Freewrite

    Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours

-       Cesar Chavez

I believe this quote by Cesar Chavez embodies how the general public should interpret the technological and media changes that are happening daily. Although this quote was said long before the creation of the Internet, we as society must come together and apply its ideals to the sociological and technological changes happening today. This quote directly applies to our generation because at this moment we are the age group who are the most educated in the technological world and we must take advantage of this skill. We hear older generations mocking our media use and always talking about the “old days” when kids used to play outside and not spend their days mindlessly behind technological screens. It is the job of our generation to prove that what we do with technology is everything but mindless and attempt to come together to create social change with our skills. This course has demonstrated that positive things have come through technology and have discussed the potentials of what some believe to be a “necessary evil”.

I actually found this Chavez quote when I stumbled onto an unknown persons blog while I thought I was mindlessly surfing the Internet. We can sit and talk about how much it complicates things and reminisce of times when we didn’t have Facebook, but we must accept that this change has happened, embrace it, and utilize it to our best advantage. I am guilty of complaining about the problems that the Internet causes in my personal life. I forget to think about how I am lucky to have access to these media resources and how they actually may make my life better and most importantly how they can make the world better. We cannot take away the facebooks, YouTube’s, and Wikipedias so instead of complaining about them lets all use them for the right reasons and view them as an opportunity for our generation to take advantage of our knowledge and skills.  My dad is constantly asking me how to do stuff on the Internet and is amazed at the things my peers and I can do with the Internet. It is almost like our generation has learned and mastered a new language at a young age by growing up during a time where technology is progressing at a rapid rate. It will take my dad years to catch up and master the applications of the Internet that we as Santa Clara students use everyday and even if he attempted to learn he could never keep up because of the rapid rate of change that occurs in the media world. The way we can use the Internet to communicate is unprecedented in the past.  

Although we are young we must take action now. It is possible that soon a new generation will be equipped with skills that we cannot fathom obtaining and we will be stuck reminiscing on days when we were young and the experts. I see little kids who barley know how to tie their shoes texting away on their cell phones. Let us pave the wave for social change by using the technological skills we have been privileged with. This social change can come in a myriad different ways. We can do this by to teaching others our skills and attempt to make Internet accessible to all. Technology helps us look into the future and see the vast change it brings. If we focus on the positive changes and embrace them then we can use it to our advantage by helping others.