I can sympathize with danah boyd on twitter on many of her frustrations. Critics most often knock it before they try it; twitter being just another social media that is mostly comprised of "pointless babble". When I first heard about twitter, I admit that I was hesitant to jump into it and didn't really understand the concept because it was different from my beloved facebook. Though after little convincing I made myself a twitter. I was fascinated that I could know what Ashton Kutcher was doing at that exact moment. Almost immediately you feel like you have a relationship with the person and have a better understanding of what they really care about. But besides the celebrity gossip, I found that other applications were great too. I follow CNN's twitter as well as a BreakingNews twitter, both of which keep me updated on current events. My personal favorite though is the ESPN twitter; (I always look extra cool around boys). So, critics can bash twitter all they want but I find that it's useful in multiple areas and I agree with danah that everything doesn't HAVE to be educational and intellectual every minute of the day.

The article on google by Nicholas Carr is one that I still can't decide if I agree or disagree. I see both sides of his argument. My parents always tell me about how lucky we are to have the resources available to us today and how they used to have to spend "days in the library" to finish research for a topic. It reminds me of the infamous walk in the snow for 3 miles to school speech. So with this great appreciation I have learned to have for the Internet and especially google, comes a certain concern as well. While I am still considered to be young, I did not always have access to today's technologies. Despite what my elders think, I can recall a time where I too did research in actual libraries. The research might have been on bubble gum and not peripheral nerve regeneration, but research all the same. I completely understand Carr's diving statement where he "Once was a scuba diver, in a sea of words. Now (he) zips along the surface like a guy with a Jet Ski." Information is so quickly and easily accessed that it never really sinks into the brain and is hardly remembered longer than a couple days. The search for information in a library makes you learn things that might not have been directly relevant to the topic. In this new age, I hope that my generation does not become victim to a Dory (from Finding Nemo) attention span and lack of deep understanding on important current and previous issues.