Growing Up Digital: Control and the Pieces of a Digital Life

A bit contradicted and one sided
Posted by: Research_Reviewer on Wed, 05 Aug 09 23:10:24 +0000
       The facts of information along with analysis is great and up front, although there are some aspects that don’t come off right in place. Such that in the beginning of the first paragraph of the Entanglement, Persistence, and Growing up Digital where it reads about young people and digital media, the promise talked about being portrayed is invisible--how does digital media portray a promise? Second paragraph shows a good way of explanations and expressions of oneself and the digital media. Third paragraph talks about old pictures and how digitally today is better than it was in the past, though past=classic either way one thinks about it. Older pictures can still be placed online whether they’re in a box shoved up in the attic somewhere or hidden away to conceal embarrassment.  Fourth paragraph ends with the digital record of one person’s life and their share of files on the internet. Though the digital age may be limited as it has been stated, what is out there today may not be available 20 years from now.   Fifth paragraph states many controls which should be mostly choices instead of restricted areas over one’s life. Growing up digital is a choice not a given. Furthermore, analog, questions of control, distribution of creative works, law versus the juvenile offender, and the role of children are the remaining analysis of information of the paragraphs that follow in that section. When it talks about ‘roles of children’, it pleads me to ask, “What role do children have in the decision process of digital media in their lives?”  This question is followed by the fact that children are just as that, children, who have no say in the matter of how their lives should be portrayed. How old does a child have to be to have a choice? Wouldn’t the answer here be 18- old enough to make their own decisions? As a parent, they are the ones to make the best choice for their children in order to maximize their childhood as much as possible.
    The second section, Control: Why we care  followed by various subsections such as s which expresses personal and human choices. The behavior of a person is their own whether they choose to respect someone else’s decisions and emotions or not. Whether a person and in your example, the boyfriend sending embarrassing photos electronically to others is one’s personal choice rather than a requirement of actions happening to every person. To be embarrassed by something is also a personal choice, one is better to forgive and forget the past before letting it hunt and hurt them in the future. Other than that, a person gives people the reason to hurt them if they allow them to. Thus, it’s not always about who has control but choice.
    The third section, Digital Media: Why control matters even more today  also followed by subsections such as the types of media and their similarities, networks and storage, retreat, persistence, law and control, and moving forward. The types of media is written very nice with the comparison of written text, recorded image, live image, and live action. Above all, everything is based on culture, personal attributes, and pride. When a person is not in contact with digital media and its culture, they do not have control of what happens to it but the person who does may have a right to do something that would hurt someone else in the process- blackmail. Thus, hurting someone is a personal choice and pride rather than something that there’s no way out of. A bit of contradiction has been found in few of the paragraphs in the subsection strangers, networks and storage, and persistence which tells of analog files being hard to find yet digital files having limited control. This comparison contradicts the idea of which one is good or bad here. If digital technology has solved problems or at least has overcome them as the paragraph states in the beginning, then why do we do not have control over those files in its distribution process? Although it is a true fact that when someone is looking for something, they are apt to find it once they search hard enough for it using the technology out there. “So far, our experience has been that if a file is digital to begin with, someone, somewhere, can design a way to make that file readable again today” reads the last paragraph of the subsection. That sentence is also true about old photos taken in the past that could be scanned nowadays and placed on the internet to bring back memories of them. The subsection, persistence and pernicious effects, has a good foundation point of children and their educational background leading them to their choices of further education. Furthermore, when is a child not considered a ‘child’ but an adult? Is it when an lawful event takes place and the repercussions are strong enough to treat them as an adult or right then the decision is already made?
    Overall, the researched material on Growing up Digital is a bit contradicted with the examples given because they show only one side of a story rather than show multitude of sides and explanations to each one in various situations. The side shown here is mostly about embarrassment and emotional background rather than positive aspects about growing up analogous and digitally. Either way, a person learns whether they remember moments black and white, or colored and sent electronically. Each individual is different whether they forgive and forget, just forgive but never forget, or neither one. Nothing is a given but a choice, a personal one.