So during the week I was tasked with not using google, Facebook, and other social media sites. The thing that happened is the majority of what the professor asked for I did because I am not a Facebook user To be honest my Facebook is full of degenerates so I don’t go on there, Instagram I only use for finding tattoo artists, and Tie Tok is cancer so I didn’t have that downloaded. I have to say though I failed at this exercise because of the simply face I needed to be on YouTube. I looked up Youtube on Yahoo to see if I can find a loophole but it definitely said no Google. I failed this with flying colors on Day 2 because I have a side job with my step mother’s company that makes logos and websites and I needed Youtube to help refresh my memories on how to do certain things. I am honorable enough to say because of YouTube I failed this challenge, everything else was easy for me to put down but YouTube was a requirement and I bombed it completely.

I think the whole gist of the assignment is because people is so dependent on Social media that it can take over our lives in a sense. I think theirs a line of people that let it consume them or people that actually need it for business ventures. In the article Is Google Making Us Stupid by Nicholas Carr, he emphasizes that the internet can make people slow in the terms of how he was having trouble reading and thinking like he used too. I can actually relate to doing this type of research on myself when I was younger. Their was a very unusual feeling when you are constantly on your phone just aimlessly scrolling, I had to start reading more and spend less time on the internet.

The Internet and the technological devices of today have made me able to retain information because mostly all of the information is online. It is an easy accessible way to gain information on any subject matter that an individual may need at that moment. It was interesting to see how Tim Berners-Lee explained his thought process regarding data and the World Wide Web he created himself. Even though we are able to gain more knowledge about numerous things, the online world can make us lose our sense of reality as well as become more dependent on it as well. Like in connection to the “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” article, in where people are becoming so used to using the Internet as the easy way out that most people aren’t using their brains to exercise them. 

For me it was definitely difficult to not use Google and Instagram because those are the two media platforms I use the most. Google to be used for homework and my own curiosity while Instagram to be used for my own entertainment. These types of media platforms are sort of like addictions that a person can’t really stop using and get away from.

Let’s just say… this challenge is almost impossible given today’s standards.
I mean, maybe it’s doable if you weren’t consumed within Google’s ecosystem. But nowadays, it’s almost impossible. You absorb Google services even without knowing it. YouTube? Yeah, that’s under Google’s umbrella. Signing into a website? There’s probably some code that forces a redirect to Google’s servers for authentication. Ads whiles scrolling through articles? Say “hello” to Google’s AdSense Program. It’s impossible to avoid.

To start, avoiding Facebook products was pretty easy. I have not used Facebook for years especially since no one else in my friend circle or family uses Facebook. As for Google products, that was definitely harder than expected. My main source of emails is via Google and since I was expecting important emails throughout this week, or even this month, there was no question that I can’t avoid Gmail. Even if I wasn’t expecting emails, I think I would have still failed the challenge as I would open my Gmail habitually as that’s what I do every single day.

I made an effort to avoid anything YouTube but that’s equally as difficult since digital platforms these days embed YouTube videos within their pages. For example, YouTube videos are embeded onto the page on Reddit threads. Therefore, in order to view the content, there is at least some interaction with the YouTube interface. Like my email situation, I fell to my habits and opened up a YouTube page the second day, binged a couple videos and came to a realization I had failed the challenge.

Looking back, it feels as if people, at least me, are accustomed to going to the internet for their sources of communication, entertainment and news. This is especially hard to avoid when your source of everything, from communication to entertainment, all falls under one company – that single tech giant. Perhaps it would have been much easier if my sources and habits were spread across multiple platforms and sources.

Now I’m thinking I could potentially had avoided Google and complete this challenge if I had planned ahead. For example, since Google is my source of emails, I could possibly setup the email to forward anything for the week to an alternate email under a different company like Yahoo or Microsoft Outlook. YouTube would be a hard one to avoid since they seem to be THE video-sharing platform on anyone’s mind with no contest.

To be completely honest I failed the challenge immediately. From the moment professor Jonah told us this challenge I knew I wasn’t going to succeed because last year when I had professor Jonah‘s class we did a similar assignment and I failed as well. It is extremely hard avoiding sites such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and more. When I’m bored that’s all I do every single day because there’s nothing else for me to do to keep myself entertained, I usually do not watch movies or TV shows and I can’t go outside due to Covid so I have no other option but to use these social sites to help with the boredom. I honestly don’t know how people could live like this but I know that I can’t and probably will which is kind of sad but realistic. This generation revolves around the use of social networks and technology so I’m sure that I’m not the only one who had trouble succeeding in this challenge but to be honest it was very hard from the beginning.

When it came to the assigned readings, the question that had to be answered was if I feel that the internet and our devices have made us unable to retain information which in this case, prior to reading the articles, I believed the internet and our devices had actually helped us retain information since the information is easily accessible and we can do more research on the topic. But once reading articles such as “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, my opinion has changed. In the article, it speaks about the effects of using devices that one has experienced that I feel like we may be able to relate to. “I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy.” This line caught my attention the most because I’m able to relate to it. Using my self phone and social media makes everything seem so face paced which reflects off of life outside of it, I tend to rush and skim through readings which makes it hard for me, this results in having to reread multiple times.

According to Hebelkys Mendoza’s writing on Network Theory – The Science- Spaninng, networks is part of our daily lives and according to Anna Nagurney, it connects humans in our communities and activities. Networks connected us to each other and made our lives more simple. Examples of networks connecting each other is social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, etc. We are able to chat and share what we do in our lives, through a new feature that snapchat introduced called “stories”. Networks that connected us through the world are apps such as restaurant apps such as Mcdonalds, Applebees, etc that allows us to order food through the app and pick it up that makes it easier for us to be on the go conveniently. Apps that helps us get places such as Waze, Google Maps, etc are network apps that connects us to helping us get to places. We can now buy, sell and trade stocks through apps as well. Networks are forever growing and there is no limit to how big it can grow.

Networks were just a tiny part of life until I really thought about Anna Nagurney’s ideas. In The Science-Spanning Disciplines it is evident that networks take so many various forms and each network functions differently according to their form. For instance, GPS is used almost everyday for so many people. I know that I would have difficulty getting to new places without my phone GPS, but I never thought about it as a network. The subway system in New York City is an entire transportation network that moves millions of people a day, and often times there are network errors that need corrections. For example, when the subways do not communicate correctly, there can be delays or train switches. These networks are vital to our daily lives and often go unappreciated. 

Nagurney goes on to discuss the various types of networks as well as list examples of them. She breaks down transportation networks, energy, water, and communication networks as well. These systems are incredible and constantly evolving as we discover and adapt to new technologies. 

Networking consist of many forms and functions in society ranging from meeting new people online to public transportation. Anna Nagurney talks about networking on her podcast and what it means as a whole for our society. She explained how networking is not about just one thing but how it plays a role in finances , science , transportation and many more of societies daily functions. many new Yorkers either take buses and trains to their destination or drive their own cars networking allows communication applications to inform the people what time to bus and trains are coming if there is going to be a delay. and for those people who drive cars many of them use some sort of application to give them directions. all these applications are keeping people connected. in “Taming Complexity” one thing that really stuck out to me was when Albert Laszlo Barabasi connects different fields by stating that network research is “not limited to physics but captures biology, computer science, mathematics, and the social sciences.” workshops and schools have focused more on network science in the past 25 years. network science have grown so much that several schools have developed course in different departments for network science classes.

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Anna Nargurey explains that the study of networks involves how to model applications of mathematical entities and how to design algorithms. Networks can be seen in many different aspects of life. You can see it from transportation to social media. Networks have progressed drastically since they first appeared centuries ago. No matter the kind of network you are speaking of, they all have nodes. links, and flows. For example, a transportation network has directions and cars. Transportation and telecommunication are two types of networks whose network problems are so often fixed easily when compared to others. Networks can be ANYTHING. The most interesting network that Nargurey mentioned was a simple plan of how to get out of a building during a fire drill. It never crossed my mind to link that with the word “network.” Another interesting fact was that the first known network was the circular flow of an economy.

Networks take many forms and functions in our everyday lives through technology and transportation. As a result, Ana states, “this is not a paperless society… where would we be without transportation.” This is important because transportation does play a major role in how we live our everyday lives. No matter what, we all must travel and or use public transportation to get around from one area to the next. However, on the weekends the networks within the MTA become a little dysfunctional because there are many delays and trains not working. Therefore, it means there is a bit of network and communication issues along the different train lines. Another network Ana speaks about is energy networks. This network is very useful in many different areas because we use the energy to keep our lights and different utilities needed by energy to keep them going. For example, the internet. The internet helps us connect/communicate with people across the world and also retrieve data to keep other networks afloat and working properly. With all the networks we use today, I cannot imagine us without them. The networks provide structure to everything we use to this day.