Unit 3
Writing Response 1
I found The Coming Apocalypse to be very interesting. This unit being about different forms of literacy, I immediately thought of the Terminator movies when I read the title. I will agree with Miller that while the Internet could not have become the thing it is today without previous technological advances – telephones, satellites, radios – its “birth” spawned exponential growth in communication abilities. Today, anyone can talk to anyone else almost instantaneously via text messages, emails, or various social media platforms. One hundred years ago, the pony express or the telegraph were the norm and telephones hadn’t really become all that commonplace yet. I remember when we got our first cordless phone, and a couple years later my mom got a bag phone for her car since she was working home health at the time. When dial up internet finally made its way to our house in the late 1990s, we thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. After that it seems is when the web started its hostile takeover of society. Within just a few years, we went from nobody owning cell phones or having call waiting and answering machines to everyone old enough to walk having a cell phone. We have also seen a steep decline in face-to-face interactions because everyone “can just do it online.” This is probably the one thing I hate about the most about technology – it has completely dehumanized society to the point where everyone wants instant gratification, nobody cherishes personal interactions anymore and the obsession with social media has brought out the narcissist in everyone. Reading this excerpt made me realize that I really wish we could go back prior to the giant that is the internet to when people actually acted human instead of behaving a certain way just to get the most “likes” on social media.