you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here

with this semester wrapping up, i'm down to my final months as a college student before graduation in may. as many of you can attest with your own experiences...soo hard to believe.

i'm a business major now but originally i was going to do CLEG. in either case, i never figured I'd be taking a class on blogs and social networking technology. i remember being one of the first of my friends from home to set up a facebook. how crazy is it to think i'd be taking a class on it before i graduated?? like that commercial says, life comes at you fast. sometimes in a good way.

as dissatisfied as i am with AU sometimes, it almost makes me proud to have a class like this. it's so current. text books and lectures and traditional powerpoints are so then. THIS is now.

i'm not sure exactly what we talked about in our class this one particular day, but things like blogs and user generated content came up in both of my classes later on in the day. i wouldn't have known much if it wasn't for stuff we did in this class. for once i felt like everything was coming together and i was truly receiving a real education.

as happy as i was for a second, it really made me think, too. education, success, happiness...they are all elusive entities. not something you can grab at once or hold on to very tightly. it takes continuous effort and development to stay on top of it. adapting is critical. recognizing how change can benefit you instead of how it might hurt you. the technology we studied is of course just a small part of it, but an important one at that.

thanks guys for a good semester and best of luck
see ya around

it's not WHAT you say...

why can't we all be as smart as andrew keen?

i have to say i didn't much like the tone of his "digital emperor" article and when i watched additional interviews of him, his arrogant tone and demeanor did nothing to sway my opinion.
basic searches of his name reveal many others who share this same sentiment. and how could they not?

seems like mr. keen is really concerned about "our culture" being destroyed by the content posted by anyone without ivy league degrees who is not part of the priveleged elite. the United States was borne as a country to fight these principles...to give anyone a chance. (ironically, keen is english)

the problem is not that non-traditional outlets of expression exist or that those without traditional background and expertise create content. those with long academic backgrounds and piles of degrees are free to use these mediums as well. they just are not using them as efficiently as others so this "tremendous knowledge" is, in a sense, being wasted. those who complain their messages are not being heard i think are forgetting one of the most important rules of all communication: know your audience. if you want your work to gain some respect outside the ivory tower, make it available, make it understandable. google results are not generated arbitrarily or by chance. they are determined by algorithms that find the most popular results. are people like andrew keen really disturbed by the "loss of integrity" they assoicate with new media, or are they more upset their work is not topping the charts?