Writing Samples
Informative Presentation Speech
Hello! My name is Ashley Kunert, a student in the Communications Media department at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I would like to talk to you about how smart phones are shaping society and why it’s important to understand.
If you take a brief look into the past, it is very easy to recognize the advancements that technology has made and continues to make. We as humans are ever evolving, learning new ways of doing things, and most importantly communicating. This brings me to the term “smart phone” which we should all be familiar with. Back in the day, our parents and grandparents didn’t have smart phones. They communicated via telephone, or face to face. They received their recipes from actual cook books, listened to music through a radio, managed their bank accounts manually, and they certainly didn’t have social media to keep in contact with one another. These are just a few examples of what we are capable of doing through a smart phone today. We basically have a pocket sized PC at the tip of our fingers. Isn’t that amazing?!
Well sometimes, things tend to be a little too good to be true. As some of you may know, technology has the potential to pose problems. Whether it’s a glitch in software and you aren’t capable of finishing your business, or maybe you are capable of doing so much with one device that you lose sight of where everything originally came from. Ever since the rise of the smart phone, there are problems that have surfaced, and some of them may be things most people don’t really think about.
There are three major points that I’m going to cover regarding these “issues” with the evolution of the smart phone, and how this pocket sized device is shaping the world around us.
- Memory and how we process information
- Human Interaction
- Other technology
According to a report by researcher “ComScore”, a whopping 60% of internet usage is derived from the smart phone oppose to desktop computers. And a study from a 2011 issue of “Science” concluded that the use of search engines and other digitally managed software actually has the ability to affect the way our brains process information. Instead of learning and retaining the information (whatever it may be), we rely on search tools like Google to find it for us. This brings me to the fact that we have so much information readily available to us. It truly is an amazing thing, but you have to think that when you have a society that begins to rely on these search engines and digitally managed software, people start to take advantage of them and therefore it actually changes the way we use our brain. In a 2012 survey by Elon University and the Pew Research Center, technology experts concluded that if this type of ‘lifestyle’ continues unchanged through 2020, future generations will have different priorities than what we have now.
Now to talk about social interaction and the role the smart phone has with it. We have gone from having just a simple telephone to contacting people with, to having a smart phone in which you can call, text, and email people as well as communicate through social media and a variety of applications that are readily available to us on every smart phone. I think that we could all agree how absolutely awesome this is. We are capable of keeping in contact with people we may not get to see often or at all, family that lives far away, and with the use of social media you can do even more than that. Imagine that. You can pull out your phone, go on Facebook, and send a distant relative a picture you just took, and communicate with one another without having to actually speak out loud.
With that being said, I think that there also lies a problem with this and many other people would probably agree. With all of these new, exciting and convenient ways of communicating, people have a tendency to hide behind a screen and fall away from face to face contact. As a result, people end up on their phone way too much, and there is a study that actually proves the effects that this can have on a relationship. Pew Research’s 2014 study “Couples, The Internet and Social Media” Proved that attachment can cause friction, making the other person feel ignored for whatever is on their screen. About 25% of the couples responded by saying their partners phone was distracting, and more than 40% of people between the ages of 18-29 said they felt ignored. So as great as it is to have the technology we do these days, it’s something that you really have to be conscious about.
The last thing I’m going to talk about is other technology and where it stands next to the smart phone. Being able to do practically anything through the use of your phone has put a lot of other devices out of business. People have grown so accustomed to being on their phone and doing everything on it that the need for certain things like iPod’s, cameras, flash lights, GPS, alarms etc. are no longer needed. You can literally do everything through your little pocket sized computer. According to Christopher Chute, the Research Director of Worldwide Digital Imaging at Market Analyst the International Data Corp, annual shipments of cameras fell at about 30% in 2013 and weren’t expected to improve. That’s a lot!!! It’s kind of sad too, but what do you expect when you have a device that is capable of doing practically anything?
I think that there are an even amount of pros and cons for this smart phone epidemic. With the possibility of great things there are always not so great things. The most important message with all of this is that we as a society need to stay conscious and aware of the possibilities to come. We are continuing to grow technologically and we need to be mindful of what negatives can be born from it. It is up to us to constantly shape and mold how we communicate and live our lives.
This is Ashley Kunert, a Communications Media student here at IUP. If you want to help shape the world we live in and the way we let technology shape us, get involved and visit my blog at https://iblog.iup.edu/jfyr/. Leave me a post and I will be glad to talk to you.
Production Samples
Informative Media Presentation