Friday, January 28, 2011

Information is Everywhere!!

Whether we manipulate information or information manipulates us?


Today, information is everywhere that makes our lives so convenient that we really can’t live without. The Google search engine is a really great helper when we work, we can find everything we want by typing in keywords. With just one click, you can find websites, pictures and video clips about the keyword you typed, e.g. when you typed ‘Information overload’ on Google, it showed about 4,590,000 results in 0.12 seconds (as shown under the search bar). Less than 1 second, you can have all the information you want through Google.
With Google Map, we can find places that we haven’t been before accurately. You can see the map with street view, so you would know how the street looks like even when you haven’t been there before. The first picture has shown where I am living and the second one has shown the back door of where I lived during the study tour!
A is where I am living! 

The backdoor of Wesley College, City Road, Sydney


With Google Docs, we can save and edit our documents in different formats just as we like, like document, presentation, spreadsheet, etc. You can even create folders to manage your documents.
Though the Internet is really convenient and it can make our lives better, we may suffer from Information Fatigue Syndrome from the British Psychologist David Lewis (1990), e.g. having 4,590,000 results from typing ‘Information overload’ or having three hundred more pieces of new feeds on Facebook everyday, or receiving loads of unnecessary emails everyday, etc.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

My Digital Life


Digital technologies cannot really separate with my everyday life.

I use my MacBook everyday to do the following things: 
- check Email (Gmail) My Email Address!
- use
Facebook to connect with my friends My Facebook
- use MSN and Skype to communicate with my friends in Hong Kong and overseas
- watch videos clips or music videos in YouTube, e.g. Bruno Mars - Just the Way You Are
- read my classmates’ blogs, as well as to write blogs like what I am doing now

I use my moblie phone everyday to text with my friends and parents and my iPod Touch for quick information, e.g. bus routes, restaurant guide, dictionary, etc. 

In my leisure time, I take pictures with my digital camera and upload them on Facebook.

In this course, I think I can learn the way we use English in digital media, how people use those digital technologies to communicate with each other, whether the relationship between people become closer or distant and the things we can do with digital media, e.g. we can see the pictures immediately with digital cameras, and we can use Photoshop to edit the photos.