(Disclaimer: The above video is hilarious, however may contain inappropriate language. Viewer's discretion is advised)
The Internet is a gateway to another world. A world where one can choose to tune into reality or virtual reality. It is a land filled with conveniences such as Email, Video chat, Voice chat, 24 hour News, and other things that are typically easily and quickly accessible. It is also a land filled with Spam Mail, Pop-up ads, Viruses, Adware, and most importantly infinitely many ways to waste time. It is also for.. you know (see video above). Without further ado, I will present a picture of my internet activities.
I use Mozilla Firefox, and I use the Bookmark Toolbar and Tabbed Windows extensively. While writing my blog I am able to access My UCDavis, Facebook, my Blog and the class's Blogs, Wikipedia, Youtube, and Gmail. I also have running in the background Windows Live Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, Warcraft III, a torrent program I use to download TV shows, a third party program for Warcraft III that allows me to chat with people without running the program in full screen, iTunes, Wordpad, FreeCell when I feel like distracting myself or have a writers block, Windows Paint to take screen shots of what I'm doing, and an episode of The Office I was watching earlier.
To explain the picture a little more thoroughly, this is a 'normal' process for me when I have work to do. I first check my email and Facebook for interesting updates, then I open my blog and begin to write. While writing, something usually comes up that grabs my attention such as finding a Youtube video to embed, or defining a word on an Online Dictionary. When I feel distracted I check my download progress, or change the song I'm listening to, or play a bit of FreeCell until an idea comes up.
There are many ways to use the internet, and this is how I use it. It might appear like I'm hardly working, or it also appear that I'm swamped with work (if you can't tell what programs I have open). This process of writing a simple blog is done on one Browser tab, however is not limited to that. While writing a blog, I have Nine Browser tabs open, and 10 Programs running in the background. This picture shows how a such a simple task of writing something on the internet can include so many tabs and programs running simultaneously. Granted some of programs open are irrelevant, yet I keep them open for convenience and because I'm too lazy or busy to close them right now. Also a flashing window, normally from an instant messenger will easily catch my attention and I may forget what I had planned to write, but I have put myself on Away status so people will not likely bother me unless it's important. Nevertheless, the internet has given me tremendous opportunities to multitask as well as an equally vast opportunities to distract myself from what I'm actually doing. I think I'm normally bad at multitasking too. Perhaps this is my workplace getting messier before work finally gets done.
1 comment:
Is the Internet a "gateway to another world" or another world *itself*? For that matter, is the Internet a single other world, or many many other worlds? Is there a way to think about the Internet not as separate from this 'world' (our world), but rather as a web *around* our world? (Is this what we mean when we say "world wide web"?) How is the Internet changing the way that we think about 'worlds'? It seems to me that this is a crucial question, especially as many people insist that 'the world' is environmentally at risk. Do we even know what we're talking about when we use the word 'world'? What is the relationship between images, worlds, and informational networks (i.e., the Internet)??? This sounds like the question that haunts Plato's "Allegory of the Cave."
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