There is a lot of speculation about how we receive our news in the digital age. Perhaps we are reading less because we have things like Temple Run, Instagram, and Words with Friends at our fingertips (on our smart phones, tablets, whathaveyou)? Maybe we read the news less because we’re just on Facebook all day?

Well as it turns out, none of that is true. As this article on NPR states, some research by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism suggests that we (as a society of course) may be reading more news because we can read news all the time. As it turns out, “adults” actually use smartphones and tablets more for news than for Zynga. This research has the ability to both support and deny common myths about the effects of technology on our news consumption.

I think this article is important in a discussion about digital media, because it shows the importance of digital interfaces in accessing the news. Laptop and desktop computers are the most used for accessing news, but smart phones and tablets follow closely. Also, as it turns out, very few people actually go to Facebook or Twitter for news. These sources tend to supplement other news sources more than replace them.

My only question is about their definition of an “adult” for which they never state the age range. It would alter the impact of this data to know whether or not it includes college students. We probably do use more Zynga than news apps (hah, I really have no idea about that).

Todd Gitlin’s essay “Nomadicity” starts by telling us about social currency and how we carry it around with us all the time. He continues to talk about the development of the Walkman and how people began to expect to individualize the daily experience. I cannot help but think about what Gitlin would say now. When he wrote this essay in 2002, we were only in the beginning of an era in which technology allowed us to take/have/do everything no matter where we are.

In a small coincidence, I got an iPhone 4S over spring break. I only specify type because it means I have Siri. I also, in yet another coincidence, asked Siri today, “Where are you?” Her oh-so-clever-and-witty response, which makes me and I have no doubt numerous other users wonder how she was programmed, was “Wherever you are, that’s where I am.” I think this response is the perfect example of what Gitlin’s article is about: nomadicity. Gitlin, referencing the pioneer of the concept, describes nomadicity as meaning “that wherever and whenever we move around, the underlying system always know who we are, where we are, and what services we need.” Siri, part of the underlying system, caters to our services and as she says, she is always with me. We can now ask our phones to cater to us in ways not possible before October 4, 2011 (her release date).

Gitlin wrote this article not too long ago, but it was before every phone had a built-in GPS, before Google and Facebook tracked our every move on the internet in order to specialize the ads we see and to guess our demographics (Google thinks I’m a 25-34 year old male), and before we had phones that could do the following: call, text, play games such as Words with Friends, Scramble, and Angry Birds, watch tv/video/games/etc, be a calculator and a compass and a calendar and a clock, play music, store photos, take photos, receive and send emails, take notes, remind us of to-dos, give us the news, tell us the weather, be a map, read books, video chat, and talk to you if you get lonely or lost. There are of course many more functions I could name, but who even cares at this point. If the iPhone, Siri and all, isn’t the perfect example and exemplification, in fact the total fruition of nomadicity, then I’m not sure what is.

Someone today told me to enjoy my iPhone, but to be careful. I was told, “It’s really just a toy.” Have we convinced ourselves of the necessity of all these gadgets simply to amuse ourselves? Is the iPhone really just a toy? Or do I need all those functions, wherever and whenever I move around? What is the utility of being able to play scrabble with 12 of my closest friends, my mother, and a variety of strangers at any time of the day anyway?

So I’ve been looking for examples of digital essays, or articles, or something that does what we call using the affordances of the web, but I haven’t found much. It’s surprising how little combination there is of media to create a more comprehensive experience of information.

One good example is the iBook program. Apple has recently released iBook Author as well, which is like app development for their iBook app. The download is currently free because they need people to create a database. These programs don’t make use of the web so much as digital technologies in general. You can watch a video of the program in action here, and I can show you a nifty one about The Beatle’s Yellow Submarine in class if you’d like.

More in accord with the assignment, I found something called Scalar which is a platform for presenting scholarly papers with multimedia tied in. I found these pretty interesting set of essays that were created using this platform. They incorporate photos and mostly videos the enhance the scholarly article experience.

I know we are supposed to write a response to a single essay from the group, but there were a few issues that I started to think about because of different elements from many essays. Though the moment I appreciated most was when it was discovered that younger generations can pay attention, it’s just that they choose not to.

1. Are we, the generation of digital natives, somehow sacrificing every single sociable skill humanity has developed by being digital natives?

It seems to me that each of the digital immigrants (as they were all immigrants) writing these essays believed that the younger generation was going to morph into a society of people who live by themselves and only communicate through abbreviated text message language. I suppose the exception to this would be online dating sites, which may find any one of us a companion of our choice. No one seems to remember that we, and those younger than us, still share the same basic instinct that makes people want to be together, to need other people around them. Sure, we text while we’re together in the same room, but usually only as a convenient way to not say something out loud. I am rather curious as to what my peers think on this subject because though I have no reference for comparison, I think we’re becoming more social considering that we are constantly in communication with one another.

I think this issue of social skills arose most in the last essay, “Your Brain is Evolving Right Now.”

2. My generation, the students in this class, what are we?

I think we’re digital natives, but also not really. In Prensky’s first essay, “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants,” I think we fall into the category of digital natives because we do things like immediately refer to google for the answer to all questions. On the other hand, I have some friends who don’t do that. I also prefer to print out my readings and read hard copies whereas my same friend who doesn’t immediately go to google (though he has an iphone and an ipad) reads all his texts digitally. We are both in and out of the digital natives definition in oddly personal and quirky ways, yes?

For r3, I posted a response to a story on NPR.org called “Who Killed Lard?” The story talks about the prevalence of lard in American cooking within the last century. It discusses the possible people/movements/companies that could have killed lard (killed as in making it undesirable and uncommon), such as Upton Sinclair and Proctor&Gamble.

I posted a short comment in which I just shared my thoughts about the story. One being that lard is unhealthy and only contribution to America’s obesity problem. The second was that I don’t think lard as an ingredient is going to come back strongly because of the growing prevalence of vegetarians and vegans. I tried to use Johnson’s voice to “keep it simple” and “be clear” when writing my comment. I read a lot of news stories online, and I find that if the comment is too long, I won’t read it, even if it could be interesting. My comment was also recommended by two other readers, which is not a lot, but it heightened my awareness that people had read what I had written.

When looking for examples of Johnson’s suggestions online, I decided to reference sites that I enjoy and see what I could glean from them. The site I chose to focus on was Slate Magazine‘s online variety. Slate’s website is rife with examples of “Choose the Right Word,” “Push Buttons,” and “Use Ambiguity for Good, Not Evil.” I was immediately confronted with the headlines “Mute Gingrich” and “Is Polygamy Really So Awful?” Both of these examples, in my opinion, push buttons and utilize ambiguity as a device.

The first, “Mute Gingrich,” is quite a wonderful example of choosing the right word, which I think includes the use of literary devices such as punning. Since puns are probably my favorite literary device, I was hooked, even though I’m tired of reading about Newt, Mitt, Rick, and Ron. As it turns out the article heavily discusses the ethics of Romney’s campaign and the effects it has had on Gingrich’s bid in Florida, not that you would gather as much from the title. I suppose in this case, Johnson’s point of “Be Clear” seems to conflict with using ambiguity.

The second headline, “Is Polygamy Really So Awful?,” actually turned out to be about polygamy being nothing other than awful. According to research by the University of British Columbia, society has evolved away from polygamy because it has social repercussions. Apparently one man having three wives doesn’t actually work. Back to the point however,  the title of this article aims to push buttons by taking a delicate and normally frowned-upon social issue and insinuating that it could be acceptable. That pushes button and ambiguously presents the content of the article. Most notably, this headline is the perfect example of “Say the Wrong Thing.” Touchy, uncomfortable issue as perfectly acceptable societal choice = wrong thing.

Considering that I am personally in love with the type of witty headlines and one-liners Slate uses to introduce and begin articles, I think I will try to take these exact methods and use them in my own writing. My first blog post is called “Have you have had a burrito that was chubby?” I could have said the wrong thing more blatantly, but didn’t want to offend. I happened to have a lot of material to work with, given that the name of the restaurant I visited was Chubby’s Tacos. Either way, I used ambiguity in naming my post, and thank you to the owners, but I think chubby was a nicely chosen word.