Week 0

5.1

Email/text (communication digitally): This allows a lot of people to contact each other from almost anywhere in the world. From digital communication, people don’t have to wait to send mail or have to go talk to people face to face anymore. A downside of this is that this allows people too easily to just stay home and not talk to people in person. This can also be dangerous to some people if, for example, a child is talking to a stranger.

Self-driving cars: This can be very convenient for people as they won’t have to be manually driving the car, allowing them to maybe pay attention to something else. This also may make the roads safer, as this will prevent bad drivers or drunk drivers. A downside of this is that the car may malfunction and possibly put other people on the road in danger.

GPS (stuff like google maps): GPS allows people to easily navigate to places without needing to know where they are. They can also determine how long it may take them and how far the location they are going to is. However, a downside of this is that people may be too reliant on this, and if this doesn’t work in a certain location, then the people will have no idea where to go.

2. I also tend to play video games a lot, though not nearly as much as the person described. I’ve been able to control myself a lot better than before. This has sometimes affected me in school, causing me to be more distracted from my school work and causing me to get poorer grades than I had initially hoped for.

5.2

Computers help people empower themselves as computers allow people to pursue their interests and allow them to communicate with people who may have similar interests all across the world.
Someone can empower someone else by just talking to them about whatever or helping them realize their interests and develop them. This can be done at Del Norte through the many clubs at the school. There are clubs for many interests, with some being culture clubs, where people who are similar in this way can empower each other.
Red tape can block digital empowerment. Especially in places where the internet is heavily limited. This can be seen at Del Norte sometimes, where I’ve tried to look for coding help on certain websites, but they were blocked by the internet. But, this can especially be seen in some countries where the country doesn’t want its citizens to access certain websites or parts of the internet.