Children of the Screen

So, I tried to be objective in this piece, but I read it over and I just sound like a big jerk face and a stalker.

Well, I’m not sure quite how I should approach this essay. When I first read “Children of the Screen” I was surprised by the lack of factual information presented to me. Then I recalled that before reading this essay Professor Lee had informed us that because it was such an opinionated paper it as likely to be easier to respond to. But I was still a bit distraught as to the overall tone of what I thought was an article pulled from a newspaper or an academic journal. The overuse of quotes and the tone of the essay read like an Anti-American Green Day song, and it all threw me for a loop.

So I googled the name “Hannah Baylon.” and found her face book page with her status as a WSU alum and all the pictures of her new tattoo. As well, a blog she wrote for another class is pretty easy to find with Google's help.

I think that I have to disagree with this essay. The idea that we are “Children of the Screen” is true, but I would be more poised to say that we are products of technology. We aren’t really children of the screen, or at least I wouldn’t say that, it’s more like we are masters of the screen. I mean, we aren’t going to be living up to our “fullest potential” as she put it without using the screen. Communication and Information sharing are two of the most important tools needed to “flourish” in our modern day world. If we are products of anything it is technology. We fathered the screen not the other way around.

It’s a pretty central theme of human existence that we adapt to our environments. Technology is kind of the way that we adapt, and the screen is its latest physical form. I’m sure that X amount of years down the road when a new and better technology has become the norm old timers like me will talk to their grandkids about the “Golden Days” when we only had a TV and a computer to keep us company.

Hannah does have a point when she says that we “waste” time in front of the screen. But wasting time has been a human tradition. I love going to the theatre (in a very masculine way) but I’m not doing anything productive there. And I’m sure that it wasn’t that productive back in the days of the Greeks. So yeah, that’s how I feel, like a big jerk face. So, sorry for being a big jerk face book stalker.

Sincerely,