"You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world"
-Revolution by the Beatles
Revolution: a way to make change come about. There are many types of revolution; revolution for freedom, revolution of music, art, equality, fashion,and even technology. It used to be that if you wanted change, you went out and you demanded it. You demanded it by protesting,sit-ins, riots, chaining yourself to a tree, or even just holding hands and singing hippie flower love songs. Now it seems that we just cower behind our computer screens, ranting
and raving on our blogs about how we are oppressed, but never really going out and challenging our oppression. We complain through blogs, Facebook, Myspace about how we are wronged but few stand up and face their opposition. What we don't seem to realize is that you can rant and rave all you want; you can bold your times new roman font, underline it in red with blue font highlighted in yellow, but it doesn't change anything, nothing
is accomplished by your multi-colored text. So the question I would like to pose to you good people is this: in an age of high-tech gadgetry, have in face lost our voice? Have we let the machines take our souls just because it is convenient for the machine to speak for us? Do we know what it's like to be free anymore, or have the machines really enslaved us without us knowing?
For anyone interested in finding their voice, a group called Students for a
Democratic Society is working to give students a voice. Meetings are open to anyone
and are at 8:00 on Thursday in Bentley 010.
Well, you know
We all want to change the world"
-Revolution by the Beatles
Revolution: a way to make change come about. There are many types of revolution; revolution for freedom, revolution of music, art, equality, fashion,and even technology. It used to be that if you wanted change, you went out and you demanded it. You demanded it by protesting,sit-ins, riots, chaining yourself to a tree, or even just holding hands and singing hippie flower love songs. Now it seems that we just cower behind our computer screens, ranting
and raving on our blogs about how we are oppressed, but never really going out and challenging our oppression. We complain through blogs, Facebook, Myspace about how we are wronged but few stand up and face their opposition. What we don't seem to realize is that you can rant and rave all you want; you can bold your times new roman font, underline it in red with blue font highlighted in yellow, but it doesn't change anything, nothing
is accomplished by your multi-colored text. So the question I would like to pose to you good people is this: in an age of high-tech gadgetry, have in face lost our voice? Have we let the machines take our souls just because it is convenient for the machine to speak for us? Do we know what it's like to be free anymore, or have the machines really enslaved us without us knowing?
For anyone interested in finding their voice, a group called Students for a
Democratic Society is working to give students a voice. Meetings are open to anyone
and are at 8:00 on Thursday in Bentley 010.
7 comments:
I think that in some ways we have lost our voice. I have thought about this before and how our generation really hasn't been through the experiences that other generations have had to go through. Every other generation has been marked by some sort of diversity. Whether it be the Civil War or womens rights, other generations have had something significant to fight for. But there are many things for our generation to fight for. There are many issues out there today that are worthy of being fought for. The war in Iraq, gay rights, abortion, and the list goes on. We do hide behind computers arguing these points but we really don't do anything about it.
I don't think we have really lost our "souls". Lots of people go out and protest the old fashioned way: walking out to the streets and yelling out their arguments. I think people just use their computers because yes it is easier but more people will be able to see it. It's just our generation is provided with the technology of computers so we use it.
Its crazy how people's reaction to oppression has changed so much over time, but i don't that computers have hid our protests as much as the author thinks. In fact, I think it just changes the WAY we protest rather than HOW MUCH we protest. For example how quickly do viral videos on youtube spread when a tragic event happens? When a cell phone video of a student getting tazed by police for arguing non violently with Al gore was passed around on the internet millions of times within days, it caught the media's attention, and created a huge scandal. Or when the media failed to cover the Jena 6 scandal, it was the internet that organized national protests on college campuses to free Mychal Bell.
I think there's a lot of generalization in the question there. There are plenty of people who go out and protest and fight for their rights today. Issues include gay rights, the war in Iraq, and others. You hear about it all the time on the news and these issues are all over the political races of today. I think that the people who say that we are hiding behind our computer screens are the ones who really are hiding behind their computer screen. The ones who aren't are the ones really out there fighting for their rights. Just a thought.
I believe that in some ways we have lost some what our voice that we used to have. Even on our campus 30 years ago there were a lot more protests and demonstrations then there are now. I think that in some way people just aren't worried about things like people used to be. In the age of technology I think that people would much rather not worry about things such as politics and I think that the age that people start becoming active in politics and other things is starting to become older and older. At the same time however I think people are using technology and using the internet people can start almost a new way of revolution and a new way of protesting through the use of technology.
This is one of the few things I like about the French (kidding), the French Government doesn't scare it's people into submission it's scared of it's people and when the French people want something, they demand and most likely get it.
Cool huh
Watch Sicko by Michael Moore
Dont care to hear about how fat and dumb he is or how much your party... sorry, you hate him.
I think by using technology we might be losing our voices, but in a way we are able to spread news faster to others. If we are able to intergrate technology and ourselves then I think that it would be the best situation. If we have these resources and we do not use them because they are not the old way of doing things, aren't we just contradicting ourselves? If we are fighting for a change shouldn't we be unafraid to use changing things such as technology.
Post a Comment