(3) Milblogs

Milblogs are something new for me, and I found the experience to be a good one. Several of my friends are either in Iraq or about to deploy, and I’ve found that after reading the blog, I have a better understanding of what they went through. I know I’ll never be able to understand exactly what they were feeling while they were in the warzone, but reading the other soldier’s experiences in Iraq helps. When I responded to the posts, I tried to infuse every response with wishing them a safe return.

(2) The Pitfalls of Blogs

The pitfalls of creating and maintaining a blog or facebook account are serious enough to make me carefully consider what I post on the web, but not enough to make me want to stop posting altogether. I understand the risks associated with posting on the internet, because everything there is universally and publically available to read with no guaranteed privacy whatsoever. My friend posted a story, which was based on a real person, on her blog, which she thought only her friends read. However, later that week, she received an email from the person who was the subject of her story. She didn’t know how he was able to get her email, and although she didn’t post any fallacies, the subject of the post felt a need to correct how the story portrayed his character, and he was able to track her down and communicate this with her. She did amend her blog, and this experience illustrates to me how every post I make has potential repercussions, both for me and the subject of my posts.

At this stage in my life, I’m not worried that employers will judge me based on my internet page, because I won’t be applying for a professional job for a couple of years yet and I use common sense when I post. I believe that employers will not judge my character based on what I posted in my facebook 4 years ago. The pertinent information employers are looking for would be the information currently posted in my facebook account or on my blog. While it is only logical to watch what I say on the internet, I won’t be grooming my facebook account for employers to see until the time comes.

(1) James Sosnoski

As time progresses, technology will make the majority of books and printed media accessible through the use of a computer, and this prospect both excites me and worries me. I like the idea that our natural resources will be better conserved, but the changes technology brings to printed material continues to be met with positive and negative responses. Luckily, James Sosnoski has a remedy for this situation. In this article, he argues that “public listservs more often stage performances of their discussants than meaningfully contribute to our understanding of the issues under discussion”, whose end result is a large amount of information with little relevant meaning on the internet. To combat this problem, he introduces the term “hyper-reading”, which is a process in which the reader uses several different reading techniques (like filtering, skimming, or pecking) and employs them to help the reader pick out the meaning out of a long passage. The aforementioned practices were once ones that Sosnoski himself taught his students never to use, believing that a student couldn’t get meaning out of a passage if used. He has since then encouraged students to use the practices to help with their computer reading.