Final Paper

Mormonism and Technology by amandajazz

Technology and Religion

Back in the day Religion was more "you must attend church if you are a true christian." Now days it is a little different, or a lot different. Technology and religion seem to depend on each other in some sense. Now that may be a little contradicting for some religions. Some religions, like Catholicism, have always had the "do not get caught up in materialistic things" idea about them. However, that seems to be changing along with technology. Most, most being almost all, churches across the globe use some form of technology to promote, educate, or recruit. Whether it be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Web sites, Dating sites, etc. I am doing my paper on Mormonism and how the Mormon religion gets its word and information out to people through technology. (broad explanation) So I decided to search for Mormon twitter account and 10 different accounts showed up, was I surprised, not even a little bit. As I have been researching, I have noticed that unlike some religions, Mormonism portrays itself in the 2000's very well. What I mean by that is, they have a lot of modern ways of connecting with people to educate them on Mormonism, for example, on Mormon.org they offer a free Book of Mormon. Anyone who is newly looking into Mormonism will just at this first hand. 

This is just a small example of now technology and religions collide now a days but it is interesting to see all the religions out there on the web and how they are utilizing Twitter, Instagram and other social media sites to interest users. 

Paper idea

For my paper I was thinking about writing on Mormonism (or a specific religion) and talk about the different ways that religion is promoting and/or recruiting using technology. For example, web site pages, Twitter accounts, Instagram accounts, blogs etc. Is this the route we are supposed to be going for our papers? 

Web URL

http://jazz2208.neocities.org

Windows will Shut Down Facebook Messenger?

I found this article that Windows will shut down Facebook Messenger and it caught my attention instantly. Even though this article, and the message provided by Facebook does not provide much information, it is still interesting as to why the app will be shutting down for Windows users. The message provided by Facebook is the screen shot below.

I hope more information on this issue will be provided before or prior to the shut down. The article states that the news of the shut down comes three days after a statement had been made that Facebook and Windows were working together to make Facebook Messenger accessible to Windows users and not just Android and Apple users. 

http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2014/02/26/facebook-messenger-windows-will-shut-march-3/#!xKp0n

"Generation Why?"

This article was very interesting to me for a number of reasons, but one that stood out to me the most was the idea of people living behind a Facebook wall. The argument between why Facebook was created and what it is actually doing to us is the articles major concern. Facebook was created to connect people and give basic information about each other to stay connected. That sounds great on paper, but the reality of it is there are so many other ways of staying connected with people and being actual real life friends with people that sitting behind a computer and saying you're staying in touch with them. I thought it was interesting that the article also said that Zuckerberg thinks personal trivia is what "friendship" is. That suggestion may have single handedly changed my perspective on Facebook.

I was an avid Facebook user back when I was in high school (2006-2010) when it was very easy to use and a new thing so every body was using it. I loved it at first, but then it got old, quick. As soon as new features were added I stopped using it all together. There was always a lot of hype about Facebook in school such as Who was where, with who? or Who was dating who? or Who broke up for the 6th time? That is when I started to realize how much Facebook was controlling and/or ruining real life relationships. Teens were overly using this site and essentially ruining their real life friendships, which was super sad to me.

I cannot say I completely agree with the article in the fact that I believe the initial concept of Facebook was great, but the way we turned it around and started using it to basically "creep" on people and "stay in touch" with them through a computer really made me not want to use it anymore. I say "stay in touch" because do we really stay in touch with people, or do we just look at their information provided, pictures, and where they are working and say we are keeping in touch with them? http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/25/generation-why/?pagination=false

Google: For the choosing self

Google completely caters to the choosing self. One of the many things Google does extremely well is that they make the user feel special as they use Google. For example, on my birthday, the Google title was customized into a birthday font and when I moved my curser over the title, "Happy Birthday Amanda" popped up in a little window. As a Google user, I thought this was awesome, and it made me think about the extra miles Google actually does go to insure a positive experience for Google users.  

Not only does Google customize pages, they also customize searches for the user based on their past search history. Google is the most used search engine for these obvious reasons.