Blog Post 12

Our assignment for Blog Post 12 was to come up with an assignment, and to do it. I came across this blog this early Saturday morning, and found it intriguing. So... Read A Different View from the Top of the World. After reading, compose a post on your own blog and share your thoughts on the matter.

Here are mine:

Just recently, Mount Everest has entered the 21 Century. A telecom company based in Nepal has set up antennas at the base of the mountain. Hmm, here is a thought. No place is safe from technology. As we grow, technologically, at exponential rates, our lives as we know it are changing.

The con:

What ever happened to taking a break from the world. At one point, people would disconnect their house phones to stay out of reach with the world, turning off their televisions and radios to find peace of mind. Now we can't even take a hike up the tallest mountain in the world without getting calls. Is the world in that much need of being able to contact you at any and every minute, at any and every place. Pretty soon, dead zones will be the new vacation spots. When you are having a bad day, alone time with yourself is the best way to "center your chi" (or creating the free flow of energy within the body to be in a perfectly harmonious state between yourself and the universe.) I guess I could've used the term "mellow out" but all in all, it essentially means the same thing. There is too much negativity in the media, we all just need a vacation to forget our troubles, and now, we can't even climb Mount Everest without the possibilities of someone calling to ruin our time of peace.

The pro:

However, I do feel that being able to share, in real time, with people your accomplishment of climbing Mount Everest is astonishing! Although we cannot experience the climber's feeling of achievement, we can see what he sees at the top, which is way cool! This would surely inspire me to visit one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. We used to only have satellite images of this wonder, then if we were lucky enough to know someone who climbed the mountain, their pictures. Now we can experience the view first-and-a-half handedly. First hand being actually experiencing it, Second hand being learning about it from someone who did experience it, and my term, "first-and-a-half hand" experiencing it simultaneously without really being there. It would also be easier for an exhausted climber to call out for help in the case of an emergency.

I have mixed feelings about the newly installed antennas. I guess with the way this world is moving, turning off the house phones (if any one still has them), turning off cell phones, computers, TVs, and radios is the only way to escape reality... Pretty soon they will create water resistant phones, and install antennas at the bottom of the ocean (surely after devising a craft that can take them there) and we can make calls (provided phone companies devise an app for translating the water-talk), send text, upload our twitter, facebook, and any other social network we are in tune with, all from underwater... Okay, so maybe the latter won't happen, but anything is possible. We went from a world of rubbing stones and sticks together to create fire, to writing letters, to sending texts through the air, to now being able to stream live video from the top of the world. Cave men surely would be astounded by today's establishments and capabilities