After reading and watching Gardner Campbell’s ideals on the personal cyberinfrastructure, what probably shook me most of all was the levels of openness that personifies the web and ourselves. The exposure to the digital world allows us to expand upon our mundane everyday concerns to new people, places, and media which is indeed a very powerful tool. But with that power also follow concern and doubt, “just another place to be taken advantage of” or “what can these new means possibly achieve that the old ways couldn’t.” Well as an example from my own personal reflection, I could say my exposure of Japanese culture largely developed by means of the web; this alternative means of info gathering allowed me to actively seek out my interests. While if I never did any of that and allowed my interests to spawn naturally, by means of random books and articles of Japanese life accompanied by a meager selection of animes on varying TV networks ranging from early in the morning or late at night, how much of my current interest would of been lost? Aside from the concern and doubt there is also the apprehension Campbell discussed to explore these new means, people may be just as afraid to put themselves out there as they are in real life. As that apprehension fosters the words “how long do I have to do this” comes out, but as I’ve seen through this class that apprehension tends to fad away very fast and then becomes a shock of “look how long I’ve spent doing this.”

As Gardner starts to discuss peoples’ reluctance to accept a bag of gold, admittedly my thoughts at first were “how is this relevant and why are you telling me this” but that is when I started to think what could this so called bag of gold do for me. In short quite a lot, so why then do others not as easily accept these promises of new and better wonders? Well I believe people probably just became  content with their lives encamping no further than the boundaries of their respective towns, cities, or possibly states. So when this new luxurious product promising a feeling widely larger than themselves came along people just stood in place and let it pass them by.

Lastly when it comes to the digital facelift, or how I prefer to see it the re-branding of media, I couldn’t help but to think this was just a normal function in our society; simply out with the old and in with the new. While I did consider the imagery of an actual facelift to be a bit melodramatic, I can sympathize with the fact that a reformatting of old means into new does not need to carry on the same exact practices and traditions. New formats should inspire new ideals to teach and create, and shouldn’t just end after slapping a new label on an exceedingly old product.