Blogging hasn't really been a big part of my online life. This class enables the students to give it a try if we haven't already been exposed to it, but it is only for a grade. I have read a lot of the other students blogs during the semester and it seems like most have been honestly relaying their genuine thoughts out there. I use to have a Twitter account, however I was part of the current trend going on that signed up, gave it a try, and then deleted my account after a couple months. It just didn't make sense to me as to why everyone is so fascinated with everyone elses' life. I grow frustrated reading blogs, or Facebook posts for that matter, that updates the online community about their everyday livings. But yet I am torn between my feeling about blogging. On one hand, I can't stand it because common (young adults) people think it's cool to follow in this trend. On the other hand, there are some legitimate blogs that actually inform the public about what truly is occurring in the world and society. These are typically the blogs that I would read. Allowing anyone with an Internet connection create and posts blogs is a catch-22 for me. There are tons of nonsense information people throw out there, but I can always find intelligent blogs that are interesting to me, even if I've never thought about the topic before. I'm anxious to see how far blogging will go because I can see some regulations coming soon about blogging. I think that the government/FCC feels that there could be too much information exposed by blogging that they just don't want the general public to know. How this regulation will transpire is anyone with a rational thought's guess, but I'm sure it's coming soon enough. Maybe they will play the card about how employers are terminating employees based on their blogs, or how certain information is getting leaked to the public about future products from mega-corporations like Google. The problem that I have with it all is that if blogging is allowed to express our First Amendment right, even if it's to criticism the government, then there should be no regulation on it regardless of how I or anyone else feels about what people post. Corrective action or punishment about a blog post is ridiculous and it's not my call to dictate such occurrences, however if action needs to be taken about certain posts, then they should only happen because of libel, slander, or threat of a human life. Nevertheless, blogging continues to grow in popularity but the line is going to have to be drawn somewhere, sometime. Perhaps after a couple more lawsuits.
Which leads me to my reflection of this course. I was pleasantly surprised in what knowledge I gained from this past semester. Have I retained all the information discussed? Not really, but there are key points that I seemed to have taken from almost every class session. I noticed that most of the information was things that we are apart of or see in everyday life. This course seemed to point out certain areas and give definitions and meanings to them. One example is the "Diffusion of Innovations". We all know there are certain people that get the earliest technology when available and others that wait. I just never thought about how information about innovations get communicated through different channels or the decision-making process that users go through before accepting such innovations. I found that particularly lesson quite intriguing. There were also other topics that I was aware of, such as privacy and security, that I was interested in knowing more about. Having served 6 years in the Air Force, I am a true believer in protecting our freedoms. That field of interest for me is one that I am so caught up in that I feel sick to know about certain freedoms that are slowly and meticulously being taken from the American people. Even though I am no longer enlisted, I still believe in protecting the freedoms this country was founded on that made it so great. I just pray that with every new innovation that comes along, that it not be the one that continues the intrusion of privacy but the one that helps restore the freedoms gone. I'm just thankful for the knowledge I have received and hopeful that I can possibly be part of the restoration process.
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