Friday, June 7, 2013


Blog#2 Media’s control over people’s lives (Minori Tango)

 

2. Overall, do you think that computers and technology give people MORE control over their lives, LESS control over their lives, or don’t you think it makes any difference?

 

 First I definitely think that computers (including cell phones) and technology have a huge power to control people and have already changed our lives in many ways.

 

 Since computers such as cell phones are so convenient that we can easily access to the Internet and get in touch with friends and family whenever we want to, those tools have become indispensable to people’s lives. Today, I see many people using cell phones when they are walking, getting on trains or even when they are hanging out with friends. There are so many people who seem to be addicted to using cellphones, and I think the one of problem of those people is that they are losing opportunities to communicate with others. As I mentioned above, people use cellphones while hanging out with friends, and the same thing can be happening in their houses too. Therefore, people tend to be too busy using cellphones to have conversations face to face with someone. It may not make any difference at first, but it may gradually become a big cause of destroying the relationship with friends and families.

 

  As there is so much information available on the Internet and so on, many people rely on those resources even though they are not 100% reliable. Since those kinds of tools have a huge influence, some people trust what they see or read on the Internet completely, and have ideas which may be biased. Moreover, it can be said that many people are losing their ability to come up with their own opinions because now we can just search for someone’s opinion which is written on the Internet, and we do not really need to have a think.

    

 Indeed, computer and technology have made our lives convenient, but we have to seize initiative to control them otherwise we can be controlled by them easily without notice. I do not think a life is not interesting which is being controlled by computer and technology all the time and not talking face to face with my friends and family, and sharing our own opinions.       

2 comments:

  1. I'm Marino.
    I also agree with Minori’s opinion.
    First, being addicted to media definitely lessens the face-to-face communication. When I was at home, my dad was browsing the website with the computer, I was watching TV, and my mom was mailing with her cellphone. Between us, of course there is no communication at all. Even though such a situation in my house is a rare case, I guess many other households experience this. Furthermore, during the lunch time with my friends, we tend to use our smartphones even though we are together at the same table. It may look awkward from other people, but in fact, many students do the same thing and we aren’t conscious about that. Thus, it true that media deprives the opportunity from people to communicate with people in face.
    Second, we trust so many dubious information found on the Internet. Using Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia which can be edited by anyone, is one of the examples. Since anyone can write the definition of the term in Wikipedia, there are full of possibilities that such information is wrong. Even though I know that, I tend to use that information because it is easy to find. Therefore, we can understand that how heavily media influence us, just because it is easy to access though we know some media is skeptical.
    In sum, I think that media is very influential on people’s life, and we need to have a certain restriction on using them.

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  2. I agree with both ideas. I would like to show one example of the problems caused by the Internet. You might have heard of the people who cannot communicate with other people well in face to face. Those who are called コミュ障 is now a serious problem so that government and society have to work on it. There are so many コミュ障 people and the number is getting bigger and bigger. what we need to focus on is that those people can communicate with other people on the Internet and it indicates that the Internet deprives opportunities to practice to communicate with people in real because they can connect to other people even at home, without going outside. Then people become otaku, neet, or コミュ障. Even it doesn’t become a “ disability”, our communication skill indubitably decreased compared with elderly people. that is why many companies require communication skills of freshman. We should bare in mind that there is a goodness not to use the internet.

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