Hw 18- Somewhat of a Big Paper

INTRO
When you talk about digital things I feel like it becomes a little personal. This unit is targeted toward us, so let’s talk about it from a teen’s perspective. We like our ipods, our Mac’s or plasma’s, our blackberry’s and our sidekicks. The thing is when we use what this great nation has provided its leaders of tomorrow we get ridiculed! How is this possible? We are like the little obedient lab rats. Corporate says “Here try this on for size” and us with watering mouths waiting to be fed more corporate bull. I believe we think that there is no choice. I think that corporate is scared of a technological regression, and we are too oblivious to notice. If there was no progress then what should be done as a pastime? We must live up to the expectations to be better, to be futuristic. Out of fear of regression there must be blind progres

ARGUMENT 1: Using Teens Attention Spans To Market

In a poll taken by Teenage Research Unlimited (TRU), teens in 2004 spent 169 billion. Well guess what? Corporate knows this, they know what appeals to us poor teens and they know just how too keep us staring at their clever commercials. New products come out so quick and so often there is little time in between products so naturally, the “new” things that come out are just like the old things that barely had time to collect dust on the shelves.

Look at ipods for example, when the ipod came out in 2001 it had a mechanical scroll wheel and had up to 10 GB in memory, when the 2nd ipod came out in 2002 the scroll wheel was touch sensitive and the USB port was covered this ipod was also available in 10 GB, the 3rd ipod was released in 2003 was slimmer and still had a touch sensitive dial and was also available in 40 GB. The 4th, 5th and 6th ipod’s were all the same basically but were made slimmer and were available in 80 GB and in a new color! … Grey. Apple shook it up in 2005 with a new design, the mini. The mini came in 4 GB and 6 GB and in several different colors, but it was still the same touch sensitive dial and small square screen. Basically they all do the same thing, touch sensitive and available in black, grey and only specific colors of the rainbow.

We as consumers don’t see it as the same old song and dance we see, advancement. We see something new and better. We teens have such short attention spans that when the new toys come out we completely ignore the old. I’ve done it, and when I think about it I can’t figure out why. Its like we are just following in the foot steps of corporate. I stopped playing my old x-box just because I had gotten a new one. There was nothing wrong with the old one but something in me just told me to reject it and forget about it, because corporate had forgotten about it. But when I really think about it the X-box 360 does the same thing that the X0box did…plays games, movies and you can go online. Same thing just more expensive.

I think that companies also use peer pressure to get teen consumers to buy the crap that they put out. Everyone knows that if Kid A bought the new Jordan’s that Kid B is going to eventually want the new Jordan’s thus starting the chain reaction. It’s the same way with digital things, its like a virus infecting us and then passing on to a new host and we don’t notice we keep sharing drinks and coughing and touching subway polls. Where would we be if production stopped at that first ipod? No one would complain, but the burning question of “what’s next?” will always be at the back of our minds and that’s when we get mindless products. We have been taught to think that nothing is ever enough.

ARGUMENT 2: Digital Overdose

We love our toys so much that we don’t notice when our face has become contorted in to the shape of a mindless zombie. What is mind boggling is that some of us know that we are slowly turning in to puppets. We think that it is okay to completely zone out in front of a screen. We have been taught to trick ourselves into thinking that all we need to have a life is a charger and a screen and we are mistaken. No one realizes that sometimes the digital toys are things that are bad for us.

I don’t think people realize that we have basically forged fake lives for ourselves. We can shop, communicate, travel, and download all from a chair. We can be totally different people from the comfort of our own homes, how great! Because of the mass rapid production of digital things there has been a large dependence on digital products and people think that it is okay. I didn’t realize this until I asked people what they thought of their digital products and how much time they thought that they spent on them. Surprisingly many people admitted to spending 12+ hours in front of screens knowingly and being okay with it.

I saw a banking commercial a little while back and one of the people in the commercial said that technology is making us better, which is something that took me by surprise. People agree that more screens is what we need.

ARGUMENT 3: Anderson

Teenagers are the ones being made fun of and talked about when it comes to technology. I think its because we are the digital puppets and we abide by what is being sold, I bet that if you asked a teenager why they buy the things that they buy I bet they wouldn’t know what to say. Anderson does a good job in Feed talking about how teens are so easily told what to do and how to do it and in the end we don’t even see why.

In Feed the teens don’t bother to think about what is happening around them they are only concerned about the things that are happening in their heads (nice) because a lot of teens are self centered and a lot of us only care about something if it only directly has anything to do with us. If we were to rebel then what, will we go back to caves? We are scared to see what would happen if the teens of today stopped being so obedient and stopped spending every cent we earned on something with a screen.

Opposing View Johnson (Incomplete)

Technology is not bad, it is something that is looked down upon. But it is possible that it is good for us. What if technology was here first would there be a whole new view on how much time is spent in front of screen?

CONCLUSION:

This is becoming a bit redundant. I feel as though nothing is going to change, we are going to be stuck in the same digital circle for a long time. There might be a few teens who think about it and wonder about it but nothing drastic is going to happen. More books about stupid teens will be published, but who cares? da da da

Works Cited (So Far)

Feed
Everything Bad is Good For You
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod
http://www.window.state.tx.us/comptrol/fnotes/fn0508/teens.html