Teens & Distracted Driving -- Pew Internet and Research

1. Teens rely on text messaging for communication on their cell phone, rather than the traditional phone call because it's faster, you can get straight to the point, and it allows you to talk almost anywhere. This is also why many teachers forbid the use of cell phones in class. It's easy enough to see a student who is chatting on a phone in the back row but teens who text hide their phones from sight but still have the same disregard for the material being taught.

2. Texting and driving is something that doesn't register as seriously dangerous to many young people. Over 30%, approximately 34%, say that they have texted while they were driving. This translates to 26% of ALL American teenagers texting and driving and this number continues to climb.

3. Texting while driving has yet to surpass the popularity of talking on the phone will driving. 52% of 16-17 year olds with cell phones have talked on the phone will driving which is almost double the amount of teens who text and drive.

4. There's a mentality in teens that they're immortal for whatever reason. This isn't the case and distracted drivers influence the entire car - not just themselves. Distracting a driver because of music, a conversation, texting, and cell phone usage can be the cause of a very serious accident.

5. It's shocking to me that 72% of teens have been in the car while the driver texted. It's also assumed that texting or talking on the phone while driving is a family tradition. If a child's parents do it, they're more likely to pick up those habits.

PEW Research on The State of Music: 10 Years after Napster

1. With the trends of people, especially youths, turning to the internet as their primary sources for internet and even television and film, the numbers for the decline of record sales are staggering and it's only getting worse. With downloadable software like LimeWire, people are stealing music from the artists. However, iTunes is also a reliable source for downloading music but even that's not secure anymore. It's easy to buy a song, download it, then send it to virtually anyone with a computer.

"In the none-too-distant future, techno-visionaries declare, musicians will not need record labels. Instead, they will market and sell recordings directly to fans over the Internet. Even the labels that manage to hang on to their artists will find their sales eviscerated by piracy. With free music available on the Web via Napster and other song-trading services, only fools will pay for songs."

2. I believe that sites and internet users will continue to pirate and "file share" music programs because it's the cheaper, faster alternative to going out to the store and spending fifteen dollars for fifteen tracks on a CD. Especially in these economic times, illegal downloading music is widely socially acceptable while it's not necessarily legal.

3. MySpace has been an extremely useful site for up and coming musicians. Owl City, a new artist who is topping the pop charts, began just by having a MySpace music site. And many DJs say that it's more useful for wannabe musicians to have a MySpace music page than have occasional airplay. This will continue to be a new way for talent to be discovered as it becomes more and more popular.

Alan Khazei ; Massachusetts Newest Health Care Reformer

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Alan Khazei is running for the vacant senate seat that opened when Ted Kennedy, a beloved and well-respected US senator of many years, passed away. Khazei's the son of a doctor and nurse who feels especially connected to the current debate on Health Care Reform and pushing for Universal Healthcare for all citizens. As quoted in one of his campaign outlines, healthcare is "personal for him and he views healthcare reform as both a moral issue and an economic imperative."

As for his speech given on Monday, November 9th, in the International Room at AIC, Khazei struggles to keep the focus of his audience and deliver a speech that leaves people feeling motivated to vote for him. As I sat with my work colleagues and listened to him speak, I could tell that none of us were blown away. And afterwards, one of them said "you could tell he was hurting," while another saw a more optimistic side to sitting through Khazei's speech. "Hey, it's free food," she said with a chuckle as she thought about the weak delivery and audience full of people unwilling or unmotivated to share personal stories or accounts dealing with poor health care and difficult insurance companies.

Do I think Alan Khazei has what it takes to become the next Ted Kennedy? Not unless things change drastically overnight. Khazei seems to be better equipped for another branch of government, perhaps more directly with the health care issues rather than legislation as a whole. He seems passionate but he's unable to get a crowd motivated and without knowing his other policies on important issues, I wouldn't feel comfortable giving him my vote in December.

Teens Online -- Pew Research

1. The report states that nine in ten teenagers are online. Somehow, I'm assuming this number has grown in the past couple years as even teenagers who don't have internet at home use it at their friends's houses, school, and even at work. It's hard to find someone without an AIM screenname and under the age of 18 or at least a facebook that they check every once in a while.

2. Teens use the internet primarily to communicate with friends. Email has never seemed to be something that teens have the patience for, unless they're sending files or something of that sort, because the instant messaging system allows for quick, easy communication. This is where most of the new slang texting comes from, too. "BRB", "TTYL", etc. were made popular when instant messaging became the new way to communicate for young people.

3. It reports that 45% of teens have cell phones and 33% are texting. I'm assuming this number has drastically, drastically increased within the past couple years because of the ease texting allows and the phone plans that include unlimited messaging. It's easy to look around the quad and see almost half of the students typing on their cell phones, especially if they have a cell phone with an equipped keypad, and they can even access AIM, Facebook, and other social networking sites via a cell phone with ease.

Generations Online - PEW Research

1. With every generation, there are more internet users. This is probably because if people don't start using the internet at younger ages, they're unlikely to start using it as adults and even later in life. with the Generation GI, the people who are now in their seventies, there's the lowest amount of internet users.

2. 12-17 year olds use the internet more than everyone else. The ages progressively decline in a steady pace where the oldest group of people, senior citizens, rarely use the internet in comparison with the rest of society. Again, this is probably because they went the majority of their lives without the internet being accessible and no longer participate in the business world so they don't take the time to learn and understand the new technologies.

3. However, the senior citizens that go online are primarily online because they want to communicate and send e-mails. As a personal story, my family has recently adopted FaceBook as their way of communication. My grandmother, her siblings, my dad and his brothers, their cousins, etc. all have FaceBook to keep in touch with one another and while it was once a site thought to be catering to the youth and only young generations, it's adopted into a site that many generations use and it's popularity has surpassed that of MySpace or any other social networking site.

Popular Opinion on Global Warming

As a new survey reports, more people are less likely to believe in global warming than ever before. There was a steady drop over the past year in people who say they believe in the issue of climate change, 35% believe in it today which is down from 44% in April 2008. So, with increasing reports of it being a real global issue, are less people likely to believe in it? The first question is whether the lack of media attention in recent months has caused people to believe that it's no longer an issue. In a survey of 1,5000 adults reached on cell phones and landlines, 57% of them believe that there is solid evidence that the climate is warming but in April 2008, 70%+ people believed that there was evidence that global temperatures were rising. The second predicament that many may be taking into account is whether people have simply changed their mind about global warming from it being a man-made problem to a natural occurrence in the world. Personally, I think that while man-made problems may be influencing global climates that the issue of global warming isn't as immediate as people first were led to believe. I think that may be an opinion of many people that while the earth is warming and gradually the climates are changing that it's not a completely man-made error against nature nor is it happening as fast as people were once led to believe. There was once a sense of fear that was instilled in people that if global warming wasn't addressed that within a decade the world would be in complete turmoil. I discredit this theory and perhaps many other people do as well. As the reports show, clearly people still believe that global warming is a possibility but the hysteria has died down and perhaps that's why more people have changed their views about it.

Fewer Americans See Solid Evidence of Global Warming: Overview - Pew Research Center for the People & the Press

PEW Research on Civic Engagement

1. It does not surprise me that political involvement, even online, is something the wealthy participate in at much higher rates than people with lower incomes. Out of the population of people who make $100,000+ 45% of them donate offline and only 35% would donate online.

2. Out of the entire population of people who donate to political causes, 30% of those people feel comfortable giving money online. I can understand the reason for online donating, it's fast and easy, but it's much more secure (most of the time!) to donate money in person.

3. 37% of internet users, ages 18-29, use blogs or social networking as a venue for political involvement. 17% of 30 to 49 year olds, 12% of 50 to 64, and only 10% of the senior citizen (64+) community use social networking and blogging as a venue for political involvement.

4. Offline donors were three times as likely to give over $500 than internet donors. I'm assuming this is because it's more comforting and secure to hand an official a check for a high amount of money than it is to send it electronically.

5. One in every five Americans post something on the internet relating to civic and political involvement. This is surprising to me because I wouldn't assume so many people would voice their opinions on politics over the internet. I always thought there was a higher amount of people who would research without posting.

Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

President Barack Obama has become the newest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, a distinguished honor that has been bestowed on just three other presidents (Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jimmy Carter). This is not the most surprising part of it, though. The deadline for the Peace Prize nominations was just over two weeks after Obama first took office. Now the debate, primarily between conservatives and liberals, is whether Obama deserves this honor. He's been in office just over nine months and it surely comes as a slap in the face to our former president, George W. Bush Jr, who didn't receive anything like this during his two terms.

Personally, I think Obama has promise to be a great president but I don't know if it's the right time to be giving him such an award. He's in the process of fixing the numerous problems left behind by the previous administration while his own legislation is slowly edging into the Congress. As demonstrated in a recent SNL spoof, Obama hasn't finished anything he has started though he is, with his unwavering optimism and nationalistic pride, doing his very hardest.

Another question that I can't help but consider is whether this is also an issue of race. An african-american president is a tremendous accomplishment on its own. It's a huge step in the way of the Civil Rights and was highlighted during his campaign by both Democrats and Republicans. However, something that seems to be unique to Obama is his charisma that inspires all demographics to go out and vote. Young people, impoverished people, and minorities who tend to vote in very low numbers all went out and rallied support for our President during his run for the office.

To summarize, I think it's a great thing that Obama won the Prize but I'm not sure if it was the right time for something like this.

Obama: Nobel Peace Prize is 'call to action' - CNN.com

PEW Research on Internet Access

1. 73% of the American population uses e-mail or internet communication. This leaves approximately 27% of the US population out of the research and, more importantly, it means there's still a number of Americans who haven't taken advantage of the new technologies and services the internet provides for business and for communication.

2. Spanish-dominant hispanics (assuming this refers to the language barrier?) have the lowest rate of internet users at 32%. However, English-speaking hispanics have the highest percentage of internet users in terms of an ethnic group.

3. Rich people, as most may assume, have the highest percentage of internet users at 95%. This is surprising because it means 5% of those people still don't use the internet which causes me to wonder how they keep their net worth so high.

4. Suburban areas (77%) have more internet users than urban areas (74%) which was surprising because I assumed with more condensed cities and higher populations that cities would have more internet users than suburbs.

5. College graduates are the second group with the highest percentage of internet users. 91% of college graduates use the internet.

6. 18-29 year olds have the highest percentage of internet users by age with 90%. 30-49 year olds have the second highest rate at 85% but senior citizens (65+) have the lowest percent with 35%. This proves that the internet is powered by the younger generations and the business class.

Degrees of Access (May 2008 data)

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Degrees of Access (May 2008 data)

View more presentations from Pew Internet & American Life Project, Pew Research Center.

Bridging and Bonding Sites

UCC.ORG: The United Church of Christ is a network for different religious sects to interact and talk about their faith, find upcoming events, and news articles relating to faith and religion. The only real restriction to be part of the UCC is having a Christian faith. UCC.ORG is a bonding and bridging site because it links people from all over the world together for the common goal of sharing, reading, and learning more about the Christian faith and local and national programs.

Facebook.com: Facebook is a bonding site because you can access friends, colleagues, family, and classmates quickly. With the message wall feature, it's easy to drop a quick note in a shorter time that it would take to make a phone call or even type a text message.

Twitter.com: Twitter is the internet's newest, and debatably most bizarre, social network site. With people migrating over from other social network sites, and celebrities creating their own to keep their fans in the know about future projects, concerts, and filming on a movie or television series, it's become a great bridging network but it also serves as a bonding site because people are able to quickly send notes to one another regarding a post or just a random thought.

Amazon.com: Amazon is one of the best bridging sites because it offers just about everything and it would be almost impossible not to find something of interest. Books, movies, dvds, electronics, posters, clothing, etc. are all on that site with easy access.

eBay.com: e-Bay is one of the older bridging sites that seems to be fading out in favor of other, more secure sites, but e-Bay is another site that has more things for sale than you would ever think of buying. Things on e-Bay range from the practical (a new DVD set that would be much more expensive in the store, textbooks for a fraction of the price, etc.) to the bizarre (napkins that people claim are touched by certain celebrities, food in the shape of the Virgin Mary, etc.) but it's a site that's so diverse that everyone can find something of interest.

Craigslist.org: Craigslist is one part MySpace, two parts e-Bay, and one part uncanny. You can advertise to sell just about everything on Craigslist from a couch and a television to looking up someone's personal ad. It's not as easy to navigate through as e-Bay or Amazon sometimes but it's much more entertaining and sometimes the advertisements are actually humorous (check http://craigslist.org/about/best/den/1188385012).

Net-Neutrality

The FCC is trying to pass regulation regarding net-neutrality which will keep the internet free, accessible, and open to all users. What private sectors and high-yielding companies want to do is limit the sites that users can access and the loading time of sites to sway individuals away from certain sites. The FCC has taken a strong stance against this.

Chairman Julius Genachowski stated, "The FCC must be a smart cop on the beat pressuring a free and open internet. It is vital that the internet continue to be an engine of innovation, economic growth, competition, and democratic engagement."

Internet companies such as Google are also concerned about this potential threat against net-neutrality. Google VP Vinton Cerf said, "Allowing a handful of broadband carriers to determine what people see and do online would fundamentally undermine the features that have made the internet such a success."

To limit internet access by slowing down the loading time of sites, forcing users to pay additional fees to read information on certain websites, and to promote a "class system" of internet users, it provides an argument against the First Amendment. To limit internet access because of an individual's ability to pay the additional fees limits their ability to free speech, access to the media and press, as well as their personal interests.

President Obama said on May 29th that he was "firmly committed" to the neutrality clause. He was also quoted saying, "we can keep the internet as it should be; open and free." On the opposing side, the Bush's Administration said these new rules weren't needed and refused to adopt a Democratic net-neutrality proposal in '06.

It is very important to protect the fundamental rights of every American. Passing legislation for net-neutrality helps to promote the First Amendment by making sure all internet users are capable of viewing and accessing all of the same websites regardless of all other circumstances.

All information taken from Bloomberg.Com

Five Observations from www.internetworldstats.com:

1. I'm surprised that Australia has such a low percentage (20.8 million, compared to Asia which has the highest population with 704.2 million) of internet users compared to the rest of the world. With cities like Sydney, I thought they would be higher on the list.

2. Out of the Amerias, North America has 73.9% of the internet users but only 36.7% of the population.

3. The North America region has 246.8 million internet users. South America has about half with 128.7.

4. I'm surprised that Germany has more internet users (55.2 million) compared to England which only has 43.8. I thought that England would lead in Europe.

5. I thought South Africa would have a high percentage of internet users but they are fourth in Africa (after Egypt, Nigeria, and Moraco) with 4.6 million internet users.