Toward a New Future: Michael Wesch

Michael Wesch Video

I found the Michael Wesch video interesting and thought provoking. I'm not sure that I could do, or would really want to do Michael Wesch's job. I'm not sure I could spend hours on the history of the word "whatever". His comments that referred to YouTube as 99.9% irrelevant to your life, pretty much applied to me as I watched his video. I know that these things may sound harsh to some degree, I just don't share the interest in studying human nature that these people do. It is my opinion that human beings haven't changed that much over time. There are good people and bad people in the world today, just as there were good people and bad people clear back to biblical history.

Technological mediums have changed and allowed more people to be more vocal about themselves throughout history, but I don't think basic human nature has changed. It's kind of the theory that we discussed in class about people uniting together as a group via the internet. That can be good and bad, depending on the intentions of the group. Michael Wesch pointed out a video where the girl was discussing the use of YouTube as a voyeristic tool. We are curious about people who are different from us, but we don't want to stare at them in public. With YouTube, you can stare all you want at someone! People reveal things to strangers that they would not normally do. I almost wonder if in one sense that commom manners and courtesies are lost when we sit behind a computer screen. Do we type things in emails that we would never say to a person if we were face to face with them?

I do think technology affects both teachers and students. In the same respect that I'm not always happy about the emails that I receive from parents that come across as unpleasant, there are days when I am appreciative of sending off that note via email vs. having to make an unpleasant phone call to a parent. I do think that technology has made us an impatient population of people. The advances we have in technology allow us to move about freely. Gone are the days of us sitting at home waiting on a telephone call, having to wait for mail to arrive, waiting on graded papers to come home from school, trips to the library for information, and in some cases not having to get out of your pajamas to attend school. You can do all of these things from the comfort of your home.

I think we have to be careful that we don't totally loose the rules of ettiquette. Face to face meetings with people and teachers are important. Facial expression and voice inflection cannot be shared via email. We don't want to loose the personal touch and interaction that are so important to human beings and especially our students. I think students need interactions with their teachers and other adults to learn how to be affective with others.