... a hungry imagination

1 year ago

TECHNOLOGY: “Friends No More” Jumping off the SOCIAL NETWORKING bandwagon

I really appreciated this article in USA Today yesterday.

I wonder if any of us would be willing to go this far.

‘Friends’ no more?

For some, social networking has become too much of a good thing

By Marco R. della Cava
USA TODAY

Facebook reports that it has 400 million active users worldwide. Make that 399,999,999. Laura LeNoir is done.

“I feel better, I feel lighter, I got my privacy back,” says LeNoir, 42, an office manager at an educational software company in Birmingham, Ala., who logged off a few weeks ago. “People say, ‘You’ll be back.’ But I read more, walk the dogs more. I’ll be fine.”

As the social networking train gathers momentum, some riders are getting off.

Their reasons run the gamut from being besieged by online “friends” who aren’t really friends to lingering concerns over where their messages and photos might materialize. If there’s a common theme to their exodus, it’s the nagging sense that a time-sucking habit was taking the “real” out of life.

“When I first closed my Facebook account, I felt disconnected from the world and missed the constant updates,” says Leanna Fry, 32, of Provo, Utah, who is teaching English in Erzurum, Turkey. She signed off after feeling harassed by strangers. “But I’ve discovered I don’t have to know what hundreds of people are doing. Now I have more time for people who really matter in my life.”

Read the rest of the article @ http://tinyurl.com/y85qbqc

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1 year ago

TECHNOLOGY: Twitter, Facebook, Buzz… oh my!!!

Now, the rating for how popular you are will be:

FACEBOOK FRIENDS

+ TWITTER FOLLOWERS

+ BUZZ FOLLOWERS

= Your “F.T.B.” popularity rating.

What if they all crashed at the same time?

What would happen to culture as we know it? Thoughts?

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2 years ago

MEDIA and MORALITY: Using sex to sell products. Christians and non-Christians alike… consider the issues raised

In a letter to the editor, John Piper addresses the issue of using women in their “underclothes” as a means to selling more product in his local newspaper.

Christian, and non-Christian alike, will need to consider his concerns.

As a 14-year subscriber and reader of the [name of paper omitted], I am writing to express the persuasion that your sexually explicit ads that often turn up in Section A are increasingly offensive and socially irresponsible. I mean that the effectiveness of catching people’s attention by picturing a woman in her underclothes does not justify the ads. The detrimental effects of such mercenary misuse of the female body are not insignificant. The harm I have in mind is described in the following nine persuasions.

1. This woman could not go out in public dressed like that without being shamed or being mentally aberrant. Yet you thrust her out, even in front of those of us who feel shame for her.

2. This portrayal of a woman sitting in her underclothes at a table with a cup of tea disposes men to think of women not as persons but mainly in terms of their bodies. It stimulates young boys to dwell on unclothed women’s bodies and thus lames their ability to deal with women as dignified persons. I have four sons.

3. The ad stimulates sexual desire which in thousands of men has no legitimate or wholesome outlet through marriage. In other words, it feeds a corporate, community lust that bears no good fruit outside marriage, but in fact many ills.

4. The ad makes sensibilities callous so that fewer and fewer offenses against good taste feel unacceptable, which spells the collapse of precious and delicate aspects of personhood and relationships.

5. The ad makes thousands of women subconsciously measure their attractiveness and worth by the standard of rarefied, unrealistic models, leading to an unhealthy and discouraging preoccupation with outward looks.

6. The ad feeds the prurient fantasies of ordinary men, lodging a sexual image in their minds for the day which can rob them of the ability to think about things greater and nobler than skin.

7. The ad condones the proclivity of males to mentally unclothe women by reminding them what they would see if they did, and by suggesting that there are women who want to be publicly unclothed in this way. This reminder and this suggestion support habits and stereotypes that weaken personal virtue and jeopardize decorous relationships.

8. The ad encourages young girls to put excessive focus on their bodies and how they will be looked at, adding to the epidemic of depression and eating disorders.

9. The ad contributes to dissatisfaction in men whose wives can’t produce that body and thus adds to the instability of marriages and homes.

I realize that the bottom line is big bucks for page two, and lots of attention for [name of department store omitted]. But please know that at least one assessment of your standards of fitness for print is that it is part of a tragic loss of modesty and decency that may, for now, feel like mature liberation, but in generations to come will reap a whirlwind of misery for all of us. - John Piper

What do you think about this?

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2 years ago

TECHNOLOGY: the iPad. A video SPOOF. Brilliant

The first of (hopefully) many iPad spoofs.

Keep ‘em comin’.

http://tinyurl.com/yb58aeg

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2 years ago

MEDIA and MIND: this will affect the future of society

Young people spend 7 hours, 38 minutes a day on TV, video games, computer

Media are a full-time job plus overtime for children 8 to 18, a Kaiser report says. They devote 53 hours a week to those pursuits, an hour and 17 minutes more than five years ago.

Reporting from Chicago - The amount of time young people spend consuming media has ballooned with around-the-clock access and mobile devices that function practically as appendages, according to a new report.

Young people now devote an average of seven hours and 38 minutes to daily media use, or about 53 hours a week — more than a full-time job — according to Kaiser Family Foundation findings released today.

A few years ago, the same researchers thought that teens and tweens were consuming about as much media as humanly possible in the hours available. But somehow, young people have found a way to pack in even more.

But in the last five years, the time that America’s 8- to 18-year-olds spend watching TV, playing video games and using a computer for entertainment has risen by one hour, 17 minutes a day, the Kaiser study found.

Read the rest of the article here http://tinyurl.com/y8nu6xq

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2 years ago

MEDIA and MIND: this will affect the future of society

Young people spend 7 hours, 38 minutes a day on TV, video games, computer

Media are a full-time job plus overtime for children 8 to 18, a Kaiser report says. They devote 53 hours a week to those pursuits, an hour and 17 minutes more than five years ago.

By Bonnie Miller Rubin

January 20, 2010

|

12:19 p.m

.

Reporting from Chicago - The amount of time young people spend consuming media has ballooned with around-the-clock access and mobile devices that function practically as appendages, according to a new report.

Young people now devote an average of seven hours and 38 minutes to daily media use, or about 53 hours a week — more than a full-time job — according to Kaiser Family Foundation findings released today.A few years ago, the same researchers thought that teens and tweens were consuming about as much media as humanly possible in the hours available. But somehow, young people have found a way to pack in even more.

But in the last five years, the time that America’s 8- to 18-year-olds spend watching TV, playing video games and using a computer for entertainment has risen by one hour, 17 minutes a day, the Kaiser study found.

Read the rest of the article here http://tinyurl.com/y8nu6xq

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2 years ago