I used to participate in call kinds of performing arts within my middle school to high school experience. However, I was never really the outgoing type. Before starting my art hobby, I always had problems communicating with others and I lacked the social skills it took to have a conversation. Although sometimes I still have some moments in which I see that trait within myself, I’ve come a long way from then and the only thing I have to thank for that Is art, specifically theater arts.

From “What video games have to teach us about learning”, I took the topic at hand and kind of applied it to my real life. In the introduction of the text (Page 9), James Gee says “So, then, what determines how you read or think about some particular
thing? Certainly not random chemicals or electrical events in your brain, although you do most certainly need a brain to read or think. Rather, what determines this is your own experiences in interacting with other people who
are members of various sorts of social groups” which I thought was a fascinating thing to say. Previously on the topic of discourse, we covered that certain discourse communities can have an impact on your speech, mannerisms and overall ways of life. Comparing this to my own, I’ve found that acting has made me more social being that I was forced to be on a stage and communicate with other actors/actresses in order to actually succeed. Not only has it made me more social, but it’s made me emotionally intelligent. In my high school major, I was practically putting myself in the shoes of others since I began. This gave me a better understanding of how other people feel which led to better communication between myself and people in general.

Although I am not able to relate much with this text, I can see the point that James Gee was trying to convey when speaking about he influence that games have on our learning and how discourse communities can go hand and hand with how we, as humans, pick up new talents and skills.

Carr makes an amazingly great illustration of how clocks and the internet molded humans and how technology tends to facilitate this molding. The fact there is no real technological advance between Google and GPT is often not realized today. This ignorance leads to confusion about GPT molding humans. GPT is to Google what Command+F is to a website. It simply acts as a magnifying glass on whatever is thought of as pertinent information. Many people forget that the distinction between pertinent and impertinent cannot be made without a deep analysis of the text. GPT and Google necessarily bring analysis minus the depth. Carr cited Socrates and Plato’s eloquently translated prediction of the consequences of writing “‘[people would] receive a quantity of information without proper instruction… [and] be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant'” (12). GPT will almost certainly bring more of the ignominious type Socrates referred to, but there is no real technological or literary advancements in GPT, and thus there will be no real molding as a result of GPT.