Midterm: Part One

My blog posts to date:

1. Introduction- A few fun facts about me.
2. Queequeg and Ishmael's "Friendship"- In this post I looked at how Queequeg and Ishmael's friendship was not on equal terms since Queequeg was always described as being a savage. I also learned my first lesson about the dangers of posting too quickly as I included a link to an article about Nathaniel Hawthorne's racism rather than Melville's, as I intended.
3. Humans + Technology = "The Machine"- This post described my views of the relationship between humans and technology as a cyclical process. "The machine" is comprised of humans and technology working together.
4. Digital Culture: my weaknesses and strengths- I assessed my strengths and weaknesses when it comes to creating, connecting, and consuming. My strongest point was consuming. My weakness was creating, though connecting was weak as well.
5. Online Rating Systems- This was my most popular post to date. I talked about how common ratings of digital material are compared to printed material, and what the possible strengths and weaknesses of such a system may be.
6. One Side of the Story- I responded to a video we watched in class of a deaf girl hearing for the first time as a result of a cochlear implant. I talked about how easy digital culture makes it to simply learn about one side of an issue and neglect to research the other angles.
7. Strengthening bonds with others through video games- I related my experience of bonding with my brothers through playing video games, and reflected about how video games and other aspects of digital culture can be strengthening, not only isolating.
8. The Persistent Popularity of Moby Dick- I wondered how Moby Dick ever became popular in the first place, and how it retains its popularity to this day, though many people have never read the story. I concluded that people are more interested in the idea of the story (in a very condensed form) than the story itself.
9. Moving into phase two of academic blogging- This was a response to our assigned reading. I thought over my past blogs and realized that I am still firmly in phase one of blogging. I connected the idea of a spiral as a way to help me dig deeper and progress to phase two (and eventually phase three) of academic blogging.
10. The Other Side of the Story-- Comments- My latest blog applied the principle of the spiral by revisiting my previous blog, One Side of the Story (number 6 in this list.) I discussed how I enjoy reading the comments at the end of articles and videos because the comments often address both sides of whatever issue I was reading about. I feel like I learn more from posted comments than the article itself.

As I look over my blog posts and think about which of my classmates' posts have piqued my interest, I can see that I am the most interested in people's ideas about how digital culture impacts our personal lives, either positively or negatively (though I prefer to look at the positive.) In particular, I really enjoy posts such as Heidi's thoughts about learning new skills that specifically show how digital culture has impacted their lives. My question is: how does one's level of involvement in various aspects of digital culture impact one's happiness and quality of life?