Dylan Langei's "Digital Nation" response

Digital Nation: Life On The Virtual Frontier is an interactive website and Frontline documentary, first aired February 2, 2010, from Producer and Director Rachel Dretzin and correspondent Douglas Rushkoff. Dretzin and Rushkoff travel to different places that are affected by digital technology in vast ways. They first visit MIT which is Massachusetts Institute of Technology, considered one of the most advanced colleges in the states. As they are at MIT they interview students and realize all of them are constantly wired to a computer, laptop, Blackberry, or other sorts of technology. The teachers allow complete use of laptops in their classes yet explain how they will give easy quizzes that are all question based on lecture and the students will get 75%. This is sort of the starting point, then Dretzin and Rushkoff travel to Stanford where a teacher is doing a study on multitasking. He shows how much more the brain has to work while multitasking and how much less it absorbs. Then the two are off to South Korea where video games have been causing health issues for much of the population. Internet pubs house many computers that kids will even stay overnight to play video games, and all sorts of eye and ear disorders have been penetrating these gamers. These video games also offer relationships between people, in California the team sees how friendships and newlyweds have been created through the internet. Then a program called Second Life is introduced which enables businesses to have meetings through a virtual person so it is a lot more formal and personal than just talking on the phone to a room full of people. Also a military base oriented through video games to recruit 13 and up kids, and a school fully taught by digital technology is also introduced. They both use technology to teach about either a subject or program to keep the kids interested.
Technology has definitely affected my life but been most apparent with my new phone. I recently got a smart phone which basically is a phone with 3G wireless internet. Before this phone I was basically grown up using the internet. My family always had computers and laptops around that I would sometimes play video games on when I was younger, then sort of matured into Myspace and Facebook. These all seemed normal until about two weeks ago when I got my new phone. This phone has over 38,000 apps which 65% of them are free, but it’s not the amount of apps I can get for free that changed my view of technology it’s what they can do. First of all the navigation on my phone is accessed by just speaking to the phone where you want to go, so you’d say “Safeco Field Seattle Washington”. The phone ultimately allows you to get a full 360 street view of Safeco Field, where you can zoom your phone into cars and look at people driving by the entrance of the stadium. This video also made me realize how much I’m constantly checking my Facebook, email, bank account, soccer standings, and just all sorts of different websites while I’m in class. This phone has basically absorbed most of my attention during the day, and this directly connects to the MIT example in Digital Nation. These kids are constantly connected to some kind of technology, yet still saying they can focus in class. The Stanford study clearly showed that you are not as capable when you multitask to when you are purely focusing on the teacher. I now realize by watching this film how harmful my new phone is to my concentration in class, yet the capability of technology has just come to my attention by owing this phone.