Stone brings up some interesting points about the deeper, scientific implications of the habits she's formed when reading emails. She says that she has a habit of holding her breath for long periods of time when reading emails. I find it interesting that she mentions that she is conscious about her breathing, as she mentions that she does morning meditations, but immediately fall into her habit of holding her breath as soon as she checks her email. This shows that our familiarity with constantly being connected and immersed in our technology can form subconscious habits. These habits are not necessarily bad, but they do raise questions about their lasting effects.

It's assumed that people who are outsiders to the realm of technology are the biggest proponents, but I have seen many people in the field who are just as adamant. Rheingold agrees, and he cites Linda Stone, who has worked in online media for a long time.

I agree with Rheingold here. Rheingold acknowledges the benefits of disconnecting every once in a while and interacting with the outside world. While I admit, most times that I disconnect, it's because I have already exhausted all the social media I partake in. However, I think it's always good to let one's mind wander free every so often. This reminds me of the habit of reading shampoo bottles while in the bathroom, before cellphones. It was still absorbing information, but it was physical and of the outside world, so that counts, right?

I'm glad we were assigned this reading, because I have been searching for the Pomodoro Technique for months. I remember reading about it on a late night, and I forgot to save the article, so it's awesome that it happens to be in assigned reading for class. Some people are more attuned to jumping into assignments or tasks for the day at leisure, and can manage that way with ease. On the other hand, there are others, like myself, who have a hard time with managing time and keeping deadlines. This technique seems good for me because it has strict deadlines that are manageable. I have noticed that I am most productive at work in the last few hours, and I think it's because I subconsciously know I can leave the task to go home and do things that I enjoy, like homework. I think this technique could be a good way to train my mind to always think like it's the last hour before works end, and make my work streamline more efficient.

Meditation is a practice that appears more and more challenging as the allure of your smartphone is just a few feet away. Artist Father John Misty has a lyric that relates to this on a song called, "The Memo."

"And as the world is getting smaller, small things take up all your time Narcissus would have had a field day if he could have got online"

While I have not tried yoga explicitly, I have noticed that reading books is kind of a mental break in the same way that yoga is to some. Sometimes, I can pick up a book and read for a few hours with ease. However, most of the time, it's hard to concentrate on the words on the page and often times I will reach for my phone for no inherent reason. The instant gratification of social media is tempting, but it is always important to take some time away and focus on yourself.

Modern society's use of technology seems to get nothing but criticism. A few years ago, there seemed to be a final frontier on how technological advancements could improve our lives more and more.

However, technology doesn't necessarily have to be something with a circuit board and a touch screen. Any big advancement, like building a fire or the first polio vaccine, can be considered technology. With every major advancement, society has always adapted, and that will likely hold true as we move deeper into the smartphone age.

The term "addiction" is not one that should be thrown around lightly. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) claim that 21.5 million American adults (aged 12 and older) battled a substance abuse disorder in 2014. As prevalent as texting while driving is, many opinions I have heard think this practice is one of those unavoidable things or a dirty little secret. In my opinion, I think this is a tell-tale sign that someone is addicted to their phone. I don't think any message is worth a life lost, especially if you are driving with other people in the car.

My first job ever was a neighborhood lifeguard. One of the most important abilities our company wanted us to work at was cognitive awareness. The instructor teaching the certification class showed us this same video and nearly the entire group missed out on the dancing panda.

https://youtu.be/9Il_D3Xt9W0

In this video, the same Daniel Simons cited in the text shows the audience different examples of street art that blend the external and internal information that makes these images appear multi-dimensional and life-like.

This piece of anecdotal evidence that ends being up being relevant reminds me of the supplementary reading article, "Mystery of Russian Fake on Facebook Solved, by a Brazilian". Rheingold discusses reading a blog by his friend, professor Cathy Davidson. She details a day where several incidents happened in a short span of time. She consciously told herself to be more mindful, instead of letting her mind drift. A few minutes later, she narrowly avoided hitting two dogs that ran in front of her car. In regards to "Mystery of Russian Fake on Facebook Solved, by a Brazilian", there was a tweet that faced scrutiny, claiming that one of the Parkland shooting survivors was actually a trauma actor. It seems that the person who tweeted this comment and image is in Moscow, Russia. Even then, who knows if this image was doctored or altered in any way?

While Rheingold intended to use Davidson's conscious mental notes as a narrative for this chapter of his book, it reminded me of all the media bias in politics. There has been political bias since the house party system first became commonplace, but technology has blurred the lines between fact and fiction and that has impacted how people analyze media. One should always make an effort to do their own research on topics that they consider important, rather than just take their Facebook feed at face-value.

Just this exercise alone demonstrates how moving away from technology in the classroom changes the way the class works. It is apparent when open discussion is encouraged in a classroom, many tend to shrink into their laptop and avoid engagement. There are classes I have taken where open discussion is prevalent, but often times it takes the entire semester to get to that point, and I think phones and laptops can attribute to that.

"How to Thrive Online" is a text written by Howard Rheingold about technology in modern society and its tremendous impact. Rheingold talks about topics such as focus, attention span, and learning in a classroom setting among many others. While Rheingold inherently believes technology has a positive impact on knowledge in our society, he argues that the overload of information can have negative effects.

An interesting subject that Rheingold brings up is the core, scientific reasons why staying connected all the time is addictive. Rheingold uses the term "dopamine squirt" to refer to the hormonal stimulation the brain receives when engaging in frequent social media. Social media, at it's core, is about connecting people. Social media websites are meticulously crafted and engineered to remove the awkward long pauses and small talk normal conversation might have, and makes engaging with other people more fun. Streamlining this engagement makes the brain pump out frequent bursts of dopamine, enough to the point that not being on social media and not making those engagements feels boring.

Rheingold presents a broad range of information about how the mind is altered when we become too comfortable with the easily-accessible technology that surrounds us. He cites the research of many noted psychoanalysts and researcher and this shows the reader that extensive research went into the development of this text.

Source Rheingold, Howard. Net Smart: How to Thrive Online. MIT Press, 2012.

In the length of a semester, it may seem that each little assignment is trivial and often times it is challenging to view the bigger picture. What I can see from this course is that each assignment is a culmination of a major assignment and the Prownian Analysis boils that down in a more digestible manner.

This paragraph describes the HIV/AIDS perfectly. I think the main point of each part of the quilt is to engage the viewer as a sort of detective. Every small detail holds a certain weight and one can see themes pop up after more investigation.

The article "3-D print your way to freedom and prosperity" isn't necessarily about polarity, but I think it uses compare and contrast in a bad way. The article jumps from the pros and cons of 3-D printing jarringly, without really establishing a strong opinion on either one.

This serves to be an effective tool for analytical interpretation. Often times, one attempts to perceive the nuances and deeper meaning behind an object right from the beginning. I know this is something that I tend to do. If something can be boiled down to something as basic as the polarities mentioned above, a birds-eye-view can be allocated to an object and zooming into smaller details will be easier.

This is an interesting comment and it helps understand how easy it can be to add subjective bias to a topic. Any kind of personal additions can largely narrow the scope of writing and it can make establishing new topics about a certain object even more challenging.

This is something I have struggled with in the past. Once my questions about certain topics are answered during research, it is difficult to keep my original thoughts in order, since I now know what is fact.

Baxandall makes a good point about pictures and how we use language to truly understand what one is looking at. In the context of objects in general, I think the supplementary text "3-D print your way to freedom and prosperity" sheds some light on how that could change if 3-D printing becomes more commonplace. I think being able to print whatever simple product one needs can change perceptions in a material culture and make certain things lose the value they may have once had.

This statement reminded me of the HIV/AIDS quilt. One can see the quilt objectively. I think the size of the quilt alone gives a good idea of how many people are/were affected. The quilt's subjective and personal appeals are what makes it so effective. Each part of the quilt has a story, family, and a fragment of time that makes it so memorable.

In this context, this statement is very illuminating. In a material culture, such as the one that is being described, the primary focus is on the objects. However, what makes certain objects more important than others in this viewpoint is how words are used to describe. I think a great example of this can be applied to the art world. There are countless talented artists in the world today that have incredible abilities.

This image looks like a picture taken by a camera, but it is actually hand-drawn. In an internet age, this illustration will get likes and favorites on social media, but there probably are not many long, meaningful comments about it.

Meanwhile, if you're shown an image like this one, it's instantly recognizable, and I believe that is largely to do with the amount of language used to describe this painting.

"3-D print your way to freedom and prosperity" by Jathan Sadowski

"The maker movement embraces a kind of naively apolitical, techno-economic, capitalist utopia that thrives on individualistic value" (Sadowski). This quote has it's own section in this article and provides a strong mantra for the phenomenon that is 3-D printing. Jathan Sadowski, a Ph.D. student at Arizona State University, talks about the concept of 3-D printing and how versatile it can be. The article begins with comments made by Barack Obama a State of the Union address from 2013. "'Three-D printing [has] the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything,' he said." Sadowski agrees with this and brings up a lot of points about the benefits of 3-D printing, such as the ability to be creative, ease of accessibility, and individualism and power given to the entrepreneurial mind. However, Sawoski argues that these very benefits fit well into "the Californian Ideology". This theory suggests that high-tech entrepreneurs can bypass the regulations and systems that have been established. However, these systems would not be broken or disrupted, but would actually stay the same. Sadowski makes another strong point about what dangers could be presented in easily-accessible 3-D printing. Since manufacturing regulations can be so easily disregarded when 3-D printing, dangerous products can be made. Sadowski writes about Cody Wilson, "a founder of Defense Distributed, [who] designed, prototyped, and posted plans for a working 3-D-printed plastic handgun he called the Liberator."

This article was written in 2014, when 3-D printing was still a very new concept and the potential for what could be created and which huge conglomerates could be toppled where boundless. However, the years have past and 3-D printing has slowly crept away from the mainstream media and dinner table conversations. The equipment needed to 3-D print a few years ago was still not consumer-friendly, but now you can buy 3-D printers for a few hundred dollars. Many schools around the United States have 3-D printers that are accessible to schools. I believe that the 3-D printing concept was always destined for small-scale usage. The flexibility to create whatever someone needs works best in a small-scale, because these products being printed do not have to go through the quality control that bigger manufacturers. I think the Californian Ideology did eventually come true, but under a different pretense. I think that the "system" was not impacted by 3-D printing because the bigger financial piece of the pie is the manufacturing of the 3-D printers, not so much the products being printed.

Source: Sadowski, Jathan. "3-D print your way to freedom and prosperity." Al Jazeera, 17 May 2014, http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/5/3d-printing-politics.html.

I thought this sentence accurately described what one might feel they lack when reading essays such as this one. The dense language and seemingly abstract concept of objects that Prown and Haltman write about... Prown and Haltman write about the concept of objects in a seemingly philosophical sense. Their use of dense and "nuanced" vocabulary allows for a very meticulous description, but it alienates me as a reader. In comparison, "3-D print your way to freedom and prosperity" takes a similar approach but makes understanding easier. The words chosen to describe concepts like "The Californian Ideology" are rich and nuanced, but using them to talk about a concept/product that is more commonly known in modern-day makes the idea easier to grasp.

This further cements the idea that rich vocabulary is essential for elaborating the emotions, sensations, and descriptions one can create when analyzing an object. The term "self-conscious" has taken a negative connotation in the way we speak today. Many use this term to describe aspects of themselves that they are insecure about, like appearances, emotions, or mental well-being. However, when analyzing an object, having a self-conscious viewpoint can be a benefit.