A New Life

                With the growing popularity of the internet and internet games, we can now choose to be whoever we desire to be on the internet.  With the anonymity of the internet to hide our true selves, we can put up a wall of lies that we call ourselves.  There are many people who would like their virtual self to be their real self, and stay online all the time as their virtual self.  I believe this is completely understandable; it would be cool if in real life I was actually an all-powerful warrior from some kingdom, and every day I go on adventures with my friends without the fear of death because I can just revive if I die.  To be addicted to your virtual self doesn’t even have to involve games either.  To be who you say you are online, a famous model from some European country, or someone who is talented at everything.  If someone believes you are who you say you are online, what’s not to like?  Of course there are moral issues with the second option.  But to go online where you can be anyone you want seems so tempting; it is surprising not everyone does it.  The reason for that might be because it is looked down upon to always be “online” and virtual games don’t have all of the sensual perks of real life...yet.  Running through the woods in a game won’t feel the same as running through the woods in real life.  There are just things you cannot truly experience in a game that you can in real life.  But hey, I’m all for virtual reality games that involve all of your senses making it seem no different from reality.  It could be what I do as an old man reliving what it was like to be young and agile.

Politically Idle...

            I did not vote in the 2012 – 2013 election because I am not the most politically aware person.  I know a decent amount of information about the candidates running, but I decided to not take the extensive amount of time needed to truly know each candidates views.  There are many biased articles online, and it is exhausting trying to sort them all out.  In all honesty, I don’t believe my single vote out of millions could change an election.  Even if there was a circumstance where it could happen, the election would be so close; both candidates should be well enough qualified.  That is why I did not vote, because I believe my vote would be negligible compared to the million others out there and not worth the time.  I agree that there are things changing in our country that I would not like to change, but I won’t always get the President I want by voting anyways.

            Next election, I might vote.  It depends on the things going on in my life at that moment.  I believe by next election I will be in Pharmacy School so I will probably be pretty busy, but I will try to make it a point to be more politically aware.  If I feel like I know the candidates well enough to make an educated political decision, then I will most likely vote.  I think it is good to know about the things occurring in our country and the future that it will be heading towards.

Interneducation

In South Korea, internet gaming addiction has become a serious problem. Teenagers “game” for hours at a time, mostly at internet cafes where they can play on high speed internet for cheap.  It has gotten so bad that some students have died due to extended gaming.  In response to this, students are now taught at a young age how to use the internet and proper internet etiquette, or netiquette.  They have classes on how to properly use the internet, have signs around school with messages of proper netiquette, and they have the children sing songs about proper netiquette.  The school curriculum relates to digital citizenship because they both are about how to responsibly use the internet and the proper ways to interact online.

 I think learning netiquette could possibly benefit a society in reducing addiction, create better internet communities, and make the internet more beneficial to society.  Learning netiquette at a young age could plant the importance of proper internet use in our mind so we have a stronger resistance to the distractions.  There are so many distractions on the internet and it plays such a strong role in our society that staying off it will become nearly impossible.  So I think in response to this, it would be best to embrace the fact that the internet is everywhere and that we cannot avoid it; but what we CAN do is learn how to properly and responsibly use it so that even though we are on it all the time, we will not be distracted by things like facebook every 5 minutes or watch youtube videos for hours when we have something we need to do.  It may or may not work, but it’s worth a shot right?