The shallows beginning.
I have started to read the shallows and started to immediately feel much more open to this book rather than feeling very offended like I did during the dumbest generation. This is an intriguing book because he's not exactly calling us dumb. He's just saying we think much more differently than humans used to. We had a discussion in class about how the brains plasticity has changed throughout the growth of technology. and how this system has caused us to think productivity is the same as efficiency. Things like the clock, the map, etc; have changed how we think and do the things that people did a long time ago. The same with google. We can find something that would've taken maybe days to find in an instant on google. Our lives have changed which has caused our brain plasticity to change drastically from someone's who's 20 years older than us. I do very much enjoy this book.

The Truth about Technology.
While doing my Facebook Assignment, I realized something about myself. I am exactly what Sherry Turkle talks about in her book. I am a cyborg in the way she describes it. I have to be a different person online than I am in everyday life because so many people can access what they see and once you put something up on the internet. it is ALWAYS there. there's no getting it offline. So I have to watch everything I say because if i say one wrong thing, it may cause an uproar. When I was 15 I was listening to one of my favorite songs (not good enough for the truth or cliche by escape the fate) and i posted the first line to the chorus as my status "sitting in this room playing russian roulette" about 3 minutes later my mother busted in my door to find me sitting on my bed listening to music and doing my homework. This caused a problem with my stepdad's work  because he's a minister and people were afraid he wasn't "raising me correctly" which I'll be completely honest I thought was bullshit. So from then on I was kept on a tight leash of what I was and wasn't allowed to put online. So I truly am not the person who I am in reality on Facebook. Not by choice. But by the fact i have been censored for so long because of my Mark's work.

Now I have completed the 2 chapters I needed for today and I have to admit that even though some of the things he states offends me, I have to agree with him on about 90 perfect of the things he says. There's one direct quote I'd like to bring in and its in page 32 and it states, "The 18-year-old may have a visa card, cell phone, MySpace page, part-time job, PlayStation 2, and an admission letter from State U..." I like this quote a lot because it brings me back to me because it's all the kind of things I have. I am almost embarrassed by some of the things he says though, and I honestly think that's his point. I believe he has a way of slyly insulting us all awhile telling us a lot of factual information that kind of makes me want to bury my head in shame. Another point he brings up which I thought was absolutely astonishing was the fact that college kids in the 50's and today have about the same test scores. He states that we should have much bigger ones because not only do we have more time of learning, we also have the mental capacity to do more. Our problem is, we're too lazy, and we are too busy with connecting to the world around us that honestly we're losing sight of what's really important. I believe that's why he calls us dumb because we have the ability to do anything and we CHOOSE not to. Which I do in fact believe makes us very stupid, indeed.

So I am at about page 27 of the book and have plenty to say already that I want to get out before I lose my train of thought. So far, I have discovered that this book is rather biased on the opinion that our generation is in fact the dumbest. From reading so far, I have discovered for the most part that I completely understand why Bauerlein calls us so. So far, the main topic has been placed as "we care too much about scores on tests and not enough about common knowledge." I believe this is fairly true because honestly I couldn't tell you who my mayor is or congressman or even the state representative. however, I could in fact tell you how to factor any equation you give me. This goes to show that teachers plant such things into your brain so you can be accepted by a college figuring that you  will learn that kind of stuff later on. Also, so many high school kids are worried about being in AP calc and you'll never use this unless you're a rocket scientist. However, you'll never see a class where they teach you how to do your taxes and how insurance works.