A lot of the time when Stephen Colbert was talking he was joking, but I think for the most part he was trying to get a very important message across. We have to be careful with how we handle ourselves online. He mentions that he should pick passwords that are very difficult, and this is true. You should always choose something that is very difficult to guess, even if the person trying to guess knows a lot about you, it should never be anything too obvious. Another thing that he mentions is making sure that you have a good program to stop viruses, which is very true. There are many different type of virus protection out there and you need to make sure that you have one that will actually work, or even have more than one. Also, like he said about people being able to find out the things that you search or download you should be generally more careful with the things that you download because they can be harmful to your computer, as well as possibly paint a bad picture of you.
http://www.sec.gov/spotlight/katrina/protectyourselfonline.htm
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Google Knows Everything
While I usually try not to think about what services know about me (really, would they ever use it?) reading this article really opened my eyes up to how much they actually do know, and how much of it is ridiculous that it would even be archived. It is a little frightening to think that every email I have ever sent is not really that private, and that all my financial information, if I use the right services is not really private at all. For most people in the world we really don't have to worry about this, because Google really can't afford to waste the time to target people, but the fact that they would use their servers to make sure they have the information is a little curious. I do not use an Android phone, so my life is not controlled completely by Google, but i do regularly use Google Maps and I ONLY search with Google. And now I use Blogger, too, which means that they know that am worried about them. We'll see what the world is like when they decide to use all this information...
Sunday, June 12, 2011
The Digital Divide
As a child of the computer generation I feel that it is easier for me to realize a digital divide, mostly because I know that it does not take much to disconnect a person from the world as they are used to interacting with it. Take a cell phone away from a teenager and they will not be able to function at all. Therefore, it is easier for a young person today to realize just how detrimental a digital divide for a country or a community can be. There are ways that people are trying to bridge that gap and they are to a certain extent successful. Schools in developing countries are receiving grants to put computers into schools for children to learn basic computing skills from an early age.
Having a digital divide drastically affects the way that people live because most people today are aware of how important it is for them to be connected, be it over the internet or by having a cell phone. People have a hard time settling for not having one or the other and they will make sure, if they have the access to it, that they do have them. If it means not having something else then that is okay, they can compromise.
Realizing that there is a digital divide also spurred on the sudden development of organizations that's goal is to make sure that they make that divide smaller. It has consciously changed the way that people deal with developing countries that do not have the privileges that we do. We, having the money and the access, concede that it is our duty to make sure that we make life easier for them by trying our best to make sure that they have the ability to know how to use the technology of the future and to also make sure that they have the ability to get to it on a regular basis which is why it has been more important to get computers and technology in schools than it has to make sure that every family has a computer in their home.
Having a digital divide drastically affects the way that people live because most people today are aware of how important it is for them to be connected, be it over the internet or by having a cell phone. People have a hard time settling for not having one or the other and they will make sure, if they have the access to it, that they do have them. If it means not having something else then that is okay, they can compromise.
Realizing that there is a digital divide also spurred on the sudden development of organizations that's goal is to make sure that they make that divide smaller. It has consciously changed the way that people deal with developing countries that do not have the privileges that we do. We, having the money and the access, concede that it is our duty to make sure that we make life easier for them by trying our best to make sure that they have the ability to know how to use the technology of the future and to also make sure that they have the ability to get to it on a regular basis which is why it has been more important to get computers and technology in schools than it has to make sure that every family has a computer in their home.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
About Me
My name is William, and I will be a junior at the start of the next school year. I am majoring in History with a teacher's licensure in social studies. I want to teach high school history, preferably United States History. My hobbies include reading and writing. I have been writing since I was in middle school and am currently nearing completion of my first full length novel. I love to watch movies, especially horror. I am a Teaching Fellow and a member of their Technology Committee because of my obsession with electronics and computers.
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