I Watched the Super Bowl Without Actually Watching the Super Bowl

Whether they be in an overcrowded bar with dry and overly-salted fries, or infront of their own 64” LCD television screen with a bowl of store-bought buffalo wings, football fans everywhere gather together for this annual meeting of grunting, cheering, sweating, chest-bumping, and fist-pumping.  Yep, it’s the Super Bowl.

Now, I’m not sure what’s so appealing about watching a bunch of hairy, sweaty men grapple each other and toss a ball around, but this event attracts millions of North Americans to turn on the boob tube at the same time.  I’m not trying to bash football, because personally, I love it.  I used to play flag football in my high school days (Warriors, FTW!).  I loved thinking out the strategies involved in planning the plays.  I loved the teamwork and the feeling of euphoria when your team scores a touch down.  Heck, I even loved all the suicide drills and endless push ups that our coach made us do at every practice - which, may I add, made me very pleased with my toned legs in my senior year - because I knew that that was the cost of victory.  I just don’t see the appeal in watching the game when I can step outside and actually physically engage in the game. 

So on Sunday, instead of sitting in front of the boob tube, I sat with Clyde and surfed the interwebs.  Specifically, I was on Facebook while I was reading articles for my classes.  For about 3.5 hours or so, Facebook was relatively quiet, except for the excited updates on the Super Bowl.  This is what I found out: 

1. The game was between Packers and Steelers. 

2. Christina Aguilera sang the national anthem.  She looked like she gained weight, but her hair was done nicely.

3. The Black Eyed Peas were performing at the halftime show.  Everyone hated them.  Fergie is horrible and she got uglier. 

4. iJustine (Youtube celebrity) is a Steelers fan.  2637 people liked the photo of her eating a yellow and black cookie.  1209 people commented, half about the game, half about the cookie.  

5. Packers scored a touch down at least twice and ended up winning the Super Bowl.

6. The Super Bowl ads weren’t as epic as past years, but Volkswagen made a super-cute Star Wars themed ad. 

7. Janet Jackson and her bewbs were no where to be seen.

Furthermore, Glee was on right after the Superbowl.  A friend wasted no time to update the world: “Sue Sylvester is wearing... black and yellow... and is raging out. Sounds like she was a Steeler's fan.”

Yep, pretty accurate summary, I know.  You’re welcome. ;)

My friend asked on Facebook, “Who ended up winning the Superbowl?? .. I want to know if my prof will be in a good/bad mood today.”  Luckily for her, her prof is a Packers fan.  Looks like she’ll be having a good time in class today.

Facebook, I salute you.  As one of the leading social media sites, you make it easy to stay connected with the world without any real interaction.  Even with no intention of knowing about one of North America’s most watched events, I was updated about every victory, every missed note, and every derp face. 

So thanks to the power of the Internet, and Facebook in particular, I watched the Super Bowl without actually watching it.  Instead of sitting infront of my telly for 3.5 hours, I used that time to finish reading and taking notes for two articles for class, played with my puppy, took a shower, and caught up with the Super Bowl shenanigans in a matter of minutes.  So with my Facebook friends watching the game for me, I can justify missing the game and was free to do other things.  Plus, “watching” the game on Facebook was even more entertaining.  People post hilarious opinions and commentary.   And, as if that’s not enough, I’m sure that within the next few days, Michael Buckley and Philip Defranco (whatthebuck and sxephil on Youtube, respectively), will post a video covering the major events of the Super Bowl.  And Ray William Johnson (RayWilliamJohnson) will review a viral video of a remix of Fergie’s exceptional performance.  I’m sure it will be better than the original. 

Cheers,

Bonnie and Clyde, watching TV without watching TV.

Reading Without Doing Any Readings

Helloooooooo, friends.

Sorry about my hiatus, but I’ve been busy not doing my readings, among other things.  Yep.  Allow me to introduce Topicmarks, an online text document summary service.  All you have to do is to upload a text document or paste the url to the document that you want summarized, then kick back, relax, and let Topicmarks do the reading for you.  It then spits out a condensed version of the document that you can read within minutes, including key words and facts that it has determined to be important.  Isn’t it awesome?  With Topicmarks, you can catch up on your readings without ever reading anything yourself!

Topicmarks is an example of digital technology designed to make the lives of digital natives easier.  We think and process information differently than the old folks.  We want things fast and now.  We want to be able to do multiple things at once.  Reading long essays for class just doesn’t cut it.  Topicmarks seems to be the perfect solution.  

After stumbling upon Topicmarks this morning, I gave it a test run.  I uploaded my document - Marc Prensky’s H. Sapiens Digital: From Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom - and waited for it to spit something out at me.  Unfortunately, it didn’t come back immediately, as I expected and hoped.  Instead, it took 20 minutes to process the 9-page document and prepare the summary.  WHAT THE HECK!?  This is an outrage!  As a software designed in the digital age for busy bodies who don’t have the time to read a huge document, it made me wait the same amount of time that it would have took me to read the whole document myself.  

Yes, I could’ve taken that time to do something else productive - perhaps start another reading or study for another class while I waited - but truthfully, I just sat there and browsed through my meaningless connections on Facebook.  So ironically, a website that was supposed to make me more productive, made me waste more time.  Epic fail. 

Is this the future of digital technology?  If so, I weep for humanity.  I predict that as sites such as Topicmarks gain popularity, more people will lose the ability to read critically and will only be able to take in information in small, fractured bits.  Furthermore, students will be unable to write academically because they are so used to taking information in small bits, that they don’t develop the skills to compose an argument effectively. 

Is Prensky correct in stating that “the brains of wisdom seekers of the future will be fundamentally different, in organization and in structure, than our brains are today’?  If so, then we will need to develop technologies that will write our essays for us.  There will be no need to teach how to read or write in classrooms.  Grammar and spelling lessons will be obsolete.

What brings about this change in the brains of digital extension users?  Are digital technologies making us less efficient?  We want everything to be fast paced and easy to understand.  We want to be able to multitask and have multiple conversations and interactions at once.  

But who said that all digital natives are made to multi-task?  For those of you who know be beyond the classroom, you will know that I am unable to walk, text, talk, and chew gum at the same time.  I am unable to walk in a straight line, and I bump into everything and everyone in sight while mumbling incoherent sentences.  I’m just that classy.  It’s really quite a show.  

Even when I’m focused on one task, I get distracted too easily.  As I’m writing this, I stop after every sentence to re-read what I wrote.  Sometimes, I even stop mid-sentence to check my Facebook or Twitter. 

Although technology is extending our digital wisdom and engages our ability to take in information, one must question its tradeoffs.  Are we giving up our ability to think critically and absorb information from written documents?  Are we controlling the amount of information that we want to take in, or is the machine conditioning us to be only able to take in small bits of information?  For myself, I think I’ll stick to reading my own readings for now.  

Love,

Bonnie and Clyde, reading academic articles.

PS:

For more information on Topicmarks, visit http://topicmarks.com/

Here are a few screen captures of the article I ran through Topicmarks, in case you're interested:

PPS:
For clarification purposes, this post is intended to be a response to blog assignment #2.