This column was first published in the UCLA Daily Bruin on September 21, 2009.
What’s the home page of your browser? Whatever it is, that window is a subtle window to your accumulated interests or your way to get the news and, by a long shot, maybe even your appreciation for a faster load time.
This column was first published in the UCLA Daily Bruin on February 2, 2009.
The information highway just got a little more crowded. There are now more than 1 billion people on the Internet, according to comScore, an Internet research firm. The Internet’s democratization of information has made a seemingly infinite amount of knowledge easily accessible. However, this also has its pitfalls.
Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet, wrote, “The notion that the world’s knowledge is literally at your fingertips is very compelling and is very beguiling.”
The question remains: Is the Internet making us stupid?
This collection of analyses was submitted for “History 2B: Social Knowledge and Social Power” with Professor Sharon Traweek in Winter 2009.
Heinze, From Scarcity to Abundance, 1990
Heinze’s topic focused on immigrants as consumers, but emphasized Jewish immigrants in particular. Heinze set out to explore why there was such a disparity between the consumption patterns of Jewish people who have immigrated to the United States versus those who have not. His hypothesis involves how Jewish immigrants interpret the values of the United States, link that to their religious past to view “America as a haven” (196) and assimilate accordingly. Thus, as Heinze concludes, Jewish immigrants are more absorbed in wanting to adopt US values, particularly consumerism, to more quickly adopt to their new home. Heinze mainly uses statistics and observations, whether his own or those noted in cultural histories.
My name is Millie — I enjoy traveling, low maintenance plants, hiking, reading and running. And, sometimes I write. If the computer is a bicycle for the mind, I can ride pretty fast. More?