Interview

My first interview I did was on my teammate who is 21. Her primary use for the internet is mainly for school, access to blackboard, online classes, and her email. But she also gets on the internet sometimes just to check her MySpace and Facebook or to buy stuff on eBay since we don’t have a lot of time off because of basketball to go shopping. My teammate has used internet all her life so she’s very comfortable using the internet, technology has been the same since she was little and nothing has really change at all but she feels that it’s changed her life for the better and has advanced so much that you don’t always have to go somewhere to get what you want you can do it online and it’s not such a hassle all the time.
My second interview was on my mother she is 45. She doesn’t spend a lot of time on the internet as much as my dad, but her main use for internet is mainly for work and when she’s on the internet is at work not really at home. When I go home just for the weekend or when we have a break I can count on one hand how many times she has used the internet at home. She feels like she really has no major use for it, it’s a convenience for her, she doesn’t take it for granted at all. My mother said that it has been an improvement in her life because she can find information she needs faster and quicker by internet, she doesn’t also have to find information through the newspaper or television because the internet will have it in minutes or online all day compared to newspapers and television. She is comfortable with being online and roaming on the internet but she told me she’s not advanced as me and my brother and dad but she can find her way to different sites. In general she thought the internet is great to have around but it’s not something she uses all the time or thing she needs to use all the time.
My third and final blog was on my grandfather who is 72. He doesn’t use the internet at all and doesn’t know ho to use the internet. If he needs to do something on the computer he will call my mom or any of his kids to help him do something on the computer or he will just have them do it for him. He says he’s too old to try to figure out the internet, it’s just too much work for him. He said technology is to advanced for him and the only reason he got a cell phone was because of his kids so they can no where he is and check on him when he is traveling. The internet has not really changed his life at all because he never really gets on it; his kids help him with things that he has to do on the internet.
Overall looking at the three different types of ages groups, their was big differences in how they use the internet and what they use it for. It is funny to me, that sometimes the old you get the less you may use the internet. With the interviews that I did I felt like either it was really complicated for them or it was very easy and not a lot of stress to use the internet.

Internet Community

The group that I decided to join was called I Love Basketball. I wanted to join a group that I play and our very familiar with and thought it would be cool to see what other people thought about the sport I love to play. This group that I joined you could tell that not everybody had played basketball or had all the knowledge about it but you also had people that if they didn't play the sport but they new a lot about it, because they were a basketball fanatic and they just loved the sport or loved playing ball so they thought that it was cool to have a group that was dedicated to basketball. I was surprised at how much people really didn’t disagree on a lot of topics, a lot of it was just asking questions about trade rumors and what people thought about the trade. Then people provided information for the people who asked about the information, but I thought that it was funny when I did ask a question about the Jason Kidd trade and why Jerry Stackhouse had ran his mouth like he did people kind of got mad at me and had a few words to say. I thought it was hilarious how people stuck by their team and thought that I was trying to be negative towards their teams but I wasn’t trying to be negative towards their team I just wanted to start something going about the player running his mouth and to also see how I fit into the group. When I first started the group I wanted to observe and see what people were saying and asking about basketball and was it just a group that talked about NBA, college or even high school basketball or was it just one specific group that they talked about.
They had a lot of conversation about more then one topic; it was very diverse as far as talking about college basketball, women’s basketball and NBA. I felt like I really fit into this group because it’s a sport that I play everyday and am very familiar with and I thought that it would be a great idea to enhance my knowledge by learning from other people and what they thought about basketball and other peoples perspective about the sport at hand and if they really thought about basketball. Their was a lot of people that were very negative and just respond negative to every post because they didn’t agree. A lot of people got real upset about this one guy who kept responding to post and not giving good post so that had a lot of confrontation I thought that was interesting because their wasn’t a lot of drama on this group.

I decided to do my topic on rhetorical criticism because I was already doing a paper on Barack Obama's speech for rhetorical criticism and analyzing the differences of the information I could find using internet sources and library sources. This speech was the perfect topic for this assignment because I had to find internet and library sources to do this assignment and we had to do the same for this class as well. When you go to the library to find information you are finding information on historical facts about presidents and political information and that information dates back a long time. The library is giving you credible and reliable information that can be valuable compared to the internet that gives you more current information that is not always reliable or credible because you have so many websites out there like Wikipedia that anybody can put information on that isn’t always true.
I thought that it would be interesting to compare the information you find at the library to the information that you find on the internet and see if you would find the same information or would their be information that would be different, and in some cases doing this assignment I did find information that wasn’t always true. What I found interesting is that politicians are often accused on “flip flopping” their political views and the library’s information is less flexible to change than the internet.
Going to the library was a difficult thing not because I had to get up from my seat but because of the fact you had to go search all those books for your book and sometimes I had trouble because the book that I wanted wasn’t even in the right spot. But when I was able to find the books that I wanted to read they had a lot of good information about politics and Obama had a really good book as well, but I found a lot of information on rhetorical criticism as well. The Pros and Cons of the information that was found on the internet was that it wasn’t always true and it took a long time trying to find credible sources. The good thing about the library is that it had credible information but some of the information wasn’t up to date but I did find up to date information as well. I would prefer being on the internet and finding sources rather then going to the library unless I already looked up my information so that I can go straight to the section I need to, in order to find the books I need.
The one thing I can say is that your life changes by really having to go to the library and put in the effort to get books and read them. It was a struggle to me because this felt like a research paper and I had to find like 15 sources just to answer a couple of questions but it does make you realize that there is just more then internet sources out their and that you can find information a bunch of different ways then just what is convenient like the internet.
References
Book Sources
Foss, Sonja K. Rhetorical criticism: exploration and practice. Waveland press. 1989.
Dymally, Mervyn M. The black politican; his struggle for power. Belmont, Calif., Duxbury Press. 1971
Obama, barack. The audacity of hope: thoughts on reclaiming the American Dream/Barack Obama. New York: Crown Publishers. 2006
Website Sources:
http://www.nwprogressive.org/ (Northwest progressive institute official blog)
http://electionrhetorica.net/ (Rhetorica)
http://csuchico.edu/phil/gtopea_mat/s05/.../rhetoric1_s05.ppt (hyperbole)

Letter

The letters that we had to do for this week I thought were very thoughtful. I felt like this assignment was a lot then what we had been doing the previous weeks and I felt like they would be very meaningful to the people that we were giving them too.
I wrote a hand written letter to my grandfather and I wrote an email to my high school coach. The letter to my grandfather was very long because he has had a very great impact on my life and will always have a great impact on my life until he is know longer here. I wrote a letter to him and sent it to him because he doesn’t get on the computer at all unless he really has to and then his children get on the computer for him and help him out. He’s not very good with technology because it’s just to advanced for him. That is what made me send it by mail because he will go to the mail box everyday and check to see if he has anything from the mailman. He was more likely to get the mail then get on the computer, plus he doesn’t even have email at all. The language in the letter was very different from the letter with my coach. The language and tone was very personal and more about how he’s been an influence in my life because of the time he spent with me as a kid and just being a great role model and how to live my life. Plus he taught me how to play ball, he was very rough and physical with me and he taught me how to stick up for myself and not let anybody push me around.
The letter I wrote by email to my coach was also a personal letter because even though he was my coach he also taught me a lot about basketball and about life. I felt like we had a very close relationship and that’s why we were able to accomplish a lot of goals on the basketball floor. What I mean by that is we won league titles, we went to the state tournament, these were goals that we had in common that we wanted to accomplish, and we were two very competitive people. I wanted to write the letter because I wanted to thank him for making me a better player, we would go to the gym and shoot extra shots, we would sit down and watch game film of what I needed to improve on and what I need to keep doing that was working . Also just the conversations that helped me get over my frustrations with basketball and just the conversations about life and teaching me something new everyday. The tone and language was about the same as the letter that I sent to my grandfather. Very personal and meaningful.
The letters that I sent had a lot of similarities because they were both personal and long letters; I had a lot to tell them about how they influenced my life and how they both meant a lot to me. The other similarity that I had with both letters was about sports. My grandfather taught me the game of basketball and my coach helped make me better on the basketball court. They both taught me something about the game and for that I am forever grateful. The differences in the letters was that the personal information was different, what I said to them and the influence that they had were on two different levels and weren’t the same type of information. The responses that I got was overwhelming because my grandfather called me and just cried, but they were tears of joy because he was so proud of how I have grown up and he was just so impressed that I wrote a letter to him because he wasn’t expecting it at all. My coach was also thankful to have coached me and jut happy that I have accomplished what I have on and off the court. He knew that I had gone through a lot of adversity in college with my college coaches and being sick with mono and just the transition. He has been happy how I’ve handled myself and glad that he can watch me play again.
What I got from sending a hand written letter instead of using technology was that it was kind of weird because we are so use to sending things by email and using all this technology that it was great to do it the old fashion was and just even hear their responses by phone because they wanted to tell me and hear my voice. The human connection was a great feeling and it was better then receiving the email response.