I am part of a generation that has grown up with computers and technology. Even at the age of 12, I was much more computer savvy than my mother, I was always the one helping everyone in my family figure out the latest technology purchase for our household. This new generation of technology has also open up a new generation of knowledge. In this day and age, limitless information is extremely accessible with a working, Internet friendly computer.
Computers and the Internet have extremely impacted my school experience and social connections. I used the computer to do about 3/4 of my homework in high school. I could quickly and easily type up a paper response or essay or research a project or subject. The Internet was also helpful for my foreign language classes, for a quick and free translation. However, my language teachers would always advise their class against using these online translators because they would not correctly translate sentences and would use the wrong word order of misplace subjects or pronouns. Often, these teachers could tell if a student used a translator due to the poor grammar and conjugation.
Another Internet invention that extremely impacted my high school experience was the invention of turnitin.com and the ramped paranoia it would cause for us students. Many student would get lazy and copy and paste information from certain websites or even plagiarize work. But the invention of Turnitin.com would stop all this plagiarism with its huge database of Internet sites; similar to the way google is used. Even if we hadn't plagiarized information my friends and I would always get paranoid about the work we would turn into this website, we all heard that the program looked for phrases of 5 consecutive words. Maybe the universe would play a cruel trick on us and someone else would same consecutive words. I always passed the "Turn it in " test and so did most my friends. In this case the Internet is used for good because whether us student like it or not, it encourages us to come up with our own ideas, instead of copy and pasting others.
Something else that has impacted my life more so in high school than now was the invention of Instant messenger. I was constantly on AIM in high school and many of my friendships and relationships were conducted through it. I got together with my first boyfriend because of the fact we could talk so much over instant message and created a deeper relationship because of it. From personal experience, I think Instant messenger allows the users to be more honest and open because the confrontation is not face-to-face or even voice-to-voice. I have created and destroyed friends and relationships through AIM and it defiantly has is negatives and positives. It creates a network of communication and friends, however many times these relationships can be artificial, because 2 people can only connect so much with the other person over a computer. The use of communication through computers also can create a facade because the party has no real way of know of what the other person is saying is true.
There are pros and cons to everything in life and it all comes down to how the user is utilizing the Internet. Anything can be abused; most of the time is more so about the person that is abusing the substance or thing rather than that thing itself. Don't use and abuse. Hugs not drugs. Or computers.
One day there will be a robot revolution
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