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The impact of technology in our lives today
The impact of technology in our lives today
Impact Of Technology On Daily Life
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Deborah Landau’s “You’ve Got to Start Somewhere”, is a lyric poem that tells the story of a speaker realizing how much technology has changed the way we look at the world. It takes place in the city as the speaker is observing life around her, and realizing how disconnected people actually are from the world, this is ironic because all people want to do in this day and age is be connected. The speaker talks about the future of human relationships through nostalgia and urges for a change. The first thing a reader notices about any poem, or text, is the title. The title holds a general overview of what the text will be about. “You’ve Got to Start Somewhere,” implies that there needs to be change made; further reading into the story gives you …show more content…
a hint that the totally digital world that we are living in, may not be the best thing for human relationships. The speaker of the poem observes life in a city how rushed and impersonal it is. The speaker then recounts her own experience where she longs to just be able to have a friendship with someone that isn’t through the computer or through a phone; she states in lines 22 and 23, “the hope of friending you without electricity.” The end of the poem and the title go hand in hand when the author initially tells the reader that change has to be made, and then provides the example that the high tech world is in fact a very lonely and cold world. The author, Deborah Landau, is probably one of the best people to an account of how times have truly changed. She is a middle-aged woman living in New York City and is old enough to observe the evolution and impact that technology has had, and still is young enough to be affected by this change. When Deborah Landau was a younger, cellphones were most likely not something that every single person had, and even then one could only make phone calls on them, they weren’t a distraction like they are now. She is qualified to talk about this change because it is a part of who she is, unlike a younger author who could only dream of what things must’ve been like in the past because they grew up in this digitalized world. Her sense of personality with the topic of the poem emphasizes the importance of change and has a greater influence on people reading the poem. In lines 20 and 21, the speaker does a commendable job at contrasting what is “natural” and what has become “natural.” She starts off the lines with “Earth, leaves, storm, water, vine.
/ The gorgeous art of breathing.” This is the ultimate form of nostalgia, because the earth started out simple and only the basic components of we see as nature existed. Nature, or what is natural, is perceived in culture to be better. Using this in comparison to cellphones and computers gives technology a negative connotation, it makes humans seem almost like robots, in the sense that there is no longer anything natural in human interaction. The speaker references other aspects of nature, for example in lines 10 to 14 where she states “I wanted to eat an apple so precisely/ the tree would make another/ exactly like it, then lie/ down uninterrupted/ in the gadgetless grass.” The speaker easily could’ve said “down in the grass,” but she specifically chose to include the words uninterrupted and gadgetless because is highlights the problem, the problem being technology in comparison with …show more content…
nature. The overall tone of the poem can be described as nostalgic and having a feeling of longing. The speaker is observing life in the present, and thinking about how the future could be by referencing how great thing were in the past; She stops to think about “a shop/ that still sells records (3-4).” Generally, nostalgia is described as a longing for the past, because the past is seen as better. The speaker makes it seems as though present day inventions are negatively influencing society, and that nothing can every compare to how great time was before the digital era. The most specific moment where the speaker compares the glory of the past to what she believes is a ruined future is in lines 5 through 7, “A letter in the mailbox. / The way that book felt in my hands. / I was always elsewhere.” She makes is seem as though books and letter are so outdated that one can’t enjoy the same feeling or company that they once brought her. There is one line in the poem that is repeated three time, in lines 1, 19 and 22, the speaker begins the line with “I had the idea.” This breaks down the poem in to three specific parts.
The first time the speaker says “I had the idea,” she is talking about a sudden urge to sit down and observe the world around her. The second time the speaker says it, she is referring to the solution to her problem, it is an action, she has had the idea to “Put down the phone (19).” The third time the speaker says the line “I had the idea,” she is thinking about how life could be. The three parts that the poem is divided into is the speaker’s progression of thought. The first part identifies what the problem is, the second part offers up a solution, and the final part is what the speaker believes will happen or at least wants to happen. The poem ends with her wanting the future to be a certain way, her ideal future parallels what the past was like. One of the most important elements in any text is the setting. The setting of “You’ve Got to Start Somewhere” is on the streets of a city. This is not a random placement; the poem would not have the same effect anywhere else. The city is often a place where culture can be clearly defined and viewed. If one wanted to observe a rapid change in culture over time, the city would be the best place to do this because it is the hub of technology and advancement. It is easier to see the impact of technology somewhere like New York City, in comparison to
a small town in Wyoming. I believe that the speaker is wrong. I believe that the speaker is using technology as an excuse- it is not the real problem. I disagree because if one really wanted a genuine connection with a person, all that person has to do is make the attempt at making one. She ends the poem with “I had the idea — the hope/ of friending you without electricity. / Of what could be made among the lampposts/ with only our voices and hands.” The speaker argues that the only way to have a real connection now with someone is physically. It is not enough to say technology is taking over, because it is the societies collective opinion that believes this. It has become a popular thought that friendships can’t be made because of computers and cellphones, and that they’re holding people back from relationships, but I believe that because this is the common belief so many think it must be true, just like author Deborah Landau. The timing of this poem also plays a crucial role in it’s meaning. Nostalgia is inevitable and if this poem had been written in another time period almost nothing would change. There will always be a longing for the way things used to be. Just because people aren’t connecting in a physical way, like the speaker prefers, that doesn’t necessarily mean that people aren’t connecting with one another or forming relationships. The only thing that has truly changed is how.
The fourth Chapter of Estella Blackburn’s non fiction novel Broken lives “A Fathers Influence”, exposes readers to Eric Edgar Cooke and John Button’s time of adolescence. The chapter juxtaposes the two main characters too provide the reader with character analyses so later they may make judgment on the verdict. The chapter includes accounts of the crimes and punishments that Cooke contended with from 1948 to 1958. Cooke’s psychiatric assessment that he received during one of his first convictions and his life after conviction, marring Sally Lavin. It also exposes John Button’s crime of truancy, and his move from the UK to Australia.
The first line of a novel needs to capture the reader. In the novel Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls the author tries to hook the reader with an interesting first sentence: “When I left my office that beautiful spring day, I had no idea what was in store for me.” (pg. 1). I feel that this sentence does bring the reader in and created a sense of curiosity of what would
First, I will illustrate how structure is being used in the poem and ties into the speculation. Structure of a poem is very important. The structure of a poem focuses on having a beginning, middle, and end to give a poem a clear meaning. The speaker starts the poem with “You can always start with the was of things,” trying to illustrate when writing a poem it is good to begin with jotting down the things
On an ordinary day, Leslie opens the main door of her house, when she walked inside she saw her mom and sister Islla sitting on the coach. Islla was crying, and Leslie ask her “What happened?’ Why you crying?’”. Islla told her that she is pregnant and that she wants to keep the baby even if her boyfriend will be against the baby, but she will need to drop out from her University. In a few minutes of thinking, Leslie decided and told her sister “You don’t need to drop out I will help you to babysit with my nephew.”
In her work, “This is Our World,” Dorothy Allison shares her perspective of how she views the world as we know it. She has a very vivid past with searing memories of her childhood. She lives her life – her reality – because of the past, despite how much she wishes it never happened. She finds little restitution in her writings, but she continues with them to “provoke more questions” (Allison 158) and makes the readers “think about what [they] rarely want to think about at all” (158).
Who is the birthday party a rite of passage for, the birthday boy or his mother?
The poem starts out with the daughter 's visit to her father and demand for money; an old memory is haunting the daughter. feeding off her anger. The daughter calls the father "a ghost [who] stood in [her] dreams," indicating that he is dead and she is now reliving an unpleasant childhood memory as she stands in front of his
During the first part of the short story the central theme is “ideas”. The character by the name of Vashti is a mother, her son Kuno wants her to visit him, he wants to see her face to face and he also shares that he wants to travel to the surface of the earth. She is disturbed by the idea as she explains to him that his idea is out of the norms of society and not acceptable. The most interesting aspect of this piece of the novel is that when she is encountered by nature (stars, the surface of the earth, and the Himalayas) she states that those things are not worthy because they give her “no ideas”. This society has completely separated and isolated themselves from the natural world, after destroying it of course, but nevertheless not even the site of these things excites thought in the mind of Vashti. Is it the nature of humans to separate themselves from the natural world or to live in harmony with it? By separating themselves from nature they have isolated themselves from each other, and yet however the machine has provided them with devices to communicate with each other which hints that even the most minimal of interaction is still part of human nature and without it life is
as a thematic statement for a poem that offers a new way of thinking, a
In August of 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment became an addition to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote. Shortly after that historic day, Crystal Eastman wrote a passage named “Now We Can Begin.” In her writing Crystal Eastman elaborates about the struggles of women fighting for equality in that era. The main equality right Crystal Eastman mentions in her message is women being capable to make their own occupational choice.
On Thursday, December 10th, I attended a poetry reading by Elizabeth Willis, the author of Alive: New and Selected Poems. Alice Quinn, the executive director of the Poetry Society of America opened the night by describing poems as “sonic reinvention of the world.” Willis read six poems: Plot, Friday, Species is an Idea, Bell Crew, Golden book of birds, and Alive. Out of all six poems, my favorite was Plot, which she read at the beginning. In this poem, she numbers all the events in the person’s life – she names many female names, possibly of those whom the main character had dated in the past. “What comes first?/Memory or Forgiveness?/Pen or paper?/Renaissance or reformation?/Me or You?” When she read this part, I could not help but
Sometimes in life we encounter experiences that alter the way we view ourselves and the world around us. These happenstances can be as informal as meeting a new person or as simple as stumbling upon a new book. These unexpected twists of fate can now and then make one reconsider who they are and what actions they put forth into their everyday life. My life altering chance encounter was with a 1999 novel written by Catherine Ryan Hyde titled simply, “Pay it Forward”.
It is not enough to write a poem. What is a poem without a topic? A poem need not be about some vague topic. Although I thoroughly enjoy the Robert Frosts and Langston Hugheses of the world, their search for knowledge through the stanza, their exploring social construct and humanity through anaphora and rhyme and meter, it is not enough for me to write a poem about these topics. No, I have something else in mind, something brewing in my head like lines about racism and womanhood were brewing in Maya Angelou’s. Something so scientific and wonderful and sinister, and I am scared because it is spilling out of me at an increasing rate. And it begins:
Perhaps the first and most obvious step would be to read the poem. Just read it. As in: begin reading and don’t stop, fee...
Let us begin by recognizing that one comes to a poem--or ought to come- -in openness and expectancy and acceptance. For a poem is an adventure, for both the poet and the reader: a venture into the as yet-unseen, the as-yet unexperienced. At the heart of it is the notknowing. It is search. It is discovery. It is existence entered. "You are lost the instant you know what the result will be," says the painter Juan Gris, speaking or and to painters. But what he is speaking of is true of art in general, is as appropriate to poetry as to painting. What he is reminding us of is the need to remain open to discovery, to largess--the need to give over our desire to define, to interpret, to reduce, to translate, We need to remind ourselves, in short, that in a poem we find the world happening not as concept but as percept. It is the world happening. The world becoming. The world allowed to be--itself. Another way of putting the same thing, this time from the per-spective of thinking (the perspective of the mind in its engagement of the world), would be to say that the poem is an enactment of thinking itself: the mind in motion. Not merely a collection of thoughts, but rather the act of thought itself, the mind in action. The poem is not trying to be about something, it is trying to be something. It is trying to incorporate, to realize. Not ideas about the thing, writes Wallace Stevens, but the thing itself. As Denise Levertov has said, "The substance, the means, of an art, is am incarnation--not reference but phenomenon."