Learning Mindfulness in a Digital Age

This week the goal of the readings was to become more mindful of our own thoughts and the beast that is the internet. In order to use tools on the internet to our own advantage we have to understand how we think and how the internet is not always what it seems. Rheingold asks us to practice mindfulness, a skill that takes time to craft but in the long run will help us better organize and filter thoughts. That mindfulness ties into awareness. That awareness which is useful for digital writing in the sense of detecting crap sources on the internet. Have you ever had to research a topic that seemed like there just were not enough sources, and on top of that you were not sure it was credible? Well, it happens a lot, and learning how to detect crap by using mindfulness is just what was talked about in chapter two Rheingold's book.

Being tricked on the internet really is not that hard when you do not have a lot of experience or understanding of how to sift through credible sources and those that might just be straight up lies. There are plenty of people out there with reasons to lie, and manipulate information, so making sure you do your best to filter what is truth and fiction will help prevent the spread and dissemination of misinformation. Rheingold tells us there are ways to tell how sources are credible, like looking up the authors, or even the websites that host the information that we are seeking. You can find an amazingly shocking amount of information that tells us just how many people are not credible. It is important to do research on your research to make sure the information that you are sharing is correct, so that you do not spread mistruth, and that you yourself do not fall for anything. Protecting yourself and the audience is aided by being mindful and digitally literate. Which so happen to be the subjects of the other readings for the week. Those readings go into further detail of the importance of being literate in an age of technology.

Often when looking for information on the internet we have the places we go to first, whether that's Bing, Google or even Wikipedia. “Googlepedia” talks about how we start searching the web for information, and how even if we think we know how to, we can overlook important factors quickly and be persuaded to use poor websites. While going over this lesson I myself was able to really understand that issue as I thought back on projects long passed. Projects about history and making bibliographies for different classes. The realization hit me like a brick that even I, who thought certain websites seemed legit may not have been. I even went back to those websites, because I could not get it out of my head and to my horror, I found that some websites I had used belonged to racist, and supremacist groups. As a warning make sure you are not only looking for good sources, but only use facts, never give into any biases. It can happen when you research controversial topics like the civil war but no matter what topic you are looking at, double check. Do you think there has ever been a moment that you used a poor source that you only realized after you started this class?