Speak blog

As William James says in the Social Me we do not define ourselves but how others define us. We act in a way that others will like, we do not act however we want whenever we feel like it or the world would be a very different place. These principals are true for me to. I act in a way that others will enjoy I do not try to make people mad or be mean to them because that would just hurt my reputation. I try to funny and nice around other people and I am also very strong willed and I will usually not back down on an argument if I do not agree with what is being said. In the novel speak Melinda dose not follow these principals. She cares what other people think about her but she dose not act in a way that causes other to want to be around her. She tends to stay to herself and act in ways that most people consider weird. She bites her lip to pieces and then when she can’t do that any more she goes for her fingernails. She doesn’t care how she looks and doesn’t brush her hair. Because of this she dose not fit William James idea. The opposite of Melinda is Rachel who is desperate for attention. In just the period of half the book she goes from acting French to acting Goth to acting Muslim. She takes William James ideas to the extreme.

Privacy

I think that the discussion we had in class today and the book Little Brother do relate to literature. This is because literature helps us understand the world in the past present and future. We can learn a lot from reading especially when it comes to places far away that are strange to us and it can even help you learn things you didn't know about your own home. Reading little brother and talking about how china is censuring the Internet has showed me that it is easily possible for people to see what I am doing. It ha made me more aware of what I do for security. I have never really cared about how private my computers were and I have never cared if someone might be watching me (because I have had the that if it doesn’t affect me don’t worry about it) but I have made a few changes to my security and I also found a lot of cool applications that are free while doing it. The way you can take over are computers and even look into are files without us knowing and the fact that even students can do that shows how unsecure we really are. I have the view that the government should be able to view are computers if they have a cause to but things like the patriot act where they can just come into your home when you are gone without you even knowing is taking it a bit far. What china is doing is totally wrong in my mind. They should not be able to block every single person in the entire country from knowing the truth about there homes. It is not write to prevent someone from knowing what happened and the truth is it will probably just make things worse. I can understand them wanting to watch what dissidents are doing but that dose not mean they can watch every single person In the whole country and block what they can and cant do on the internet. While reading this book I also learned about a lot of other gadgets that people can watch you with like the ARPHIDS and things you can use to stay private like the onion router. I never knew most of these things existed before I read this book but I am still not good enough with computers to understand how to do any of the stuff he dose. This book helps us understand many of the things that can happen in the modern world and I know many of us never knew about them before. The talk we had about China also really helps put things into perspective because we can see how things we are reading about are really being done in the real world.