www.joshholat.com

Some of you may be wondering what has taken me so long to get some more content out for this site, my main blog, as it has been almost a month since my last post. I wish a had a good excuse for you guys.  Ever since exams during the last weeks of school, I have been nonstop busy with jobs and other summer goals, and I’m usually up until about one in the morning.  Although it is good always having something to do, I think it’s time to start blogging here and reflecting on my life again.

I said in the last paragraph that I was busy with things.  For one, I am constantly writing over at Appletell which keeps me pretty busy when I’m online.  However, I am also currently setting up and running a sort of summer “business” that consists of fixing people’s computers and other stuff to make some money on the side (have you seen gas prices lately?).  On top of this, I plan to learn Ruby on Rails and make my first application with that while playing an active role as a programmer for my local robotics team. Yea, I’d say I’m busy.

When I think about it, though, it’s summer, school’s out. It make perfect sense to be this busy. I have about three months all by myself, to do what I want and what I love, not what school says I should be doing.  I’m going to take advantage of the time in the most ways I can and learn as much as possible. I’m not going to spend my summer watching T.V. and wasting time, I’m going to do what makes me happy and start paving the way to my future while having fun at the same time. That’s the key.

That brings me to the point of summer. Obviously, I want to have fun in my time off of school. However, I still want to grow and learn as much as possible in my own way this summer. If I enjoy doing it, this summer is the time to let that enjoyment flourish in all that I do. I’m going to get as much done as possible and get involved in everything I can that I love.

We had an interesting discussion in History class the other day at my high school. We were talking about the Enlightenment and some of the popular philosophies that arose from that time period. One of these that I found the most interesting came from a man by the name of Jean-Jacques Rousseau who said the above quote and published his ideas in the book Emile: or, On Education. The core point that can be taken from this book is that men by nature (from the state of nature, or how humans would act in a environment of lawlessness) are good, but it is society that corrupts us. For that reason, the social contract, an agreement between subjects and their superiors, is between me and you, not me and a government. Without a government, people would grow up according to the right morals and there would be no society to corrupt us.

This viewpoint can be compared to that of John Locke, who had a great influence on the American Declaration of Independence. Locke believed that men by nature are resonable, and therefore will act reasonably in a state of nature. According to him, people have the right to life, liberty, and their property (sound familiar?) and the social contract is between me and a government. However, if that government takes away my rights, I have the right to overthrow it.

But back to my initial question from the works of Rousseau. Is it society, the very thing we made to keep us from killing each other, that corrupts us? I believe to some extent, yes, society does corrupt us. It is society that creates the social classes and stereotypes we are all so familiar with. How do you know that just because that person dresses in all black, they will always be angry and depressed? They could be a really great person, but society tells you not to befriend them simply because of how they look. And who is it that criticizes your every move, whether it be the clothes you decided to wear that didn’t exactly work for you or the way you talk? Society. Who is it that creates all of these stereotypes we have today in the first place? Thank you, society. Society has turned into a monster that controls your every action and tell you how to think. If you ask me, it has only hindered our ability to fully express ourselves for fear of being brought down by others.

However, I did say before that it only corrupts us to some extent. Why did I say that? Frankly, because we need society. Take a look at history, our society has developed since day one. In my opinion, no matter what you do, people will eventually get back to some sort of government/society. We need people to lead us and help keep our daily lives going in some sort of forward direction, otherwise there will be utter chaos.

Now it’s your turn to play the philosopher and answer the question, does society make us evil? Do we need it? What would happen without it? These are all great questions so start pondering!

The Internet is a worldwide, publicly accessible series of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It is a “network of networks” that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government networks, which together carry various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, file transfer, and the interlinked web pages and other resources of the World Wide Web (WWW).
-Wikipedia-

Wikipedia may not be the best example to use when trying to explain how easy it is to access correct information on the web, but it is definitely one of the easiest ways. The internet itself is full of information about anything you could ever want and there is still endless amounts of information being added to this online library of knowledge every single day. It has obviously eased and changed the way people access information, and therefore it has revolutionized our society and the way we go about our daily lives. But all good things also have their downsides. With all of this availability at our fingertips with a simply click, is it making us dumber?

Example: The other day I walked into someone’s (*name disclosed because this could be considered cheating*) room to see what he was up to. He had his homework in front of the computer with a website up. The site he was on had all the answers to a particular vocabulary worksheet that are popular among our school’s English teachers. Because this information was all on the web, what did he learn from that worksheet? Probably very little, which defeats the whole purpose of the homework assignment in the first place. He didn’t have to sit there and work through the questions himself in his head, he just had to to a website.

Another Example: I believe we are all guilty of using Sparknotes to help get us through those terrible books we are forced to read. With in depth analysis’s and chapter summaries, some people can get by without ever opening up the book. Whether this is just a super useful study resource or a way to get out of learning about literature, I’ll leave up to you. However, the point is that all this information is making is so easy where students barely need to do work for themselves anymore.

So back to my initial question. Is all this information availability making us dumber? If you really think about it, we barely have to think for ourselves anymore. If we are stuck on something we can open up our favorite search engine and have the answer in a matter of seconds. Heck, some people even download whole reports from the internet and hand it in as their own. If there is a question in your mind, there is an answer on the internet (even the answer to life). It’s as simple as that. If you know how to use the devices around you to access that information, that’s all you need these days. No more thinking for yourself, no more making your own conjectures, just pure, simple searching. It’s kind of scary.

Hello everyone, and welcome to my 5th site redesign! The first thing you’ll notice is a huge change to the look and feel of the site, but there has also been a major back end update. I have finally given in and started to use WordPress as a blogging engine. The main reason for this was the time it will save me when writing posts and the assurance that it will work with all major browsers. One major thing I have to get out of the way is thanking Chris Thomson for all of his help in getting this site setup. He is a WP genius!

One other thing I need to point out is that with this new look comes new content. No more of the boring, dry content from my older sites. I have started writing a lot more and I feel that I am really improving, so I hope that you will find the content on this site much more exciting and interesting than in the past.

Please let me know what you think of the redesign and if you experience any problems with it. I look forward to your feedback! If you like what you see, feel free to subscribe!