Blogs I have visited

• Uliana Formina Advertising and Children http://ads-and-kids.blogspot.com/

I recommend this blog to those people who are interested in the effects advertisements have on children. There are particually interesting examples of food advertisements in relation to children.

• Dimana Petkova The Media and Pornography dimana.wordpress.com

A very interesting blog about high society and pornography. I found this blog interesting because of different examples of pornography and the Palyboy. Surly, I recommend to visit this blog.

• Martina Pacaiova Women and Advertising http://womenandadvertising-unyp.blogspot.com/

This blog talks about little and young girls and the negative influence of media. There are examples related to make up and young girls as well as different portrayals of famous media. I recommend this blog to everyone, especially those who have little sisters, and those who have children

• Eva Ravingerova Media Violence and Children http://ravoska.wordpress.com/

Does violence influence children? This blog tells us! On this blog, I found interesting information about the effects of violence in children behaviour and thinking.

• Zhazira Alikhanova Media and Eating Disorders http://zhazira.wordpress.com/

Zhazira's blog talks about one of the most important issues nowadays. The blog examines eating disorders of women and it shows pictures of extremely thin women. I strongly recommend this blog to girls who think that they should loose weight to look more like some stars...

Technological Invasion Through Media

Technological invasion is no longer strange for our society. Media used to present technology as a part of the social growth and improvement. Nowadays technology has become rather a threat for our society because of the massive technological incensement. The media itself has become virtual and ‘unreal’, only a few original media aspects have survived such as print press and magazines, the rest has become technological. Media has lost its previous duties, such as to inform the public in an objective and natural way. Nowadays the society is influenced and motivated for technology in almost every aspect of the media, may it be advertisements about technology, news, shows, stories or the actual practicing of technology through media.
Technology has always played an important role in human life. Ever since the times when humans were using such primitive objects as stick and rock, but this was a type of technology to survive during the Stone Age. Nowadays technology was invented to make our life easier but it developed extremely fast, and now it is almost controlling our life. For example, the advertisements that are presented to us every day, every minute seem normal to us. We do not even recognize anymore how much they influence our life’s and our thinking, because of the advertisements we build our opinions, we buy things and spend money for objects we do not even need because we have been influenced by media in our sub consciousness.
An object created through technological invasion is the robot. The word Robot, has first occurred in the year 1920, in a play written by the Czech writer Karel Capek, called the R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). This play is about a world, where robots are first created to help and simulate people, make their life easier, but at the end robots form their own group and begin a war against humans. (capek.misto). Even though this is a play based on imagination, we can see the idea about a threat and danger rising from technological development and inventions such as robots, which will be so intelligent in the future that they would reach the level of abilities of a human beings. This example can be related to the paragraph above: first technology was developed to make human life easier but now it has become controlling and rather a threat.
Is media portrayal of technological development a method through industrialization and automation, which will, when implied to the society, lead to freedom of people and no more need for manual work? Decrease of manual work, less working hours, better and easier work conditions and everything automatic, these were the main ideas and targets of technological development in terms of work that appeared often during the last years in the media. However, already in the past, with the first modernizations and automation protests have started, as people were afraid to loose their jobs, when robots and machines were taking over their place. In today’s world, due to the influence of mechanization, there is less manual work than in the past, however more soul working is demanded from employees and positions of manual workers have changed, since less workers are needed with the help of technology. We can sat that technological development does not lead to the freedom of individual, but on the other hand to the creation of new pressure and social control, which is again a negative invention ‘supported’ by the media.
The mass media and the technological development is having greater speed every year and since society is unable to keep up, there is no control over such development. This creates many threats and potential dangers as technology is uncontrollably taking a more and more powerful position in our society while being supported by the media, and the people are becoming more and more dependent on technology, without even realizing it.

Works Cited
• Zunt, Domenik. “Who did actually invent the word "robot" and what does it mean?”. 1998-2004.
Ceska Verze. 6 Jan. 2008
http://capek.misto.cz/english/robot.html
• Marson, Ingrid. “Media and technology 'won't merge'”. 2 Jan. 2008.
• http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,39251719,00.htm
• Norma, Don. “Robots in the Home: What Might They Do?” Don Norman’s jnd.org.
25 Nov. 2007
http://jnd.org/dn.mss/robots_in_the_h.html
• Transhumanismus. “Ecological Challenge: Technological Development is Becoming a Threat”. Transhumanism. 21 Jan. 2005. Transhumanismus. 26 Nov. 2007
http://www.transhumanismus.cz/blog.php?time=050124
• Smolikova, Dagmar. “The Biggest Wealth”. 24 Nov. 2007 Sedma Generace.
http://www.sedmagenerace.cz/index.php?art=clanek&id=279
• Svrsek, Jiri. “Nanotechnology and Social Transformation”. 28 – 29 Sept. 2000.
Natura. 24 Nov. 2007.
www.natura.baf.cz/nature/2005/1/120050103.html

Pages to Visit

http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2005/4/28/technologyTakingOverHumanFunctions

This internet page examines the problems that develop through technological invasion. The technology is taking over people’s job and through this people in our society start to loose their positions and jobs because they have been taking over by machines. Especially endangered positions are those of journalists, salespersons and people in the mid-income range. I recommend to visit this page in order to get an idea about one of the largest problems that is taking over our society. If technological invasion will continue the same way as now, millions of people will loose their jobs.

http://capek.misto.cz/english/robot.html

What is a robot? And where does this word actually come from?
This page tells us about the history of the word ‘ROBOT’. Since a robot is one of the highest developments of technology, it is important to understand the sense it was used before, and how it is used and understood now. This page involves interesting information of the actual, first meaning of the name ‘Robot’, which was a play and rather a illusion in contrast what it has become ourdays.

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~krystles/NegativeEffects.html

This is a homepage concerning iPod technology. It involves different aspects explaining what an iPod is and its negative and positive aspects. This page also presents how the iPod is influencing our behaviour, thinking, and how the society has changed since the invention of the iPod. I recommend this page especially to young people who own an iPod; after reading this page, people will maybe think a little about their lifestyle. About how their lives have changed since the MP3 player, if they really communicate less, and if yes, then why?

Warding off Negative Impact of Technology

This article examines the overall negative impact of technology concerning our society and culture. Experts and professionals who came together in a three-day conference involving the opinion of students were discussing the issue concerning the impact of technology. Throughout this article the issue of technology’s effect on education is discussed, the experts claim that technology is booming and developing incredibly fast and that our society might not be able to follow. The expert Shaikh Mahyan states “ As the conference clearly demonstrates, worldwide trends in technology and communication pose serious challenges for the development of our educational system. Mahyan claims that even if one is trying to keep the distance from technology and live his/her life on a natural basis, it is really difficult to do so because technology is ‘catching’ us in every part of our life’s. “It is impossible to stay isolated from the rest of the world”. This statement means that even if we would try to ‘isolate’ our selves from the world – the technology world, it would be very hard or even ‘impossible’.
This is only one out of many themes concerning technology and how it has taken the control of our society but shouldn’t we be the ones controlling the ‘robot’?
http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/05/02/20/152737.html

The Impact of Home Computer Use on Children’s Activities and Development

This article discusses the issue how computer technology can affect and change the life’s of children. In fact computer technology can affect the children negatively; computer games or violent videos can lead to a violent behavior or depression.
The first paragraph of this articles talks about the negative changes in children’s minds and how the children can become passive through electronics. “Initial research suggests, for example, that access to computers increases the total amount of time children spend in fron of television or computer screen at the expense of other activities, thereby putting them at risk for obesity.” This quota explains that children start to spend more and more time in front of television or their computer’s and through this they start loosing the relationship to real people and an active lifestyle.
The information presented in the second article presents statistics supporting the claim of technologies (computers) negative influence. “…recent survey data show that increased use of the Internet may be linked to increases in loneliness and depression.” While the children start developing Internet relationships, they often forget the real life around them. Their lives are greatly affected by their new virtual life, through this they start loosing the sense of real communication and this can lead to the feeling of depression or loneliness.
This article represents the data of our societies children. It shows the high impact computer technology can have on us, the negative impact. Technology can be helpful in many ways but nowadays it has become too controlling. Technology is influencing our behavior, our thinking and our mind in a terrifying negative way.
http://www.futureofchildren.org/information2826/information_show.htm?doc_id=69826

The Phenomenon – iPod-

The iPod is the 21st century’s generation Cd player. However, the only feature these two technologies have in common is: they play music. The iPod is smaller, needs no Cd’s, hase its own memory and is louder than our ears can hear.
The iPod was invented as a new generation MP3 player, nevertheless it has become a ‘cult’, and now a great number of people fear that the iPod can couse and actually is causing a damage upon our society. From one side it can be seen that the iPod is ‘helping’ us to ‘protect’ ourselves from the unwished society and happenings around us; if we do not want to listen to other people or if we do not want to get involved, we stuck the little white ‘buttons’ into our ears and its done: we have our privacy but is this really as esay and harmless as it sounds? No. The technology of our century, especially the iPod, separates us from the society. We stop talking to people, the communication decreases and through this we become passive and isolated while this little mechanism is often damaging our ears due to extreme high volume.
The isolation and damage of our health is not the only negative aspect. Since the iPod is owned by mostly young people such as teenagers and even children, it opens gates that were prohibited before, for example, downloading of porn and horror movies, and different other access opportunities that were not of great importance before the iPod era.
These times the iPod has become an important part of our day’s technology, and positive as well as negative impacts. The negative impact becomes more obvious because of the society’s extreme use. The advertisements through media, our friends and Hollywood have a greater impact on us than we think. Technology can be useful, helpful, and it can indeed make our lives easier but if we get ‘bombed’ with technology everywhere, we loose the sense of ‘having enough’, and this can be dangerous.

Computer Influence on Human Health

The fact that computers can harm a human’s life has been announced. There was an analytical research prepared and exercised where the negative affect on human body through such technology as computers was announced.
The first paragraph of this research talks about the massive use of computers and the fact that they can be found in almost every person’s life; may it be school, home, work, airport, city center etc. The fact that computers play an important role in our lives, starting from kindergarten till pension, is the reason why this research was made. It was important to find out the effect that this technology has on the human body, since most of the time we are working or close to this mechanism.
In the second paragraph the researchers were concentrating on the affect a computer has on those people who have to work every day in front of the computer. The positions examined were: secretary, different management positions, government, police, teacher’s and the most harmful position – the internet/computer operator position. 5t was found that in Germany the operator position is one that endangers a person’s health particularly. “…In Germany operator work is included in the list of the 40 most harmful for the health works and in accordance with the prescribed rules the work at the monitor should not exceed 50% of the working time.”
The intense work in front of a computer not only harms physical and psychological development of a person, especially children, it also decreases physical health and it even causes illness. The researchers found out that: “70-75% of all users which routinely work at the monitor screen have problems with the eyesight.” Of course eyes are not the only body part that becomes ‘damaged’. Computers can negatively affect also brain cells, the back, hands and even inner organs.
I believe that this research happened only because of the fact that our society is becoming more and more affected by technology. Our society has become more technological than ever before; computers and other technologies are used extremely often, and through this they have started to have a negative impact on human bodies and health.

http://library.thinkquest.org/C0123325/comput.htm

Hands and Writing: A Digital Sample