Technology- Is it always a blessing to our personal and social lives?

In February,  I attended the Heritage Competition at LeTourneau University, where I will be attending in the fall.  Part of the competition for the scholarship was an essay.  It is not very long, but I thought it would work well as a blog post.  It talks a lot about the seldom-heard disadvantages that technology can bring.

In the recent years, the world has seen an explosion in technology and digital information.  10 years ago, a gigabyte of information on a computer was considered unnecessary, yet today a gigabyte isn’t enough even for an 8 year-old’s mp3 player.  Terabytes, which are equal to 1000 gigabytes, are quickly becoming the new standard.  10 years ago, the smallest cell phone was the size of a 6-inch subway sandwich, and this only made calls.  Now, the ever popular iPhone is a tenth of the size of the first cell phone and functionality wise is just short of the computer.  Within the next couple of years, video chatting such as Skype will become commonplace, even while walking along the streets.  As you and many others can see, these technologies provide us greater power in information than ever before. 

We have experienced a great revolution in the world of data and music.  With 3g networks, Wi-Fi and Google, tons of information is at our finger tips.  We can find the nearest restaurant, where our friend is, or even that a group of Unicorns is a cornucopia.  Technology has enabled us to keep our whole music library on our iPods.  With 64 gigabyte players, more than 4 days of music can be stored on a single device.  And unfortunately, humanity has mirrored this fact, and we spend ever-increasing amounts of time listening to music in public.  Instead of taking in the sights and sounds of an early morning run, we choose to stay in our own little world of music.  Even listening to a CD in a room with the door shut cuts one off from his family; parents and siblings cannot even yell to get your attention.

Probably the greatest thing that technology does is keep us more in touch with people.  Email, texting, and Facebook allow us to keep in touch with any person with text.  Well-loved relatives from far away are available at the push of 10 or 11 buttons.  Video chatting even allows us to look at that person’s face, which provides even greater advantages. One of the greatest advancements we will see is video chatting.  Through Skype, and Facetime on the iPhone, we can see people we love face to face, even on a mobile device.  Through the years, this technology will become ever more flexible, and soon we will be able to use it all of the time.  However, as Spiderman points out, ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. 

The fundamental premise is this: face to face conversations while in the same place are ultimately the best mode of communication, and these technologies are just substitutes that will never fully live up to face to face communication.  With this premise in mind, we begin to see some of the social aspects that are diminished with the use of technology.  Too often teenagers are disengaged with their families at the dinner table because of a texting conversation with their best friend.  They will spend hours talking to their friend on the phone about a difficult situation at school or some drama, yet ignore their parents who are right down the stairs who would be the best help.  Too often we fall into these traps that diminish our relationship with the people around us.

Check in later for part 2.  :)

My Day at the Toyota Driving Expectations.

Before I tell you a little about last Sunday, let me share a few stats with you.

• Motor Vehicle Crashes are the number one cause of death for teens
• Teen drivers are involved in fatal crashes at over twice the rate of the rest of the population
• Teens represent 6% of all drivers and 16% of all crashes
• Driving at unsafe speeds is the most common error in fatal crashes
• The leading cause in death for ages 16-20 is automobile crashes
• 58% of teens killed in automobile crashes were not wearing seat belts
• Finally, 20% of 15-20 year olds will be in a crash within their first year of driving

I learned these things at a defensive/smart driving course I attended last Sunday afternoon called Toyota Driving Expectations.  In these stats, you will notice that car accidents are never mentioned, only car crashes.  The people at Toyota did this because they were confident that most crashes were not acts of God; they could be prevented.  Hence they were called crashes.  The course was pretty cool, and I learned quite a few other useful things, a few of which I am going to share.

One of the main things we talked about was a contact patch.  Say you covered a tire in paint, and set the car down on the concrete, then picked it up again (you feel really strong today).  The paint that is imprinted on the ground would be the contact patch; the bigger the contact patch, the more traction you have on the pavement.  Your tires should be pumped up to the right pressure because this affects the contact patch.

As you can see, the contact patch, as illustrated by the lower part if the first picture, is significantly reduced when your tires are not inflated correctly.  When correctly inflated, the combined contact patch of all four tires is 1.3 square feet. 

This second picture shows how much the contact patch changes when you make a turn.  Most of the tire is still touching the   This is why skidding is a whole lot easier when you are turning, as only part of the contact area has enough friction to be adhesive to the concrete.

The fun part was the driving.  With an instructor, we got to stop on a dime and do different slalom courses.  We also got to skid to a stop while turning, testing out the anti lock brakes.  While doing the slalom courses in particular, I learned something very important.  When you are in any situation, always keep your eyes looking ahead.  Don't stare at the think you are trying to miss, it doesn't work.  Just keep your eyes where you want to go, and use your peripheral vision to avoid whatever obstacle you may be trying to avoid.  I was amazed at how much this helped.

Defensive driving was another topic of the afternoon.  The main formula put forward was P = R ≠ T, that is, Perception equals reality but not necessarily truth.  The driver next to you may look like they are paying attention, or look like they are sober, or look like they are in a good frame of mind, but are they?  Defensive driving sometimes means anticipating an answer of 'no' to the previous question.  There are many ways to be a defensive driver, such as leaving room to move and being aware of your surroundings.

Probably the biggest tool for safe driving is focusing.  After all, the number one safety feature is you.  Over half a million people were injured in 2008 in car crashes because they were distracted.  We live in a world filled with distractions, and this is not limited to texting.  Even calling someone on the phone with a bluetooth headset uses some of you cognitive faculties that take away from you concentration on the road.  Once I was driving home from reffing a soccer game, and I just looked down for one second to turn on the AC, only to look up and stop quickly to prevent from rear-ending the car in front of me, who was turning into a strip mall.  The next time you think about doing something 'productive' while driving, think again.  While it may feel good to get something accomplished while driving somewhere, it may turn out to be a very unproductive thing as it relates to your safety.

Homeschooling Questions- round 2

Here are a few more questions that people have.  By the way, see if you can tell which one is from a guy, and which one is from a girl.  It's funny how different our brains work.

Friend #1
"Um, definitely how you schedule your day."  This has changed over my life.  Before my senior year, my Mom, being the orginizational expert/fanatic that she is, made and printed out my day-by-day schedule using some computer software, where I would check off things once I did them.  This year is a little different.  I know when things are due for my college and co-op courses, and I have to plan when to do the homework myself.  For the three courses outside of home, I have to follow their schedule, and plan accordingly.  For the courses at home, my Mom has given my deadlines for modules/decades in physics and history.
"Also how those state test things work." - Well, don't mean to make you jealous, but I did not have to take any taks tests.  However, I have taken the stanford test twice, to get an idea on how I stack up against everyone else.  Most of my homeschooled friends do take a test like this at sometime.

"Um, maybe just your everyday workings and how you structure units and stuff like that" -  As far as structuring units goes, I am ignorant.  My Mom is the expert planner.  Basically she justs looks at the curriculum that we are using, and plans it out equally throughout the year/semester.

Friend #2
1.) "Do you feel a seclusion from others, or missing out on things such as sports or dances, etc?" - Well, as far as sports, I have always been a low-key player.  By that I mean, I have played recreationally, and I am competitve, but not competitive enough to go really far distances and work super hard to get really good at a sport.  Sometimes I think I might have played school sports if I went to public school, but I am sort of glad I played recreationally.  Ok, now to dances.  In the modern sense of the word, I have only been to one dance, and that was at Mo-Ranch, and quite possibly one of the most awkward moments in my life.  I can't say that I miss out on dances.  In the broader sense of the word, I have had more than my fair share of dances.  For those of you that don't know, I swing dance and English Country Dance (ECD).  I haven't done as many this year, but in the past I have been to a ECD practice about once a month, and recently swing dancing once every couple of months.  I have also been to several balls for ECD, and they are lots of fun.  The main difference between these dances and your modern dances is that the ones I go to are a lot more social.  At your typical school dance most people are paired off with another person, and you dance with them almost exclusively, while at the ones I mentioned, you try to dance with many people, and you focus on friendship and fun more than romance.

One thing many people do not realize is that homeschoolers aren't necessarily secluded from others, per se, but just do their socializing in different situations.  On fridays I get together with a bunch of homeschoolers to hang out and do whatever.  I am not in constant social contact with others like I would be at a public school, but I do not necessarily feel secluded.

2.) "Do you feel that being home school affects your family dynamics, like in has it brought your family together?" - I would definitely say that it has brought our family closer than we would have been otherwise.  It definitely does help to be around your parents more.  This is a big reason why we homeschool.  That being said, I will say this.  Not all homeschoolers have really close families.  From what I have observed, the people I have asked questions to have closer families than many homeschooled families.  Like anything, just doing one thing different, like homeschooling, doesn't automatically make every aspect of your life better.  you still have to work at it.  But I think homeschooling absolutely gives families a better oppurtunity to be closer.

3.) "Do you feel you are a step ahead of those who attended public school?" - In some ways, yes, in other ways no.  Because of the way homeschooling works, I have had the advantage of being to go more or less at my own pace.  In many ways, I have been able to spend more time on the things I enjoy and will need more later in life, and less on things that would not be as important.  There isn't a certain number of English or Math or science or language classes that I need to take.  Of course, I can't just slack off, as I need to pick courses that makes sense on my transcript.  On the other hand, there are certain general knowledge things that I am not aware of.  But I think that happens with most people so I am really not that much different that someone else.

4.) "Do you feel it will harder for you to acclimate in college?"  Good question.  Many times I have wondered about that, and I thought that it might be harder for me to accmilate.  Actually, the other night, we were talking a little about it, and my Dad stated something I hadn't thought of before.  This year, I am taking my fourth and fifth dual-credit college classes at Quad C (technically, Collin College, but I'll always think of it as Quad C).  So as far as handling a college workload, I may have a little of a head start because of the college courses I have taken.