Jeremy Lin Essay #2

What’s All the Linsanity About?

Over the past month Jeremy Lin has picked the NBA up by its heels and shook it violently. He came out of nowhere to save the Knicks’ more than disappointing season, but does anyone really know the truth about him? For starters, he’s Asian American and from the Bay Area of California, went to and graduated from Harvard in four years. His NBA career has been less than stellar up until earlier this month. He was undrafted out of college, and worked hard in the Development League for a twenty game stretch where he averaged roughly 18 points and 4 assists a game. Finally the Golden State Warriors took notice and signed him only to cut him months later to open up salary cap space. He was then picked up by the Houston Rockets and cut again for the same reason. The New York Knicks picked him up on December 27 of last year because he was six foot three, athletic, and has great agility. In an article from the New York Times, Mike D’Antoni was quoted: “If somebody wakes up with a cold, he’s playing a lot. If not, we’ll see” (Beck). This goes to show when he was originally signed not many people in New York has faith in his talents and he was seen more as an insurance policy than anything. The phenomenon dubbed “Linsanity” started after a breakout performance from him against the Nets. He scored 25 points, dished out 7 assists, and snagged 5 rebounds in his NBA debut to lead to the Knicks to a 99-92 win. Since this game he has remained in the spotlight of many news sources and been one of the most highly criticized and complimented players at the same time. The compliments he's been getting is that he's off to the highest scoring start any player in has had in their first seven games since the NBA/ABA merger in the seventies, even Michael. Criticisms of Lin as a player attack him as a person, and many writers use the race card to rationalize the reasons for Linsanity. When following the progression of Linsanity, one can’t help but notice the different ways in which people write and speak of him. The remainder of this essay will analyze the short time span Linsanity has been around, and attempt to identify the different views used to describe it by different media sources and people.

Since there have been so many stories written on Jeremy Lin in such a short period of time, it’s challenging to find the articles that display radical differences of opinion. Luckily Jeremy Lin is Asian, a subject that is very easy for people to pick on in the game of basketball. Playing in high school and college he was subjected to many racial slurs and picked on in almost every visiting arena by opposing fans. Now that he's in the NBA and showing everyone that he can play at a high level, people still find the need to him the respect he’s earned. For example, Boxer Floyd Mayweather stirred up media attention when he posted this to his twitter: "Jeremy Lin is a good player but all the hype is because he's Asian. Black players do what he does every night and don't get the same praise," he responded later that night with more, "I'm speaking my mind on behalf of other NBA players. They are programmed to be politically correct and will be penalized if they speak up” (Begley). Granted that Mayweather has a reputation for being a loud mouth but he has a point. How much of Lin’s popularity is because he's Asian?

In a survey on Bleacher Report that I took, the question read: What role is race playing in Lin’s popularity? The three responses were: “Huge,” “Some, but not enough to be a big deal,” and “None”. Out of the 3,849 votes, 49.4% voted “Some, but not enough to be a big deal,” 40.1% voted “Huge,” and only 10.5% voted “None.” The survey was featured in an article about how Andre Iguodala chimed into the conversation by saying when you see Lin do what he does you are surprised. The comment by Iguodala is at the top of the article, then the author briefly scolds him for becoming a part of this conversation, and goes on to counter that race plays a major role in Lin’s popularity. He writes, “Has anyone actually stopped to think that Lin is getting all this hype, not because he is Asian, but because he plays in New York and the team is on a seven-game winning streak? If Lin were putting up the numbers he has and the team was losing, would anyone care as much? Of course not. The hype machine is coming because of the New York factor” (Wells). This shows Harris’s move of countering because Wells takes what is written, and completely disagrees with it. He takes the fact Lin is Asian and ignores it. Then goes on to explain that the reasoning behind Lin’s popularity is because they are in New York, the media capital of the world. He elaborates, “Lin is not the best player in the league, but because he was undrafted out of college, was cut by the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets before the New York Knicks took a flier on him and is now thriving, he is the best story” (Wells). As a member of the general pubic, I agree with Wells. We shouldn’t be hung up that an Asian kid is all the sudden playing well in the NBA, but rather that no one knew who he was less than a month ago. Sit back and enjoy watching the evolution of who has already promised to be one of the most exciting young point guards in the NBA.

As everyone well knows by now, there are always two sides to an argument. Usually writers try to avoid bias because it shows favoritism and makes for some very questionable headlines. Jay Caspian Kang, a writer for Grantland, and Rick Quan, a sports anchor in San Francisco, have both covered the Jeremy Lin story. It should be pretty obvious that both these writers have something in common with Jeremy Lin. All three of them are of some Asian decent. Not to be racist in any way, but when an Asian writer writes about an Asian athlete who has been defying all odds in the game of basketball, there’s always going to bias in those articles. Luckily for Kang he writes for a blog and Quan submitted his opinion piece to CNN so the addition of bias in this situation is a good thing.

When Kang and Quan write about Jeremy Lin, their writing shows a sense of pride they have being similar to him. In this case they are demonstrating two of Aristotle’s appeals that we use in writing today, ethos and pathos. The character of the speaker plays a role in the credibility of the story, and when I noticed the bylines of three articles were Asian names I paid closer attention to how they were written. Their sense of pride is where they demonstrate pathos, in their emotions and ability to connect to the reader by making them feel what they feel. Kang wrote about Jeremy Lin once before while he was still at Harvard in 2010. In his more recent article he referenced that experience by stating, “What I was trying to describe was the very strange, specific, and rare pride one feels when watching one of their own succeed in a forbidden field” (Some sort of citation). The forbidden field Kang refers to is the game of basketball, which barely has any Asians in it, and through his writing he is showing bias towards Jeremy Lin because the two are alike. I don’t blame him; he’s in a rare situation. African Americans can’t say they have pride in some players in the league because they make up the majority, but Lin is the exception. He’s the only Asian American in the league and that unifies a race of people to feel what Kang is feeling. Rick Quan writes in a very similar way to Kang. He says things like, “That is huge” and “If a Chinese-American guy can hold his own against the best athletes in the world, wow!” (Some sort of citation). These clearly show that Quan feels for Jeremy Lin and that he too relates to him because they are both Asian. Also one can tell from the way he writes that he feels connected with Asians in general because he says “we” to describe his race. Kang and Quan both use race as a way to make their articles more interesting. By relating to the topic they are writing about they offer a unique opinion on a subject, which makes their audience more interested in their articles.

The authors that we have explored have focused on Jeremy Lin being an Asian American in the game of basketball. Whether they have criticized that the American public needs to drop the fact that he is Asian and start appreciating him for the excellent point guard he is or explained the sense of pride they share with him for being the same race, they are all talking about the same thing. As an observer to the story, I project that for the rest of the year Linsanity will continue to hold onto New York and when playoff time comes around Jeremy Lin will get to show us all what he's truly made of. After the Knicks lose in the playoffs there will be two maybe three weeks max of buzz on Sportscenter about what Lin will do next year. From there Jeremy Lin will no longer be known as the Asian kid in the NBA, he’ll be known as Jeremy Lin. Writers will continue to write about him, but now instead of questioning his ability, he will have become one of the regulars to writers and they’ll know what he's capable of. Once and for all people will stop going Linsane.  

My Best Guess At Taking An Approach

Harris is pretty unclear about what he actually means by “taking an approach,” but from what I can best assume he defines it as changing a way of thinking to not necessarily rewrite a text of an author like one would in forwarding/countering but to redesign a broader style that the writer uses in their thought process. He also says it takes a long time to master so bear with me on this next part for I am only a novice.

One of the authors at Grantland wrote a piece Leave Jeremy Lin Alone. He didn’t mean it in the way that we should stop following the Asian sensation that New York has come to love. He meant it in the way that he wishes America could just step back and appreciate Lin for what he is, a basketball player. I believe he takes an approach In relation to Jeremy Lin by changing the way he looks at him. He starts the piece out with saying he has no take on this situation, which I find hard to believe seeing as he's a writer for a sports blog. Then he goes into detail about how America can’t get past the fact that he’s Asian and doing so well, it’s like no one thought it to be possible. The taking an approach aspect of this post is shifting views from the fact that there are very few Asians playing professional basketball to the fact that hidden talent pop up in funny places. Also that we (being America) need to stop making people into things they are not. Jeremy Lin is just a basketball player, and is very early in his career. How will we know what he is actually going to become?

How Carr relates to Linsanity

I’m choosing to forward a small portion of the post I wrote in response to first reading Carr. Back in my young-naive days of unit one, I was close-minded as to what Carr truly had to offer with his words. Now I see the light. With this forwarding, I’m using the analogy of the Internet rather than the process used to explain the exploding phenomenon we’ve come to know as Linsanity.

My older post:

He’s arguing that the new ago of technology and the explosion of the Internet is changing the way humans think. He uses the example of a research paper taking days to compile all the data, whereas now those days spent in the stacks are turned into minutes at the computer thanks to a friendly search engine called Google. Another metaphor he used that I found interesting was “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski” when he was referring the fact that his mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it.

What I’m forwarding:

The fact that Carr references the speed of the Internet makes me think of Jeremy Lin. After an outbreak performance against the Nets just earlier this month, millions of people were buzzing about him on the Internet. People like Shaq were tweeting that they’re going “Linsane” and everyone else was commenting on how he came out of nowhere. Because the Internet gives us the opportunity to communicate on a mass level so quickly people like Lin can gain popularity. Back in the 80’s when people like Michael and Magic played the game, if a team was hot you heard about it if they were really hot. News took a long time to spread across the country, now it takes one game and a few hundred friendly tweets.

That's Exactly The Way It Wasn't

No you're a towel! As much as I love South Park, this isn’t countering. Countering is much more in-depth than simply disagreeing with someone. According to Harris, to counter is “to develop a new line of thinking in response to the limits of other texts, it almost always involves a close attention to the specifics of their structure and phrasing” (57). Just as in forwarding, when you're countering you're not trying to shut someone down and finish an argument. The world would be discussion-less if everyone aimed to end conversations on the first comment. The goal of countering is to move the conversation in new directions with the addition of your own NEW thoughts. I stress “new” thoughts because Harris does as well. When he identifies the three steps to countering at the end of the chapter he says that the emphasis of your writing your be with constructing your own positions in response. This is important because you can’t simply rip the ideas of someone else; an essay is critique and analysis. You need to have your own original point (Ironically, this was my downfall in the essay we just got back. I just proved many of the author’s points wrong, and showed nothing of it. When I go back and revise I’m going to give analysis and connect many authors points together to form a strong centralized argument). Anyways, original ideas are needed to be successful in countering.

The best part about a sports blog is that it’s full of countering. Almost every post offers countering in one way or another. Sometimes is more discrete and sometimes its right out there. In the post that I’m going to talk about its incredibly obvious that the author is countering. The author talks about the All-Star lineups and where he has a difference in opinion. He states why he disagrees with some of the starters and reserve players for each team, and then provides his own ideas as to why his pick should be in there. He uses stats from seasons past and present to prove his point as to why certain players should be starting or not. He even uses the fact that certain players mean more to their team than others. I think that in this countering, perspective is gained. I say this because when the lineups are released some people either agree or disagree the fact that someone has been chosen, and then there’s not much more after that. In this post the author refutes and elaborates as to why his picks are better. Needless to say, the coaches picked the All-Stars, with the exception of the starters so I see his argument more as frustration than anger. 

Link to the article I referenced:
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7562176/the-sports-guy-nba-all-star-team 

--------->FORWARDING<----------(replying)

Technically I'm talking about forwarding, while I'm forwarding, awkward. Whatever that means. Harris describes as taking words, images, or ideas from a text and putting them to use in new contexts. That’s pretty general if you ask me, and I probably could’ve made up something similar without having any knowledge of Harris in the first place. I do like that in the opening pages of this chapter he references academic writing as a conversation. As to say, when you comment or respond to someone’s work of writing, you aren’t trying to get the last word or final say. To be the end-all-be-all comment on someone’s paper makes you seem like kind of an asshole. The purpose of commenting on someone’s paper is, as Harris put it, “to push it forward, to say something new, something that seems to call for further talk and writing” (36). Viewing writing as a conversation between many people helped me grasp the idea of forwarding because it made me realize writing is just a back and forth discussion.

I’ve been following the Grantland Sports Blog, and luckily forwarding is a huge part of sports. In the post about how the Detroit Red Wings aren’t really that deserving of their 21 home game win streak the authors uses Harris’s technique of forwarding a lot. After going on his rant about the Red Wings he focuses more on what been going on in the NHL the past week. He uses video clips of two players who scored hat tricks, goalies who got dangled, and defensemen with big hits to better illustrate (also a method or forwarding) what happened this weekend. I think the use of video clips is a positive on the author’s behalf. Harris would agree just as he did with Todd Gitlin’s writing piece in this chapter. Harris states, “Quoting the lyrics of a song doesn’t always get at how it feels to hear it preformed” (41). Rather than a song, the author used video clips of the athletes getting their hat tricks. It would be very different to read that two players scored hat tricks with the third and final goal coming on an empty net Tuesday night than to actually watch them make a fool of the opposing goalies. I think the addition of video clips to blog posts makes them much more interesting, and it also gives us the opportunity to take a break from reading since out attention spans are getting much shorter these days.

To see what I'm actually talking about, I'll forward you the link (pun intended)..
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7583076/coldhearted-red-wings-win-streak-looming-trades-rest-week-nhl 

The New York Times. The New York Knicks.

What to the New York Times and Grantland’s Blog have in common? The Knicks, a team that no one in New York expected to be good since Patrick Ewing left. Who could blame them? I mean really Landry Fields is on the starting roster; Mike D’Antoni is probably even wondering why. And the emergence of Jeremy Lin the Harvard graduate who can slice the lane like nobodies business and score more in his first four games than any NBA star who ever lived. Granted the first four games of a superstar’s career tell you almost nothing about the player, but beating Kobe and the Lakers in New York? That will turn many heads; including Kobe’s. The Times has a sports section, and their article on Jeremy Lin is, well, disappointing. Being a sports writer for a newspaper like the New York Times would be awful. Instead of talking about the fact that a single player has most of the city flat on their asses in front of a TV watching on game day; the writers at The Times get to talk about how Jeremy Lin has raised the stock and ticket prices of Madison Square Garden. That’s the boring part of this “Linsanity”; the exciting part is what the bloggers at Grantland can talk about. They can use emotion and say fuck in their articles whereas the only people saying that at The Times would be the editors.

This blog could be seen as apart of a press sphere because it’s a way that people get their news. It’s all incredibly informative with the added bonus that you get to read what the authors personally have to say about specific sports events.

A sphere is 3 dimensional. That's just a press circle

What could possibly have been going through your head Mr. Jarvis when you decided to draw these diagrams? The press sphere? Go back to your finger-painting class with Lilly and Todd from the first grade. From this article, my best guess of what you mean by this “press sphere” is the way in which we are receiving our news nowadays. As in the way we intercept our news through interactions with many sources.

Now for the easy part, what was confusing to me? For starters, the press sphere. Clearly the press is at the center of it, but does the press get all of its information from the circles surrounding it? And what about us? Where does the news get forwarded onto us like in the original diagram? The diagram at the top that goes The World à The Press à Us seems to be working fine for me. Sure you could add some extra arrows now that social networks have exploded into our lives but I’m a simple man who enjoys reading what the press/new tells us. In his closing statement Jarvis makes it seem like the press is dying. I couldn’t disagree more with him, I think the press is just having more added to it.

My personal experience with the news is that I get it from the press (NY Times, Yahoo, or whatever source it doesn’t really matter). I may stop and talk to a friend about the news in passing, but I don’t usually believe them enough to take their word for it. When I have a minute, I’ll go and check what we talked about. If they’re right I’ll usually pick up additional information about it and if they’re wrong then I’ll just correct whatever crap they just told me (my friends in high school were not very informed by the news). 

Grantland

Unless you know what Grantland prior to reading this, then you're probably thinking it's a town somewhere in the middle of the country with a population barely above 1500. If you thought that, you're wrong. I'm not even sure if Grantland is a physical place, but that's besides the point. Grantland is sports blog that I've been following, and its purpose is to inform people of whats going on in the sports world with a little added opinions to their pieces. Their audience is people like me who have an interest in whats going on in the sports world and/or people who are just interested in hearing what other people have to say about pressing stories in sports. There are many authors who post stories to these blogs and they all have an general interest in sports, but more specifically they are all incredibly biased in one way or another. This is the only scenario I can think of where bias isn't a bad thing. For instance, Bill Simmons wrote a lengthy piece about his view of the teams that were picked for the upcoming NBA All Star Game. When comparing Marc Gasol of the Memphis Grizzlies and Andrew Bynum of the Lakers for starters for the West squad he said, "He's averaging a 15-10 for Memphis; Bynum is averaging a 17-12 for the Lakers. But Gasol means more to his team. I really believe that. And also, I fucking hate the Lakers." This is the example of good bias because it doesn't impact the informative aspect of the story, it just shows the opinions of the author.

Sports Blog?

I will be following the Grantland Sports Blog. It not only provides scores but perspective of what's happening around major leagues.

Here's the link: http://www.grantland.com/

I am interested in sports, more specifically Chicago Basketball, because they are off to another record setting season with reigning MVP Derrick Rose. This blog wont give me (and all of you for that matter) news on just the Bulls, but rather opinions and viewpoints of athletes and current sports events.

I knew I forgot Something... Works Cited

Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid? - Magazine - The Atlantic." The Atlantic — News and Analysis on Politics, Business, Culture, Technology, National, International, and Life – TheAtlantic.com. Web. 29 Jan. 2012. <http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid

Chris, Hedges. "America the Illiterate." Truth Dig. Web. 28 Jan. 2012. <http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081110_america_the_illiterate/>.

Sullivan, Andrew. "Why I Blog - Magazine - The Atlantic." The Atlantic — News and Analysis on Politics, Business, Culture, Technology, National, International, and Life – TheAtlantic.com. Web. 30 Jan. 2012. <http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/why-i-blog/7060/>.

Thompson, Clive. "Clive Thompson on the New Literacy." Wired.com. Web. 07 Feb. 2012. <http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-09/st_thompson>.

 

Ink Covered Fingers

I’m going to be honest; I haven’t really been keeping up with the New York Times like I should be. I'm sure I'm not the only one. On days I do make it to the lobby from my room (like today) and grab the paper, I usually just end up skimming it. Luckily I’ve also been pretty lazy with cleaning my dorm, meaning the issue of the Times I grabbed on January 24^th has been in pretty much the same spot on my desk since after I skimmed leafed through it.

Ironically, the story of how the Giants got to the Superbowl was all over the paper on the 24^th and of course stole the front cover the day after they won. I noticed this because I follow sports, more so Chicago basketball, but when the playoffs start in the NFL I'm definitely going to watch them. Another story that remained in the press is the coverage of the presidential race, no shit right? If the New York Times didn’t cover the presidential race for a week, the next weeks letter to the editor would be filled with, “What are you guys doing?” or “We want more Ron Paul!” but thankfully the Times would never do such a thing and the stories have still been in there. However, on the 24^th Newt Gingrich had just gotten $5 million dollars in a ‘Super PAC’ and now it is more focused on how Ron Paul’s views are changing because of his early career and family life. I follow the presidential race because I don’t want to seem completely useless when I'm talking with my family members.

I usually skip over the articles that don’t have to do with our country but will read the captions and look at the pictures to see if they catch my eye. This is probably incredibly ignorant of me, but I’ve got time to change the way I read.

I’m not really sure if reading the New York Times has influenced my other habits mainly because I haven’t really been reading it. I’m going to keep reading it and I will come back to that question in a later blog entry.

Called that one

It comes as no surprise that most of my fellow classmates get their news off the Internet these days. It’s hard to keep up with the news, and to do so one has to find the fastest way possible to check what’s going on in today’s world. All we have to do is open the Internet and just like that we know that a nuclear reactor is omitting radiation in China. There are really only two major differences that I’ve seen from everyone’s blog about where and how they keep up with the news. For starters, clearly everyone’s website of preference for the news is different. Whether is be the NY Times to keep up with the presidential race or Yahoo to hear the who’s who of what’s going on in Hollywood, news sites vary depending on person and sophistication. The other difference I see is whether or not someone keeps up with the news when they are at home an have lost touch now that they are at school. It could be as simple as watching the news with your dad or reading the paper every morning. Now being at school the opportunities to grab the paper on the way to class seem like too much of a hassle.

If Carr read the results of how our class gets our news, I think he would be sitting back in his chair with a huge smile on his face thinking to himself, “I told you so, I told you so, I told you so.” He believes that the Internet is transforming the way we intercept our news. He even says “It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense” aka picking up the Sunday Paper and reading it cover to cover like so many of our parents would. Our class is a perfect example of how the way we read is evolving. Readers are shifting away from print media and more towards electronic based sources. I’m guilty of it too; I'm in one of the furthest rooms from the newspaper stands that are sitting in the main lobby of JMAC and often would rather read the news online than go walk to get a paper. Maybe I’ll start grabbing the paper on the way in instead of being disappointed by how lazy I am becoming.

Essay #1: Revised

This essay was written primarily to our class. My essay is tailored this way because I say things such as “The article we read in class.” Only people in our class would understand that because I don’t say in Andrew Sullivan’s article, Why I Blog, which we read in class, I simply reference Sullivan’s article and it’s implied from the knowledge of our class that everyone knows what I'm talking about. This essay is also geared more towards young people. I don’t use as formal of a tone as I would if I'm writing a paper on the Supreme Court lifetime tenure like I did earlier in the year. I wrote it in a more relaxed tone because I feel it flows better.

The other night I was watching Sportscenter before going to bed and I heard something that caught my ear. Reporters in the studios were talking about how at this weekends upcoming NFL Pro Bowl; players would be allowed to tweet during the game. I'm envisioning the following post from Aaron Rodgers after coming off the field, “Just threw a 46 yard touchdown pass, nice catch Greg. #NFCRULES” To me this exception to allow players to tweet during the game shows the types of writers we are becoming. Our writing isn’t the only thing that has been changing recently. With modern advances in the last ten years of the Internet, we are now relying on it more than ever for a lot of our information. It’s easy to use, and doesn't take long to search. Carr uses a metaphor to describe the way the Internet has changed, he says, “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski” (1). Overall, I believe that due to the new age of technology, we have become more frequent, but not necessarily better writers, and worse readers for the time being because we have not yet adapted to the way information is intercepted.

            Of the readings we did in class, two writers in particular had the viewpoint that with the new age of technology our writing is improving and can only get better. These writers were Andrew Sullivan and Clive Thompson. Andrea Lunsford was featured in Thompson’s article for her research with the writing of freshman at Stanford University. Thompson references her research when he states, “The first thing she found is that young people today write far more than any generation before them. That's because so much socializing takes place online, and it almost always involves text” (Thompson 1). Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and any other networking site for that matter let’s someone instantly post what they are thinking, whenever they want. It’s ingenious, these sites have realized that teens want an outlet where they can publicly display what’s on their mind to an audience of their friends and family. Another result she found was:

The modern world of online writing, particularly in chat and on discussion threads, is conversational and public, which makes it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than the asynchronous letter and essay writing of 50 years ago. The fact that students today almost always write for an audience (something virtually no one in my generation did) gives them a different sense of what constitutes good writing (Thompson 1).

She elaborated that because students almost always write to an audience, when they had to write in class and only to their professor they found it boring and useless. Students don’t enjoy writing only to a teacher; we are the writers of the future. We write short, concise, audience based pieces of writing. If a professor also reads and grades it for class that only helps. Academic writing is shifting away from formal essays that are turned in with a cover page and towards blog entries that are graded on a regular basis.

            Rather than using a social networking site to get his thoughts read on the web, Andrew Sullivan _­takes a different approach, an approach where no friend request needs to be accepted. He uses a blog as his way of communicating with an audience, and a very popular one at that. Blog are a useful tool for anyone who loves to write. Sullivan writes of his experience, “The simple experience of being able to directly broadcast my own words to readers was an exhilarating literary liberation. Unlike the current generation of writers, who have only ever blogged, I knew firsthand what the alternative meant” (Sullivan 3). The alternative he's referring to is print media, because he has been an editor and is currently a writer. I couldn’t agree more with what he said. There is a pretty big difference from his audience of millions of readers and my audience of fourteen class members, but it’s the same feeling of knowing what you just wrote is being read by someone. Sullivan describes blogging as an extreme sport, and once again I know how he feels. Although I'm assuming when he writes his blog, its not in a word document like mine were, but the instant publication after I’ve finished in a word document is a small rush of nervousness and excitement. As Sullivan states, “And the risk of error or the thrill of prescience that much greater” in relation to posting entries in a timely manner. Sullivan posts very often to his blog, which is part of the extremeness. If you don’t keep posting, people will lose interest. In essence, once you start, you can never stop. Sullivan explains:

You can’t have blogger’s block. You have to express yourself now, while your emotions roil, while your temper flares, while your humor lasts. You can try to hide yourself from real scrutiny, and the exposure it demands, but it’s hard. And that’s what makes blogging as a form stand out: it is rich in personality (Sullivan 5).

Because we can use new technology, our writing can become interesting to anyone who is willing to read it. It’s not hard to find, and there’s no shortage of it on the web. Technology has made us into instant writers. I see this as a positive change because there will always be someone out there who is writing that you can relate to, all it takes it the patience and interest to sit down and read it.

            As positive as Thompson and Sullivan are about writing, there are others that we read in class that don’t feel the same way. Hedges and Carr see the Internet as a possible risk, specifically, Hedges, views the Internet as a major roadblock in our intellectual development. He states:

 The core values of our open society, the ability to think for oneself, to draw independent conclusions, to express dissent when judgment and common sense indicate something is wrong, to be self-critical, to challenge authority, to understand historical facts, to separate truth from lies, to advocate for change and to acknowledge that there are other views, different ways of being, that are morally and socially acceptable, are dying (Hedges 3).

None of this however, can possibly happen from using the Internet too much. The ability to think for ones self and to distinguish between truth and lie, are human traits. They are hardwired into our brains from the time we are very little. No such study has been proven that the Internet can destroy our neurological paths. The Internet cannot take away a trait that has been inherently humanistic for hundreds of years; it’s biology, humans cannot evolve that quickly. Hannah Arendt was featured in Hedges’s article for saying, “Culture, is being destroyed in order to yield entertainment” (Hedges 3). When I read this, I was a little bit confused, mainly because culture cannot be destroyed; it’s the customs that people do on a regular basis. Meaning, if people decide to shift away from their old customs and more towards new ones of being entertained, then the culture of that group of people has changed, not been destroyed. Spending prolonged periods of time using Internet cannot take away culture and stop us from making decisions that humans have been making pretty much since the beginning of modern society. Hedges doesn’t consider the fact that we are about to turn the corner on a new age of technology, and that the way we think is going to change. This doesn’t mean out with the old and in with the new, it simply means the new is going to mesh with the old and create a new way of thinking. It’s just too early to see how that is going to change and because of this Hedges seems like a skeptic of the Internet.

            Nicholas Carr makes a much less harsh argument towards how the Internet impacts our ability to be better readers. At times, he questions his own thoughts to if something like this can possibly true. I believe he makes some very convincing points about the Internet, however, where we differ is I believe that humans will adapt and change to become more efficient readers when using the Internet, he does not show the same faith. To show the massive reach that the Internet has over our lives he states, “The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV” (Carr 4). This is all true, but not the end of the world. The Internet will likely take over print media in most places and many inventions that we knew to be useful will cease to be popular, but there will always be people who feel like doing it the old fashioned way. People who pick up a phone and dial home, or read the Sunday Paper cover to cover. As for the rest of us, we will have to adapt to the new way media is given to the public, mainly through the Internet. No one knows what types of readers we will become, but everyone is making wild assumptions of the unknown. Carr explains the types of readers we currently are. He says:

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle (Carr 1).

Our attention spans are shortening, but I know we have the ability to change the way we read. We are the types readers, and more importantly people, who have the capability to learn new things and always find interest in topics. We will never become the dreaded “Pancake people” that Carr mentions in his article because people will always be curious. Curiosity did kill the cat, but yeast is what makes bread rise. The Internet is our yeast, it will allow us to rise above the stereotypes that authors, such as Carr, give us and allow us to access more knowledge than we could have ever imagined.

              Literary critics fear that the new age of technology, specifically advances in the Internet, is changing the way we read and write. It’s true; the evolution of the Internet has created an evolution of language that many see as the downfall of American literacy and intellectualism, but I see it a different way. The progressions in the Internet are an opportunity for Americans to adapt to the new ways technology will influence our lives. Changes in the way we write are already apparent from how much we write. Changes in the way we read will take much longer to show up since humans are in a transitional period. The transition that is taking place from print media to electronic news is just beginning. The way we read and write is changing, but this is a good thing. It will once again show that humans have the ability to adapt in any situation.

Today's News

this is being published in all caps for some reason, please disregard it. there is no extra enthusiasm that i'm trying to add.

Where do I get my news? Where do you get your news? Teens these days are, for the most part, very similar in relation to where we get our news. As we all know by now, the internet plays a major role in where we get our news. For good reasons too, its much faster and probably quicker. I’ll even admit that if I want to know what’s going on back in Chicago ill just go on the web and check it out. That doesn’t go to say that I am a strictly internet newsreader. I love reading the paper; it makes me feel older than I am, its also easier than reading off a screen in my opinion. It also lets me choose what I want to see first. When you log onto the New York Times website what comes up on the home page is the top stories. For example the top headline right now is “Egypt to Try 19 Americans in Inquiry Over Use of Funds” but if I picked up the paper I probably wouldn’t want to read that first. I would probably flip right to the sports section because it’s Superbowl Sunday and read about who has the advantage in tonight’s game.

When I’m at home, and have the availability of my car, one of the preset radio stations is talk radio. I’ll give my brother all the credit for this because it was his car before mine and I just kept it because I’m too lazy to change it, and to be honest there are very few good radio stations left between the oldies and that. When I flip through the radio, I always find myself listening to it for a few seconds longer than if it were a song because I'm listening to what the hosts are saying. It’s how I found out Clarence Clemmons had a stroke before he died. I will say one way I have not gotten my news since it was homework to watch in high school, was television. For some reason I cant watch people talk about the news. It’s usually on after many hit TV shows and I am the first one to grab the remote in my family and either change the channel or turn it off. I think the reason I can’t watch someone talk is because its visually unappealing. Although the weather features the most color and movements, I’d rather flip to the back page of the Metro section in the Tribune to see the seven day forecast. People these days are more inclined to watch something exciting, and the news just doesn’t fulfill that requirement more of the time anymore. From Johnson Hall, I’m Sam Blinderman. You stay classy, Denver.