displayed in their advertisements and press releases. I like the cleanliness of the posts and images that come up in my Google+ stream. Way to go Google+—I can already see an emotional bond forming.

Evaluation at Midterm

The Googlization of Everything

Admittedly I skimmed this book and didn't look into it much after the first skim. Although, skimming through this book helped me to realize that many people are still nervous about new ideas and wary of new ways of doing things. Yesterday, I attended the Crandall Printing Museum for one of my editing classes. (This place is awesome, you should all go! It gives some insight into the beginnings of the digital media age—starting way back with Johannes Gutenberg and the invention of a moveable type printing press.) Anyway, one of the historians explained that Gutenberg was very careful to not change anything too drastically by the invention of his printing press. He copied the Latin letters exactly as they were hand-written in the first bible he printed. People don't like change back then, and even though our society is more accepting of change now, people still get nervous when big changes happen. The author of this book seemed to be worried that Google will eventually take over everything. He worries that our searches will be limited, that maybe Google will have control over all of the information we look at or place on the internet. I don't think we have to worry about this. Although we operate in a different way in the digital age, we don't have to worry about the actual Googlization of the digital age.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

In my novel (not actually a work of fiction, but definitely a novel) I read about David Eggers and his reaction to a huge traumatic change in his life—the loss of a mother and father to cancer within months of each other. Although we don't want to think of the digital age as a traumatic change in a negative way, digital culture has changed life dramatically and continues to do so at a much faster rate than we plan for. I read once that a traumatic event can be described as an event that does not fit into any known frame of reference. Eggers never could have foreseen or even imagined what would happen to him when his parents died. He never thought he would be raising his younger brother. He never thought he would lose both of his parents so quickly. He chose to see himself as the new model and at first he tries to do everything different than his parents did. He soon realizes that many of the things he does after their death, are the same things his parents would have done. He realizes that he has to combine some of the old rules/habits with some new rules/inventions to get through his situation. Now that we are in a digital age we need to apply some of the old rules to the new system while still allowing space to explore and enjoy the newness of the system.

Self Directed Learning

I am enjoying applying these ideas to my group project and also struggling with them myself. While I'm looking for ways to improve family connectivity through the fluidity of the internet and other digital devices, I'm struggling to post blogs that are fast, quick, and still in the process of forming. I like to develop my ideas before I publish them. But I think it is important to understand the new format of Web 2.0 and understand that this new more fluid system can be beneficial. As google chrome advertisements say "the web is what you make of it." It is ok to throw out some ideas in social networks or on a blog, and have people comment on them to give quick feedback. I'm excited to see how a webinar works and excited to brainstorm and work over the web to grow and learn together. And just as communities can be brought together in digital culture, families can be brought together using digital media. In my personal efforts to look for useful information for my group I have searched all over the web, talked to people on and off of the internet, and have done some personal reading. I've learned so much and found so much. Outside of class it has been fun to work on the internet and see how people interact with my 'official' facebook posts for the Museum of Art and the College of Fine Arts and Communications. The internet is a vast expanse and although much of it is unfamiliar territory, I know I can benefit from it. I'm excited to see where the internet and digital culture goes next.

Others Influence

Wow, I'm impressed with the hard work of the other students in the class. Their enthusiasm gets me excited to work on my own projects and search deeper in my own topics (further proving that the idea of interactivity that comes from Web 2.0 helps creativity). I have learned a lot from watching the google+ stream and from talking about the other group projects in class. I've learned that crowd sourcing can be difficult, but also extremely useful. I also have found that as we continue to connect in this way it becomes more natural. The sharing of videos, images, and articles is easy. Instead of explaining something I saw on television the night before, I can simply send a clip of the show from Youtube. This speeds up the learning process and helps me more easily connect with group members and even those that we are trying to get social proof from. In class, I have loved learning about the Church's influence and use of digital media. I'm excited to participate in the digital future of the Church. And those are just a few thoughts that I have about digital culture.

Church Magazines

So my task for this Thursday was to look up our topic in all of the past articles of the church magazines. I found a lot of information! Which we all expected. This topic has already been heavily researched and talked about in the church magazines. This last February all of the magazines really focused on the ways we can positively use digital media to help our society. There were lists in each magazine about how families can improve internet use and make it effective in multiple ways. A lot of the articles I did find were talking about the dangers of the internet and the restrictions that should be used. Since our focus is more on the connectivity that comes from using the internet as a family, I tried to stay away from those. 

There are obviously many more articles, but these are the most current and relevant articles I found:

Keeping Safe and Balanced in a Google-YouTube-Twitter-Facebook-iEverything World

            Jan Pinborough ~ February 2012 Ensign

Screening Your Screen Time

            February 2012 New Era

Choose the Right Media

            April 2012 Friend

Things as They Really Are

            David A. Bednar ~ June 2010 Liahona

Three Goals to Guide You

            Thomas S. Monson ~ November 2007 Liahona

A Matter of a Few Degrees

            Dieter F. Uchtdorf ~ May 2008 Liahona

Sharing the Gospel Using the Internet

  M. Russell Ballard ~ July 2008 Ensign

These will all be very useful resources for our webinar!

Brainstorming for Families

So our project for Digital Culture is coming right along, except we cannot figure out what will be the best way to compile and introduce our information yet. So I'm just making a quick post to comment on some of the things we talked about last Thursday.

We know that we still have a lot of research ahead of us. If we are going to compile the best information to help parents with internet use we will need to continue to do our research. We also need to define our area of research. It's still a little broad. We need to look into the different sources of information and projects that have already been based on the same ideas as our own.

We were going to use a blog to post all of this information. But none of us are actually planning on updating the blog after our class. The point of a blog is to continue posting and keeping the information updated. It's like a newspaper or a magazine that requires weekly/monthly/quarterly/annually published information that keeps its audience captivated by the new stories and information.

We were going to create a wiki with the information we have archived and collected, but then, since in the digital age everything changes so quickly, the information would become outdated too quickly.

We wanted to create an online brochure with available links to websites and information databases for parents to access. But without gaining a large audience, how will we even get people to look at the brochure in the first place?

Maybe we can just compile a list of tips and stories that have worked for other families? We can advertise our brochure (with links and blurbs that explain why these links are useful) on a YouTube channel? We can post funny videos, or fit funny videos into our own videos that we create. In our Youtube channel we can link to our brochure.

Needless to say, we still have a lot of brainstorming to work on. Any thoughts?

My Family and Digital Media

Brainstorm for different ways my family benefits and stays connected through digital media:

1. Cell phones
1. Constant contact
2. Texting
3. Calls
4. Picture messages of funny things we see, special photos and hilarious cartoons my brother draws
2. Skype
1. Siblings live all over—New York, Florida, Nevada, and Utah
2. I could skype my family while I was in London on a Study Abroad
3. Facebook
1. Pictures
2. Posts and Comments
3. Links to articles and websites we want to share with each other
4. Extended family groups
5. On-going message with my five girlfriends from high school. We've had to create new messages since we've emailed so much that we reached the limit on Facebook messaging. We're spread all over the world now, but we're still close. They are a bit like family to me. I've know some of them since 3rd grade. We are currently in Boise, Idaho; Logan, UT; Provo, UT; Honduras; France; and soon to be New Zealand. And now we have an awesome history online of our lives through college. Detailed and personal—stuff you would only tell your closest friends.
4. Email
1. Event planning—reunions, parties, trips
2. Family history tips and stories
3. My dad sends out actual stories he has collected, even typed, and I can save them in a file on my computer
4. We often start long hilarious conversations by replying to all in response to reunion and trip plans—they can get pretty crazy
5. Share pictures—from trips together, presents we want
6. Gift lists
7. Spiritual messages—sharing our testimonies, articles
5. YouTube:
1. Nephews share funny videos with my family—we can connect with them on a higher level than usual—these two are ten and twelve
2. Dance parties in the kitchen
6. Private Blog
1. Titled: Close to You—play on words from a family inside joke
2. Funny moments—my sisters' kids are hilarious
3. Pictures—trips, kids, ceramics, Florida, New York, funny cartoons, Lake Tahoe...etc.
4. Examples:

• Elly's post 

 Today's Becca Story:

Brian and I watched a scary movie in our room last night and so I wouldn't let Becca climb in our bed. She cried herself to sleep.

But the thing with Becca is, she has a long memory.

When I went to give her a hug this morning, she made a very sad face and said, "Mom, I had a bad feeling last night because of you..." And her little lip quivered.

Poor baby.

So I gathered her in my arms and we watched Little Einsteins together and she forgave me. 

• Tori's post:
 As if you all aren't tired of the Facebook plethora of first day of school pics, right? 

I guess you could say ours is a little different because well, let's just say there are cute shots of Owen and Miles and then there are, well, ones like this...

Anyway, those are just a few ways my family uses digital media to bring us together.