Gardner Campbell’s essay and video honestly confused me a little. It’s not that I didn’t understand what he was saying, but he just posed a lot of ideas and perspectives that I hadn’t always thought of.

My stepfather is a programmer for HP and a technology guru, and has been forever, so I’ve grown up with technology as a major part of my life. In the last few years, I would have to say that being online has been most useful and relevant to me due to school. For example, since my freshman year at VCU, I have constantly relied on Blackboard for EVERYTHING. I check my grades, I e-mail classmates, I e-mail my professors and student teachers, I save my school documents, etc. all through Blackboard. (Now Canvas at UMW). As Campbell stated in his essay, “Students would have the convenience of one-stop, single-sign-on activities, from registering for classes to participating in online discussion to seeing grades mere seconds after they were posted.” I think I rely more on online communication (especially for school) more than I ever realized. I know for a fact that my life would be much more difficult without it, and I have no desire to ever find out what that’s like! In that aspect, I definitely support and believe in the progress of the online world. It would be impossible for me to accomplish my regular daily activities without it.

On the other hand, despite growing up in the household that I did, I’ve always remained slightly old-fashioned in some aspects. I feel as if sometimes we lose sight of how we’ve accomplished so much in our lives, and personally, I know that there are times when the online world has failed me (or not helped me at all), which makes me skeptical of what our world is becoming. I sometimes catch myself relying so much on the Internet, for example, that I get so incredibly frustrated when I don’t have access to it. I always forget that I have the library as a resource for research… good ol’ fashioned books! I constantly use the Internet and I honestly find it a huge inconvenience to find something any other way. But I don’t think I should feel like that, and it kind of disappoints me that I do. A part of me wishes the world could just slow down and take a breather before we revolve our whole lives around technology and cyberspace, if we haven’t already passed that point. I’m still new to the whole concept of DS106, and I think part of it is by choice; it’s because I’m reluctant to get too involved and too caught up.

Needless to say… I’m on the fence?