Self Evaluation

This class has truly been like no other class that I've ever had, and I've enjoyed learning many new concepts and applications, combined with various fascinations as well as frustrations.

Perhaps the hardest thing for me has been trying to establish a focus along the way. I began, thinking  I would focus on digital culture's influence on human relations and interactions. I read the non-fiction book The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution Will Change Our Lives, with this focus in mind. However, this book expanded my view of digital culture beyond just this original purpose. I learned more about the wide-reaching effects digital cultures, that it goes beyond just human relations, but rather can even affect the quality of the human condition, influencing issues such as medicine in third world countries for example. This made me realize even further all of the positive influences of digital culture and that there are many ways that it can be used for good, rather than mere entertainment.

My reading of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried further aided me in my study and contemplation of this topic, particularly in that it helped realize even more the importance of having a worthwhile purpose when using digital media; to be active contributors rather than merely passive consumers. The Things They Carried helped me in thinking about this digital culture concept because of its theme of wandering aimlessly, and things losing their necessity if they don't have a clear purpose behind them. The soldiers wander aimlessly, and discard seemingly necessary supplies, regarding them as unnecessary, because of a lack of clear purpose of why they're in Vietnam and why they're even fighting the war. This made me think of the digital world and how many people just use it passively, and often pointlessly, simply wasting time, like these soldiers wasted supplies. For this reason, there are many critics in the world who assert that digital culture in general is a waste of time. However, I realized that this is only the case when people fail to recognize the numerous beneficial forms and functions of digital culture and social media. Viewed in this light--having a clear, meaningful purpose--digital culture actually becomes a necessity rather than a mere pleasure or simply a waste of time. This concept of comparing "Consume, Create, and Connect" has been one of the most intriguing to me.

It caused me to start thinking and researching ways in which I could promote this concept. That's when I developed the idea of having a media diet--a balance between the good, "healthy" media consumption/contribution and the more "junk food"-type media. At this point, I feel that my self-directed learning increased a lot, because I had found something that really interested me and was excited about. But then I found out that we had to do group projects instead, and as I melded into another group, most of these original ideas got dissolved because they didn't really relate to other peoples' purposes in the group. That was fine, I tried to find new things to be excited about and ideas to contribute to the group; however it seems that these ideas keep failing to take root with anyone else, and no one is really interested in them, so they just get dissipated. After awhile of this, I start losing motivation to come up with ideas or do further self-directed learning, because I don't feel as much purpose or passion behind it, or that what I do has much consequence. I'm still working towards this and will do my best to find the same excitement in this as I had in some of the other topics I was studying. I do nonetheless greatly appreciate the help of my classmates, both in my group and in earlier topics as we have engaged in conversation on our various topics, and exchanged ideas and their interest and excitement often spreads to me.