Savvy, 1/15/09

 The idea that faster is better is something that really stood out to me in class on Thursday. I had no idea the  answer to Dr. Casey's question, "Why do we think faster is better?" I suppose that this notion was just ingrained into my mind since I was child. We have grown up in a society where we have been taught that to do things faster is better. When Dr. Casey was telling the class about his story with the taxi driver, it made me think back to when I was learning the multiplication facts. I can remember the teacher giving us all pasta noodles in class to learn visually when multiplying. At the end of the week we were to have a test on the times tables. When I went home and was studying with my father, he whipped out a bunch of flash cards that he had made. I can remember being disappointed because I liked learning with the pasta noodles. When I asked him if we could use the noodles like I had done he said no. I still to this day can remember him saying, "This way is better." At the time I was very little and I can remember asking my father why it was better. He said, "It's better because it is faster." I still to this day can remember thinking to myself, why is faster better? 

Another point that we discussed in class was the explosion of communication. Today we live in a society where we communicate through cell phones and the Internet. It is common to receive text messages and e-mails instead of calling someone. In CMC100 my final group project was about Facebook and how it has become one of the largest means of communication. College students especially use facebook as one of their main means of social networking. I was shocked when the slide in class showed a text message from a ten year old. I could not understand it. It was like a foreign language to me. I think that this really proved the point that with the advancement of technology comes new means of communication, and in some cases like with the text message new languages.