1.) After reading the Daniel Gilbert’s Reporting Live from Tomorrow, he explains his belief that false statements are like bad genes. I agree with him on this topic because like a bad gene spreads throughout the body, false statements can spread throughout the media, schools/universities, teams, etc. Whether the news is good or bad, it will spread fast. I have seen this first hand where gossip and rumors in high school spread on a loop where people just add in their own details. This causes a huge misinterpretation of the truth and false statements. On page 182, he depicts his version of people who are gullible, which happen to be the people who tend to spread and follow false statements. On page 180, he talks about we listen to others before we listen to ourselves. As examples he talks about how we follow the advice of teachers, guidance counselors, coaches, and more for our own future. According to Gilbert, American’s change jobs more than 10 times which shows that they have taken the wrong advice from others who they should not have listened to in the first place. Therefore, I have learned to not trust everything everyone tells you without hearing it from the source it originated from.
2.) An idea that sparked my interest was how in the The Moral Bucket List, Brooks talked about the value of people opposed to how Gilbert talked about their wealth and averageness. He emphasized how a happy-looking person can make someone’s day better just by seeing them. The happy person has no idea the effect they have on the observer, as the observer is almost envious of them. “It occurred to me that there were two sets of virtues, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues.” This quote stuck out to me, because it got me thinking about how people will eventually see you at the time of your death. He questions, “Were you capable of deep love?” Were you? How will you know if all you’ve ever been focused on is making a name of yourself for wealth? Which is where Gilbert’s Reporting Live Tomorrow comes into play in my eyes. Gilbert said, “If you are like most people, then like most people, you don’t know you’re like most people.” (page 190) Insinuating average people have no clue they’re average and think that they are above others. For the most part they are not, which is why Brooks interest in value intrigued me.
3.) Richard Restak, the author of “Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of Our Era”, speaks about ADHD and ADD, which is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and attention deficit disorder. Specifically he connects these two disorders with today’s technology. Restak talks a lot on technology and how it is actually changing to physiological makeup of the human body. Since ADHD and ADD have become so common in the world we live in today, he quotes Sam Horn, who is the author of ConZentrate: Get Focused and Pay Attention – When Life is Filled with Pressures, Distractions, and Multiple Priorities. Sam Horn states that many scientists are dissatisfied with ADHD being categorized as a disorder (Restak 377). I thought that this was very interesting because although I knew ADHD was common in the modern world, I did not realize that such a large amount of people had it. Personally, I believe that modern technology has taught people to multitask and get distracted easily, but I do not believe that it is a bad thing in today’s world. Samuel’s article “Plug in Better: A Manifesto” showed a plethora of ways to “unplug”. I agree with all of his unplugging techniques, I have personally used them before. To me this is interesting because although I knew others did this, I never thought about reading it in my english class. After reading Samuel’s article “Plug in Better: A Manifesto” I have realized there are ways, that fortunately I was aware of before this reading, to handle this and to become “disconnected” in certain ways without completing taking yourself out of the picture.
4.) In Have Smart Phones Destroyed a Generation, the author, Jene M. Twenge states that Athena said, “We didn’t have a choice to know any like without iPads or iPhones, I think we like our phones more than we like actual people.” I would like to challenge this. Although she is correct by saying that we have had no choice but to grow up in the world we have been exposed to, I do not believe that people like their phones more than actual people. If it was not for the actual person to follow, check in on, or connect with, social media and technology would not have taken off the way that is did. Technology is popular because of the features it offers, that one can more than likely not do by themself. I believe that some people may actually be addicted to their phones, but this does not mean they like it more than another person. I think that technology is a distraction that can prevent face-to-face conversation or interaction. I do not think that means that one person may like their phone more than their acquaintance. Therefore, I believe there is a fine line between the addiction aspect of technology compared to the one that depicts if one likes another or not.
5.) After reading Thomas Friedman’s “The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention” I learned many things about globalization that I did not know prior to reading the article. I was very intrigued when he mentioned that since the global supply chain, the world has been at peace. One supply chain that I believe was especially interested was one of the first ideas that Friedman mentioned, which included McDonalds. He noted that any two countries have not been at war since each country has gotten a McDonalds. This example is goes hand-in-hand with the Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention. Another thing that stood out to me was the technological aspect of this article. The downside to this supply chain is the technological aspect, where it can be easier to create terrorist attacks. Although we just recently went over negative effects of technology, I never thought about an example like that. Therefore, after reading this article I learned quite a few things that interested me about globalization and international technology. I believe that these although there are downfalls to both globalization and technology, the good outweighs the bad and at the end of the day that is what the world we live in will be focused on.
6.) I was able to relate to Appiah’s article “Making Conversation” and “The Primacy of Practice” to Charles Duhigg and David Barboza’s article “In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad”. I was able to connect that because they both discussed rights of the human population. In “Making Conversation”, his father’s final message that he left for Appiah and his siblings states, “Remember you are citizens of the world” (Appiah 48). I took this as a message saying that you are just as good as someone else, in this world we are all one and the same. After this, I thought about things that people had in common besides biology. I went from physical features to wants and then finally to needs. Every human needs money to survive in this world, which is where “In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad” comes in to play. In this article many workers came to work at factories, such as an iPad factory, the hub of these factories was located in Chengdu. I was able to relate these because in Appiah’s article he discusses how people are not always accepted the way that they should be because of sexuality, gender, race (etc). The people that worked at these factories were dehumanized and not treated equal or fairly, the way that they should be treated.
