Anecdotes from a New World of Communication
Write about your experiences with new forms of communication in the form of anecdotes (a "mini" story). Discuss two positive and two negative experiences. Each anecdote should be no more than 50 words long, so the overall word requirement is from 150 to 200 words. Be honest but there is no need to name names to protect your privacy.
Possible topics: Facebook; Twitter; Smart phones; email; texting and their effects on you personally and others around you.
NOTE: Please do bring a printed copy of your remarks to class on Wednesday. See you then!
17 comments:
Fifteen years ago, I had bought my first and my last cell phone. After two months using of this toy, I realized that the cell meant not freedom but iron chains. My wife, friends, relatives, and business partners could reach me disturbing my privacy. And I gave it up.
I used to like to read an Internet forum about World War II. One time, I decided to leave a post there. After, in comments about my post, I found many interesting facts about myself; from unprofessionalism to stupidity. And I gave it up.
A Russian social networking service helped me to find my university classmates. It breathed new life into old relationships. In 2008, we met and celebrated the twentieth anniversary of our graduation.
This spring vacation, I was checking email in a coffee shop in Prague, when I suddenly got a call through Skype. It was from my old pal from Siberia; he found me. Our conversation inspired a warm wave of nostalgia in my heart.
- 167 words
At the conference this week I “met” a young teacher who shared a table with eight other teachers who were discussing important issues concerning curriculum and government policy. I say “met” because her eyes never left her iPad the entire time; she neither spoke to us nor acknowledged our presence.
As I drove out to Harrison Hot Springs on Wednesday, I noticed a driver acting a bit weird as I was entering Highway 1 at a busy on ramp. She was staring into her lap instead of at the road. I assume she was texting as she drove at 100 kilometers an hour. I let her go ahead of me.
When I accidentally left my driver’s licence at my daughter’s Montreal apartment and needed to return to fetch it instead of meeting her at the car rental office, it was easy to communicate with her via text. She wasn’t happy to wait, but at least she knew where I was and when I would arrive!
As my daughter travelled in Europe six years ago (at age 18) naturally I was a worried father. When I spotted her on her gmail account, we would often have long text-based chats. It was a great relief to know she was safe and having fun.
—211 words
Last month, during an event of Vancouver Business: Franchise expo, I had an opportunity to observed social media, that’s causing an acceleration in communication innovation. A good friend came along and attended with me and already making an impact of his life, by using his smart phone every 5 minutes.
This past year, I've turned into a heavy user of Facebook as a communication platform. This unique messaging had helped me communicate with friends and family as well as meet new people with shared interest. It impacted a few of my friends that Facebook provides an “extremely rich communications experience”, basis on sharing pictures and videos. I used to get emails from friends through email but I now get almost all my non-work email via Facebook.
As I work few times a week, at one of the largest electronics store, I am witnessing a breathtaking evolution of new forms of communication like twitter, LinkedIn, Skype, Facebook & smart phones.
Families in my country are all unfolding this quickly that we don’t have time to reflect of what’s going on. A few of my friends, thinks that email is becoming endangered species! Though, my question always still stands, what are the new forms of communications shall we see next?
- 208 words
I used to text and talk on the phone all the time. I wasn’t paying attention and I rear ended another driver. Luckily it was only a fender bender with no dents or scratches. It is very dangerous and distracting.
I knew someone personally that was a great hacker. She used to hack into people’s personal blogs/pages for fun. She would expose mean but true things about the certain individuals and their dirty deeds. It wasn’t talked about much back then, but today, it’s called cyber bullying.
I used to play on a website similar to Facebook but it was called Asian Avenue. It connects friends of friends. I have met many of my closest friends from that website.
Every time when a bunch of us girls go out to events and bars, it’s very hard to hear your phone ring. Nowadays everyone’s always checking their cell phones so if we accidentally get separated, we can always find each other by texting.
- 162 words
This January, I took a plane to go back to China. Despite the crew repeatedly requesting that all passengers turned off their cell phones, a stylishly dressed, middle－aged woman seated directly in front of me, was still phoning even as the plane started moving. Soon a crew stopped her.
Last term, I took another English course. After our final exam, a classmate who had not taken the exam, but who was allowed to take it another day, called me asking about the exam’s content. Unbelievable! I simply replied “the exam was too hard for me, I can’t remember.”
Last month, I found that Vancity bank had charged me seven dollars because my account balance was below $1,000. I went to a local branch and told a staff that I had just opened a new account. The friendly staff consulted with her manager and my money was refunded.
One morning, while travelling in Japan ten years ago, I was out bicycling. As I passed a small crossing, I ran down a young woman who had suddenly appeared there. I lifted her up, but was worried that she would charge me. But she only said “Thanks, I am ok” and then left.
-201 words
Last year I went to Victoria with my husband for three days. It was difficult to find the way to our hotel, but with the help of my husband’s i-phones GPS, we found all our destinations in less time, anywhere we wanted to go. It saved our time, and we enjoyed it thoroughly.
I came to Canada in 2010. It was the first time I was away from my parents, so I felt quite alone and missed them. I started using Skype to talk them and to see them which made me feel relaxed and blissful.
Two months ago, I was searching online for new software to download and I didn’t get any success; so I shut it off. When I tried to log on again, my computer stopped working because of some kind virus. So I had to pay almost $100 to make it work again.
My cousin got a girlfriend from chatting online. He started trusting her quite a bit even though he didn’t see her in person, only her pictures. He also sends her some money. Finally they decided to meet in person, and when he came back, he was upset. He said that “she” was a boy and obviously was gay.
Words-205
I took the bus on a beautiful day, the kind that you want to be nice and talkative to everyone. I sat in hoping to find some engaging friendly faces but people all looking at their Smartphone and avoiding each other. I was shocked by this eerie; and I could not help but to say “this technology, what a mess!”.
-60 words
I remember this documentary about teenager talking about her Iphone .She was saying” I cannot live without it, I need it every time. I feel safer and less lonely with it”. Listening to her I first thought “How people did before, seriously huh..?!!” Then thinking deeper I said “it is strange how mans can create their own addiction”.
-58 words
I had an appointment at the theater with some friends I had lost their phone number and I felt helpless. So I got the idea to send them a message through Facebook as they had internet on their Smartphone. It worked. They called me and thereafter, I was then able to be on my way.
-55 words
In grad twelve, I was doing a math assignment .I felt very depress about failing it and did not have someone to help me on. Therefore I started browsing the internet and found the clearest explanation ever on the subject. I used it. Later I gave my completed work to my teacher, and got an A minus.
-57 words
It was four years ago, when I signed up on facebook. At first, I thought I only had four people on my friends list until I got connected with my high school friends. That is the power of facebook, at least I’m happy to keep in touch with my buddies although we are far apart.
Whenever I’m bored and lonely, I always talk to my parents and my siblings through skype. It is useful and convenient way to keep updated with my family without any hassle. To connect with them via video call is phenomenal; I actually forget the feeling of being homesick every time I talk to them.
Two years ago as I was chatting with my cousin using yahoo messenger, my college and my high school friends saw me online then, I ended up chatting with them as well at the same time. Chatting with six people was challenging and confusing: I couldn’t keep up and ended up sending the wrong messages to them.
Last week, on the way to Richmond, my friend and I noticed a young female driver under speeding on the highway. No wonder she was driving slow because she was busy texting while driving.
-200 words
As soon as I landed in Canada, I noticed that everybody, really, "like" everybody. White people "like" Asian and African people, people from Asia "like" people from Europe and Africa, and ultimately people from Africa "like" European and Asian people. Before I came here, I didn't know how these people "like" so much each others.
One day at the college, a lady friend, had an interesting topic about the differences between European women and American women. One of the ideas was, why is the American women larger than the European one. One of my lady friend's classmate, a young lady from Asia, whispered, "Yeah, f...ing ghost."
Once, I talked to an Indian fellow about how expensive is the living cost in Vancouver. I told him that I don't understand why is everything so expensive and he responded to me sharply loosing his anger, "Because of f...ing Asians." Was he referring to the Chinese people, or to all the Asians?
When I was working at Vanship, a white Scottish workmate was coursing the Europeans, for building the three ships for BC Ferries in Europe."These f...ing Europeans took our jobs," my workmate said.I started to smile at him for it was a very interesting way to characterise himself.
208 words
For the past few years,i have become addicted to facebook as a communication platform .Since i have friends all over the world, this unique network messaging had helped me greatly to communicate with friends and family as well as meeting new people whose share the same interest with me.I use to receive mail through email but now i get all my email via facebook.This powerful network had enable me to share pictures and videos with my love ones.
As i live far away from my home land Sierra Leone, skype had been a new way of interacting with my friends and family back home.Through this powerful network communicating platform,i can now talk and see my friends face to face.It is a great relief to know that my people are doing well.
When i accidentally left my bus pass at my girl friends house and needed to return to get it instead of meeting her at the house, it was easy to communicate with her via text. She was not feeling well that day but at least she knew where i was and how to get there and she easily brought it to me.
About three or four years ago there was this blank caller, who was bothering me all time; sometime he even would call me at the middle of the night and didn’t talk, just blowing.
Once upon a time, there was this person who I was kind of avoiding and didn’t want to talk to her, but there was she always messaging and calling me. I did changed my number few time , but she would always find it. So I had to disconnect my phone.
Last month my friend and I met up at this Starbucks in New Westminster, and we wanted to go to the Capilano Saspension Bridge, but we didn’t know how to get there. Thanks to the GPS on my cell phone, got us there before I knew.
The Sunday that it just passed by, I was away from home for the day, and my mother wanted to go to Victoria to visit a relative for the night. So she called me on my cell phone and informed me that she is going to be away, and I don’t have to worry. 187 words
Since I had a cell phone ten years ago, I couldn’t leave without it . My cell phone is some part of my brain. When I was a child I used to memorize at least my close families and friends phone numbers, but since I had my cell phone I can store all my numbers and emails on my cell.
One of the most important means of communication for me is using the internet. For the last few years I started using internet, searching on Google, and face booking, chatting with my family in back home. If there wasn’t face book, I couldn’t talk and meet my friend from kinder garden Marta . Internet is very important in our life this time, to find a new job, rent, anything you need its all in the computer, so that without internet life could have been harder.
It was a relief to hear that texting while driving banned from British Columbia. Since it was banned it saved 16 peoples life a year and dropped 12 present serious injuries. It is important to those who drive carefully .
One of the reasons I do not like our means of communication is it makes us obsessed using it. Most of the time it isolated from our family members and friends while we use face booking or chatting on emails.
Word count:220
I came to Canada about 5 years ago and I had never heard of all these new forms of communication such as twitter, Skype and Facebook. I had no idea what Facebook was until I made one. Facebook is very popular in the modern time and I have noticed this many times that people often ask for their Facebook’s instead of asking number if they don’t have one.
My brother’s wife is in Afghanistan now and she requests to talk to my brother at least once a week .So calling from here to Afghanistan isn’t cheap so what we did was to made her a Facebook account since it has everything for chat. And by doing that we saved a lot of money. That is one of the good things about having Facebook. However, having Facebook can also be dangerous especially when a person hacks you and make you trouble.
Two years ago one of my friends account was being hacked by someone and he or she had done lots of inappropriate things, which caused him so much trouble later on.(187)
Beeper is a radio-technologic communicate device. The more beepers people have, the more busy public phones are. Once time, I could not find any public phone to reply my friend’s page in beeper. Because busy in answering beeper pages’ people were queuing at all public phones. So, when I reached the public phone which my friend called from, my friend had left! [62 words]
I have been not used my first email address because of full spam. Unwittingly, when I scanned my first email address’s contacts once time, those names reminded me something happy, or something sad. These people are a part of my personal history. I tried to send greeting to them. To my surprise, most of them wrote back with their greeting. [60 words]
Cellphone is a convenience communication device. But the trouble is that we are not aware of how much we rely on cellphone unless we lost it. It is easy to get new cellphone instead of lost one. But loser should take a long time to rebuild his address list. At least, I took almost two weeks once. [57 words]
Blogs is funny! Because not only is it a communication platform for us, but also it is a platform of simulcast! Last Friday, when my classmates did their presentation of poems, I found that I could take picture or video for them and sent to our blog with my ituoch. It should be a happy memory for us. [58 words]
This past few months I turned to social networking (facebook) as a means of communication. Either video chatting or, sending private message to my relatives back home. I find modern technology as more convenient and inexpensive.
It was a few months ago when we went shopping in Costco. At the beginning we were walking through every aisle. As we were busy looking at an item my grandma suddenly dissapeared. We didn't mind it at first, until it was time to go home. I remember that I walked around the warehouse twice and never even bother to look on the pharmacy side. There she was on the corner seat waiting. That's when I realize how important a cellphone was.
I remember when me and my friends went to a Filipino restaurant. She posted something on facebook, then all of a sudden notifications flowed in. She began to disconnect from our conversation. She was more focus on her phone, than to chat with us. At the end I find it very rude and annoying.
You sometimes rely on the computer to hold important documents. I had experienced going to the store and spending money to reboot our computer and retrieving all our files. Well, we learn after doing it twice, thats why we now have an IMac less stress less hassle.
-219 words
I came to Canada in 2006.We met a Colombian family and they have 3 children and all of them owned a phone. My brothers and I were looking for friends and someone to ask about Canadian life. We were in the same room talking to each other when on the other hand; they were talking to us but looking down at their phones.
When I left Colombia I thought I was never going to see my dad again. Luckily when we arrived in Canada people helped me to open a messenger account and taught me how to chat. However, for my dad, this was new. He did the same and nowadays we are very connected.
It has been five years since I came to Canada. I used my GPS a lot to travel through the lower mainland. I went back to Colombia and I thought I could do the same. However, technology is not as fast or as easy there. I got lost many times and become frustrated driving and I decided to bus.
Three years ago I started to work at Safeway in White Rock. I was the last cashier and I was receiving phone calls every day for shift changes or other massages. Now my manager does not call but texts all the schedules. I find this much convenient. -221 words.
Technology has advanced our life for the betterment of our world, but it also come a side effect. Cellphone one of those technology that has become every day part of life. I got my first cellphone three years ago and before then I didn’t feel a need for it and now, I feel naked without it.
Surfing the internet came across an article about a celebrity saving an individual from walking into traffic. The article goes on to say, the person was texting while walking. It’s not only other people I see it on myself the attachment we have to our cellphone. People have become slaves to it.
I have to younger brother and they use face book and tweeter all the time. They spent most of their free time on laptop or the computer communicating with friends and other staff. Although, I don’t understand the excitement toward face book and tweeter, I understand the limited use of it. It can be used to connect with old friends.
Word count 168
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