Addictions to What?

James Park's first line of his essay "Addictions and Sheep" , “The computer, and subsequently the Internet, has devoured our lives" really grabs the readers attention. The essay itself is evaluating a video on Bloggingheads, which is basically a conversation between two professors. The video, he says, is horrible in audio quality and does not really tell him anything he does not already know. He summarizes the conversation as being about “Computers, Drugs and Modern Student Culture". Mr. Park believes that the two professors from the video cannot truly be able to talk about student culture without being a student themselves. He also explains that he is a computer science major and he has studied some of the topics brought up in the video such as the addictive nature of technology and disagrees with some things that they say.

One of the biggest concerns that James Park has with the conversation is that they two professors do not have an argument. After watching the video I have to agree with Mr. Park, the conversation was unbearably boring. He argues that "if you are going to throw two professors at each other in a head to head video chat conference for a blog, you might as well make it two different people". I really agree with this point I found that they were just stating the obvious for 30 minutes. We both also agree that it would have been just as interesting if either one of them was giving a short lecture.

In order to explain that people are still attached to other things such as their television instead of 100% attached to computers and internet, Mr. Park talks about his childhood and how his childhood has connected him 100% to technology. I believe that because he was cut off from technology at an early age he became more addicted to it later on when it became more readily accessible. "I spent most of my life isolated from other kids my age. The result was that I grew up with a very adult perspective on life, mostly my parents'. I also grew up in a third world country cut off from most modern technology. Combine the two and I'm an old fart in a young whipper snapper's body." He disagrees with the professors argument that people are 100% addicted to technology. I myself agree I know many people who are on this campus and not addicted to technology. For instance my computer science teacher for instance does not have a cell phone and does not check his email. It’s actually pretty annoying.

James Park does, however, agree with some things that the professors say. He agrees that people always want to be entertained, I personally believe this has been true since people have had free time. He also agrees with the statement that people always want to be somewhere else, for instance I want to be asleep right now. He says "they don't want to be in their crappy homes living their crappy lives." However I have to say I disagree, I just went to Blizzcon and while I was there I can't say that I wanted to be anywhere else in the world. In fact while there I met Mike Morheime, yes Mr. Morheime the godfather of Blizzard.

It seems Mr. Park, myself, and the two professors agree that students who overload themselves with classes seem to have trouble with extracurricular activities. I myself took Japanese, which was a bad choice, I am probably going to have to drop that class later this week because its way too much for me to handle and I don't have time for any extracurricular activities. James has simply joined way too many clubs and organization. Also although he says that "Edmundson's call for dissension brought back some fond memories of my History teacher's class" he agrees saying that "They're right, "there is no no to the yes in our culture". We've lost a lot of the independent thought that resulted from rebellion." I think there is still allot of rebellion, for instance look at how people view the war, not many people like it and many talk against it. Many of us do still question society.

However the biggest flaw in this Mr. Park’s essay over the blogingheads video is that he does not really take any sides. His opening paragraph would have you believe that he disagrees with most of what the professors say but he seems to agree with them just as much as he disagrees. I think that in order to get his points across that he does not see eye to eye with the professors he needs to stop being so double sided. Also the title itself also has nothing to do, as far as I could tell, with the entire paper.