HW 24: Short Story

A kid walks into class wearing some kind of bright hoodie with aviators on top of his winter hat and his light blue skinny jeans hanging off his ass showing off his boxers while he makes a spectacle of himself while he greets all of his friends and cracks jokes about "the game" he saw last night... what a douche-bag I say in my head. Most people like this kid, but then again most people are walking stereotypes who's only concern is showcasing the newest dance move while wearing the newest clothes while humming the newest rap or hip-hop or R n' B song. I on the other hand am wearing whatever I could scrap together out of my closet, no logos, no ass hanging out of my pants, dignity in tact, even if I don't attract as much attention.

As I sit in class, having already done most of the problems on the board, I take a look at the people around me. Most of them are slaves to the newest thing, be it a new song, a new dance move, a joke they heard on TV or celebrity gossip. "These are cool people?" I think to myself. Where are the weird interesting people that every high school is supposed to have? I think every school has some sort of unofficial quota to fill of nerds, geeks, jocks etc., people naturally fit into this quota of people, however you don't see it in the refreshing way it was shown before. Now "cool" can be bought and the "cool" you buy outshines the "cool" you made in your room in the middle of the night. "Cool" people are just the regular people who have the money and time to get the most expensive and most "cool" stuff. Even the "cool" "un-cool" people have bought their version of "un-cool" at a store. Pretty soon the whole world is gonna be a great big pile of--"

"Yo, can I borrow a pencil?" the person sitting next to me asks as he interrupts my thought, I look up to see it's the same douche-bag who walked in dressed like a "'non-tool'-tool"

"Yeah, sure" I say as I give him one of my spare pencils so I can go about daydreaming again.

The kid next to me begins to doodle in his notebook which is filled with half taken notes and smudgy drawings he made weeks before. He uses my pencil to draw a monkey in a top hat with a cane dancing. Initially I'm angry that he couldn't have used one of his pencils to waste time in class but after seeing the doodle I smile a little to myself, the kid walks out of class, forgetting to give me back my pencil and pulling down his skinny jeans on his way out to adjust his low-pants look. I continue my day slightly less disappointed in the world... but only slightly.

HW: 25 story comments

Jakob's Story

Jakob, I liked how your story was very subtle and you didn't spend time talking about the persons clothes and what they have, as most people might be tempted to do. You focused on the actual person and their personality and goals which is a deeper version of cool than how someone looks. You chose to write a story about a very real person who doesn't try to be cool and just knows what he wants in life and tries to get it. This story was written well and gets across a real version of cool, good work.

Rachel's Story

This was an odd version of cool, a cross between the pretty girl and mysterious cowboy type which is a bit odd but makes sense the way you describe it. I would have liked to see you make the character seem cool on her own instead of having everyone else say she's cool and the reader by association thinking she's cool, remember "show don't tell". Besides that, your story was well written and showed an odd way of being cool that we haven't seen much of.

Henry's Story

This story was interesting because it shows the main character as someone who's actually smart, most people see cool as looking good or having a certain personality but most people don't think of intelligence as cool. That being said, I felt as though the beginning of your story was a big list showing just what she wore. This information is useful to characterize her but it's not so important that it should take up the majority of a paragraph. All in all this story was well written and showcases a cool that we don't normally see or recognize which deserves some credit.

Charles's Story

This story was very funny and makes its statement, however I think you spent most of your story explaining the prices of things while you could have spent time expressing Andy's excitement or showing his "swagger" after he buys the shoes and why that makes him cool.

I've noticed in most of the stories I've read that the cool person is usually mysterious, heroic, looks good etc. They fit an archetype for good in most of these stories, they're either the hero, the criminal with a heart of gold, the mystic with knowledge etc. these cool people fulfill roles that we can't fit, we're attracted to these people because we subconsciously want them in our lives. Most of the stories I've read haven't said that cool people had the capacity for evil. No one showed a cool person making fun of someone else or being a bully, this may be because people don't want to admit that bullying is cool or because they personally don't like bullying. However Evil can be seen as cool, Darth Vader from "Start Wars" is seen as cool, he's a badass who has power and attitude and competence. Even though Evil can be cool I haven't seen it expressed in people's stories, which reveals more about what people want other people think about what they think is cool.

HW 23: Initial Thoughts on Cool

"Cool" is a term people use to describe someone who they like or admire. Someone can be admired for several different reasons, people are mainly admired because they have something the other person doesn't have. However if this were true then everyone would be cool because everyone has some sort of desirable trait. Technically everyone is considered cool by someone, even the most "un-cool" person is loved by their family (hopefully). In our culture we have an average consensus for what cool should be, even though most people try not to be obviously cool, or try not to show that they're trying to be cool. This definition of cool differs from race to race, area to area etc. there is no universal "cool" but we can see how people might think they're cool.

One interesting thing about the word "cool" is how closely it's definition is related to admiration. I would say that "cool" is a word to describe admiration on a scale, even though most people won't say they admire the person they think is cool, because that statement is too sentimental which is un-cool (for men at least). However when you replace the word "cool" with admire you end up with some odd behavior. For instance, people can be viewed as cool based on the things they have, in this particular example it'll be a car. The sentence "I think he's cool because he has a nice car" can be changed to "I admire him because he has a nice car". When you look at the word "cool" that way it pertains to desirable traits and possessions, instead of the word admire which has a more meaningful definition and relates to personal traits rather than possessions.

The word "cool" is largely undefined, we all use it but we haven't really tried to define it. Naturally if we all use a word with no real common definition we're going to make our own meanings. Because people are throwing around virtually thousands of definitions of the same word we're all somewhat confused when we look at cool on our own so we base the word on things that are universally cool like celebrities or TV and Movie characters etc. "Cool" has become (or possibly originated as) a commercial tool to sell things, since cool involved material items as well as traits. Another piece of proof that "cool" is commercial is that the stereotypical "popular" or "cool" kids are rich and are viewed as cool because of their clothes and money.

HW 21: Art Project

(The Speech balloons, or boxes in this case, came out blurry so I've re-written them below)

Panel 1: nothing

Panel 2: "Select Tool"

Panel 3: "Copy"

Panel 4: "Print"

Panel 5: nothing

Panel 6: "Realistic Accuracy Achieved 75%"

I decided to make a one page comic about a robot that wanted to represent reality, in this case a nice sunset in a meadow. It does this by using commands and tools that computer users will be familiar with, it copy's the scenery and prints it to see that it can't accurately copy the scene in front of him. This is true of digital media as well as all media, reality can't be fully captured in any medium, in this case the picture didn't look fully like the real image but in today's technology we can't simulate full reality. While we have sight and sound copied we can't copy smells at the same time or copy what the person might physically feel at that time.

The robot feels somewhat frustrated that it can't copy reality completely, this shows our obsession with copying reality, we've become so obsessed that we believe we can copy anything. People have become so arrogant in their ability to copy reality that you can only assume someone might get frustrated when they can't copy it correctly, much like an artist who gets frustrated that they can't draw something the way they see it or imagine it. This piece of art is like a mirror, but it doesn't reflect the viewer directly, it reflects the media that the viewer creates or takes part in. This piece of art doesn't inspire change because I don't feel like it's necessary, people will naturally copy the images they see but it's important to see that the object we copy is still there and can be enjoyed for what it is.

One interesting obstacle that came about when I was making this comic was making the robot likable. I didn't want to make some sort of evil robot who would "rape" reality by copying it and trying to commercialize it or something. The robot's intention was to save the image of the beautiful sunset not to make it obsolete by copying it, the makers of the Wii didn't want to make outside physical activity obsolete, and the makers of Facebook didn't want to make social interaction obsolete either, they wanted to copy a portion of reality for a constructive purpose. In the Wii's case to influence gamers to exercise more and in the case of Facebook to have people be able to share photos easier and talk to friends who might be far away. The way I did this was I made the robot happy and borrowed elements from the face of EVE from "Wall-E" who looks approachable and friendly (when her face is green and she isn't blowing things up). This project was fun to do and it's refreshing to be able to express ideas outside of blog posts for a change.

HW 22: Final Draft Big Paper

Introduction

The debate over weather digital media is good or bad is a futile argument and a waste of time. Digital media is just another medium and the true "evil" people see in digital media is the subject it represents, not the media itself. Digital media is an easily accessible form of non-digital media or a mixture of non-digital mediums. It's just another way of showing things and doesn't necessarily add to the "evil" of the subject. For example, the hands down most controversial video game "Grand Theft Auto" isn't thought to be overly violent and too inappropriate because it's a video game, it's because the game has you selling drugs, killing people, stealing cars etc. The game itself is only the carrier of the subject, you can't blame someone for giving you a cold because they were just carrying it, they didn't add to the disease.

Background

Throughout this essay I will use words like "Good" and "Evil" to describe how people view digital media. The main criteria people use when defining these opinions about technology is how this technology affects the viewer or player. "Good" media is viewed to make the audience smarter, more knowledgeable and retain good morals and values. "Evil" technology is viewed as "a waste of time", or "it'll turn you brain into mush", or its too violent or immature or of bad taste. Most people will agree that people find Digital Media entertaining weather or not it's "Good" or "Evil", the argument I make is based on this definition of "Good" or "Evil" media.

"Feed" Arguments

In the book "Feed" by M.T. Anderson, people of the future use devices that are surgically implanted into the brain and can allow people to communicate and buy things almost instantly. The book clearly blames technology for the cultural decline in the future, however when you look at the way this social decline happens, the Feed Corporation is the one to blame. The Feed corporation would send advertisements directly into people's brains so that they couldn't get away from them, those people then bought the products that were advertised. The corporations advertised other products based on what they bought. The teens in "Feed" were buying things based the corporations which shaped them. This made them buy anything that the corporations sold and they all became obsessed with fads and had no idea what was going on in the world. This is the true "evil" in the book, consumerism truning into apathy and eventually into ignorance. Even though the Feed was able to distribute the message of the corporations, the ultimate evil in the situation was the Feed Corporation.

In "Feed" the main populace, the 73% percent of people who had Feeds, had no idea what was going on in the world because they were distracted by trivial fads. These fads were written to be ridiculous, dressing like old people was "in" when the characters were young, owning fake birds was "in" at some point and even having lesions was "in". The character Quendy even had plastic surgery to cut open her skin in several areas to look cool even though it's obviously unhealthy and dangerous. Even today we're distracted by celebrity gossip, people talk about Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift's VMA award speech instead of discussing the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, or the genocide in Darfur, or even the discussion on health care policies that will directly affect Americans. This distraction doesn't originate from Digital Media, in ancient Rome the colosseums were used to entertain the masses to distract them from the inner turmoil within Rome (Andy's "Bread and Circuses" lecture). Therefore the apathy and ignorance exhibited in "Feed" and in our own culture isn't derived from Digital Media, it's derived from our desire to be entertained.

"Feed" also bombards the reader with advertisements from the company's that exist in the book. These advertisements are inescapable and are beamed directly into people's heads. One explanation for the cultural decay in "Feed" is the obsession with consumption, the teens in "Feed" constantly say things like "lets buy something" they don't even know what to buy, yet the need to buy something is there. Everything is also incredibly accessible and there's a direct relationship between accessibility and the need to buy, the less work you have to do to buy something the more you'll feel like buying it (paraphrased from a discussion with Jakob Friedman). This idea of accessibility and excessive advertising isn't specific to Digital Media. On the streets there are tons of poster ads, some buses have TV screens showing ads on them, there are bill boards everywhere, McDonalds goes so far as to even have a sign about the McCafe in the McDonalds (chances are if you're INSIDE the store you know about it). Convenient stores have shelves for candy at the counter, because it's right there people are tempted to buy it, like the store, its convenient. Excessive ads and easy accessibility are techniques used by companies to get more sales, this can be done through Digital Media, but its certainly not exclusive to it.

"Everything Bad is Good for You" Arguments

Steven Johnson's book "Everything Bad is Good for You" brings up the idea that people can learn from digital media. He argued that video games were able to teach reasoning and logic skills, complex TV shows taught us to use our memory to get inside jokes or to get plot twists that referenced other episodes. I believe that humans can learn from anything if they enjoy it. People can learn from books, drawings, comic books, physical interaction etc. The only difference between digital media and non-digital media is the fact that more people prefer digital to non-digital. Digital media only takes what non-digital media does and makes it more entertaining via the use of images and sounds. The same way you can use logical reasoning to think about how you would tackle a reality show situation, you can also use to figure out how to solve a problem occurring in a book you're reading or any story you've been told. This means that the subject is causing the development not Digital Media itself, the "good" in Digital Media comes from it's subject as well as the "bad" in "bad" Digital Media, the subject is what matters.

Steven Johnson's theory seemed logical and correct, however he didn't specify how much of that development happened due to the medium its expressed in and how much development came from the subject matter. He stated that following complex plots in TV shows made people think about what was going on, but if the story was causing the development then the same thought process could be applied to any other story telling medium, several of which are non-digital. He stated that video games made people obsessed with them and they tried incredibly hard to solve problems within the game, while he said in the book that there was no counter part to this I disagree. Riddles, physical puzzles, crosswords and sudoku puzzles can be very addicting, they teach people the same logical skills you may get out of a video game but in a non-digital way. All of the types of mental development he listed was based on the subject of the Digital Media, non of these "developments" were proven to be exclusive to the media they were expressed in.

Personal Thoughts on Digital Media

Digital media is just an extension of non-digital media which is an extension of the real world. Any problem that digital media has caused can be caused by non-digital media, even if it's not as drastic. Some problems "caused" by digital media may even stem from underlying phycological problems. Many people argue that the internet makes people "fake", they pretend to be someone else, but naturally there's a difference between who we think we are, what we're viewed as and who we really are. Technology didn't create that problem, it's always been there because it's a part of human phycology. People complain that TV shows and movies give us a skewed view of reality, for one, this problem could be caused by books, but also our view of reality will be skewed anyways because we're all biased in some way because of how we're raised or taught.

Conclusion

Digital media is a representation, humans can only represent or recreate things. The constant prefix "re" means that people just make something again, which means there's an original. Because there's an original, everything we make or do has been made or done before. Digital media doesn't bring up any new problems because at its base its a representation of sights and sounds that we've seen before, it's impossible that digital media could make new problems in our society when it represents things that have already existed. Likewise any positive thing has been seen before in nature and is simply captured in the medium. Media is just a form of capturing something, when you put a bird in a cage it doesn't change the way the bird looks or sings, it's just put there so people can enjoy it, the bird can be ugly or pretty but the cage has nothing to do with it. People need to realize that they can't blame a medium for expressing a bad subject, people get caught up in blaming things without realizing the source which just showcases their ignorance. The world is full of bad and good but media just captures it, and Digital Media captures it with lights and sounds.

HW 20: Big Paper Draft Revised

The debate over weather digital media is good or bad is a futile argument and a waste of time. Digital media is just another medium and the true "evil" that comes from digital media is the subjects they represent, not the media itself. Digital media is an easily accessible form of non-digital media or a mixture of non-digital mediums. Digital media is just another way of showing things and doesn't necessarily add to the "evil" of the subject. For example, the hands down most controversial video game "Grand Theft Auto" isn't thought to be overly violent and too inappropriate because it's a video game, it's because the game has you selling drugs, killing people, stealing cars etc. The game itself is only the carrier of the subject, you can't blame someone for giving you a cold because they were just carrying it, they didn't add to the disease.

In the book "Feed" by M.T. Anderson, people of the future use devices that are surgically implanted into the brain and can allow people to communicate and buy things almost instantly. The book clearly blames technology for the cultural decline in the future, however when you look at the way this social decline happens, the Feed Corporation is the one to blame. The Feed corporation would send advertisements directly into people's brains so that they couldn't get away from them, those people then bought the products that were advertised. The corporations advertised other products based on what they bought. The teens in "Feed" were buying things based the corporations which shaped them. This made them buy anything that the corporations old and they all became obsessed with fads and had no idea what was going on in the world. Even though the Feed was able to distribute the message of the corporations, the ultimate evil in the situation was the Feed Corporation.

In "Feed" the main populace, the 73% percent of people who had Feeds, had no idea what was going on in the world even though an invention like the fee would let people know what's going on instantaneously. Most people argue that this is because digital media distracts people from what's really going on through TV shows video games and the Internet. However, entertainment is natural, the thing that distracts us from the world is entertainment, baby lions play with each other not knowing they'll have to defend their territory and struggle to survive. Distraction is a vital tool that people in power use, the Roman colosseums were used to distract Roman citizens from the internal power struggle within Rome. This is known as "Bread and Circuses" using entertainment to distract from the real problem (Andy's Lecture 9/22), this can be done with digital technology and with a gigantic stadium (which we also have anyways).

Steven Johnson's book "Everything Bad is Good for You" brings up the idea that people can learn from digital media. He argued that video games were able to teach reasoning and logic skills, complex TV shows taught us to use our memory to get inside jokes or to get plot twists that referenced other episodes. I believe that humans can learn from anything if they enjoy it. People can learn from books, drawings, comic books, physical interaction etc. The only difference between digital media and non-digital media is the fact that more people prefer digital to non-digital. Digital media only takes what non-digital media does and makes it more entertaining via the use of images and sounds. The same way you can use logical reasoning to think about how you would tackle a reality show situation, you can also use to figure out how to solve a problem occurring in a book you're reading or any story you've been told.

Steven Johnson's theory seemed logical and correct, however he didn't specify how much of that development happened due to the medium its expressed in and how much development came from the subject matter. He stated that following complex plots in TV shows made people think about what was going on, but if the story was causing the development then the same thought process could be applied to any other story telling medium, several of which are non-digital. He stated that video games made people obsessed with them and they tried incredibly hard to solve problems within the game, while he said in the book that there was no counter part to this I disagree. Riddles, physical puzzles, crosswords and sudoku puzzles can be very addicting, they teach people the same logical skills you may get out of a video game but in a non-digital way.

Digital media is just an extension of non-digital media which is an extension of the real world. Any problem that digital media has caused can be caused by non-digital media, even if it's not as drastic. Some problems "caused" by digital media may even stem from underlying phycological problems. Many people argue that the internet makes people "fake", they pretend to be someone else, but naturally there's a difference between who we think we are, what we're viewed as and who we really are, technology didn't create that problem it's always been there because it's a part of human phycology. People complain that TV shows and movies give us a skewed view of reality, for one this problem could be caused by books, but also our view of reality will be skewed anyways because we're all biased in some way or another.

Digital media is a representation, humans can only represent or recreate things. The constant prefix "re" means that people just make something again, which means there's an original. Because there's an original, everything we make or do has been made or done before. Digital media doesn't bring up any new problems, at its base its a representation of sights and sounds that we've seen before, it's impossible that digital media makes new problems in our society when it represents things that have already existed, if digital media will create any problems it will create ones similar to what came before it. For example, people criticize MMORPG's (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) for putting gamers into a false sense of reality and immersing them in a fake world. Books have done that for years, and before that people had their imaginations to take them to new worlds. In short, digital media can't be good or bad because its just an extension of reality, reality is only good or bad depending on the specific subject, therefore the subject can be "bad" or "good" and it's pointless to argue for or against digital media.

HW: 19 Draft Comments

Jakob

Jakob, I enjoyed reading this paper and found it to be very thought provoking, your thesis is very relevant to how people act but it's also not an obvious statement someone would make. The idea of people distracting themselves is closely related to Andy's "Bread and Circus" lecture, except instead of the government distracting us we choose to distract ourselves. I think it'd be interesting to compare how we as humans distracted ourselves before the creation of digital media and how we distract ourselves now, this way you can be able to say in your paper that digitalization is the cause of this passiveness and not just entertainment (which has existed for thousands of years and is experienced by animals as well who have no idea how to use a computer). Great paper so far, I'm anxious to see what the final product will be like

Beatrice

Like Andy said, you're taking on a lot of different problems, your paper will be more organized if you look at one problem and create a thesis based on that, or find one specific factor of digital technology that causes a multitude of problems. Great intro though, very engaging and dramatic if you make the rest of your paper as strong as this intro it'll be that much better. As for the stress just relax and gather your thoughts, good luck with your paper.

HW 18: Big Paper Draft

The debate over weather digital media is good or bad is a futile argument and a waste of time. Digital media is just another medium and the true "evil" that comes from digital media is the subjects they represent, not the media itself. Digital media is an easily accessible form of non-digital media or a mixture of non-digital mediums. Digital media is just another way of showing things and doesn't necessarily add to the "evil" of the subject. For example, the hands down most controversial video game "Grand Theft Auto" isn't thought to be overly violent and too inappropriate because it's a video game, it's because the game has you selling drugs, killing people, stealing cars etc. The game itself is only the carrier of the subject, you can't blame someone for giving you a cold because they were just carrying it, they didn't add to the disease.

In the book "Feed" by M.T. Anderson, people of the future use devices that are surgically implanted into the brain and can allow people to communicate and buy things almost instantly. The book clearly blames technology for the cultural decline in the future, however when you look at the way this social decline happens, the Feed Corporation is the one to blame. The Feed corporation would send advertisements directly into people's brains so that they couldn't get away from them, those people bought the products that were advertised, the corporations then advertised other products based on what they bought. This way teens bought what was advertised to them and what was advertised to them was based on what they bought, naturally those teens will end up buying the same things. This made the teens in "Feed" obsessed with fads and had no idea what was going on in the world. Even though the Feed was able to distribute the message of the corporations, the ultimate evil in the situation was the Feed, some might argue that other "evil" messages could be spread through word of mouth, newspapers etc.

Steven Johnson's book "Everything Bad is Good for You" brings up the idea that people can learn from digital media. He argued that video games were able to teach reasoning and logic skills, complex TV shows taught us to use our memory to get inside jokes or to get plot twists that referenced other episodes. I believe that humans can learn from anything if they enjoy it. People can learn from books, drawings, comic books, physical interaction etc. The only difference between digital media and non-digital media is the fact that more people prefer digital to non-digital. Digital media only takes what non-digital media does and makes it more entertaining. The same way you can learn how to use logical reasoning to think about how you would tackle a reality show situation, you can also figure out how to solve a problem occurring in a book you're reading.

Steven Johnson's theory seemed logical and correct, however he didn't specify how much of that development happened due to the medium its expressed in and how much development came from the subject matter. He stated that following complex plots in TV shows made people think about what was going on, but if the story was causing the development then the same thought process could be applied to any other story telling medium, several of which are non-digital. He stated that video games made people obsessed with them and they tried incredibly hard to solve problems within the game, while he said in the book that there was no counter part to this I disagree. Riddles, physical puzzles, crosswords and sudoku puzzles can be very addicting, they teach people the same logical skills you may get out of a video game but in a non-digital way.

Digital media is just an extension of non-digital media which is an extension of the real world. Any problem that digital media has caused can be caused by non-digital media, even if it's not as drastic. Some problems "caused" by digital media may even stem from underlying phycological problems. Many people argue that the internet makes people "fake", they pretend to be someone else, but naturally there's a difference between who we think we are, what we're viewed as and who we really are, technology didn't create that problem it's always been there because it's a part of human phycology. People complain that TV shows and movies give us a skewed view of reality, for one this problem could be caused by books, but also our view of reality will be skewed anyways because we're all biased in some way or another.

Digital media is a representation, humans can only represent or recreate things. The constant prefix "re" means that people just make something again, which means there's an original. Because there's an original, everything we make or do has been made or done before. Digital media doesn't bring up any new problems, at its base its a representation of sights and sounds that we've seen before, it's impossible that digital media makes new problems in our society when it represents things that have already existed, if digital media will create any problems it will create ones similar to what came before it. For example, people criticize MMORPG's (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) for putting gamers into a false sense of reality and immersing them in a fake world. Books have done that for years, and before that people had their imaginations to take them to new worlds. In short, digital media can't be good or bad because its just an extension of reality, reality is only good or bad depending on the specific subject, therefore the subject can be "bad" or "good" and it's pointless to argue for or against digital media.

HW: 17 Blog Comments

Jacob's Blog

I can tell you've gotten a good start on your paper already and its coming along nicely. I liked your idea about how people should try to learn from everything but they choose only to learn from digital media or anything that's entertaining. I'd like you to connect that to your thesis some how, maybe controlling how we learn can give us control over our lives, but limiting what we learn can make us loose control, opting to learn from GTA will make impressionable kids lose control because their ethics will be skewed. Great start though, I can tell you have a lot of ideas to get out and I'm looking forward to reading them.

Beatrice's Blog

Good start, I feel like you have a lot of good examples to back up your point but your thesis needs to be elaborated. You should explain how technology is detrimental to our society, there is a huge list of reasons for that that we've discussed in class, and Feed will end up being an excellent resource for this paper. Once you have a detailed thesis you should base your evidence on the thesis itself, you paper might be vague if you have god examples but nothing specific for them to prove right or wrong. I look forward to reading your finished essay

HW 16: Big Paper Outline

Thesis: The debate over weather digital devices are good or bad is futile. Digitalization like any other medium contains both good and bad subjects within it's genre. Any negative or positive effects based on the subject can be experienced in any genre, digital media just changes the way its shown.

Intro: (explain thesis in depth etc.)

Body #1: "Feed", the corporations are the true enemies, instead of using the Feed as a positive tool for learning, spreading awareness of issues etc. they use it to advertise and sell which in turn makes people obsessed with fads, the technology just disperses the advertisements of the Feed Corporation faster

Body #2: "Everything Bad is Good for You", Steven Johnson lists the various ways that digital media can help people's mind develop, I would argue that it's the nature of the human mind to learn from whatever is presented to it, the mind just develops in different ways, therefore digital media doesn't have a positive or negative effect, just a different one

Body #3: (compare other mediums to digital), the subject is what matters, people can get immersed in books and live in those "virtual" worlds as well, they don't have to be digital.

Conclusion: (wrap up ideas etc.)