The Countdown

Matt Sorteberg and Pat Salvas
ICM 501
Fall 2008
Professor Halavais

Minutes after the polls closed on the 2008 New Hampshire Primaries, ABC News had questions posted on Facebook asking users what they had wished the candidates had spent more time on. In the wake of one of the biggest news events of this past decade, a major network’s news bureau was picking the brains of the world’s largest social network users; a clear indication of where priorities have shifted in today’s technologically-based society. Facebook has, without a doubt, reshaped today’s youth’s perspective on socialization and what it means to connect with people. It has created a centralized location on the Internet that allows people to meet, stay in contact or just follow from afar. Using its own terminology, it has created a skewed sense of reality among its users of what friendship really is; toeing a very precarious line of altering human interaction altogether. Some might argue that this theory may be a harsh reaction to a worldwide network, but there is little doubt that this website has changed the way we value our friends.

Facebook started in the spring of 2004 by a student at Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg. His idea was to create a site that could allow students at the Ivy League institution to connect online and share stories and personal information. In the nearly five years since the creation of the site, more than 120 million people have created profiles, building the fifth most visited site in the world. This network is more than just an online location; it is a society within a society. Wall posts, messages and pokes are all part of the language of this society. They all add their own touch to the interaction between users. Through these social interactions have come a new set of unspoken rules and codes revolving around what is and what is not appropriate.

The first, and most perhaps most striking, change in Facebook’s effects on socialization surrounds the idea of what being a friend really is. A friend is defined as one attached to another by affection or esteem (Merriam-Webster Online). Does this relate to the world of cyber friends, where communication can go the entirety of the relationship without ever talking or meeting face-to-face? It really does depend on whom you ask. However, the old ways of thinking about friendship have morphed into a new set of beliefs thanks in large part to the workings of Facebook and social networking.

Now that we have established a new set of standards surrounding the interaction of friends on the site, there is the issue of technology helping to shape friendship. We are at a crossroads in our society. Having developed so much technology has made the world a much smaller place. In doing so, though, we have almost eliminated the quickness and ease that previous technological advances have given society. The phone was once the pinnacle of communication; allowing people to communicate instantly with one another to share information or just see how someone was doing. Then came the cell phone and people were able to talk with anyone they like almost anywhere in the world. Instant access to people was the key in those; people’s ability to reach and connect with anyone and accomplish something through a conversation changed the world. However, we now rely on text messages, instant messages and Facebook wall postings and messages to relay information to companions. It is in this change in mediums that we can see that instantaneousness slip away. All these tools allow users to send messages instantly, but are often answered at the leisure of the individual. Time has been eliminated as a factor in friendship, we don’t use our phones to call, we use them to text and we use Facebook wall postings and messages as a means of finding out information that we could easily get with a phone call. By sending a message through the site, it says that it is not too urgent as it would require an instant response. The likelihood that someone is sitting at their computer ready to answer it the second it comes through is negated by the fact that there is a taboo of answering in a timely fashion so as not to appear to be sitting around waiting.

An importance on the number of friends one has and the way one uses the network is weighted more than the actual bonds cultivated on the site. In Vincent Miller’s “New Media, Networking and Phatic Culture”, he makes a case that:

“Social networking profiles push the networking practice to the forefront by placing more prominence on friends and links to others than the text being produced by the author. Where the blog had links to others either on a fairly anonymous list of hyperlinks on one side of the front page, or on a separate profile page MySpace, Facebook and other networking sites give much more space to friends (including pictures) and thereby much more visual prominence on the profile at the expense of textual material” (Miller, 390).

He alludes to the blog in this passage, showing the difference between social networking as a means of sharing quick snippets of personal information with the world and blogging as a means to try and share ideals or viewpoints with the world. This is a subtle backhanded-smack against the social networking establishment, claiming that its presence on the web is not as significant as other means of personal expression. An individual telling the world who their favorite band is does not carry the same weight as explaining why they are what the reasons for choosing them are; it has become a place to list titles and names rather than a true expression of one’s self. Miller is saying that Facebook is not a place of individuality, but, rather a place to fit in and conform in the grand, overlaying theme of the network.

Facebook and other social networks have created a “Database Culture” (Miller, 393). The idea of creating profiles as just listing interests illustrates the idea that there is a lack of personal expression to one’s page. The most important list of all is the list of friends that a page is truly based around. Although often relegated to the side of the page, the whole point of the network is to connect and link to other people’s profiles. Friends are now numbers on the side of a list inside of another list.
The human contact that was essential to the bonds of friendship are now lost in the cyber reality of Facebook friends. No longer is a required task to stay in contact with people once considered friends as Facebook’s “friend” title has created a system when friends are always friends as long as a network connection still exists. The old expression “quality, not quantity” is completely wasted on social networking sites that place the importance on the amount of friends, rather than the legitimate connections that are kept going through the site. Miller argues that people are comforted by the greater number of friends they have; the larger the network, the more secure the individual (393).

Social networking has placed more importance on status than the connection. Prior to Facebook, the most popular kids in school were the ones who talked to and, seemingly, knew everyone they passed in the hall. Now, it is about a number in parenthesis on the left side of their personal profile. In Christine Rosen’s “What Are Facebook Friends For?”, she poses the idea that the accepting of friends on Facebook translates to one of the most basic social human trait: the desire to be accepted by others. There is instant gratification in being notified that, yes, someone likes you enough to create a link between you and them for the whole world to see. Today’s society is so celebrity-based, where the masses are told to worship these people for being beautiful and popular, that Facebook allows individuals to show the world just how popular they are by collecting as many friends as they can. It is in this that the root of social issues.

People are expected to now have two sets of social lives to be considered ‘normal’ in our emerging technological culture. In many colleges and high schools, there are two sets of kids: those with and those without Facebook. However, those without a profile are not immediately shunned for their inability to sync up with the rest of their peers (although, they are probably judged initially for not having it until making their reasons known). Like the motorcycle riding, leather jacket wearing rebels of previous generations, those without Facebook are seen as going against the grain, a trait that many can appreciate as individualistic. That idea is ironic in that Facebook is supposed to create an individual identity online inside of this network. More importantly, how can we have real friends without having that assurance of having them as our friends on Facebook? It’s a question that keeps many adolescence up at night. Paul Kita’s editorial “Facebook brings social interaction online” touches on this idea when his fictional character asks another about not having Facebook, saying, “‘Dude, you’re not on Facebook?’ I receive questions like that along with a look like I might have a touch of Chinese Bird Flu, ‘Like, how am I supposed to talk to you?’”. Today’s youth and even many middle-aged Americans are feeling pressure to have cyber identities that match up with their actual persona.

Dual identities are one of the many things that are clear indications that society is placing on technological interactions. It has become evident that just knowing someone personally is not good enough anymore. People must be friends with them online. And the truly funny thing about all of this is that these lists of favorite bands or TV shows or movies may tell us more about each other than we actually do. There has become a certain comfort level that has come with Facebook in recent years. Individuals need not worry anymore about the social awkwardness of meeting someone, rather with the simple friend add, the personal information that can spark a conversation is laid out. So, in essence, Facebook is a road map to easier face-to-face contact. All the tools to a pleasant conversation are given; it is just in how you use it that determines the successfulness of the idea. However, it is not used in this way, for the most part. Rather it is used as a means to maintain strictly Internet based relationships.

With multiple levels of personal interactions, there is evidence that Facebook has created another level of society where people can act however they want without any fear of repercussions on their actual identity. Facebook has created such a detailed platform for users, that it is very possible to live an online, social networking alias. For instance, if someone wanted to legally change their name and identity, they could very well do so and go on living their real life under their new identity. But, what if that person wanted to live as their previous identity via Facebook? With the features that the site offers, that could be a viable option. The individual could converse with “friends” through messages, wall posts and even live chat. He or she could post pictures and update personal information under this new name and create all the background that comes along with it. Needless to say, it would be quite easy to portray a life lived through Facebook that is actually entirely false. Now, who’s to determine whether this action is right or wrong? More importantly, what does this say about the level of social interaction in our society today?

This scenario depicts a very real and scary situation that comes about with all the facets of Facebook in the hands of its users. If people are supposed to use the aforementioned lists of personal information to get to know someone, how are they supposed to feel when they are duped by fake information? Facebook has taken the steps to prevent fake names from being used on the site as a means to make sure that things are get as real as possible, but how can they determine what is real and what is fake based on personal listings? This system has created that lack of personal interaction that could allow this fraudulent friendship to occur. Today’s society has, to some extent, accepted this practice as okay. It is seen as comical to view a friend’s profile page with a fake name or outrageous comments posted under different headings. However, this is only funny to those who know the personal well enough to know that it was a joke. If a person was to take the information as truth and use it in a face-to-face setting and, subsequently, was called out for not knowing it was actually fake, this would create an incredibly awkward situation. This is the antithesis of what Facebook’s original purpose was designed for.

When examined closely, Facebook is nothing more than a collection of regions that come together to make one larger overlapping network. Schools and companies beget regions and regions beget the entire network as a whole. Individuals are instantly put into an area where they have something in common with a large number of people. This helps with that desire of seeking acceptance almost as soon as one signs up as you are tabbed to be like others in that same regional network. From this, individuals now have the option of taking part in one of the oldest applications on the site: groups. These groups are where people can come together with a common ideal or goal. Just like having a greater number of friends reassures people of their worth in social circles, being part of a group (being a number: 8 of 1,104 members showing for example) makes the user feel that they are a part of something important. The more groups someone is “in”, the more they feel accepted as they can connect with more and more people through group wall postings, even with people they aren’t necessarily “friends” with.

To claim that such feelings do not exist is no longer an option. Facebook is not just a place to share information; it is a place to seek acceptance and reassurance that what you as the user are doing is normal. That student who feels rejected at school can always come back and connect with someone around the world that is going through the same problems or issues normally associated with teenage angst. The same can be said about the popular kids at school who are a part of the network. When they log on, what is to say that once they leave their real social circle and enter the global network, they are not ridiculed? People want to belong, even in a pseudo-friends network. So they seek that acceptance in their comfort zone, rarely straying from the things they like in the “real world”. This way they are not exposed to new things and they can still maintain that appearance of ignorance to what makes people different. The Internet has given the world the ability to come together and find common ideas and viewpoints, if not to educate others on why people act the way they do or believe what they do. Facebook allows people to do this on a social level, but it appears that this is not the case as many users stick to their own personal interests, straying from the option to learn about what makes others different.

In a few short years, Facebook has grown from a phenomenon to a standard in socialization. The site claims it, “gives people the power to share and makes the world more open and connected” (Facebook). It does so by demanding new social standards of its more than 120 million users. Now, the idea of Facebook as a centralized location is becoming even more relevant as the site is beginning to sync up with other networking sites. Instead of going to many different sites to accomplish numerous tasks, someone will only have to go to Facebook and be able to perform all the same tasks. This covers the ease of the situation, but it also harps back on that idea that people are not required to interact with as many people as before. By eliminating the amount of locations, people will interact with fewer and fewer other people as they are able to perform all the tasks in one location that used to take them to multiple websites.

The world today is very different than the one the “Baby-Boomer Generation” grew up with. Gone are the days of the malt shop and sock hops, replaced by television and internet entertainment. Today’s youth are under more pressure to succeed and move on to better things because society has developed so greatly in terms of information that it has afforded them this opportunity. However, while creating a system for greater intellectual growth, there is a decline in social ability. Kids are facing pressure to be even cooler and fit in with their peers even more. Facebook has not only dehumanized social interaction by standardizing many connections through web-based communications, but it has also changed the definition of friendship. Emphasis is put on how many “friends” one has, rather than how good of friends the people are. As a society, we don’t talk to each the same way. The site’s terminology has seeped into our sub consciousness and changed the way we act with one another. The exchange of phone numbers used to be the standard act for people interested in making connections with others. Now, that has shifted to friending someone on Facebook, poking them, sending them messages and writing on their walls. We have lost the simple ability to talk to one another. We now have the ability to write, revise and rework what we want to say to someone, instead of shooting from the hip and saying what we mean right away. Instant interaction has been replaced by the ability to manipulate what we want to say, much the way public relations people can spin something in their favor.

In the waning days of 2008, individual interaction has been boiled down to a series of keystrokes. Too much emphasis has been placed on a site designed originally to bring people together. There is no doubt that this site has done something to that extent, but in doing so it has moved in a different direction (unintentionally, we hope) that has created a more group-oriented way of communicating with one another. Facebook has made people feel secure in conversing with others in a non-threatening manner that may suit some better than others, but in the long run will make people far less likely to be able to communicate effectively face-to-face than previous generations. In all of this, we have lost personal connections, face time and our identity. Instead, we settle for slow, less personal, but more self-assuring means of communicating that may have cost us the most important thing we have ever had: our humanity. Is that too harsh a judgment for what began as a simple social networking site? Time will tell. It is in the hands of the users and their ability to separate reality from Facebook reality.

Works Cited

Arrington, Michael. “Biggest Battle Yet For Social Networks: You, Your Identity And Your Data On The Open Web”. Tech Crunch. November 30, 2008. http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/30/facebook-google-myspace-data/. December 1, 2008.

“Facebook”. November 24, 2008. http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/facebook?ref=pf. December 9, 2008

“Facebook Application Allows Users To Join 2008 Election fever”. Turks.US: Daily World EU News. January 18, 2008. http://www.turks.us/article.php?story=FacebookApplicationAllowsUsersToJo. December 1, 2008.

“Friend”. Merriam-Webster Online. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/friend[1]. December 1, 2008.

“Global Top Sites”. http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global〈=none. November 23, 2008.

Gray, Louis. louisgray.com.“Facebook Still Banning Aliases to Avoid Becoming Fakebook”. July. 2008. http://louisgray.com/live/2008/07/facebook-still-banning-aliases-to-avoid.html

Kita, Paul. College Media Network. “Facebook Brings Social Interaction Online”. October 2005. http://media.www.alestlelive.com/media/storage/paper351/news/2005/10/04/Editorial/Facebook.Brings.Social.Interaction.Online-1008756.shtml

Miller, Vincent. “New Media, Networking and Phatic Culture”. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. 2008.

Noble, Alan. Christ and pop Culture. “Your Life in 12 Words”. November. 2007. http://www.christandpopculture.com/television/your-life-in-12-words-or-less-the-dehumanizing-effect-of-facebook-profiles-personal-ads-and-eulogies/. November 23, 2008.

Orland, Kat. “Interview with Chris Hughes of Facebook”. 2006. http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0/interview/facebook/2006. November 28, 2008.

Rosen, Christen. Alternet. “What are Facebook Friends For?”. November. 2007. http://www.alternet.org/story/66615?page=entire. December 1, 2008.

Sorry we could not make it tonight. Both Matt and I had prior engagements that took us away from joining in on all the fun, but c’est la vie. Below is the video presentation of our final project. Sorry for the audio levels being really bad, but that’s the best I could do.

The main point of our paper is that we want to shed light on the changing landscape of human interaction based on social networking sites like Facebook. We think that Facebook has taken human contact out of many of the necessary interactions that youths usually have in developing in adolescents.

In the same type of mold, we think that these types of sites have begun to redefine what it is to be a friend to today’s youth. Facebook has changed the definition of what friends are and has made two separate categories of friendship: one that is for real friends and one that pertains to those friends made through the social networking sites.

Again, we are sorry for missing out, but we had some stuff that had to be done.

In the 60 Minutes clip, two very important issues were brought to light for me. The first being that we now have tapped into the power of the mind as a means to control technology created by man. That made me think that if this is used a much wider scale in the future, what will happen to the term artificial intelligence. If we create products that we actually use our own minds to control, then what will the computer mind then become? We now have the capability to create programs that learn and adapt to react in different ways based on previous actions. However, now it is becoming possible to use our own minds, which then might alter the way we create future types of artificial intelligence in computers.

Also, the fact that the computer can read the mind in very basic ways through waves emitted through the brain was impressive, but the woman’s ability to control things directly with her mind was something completely new. It is this type of technology that is the wave of the future. It could open a lot of doors for people in that the same situation and are trapped in their bodies, but still have sharp minds and are able to use the power of their minds to mold with technology to create this sort of advancement.

The TED presentation made me rethink some of the ways that we go about creating new technology. The man presenting said something that really sparked something inside of me into thinking something that I never had really thought about before. He spoke of creating technology as a means to stand apart from others. He illustrated this with the video of the woman screaming into that contraption. This is a representation of making something that sets her apart from other people, rather than using something that others have as a means to fit in.

Building on that idea of independence in technology, he spoke of the kids in some third-world countries. In doing so, he spoke of their desire to create technology to set themselves apart from other people in the villages and towns. Because they do not have the technology as readily available as we do they value the chance to work with technology as a means to create some sort of identity. This video was not as ‘earth –shaking’ as the first, but it did make me think more that if the individual creates their own technology then it would have far more meaning in beginning to define who they are as an individual, rather than just adhering to the trends of the current market place and using the same products as others.

In Rheingold’s piece, he discusses the changing landscape of the global market with an emphasis on the mobile aspects of technology. This medium is definitely the wave of the future in the way that it allows people to have technology at their fingertips at all times anywhere they are. Having this type of power and ease of information is what is so enthralling and appealing about it. He talks about Finland as a place of great mobile aptitude. I believe this is true because they have created a willingness to accept this new way of communicating. Many people focus on the Japanese and countries more often associated with technology with this type of medium, but the Fins have adapted to make this not only work, but have made significant improvements to their lives.

The mobile phone revolution has also played a role in the development of the internet. In just a few short years we have taken the web from a wire based service to a wireless revolution where there are few limits to the place where we are unable to connect to the rest of the world. The fact that phones could go on the internet has now allowed for us to have wireless cars at 3G speeds at seemingly limitless locations around the world. By creating an almost totally connected world, we as a society has the ability to make decisions that could go into effect almost immediately from across the globe, without so much as saying a word to anyone else. This is something that no one could have seen coming just 20 years ago and it speaks volumes for how far we have come and in the relatively short time in which we have made that journey.

Finally, I had to reevaluate some of my own methods of remembering after reading/hearing about the lifelogging that some people are doing. I have the uncanny ability to remember pointless hockey stats, sports trivia and other otherwise useless, but I cannot remember the little things or phone numbers or anything else like that. This man’s desire to document his life is admirable in that he is documenting it for himself, mainly, but also for other members of his family that may want to know him better or remember him after he is gone.

It lends itself to the idea that people are not just documenting their life, but a period in time for future generations to look at. We have more technology right now than ever before and a lot of this new technology allows us to document what we are doing at this moment in time with a greater amount of ease. There seems to be some obligation to do so then. It is people like Gordon Bell that have taken it upon themselves to do so. Now, whether or not he did so knowingly or not remains to be seen, but he is doing so nonetheless. There always has to be historians who are aware of what happened in the past while at the same time making sure that we are preserving what we are doing now knowing that it too will be history one day. Bell’s methods are one small portion of doing this. It is not the big things that are necessarily imperative because those are documented by so many. But, the little things tell so much about how everyday life actually was and our simple snapshots and blog posts will someday show insight into how we live now.

I don’t know why it took me so long to write a response to the Grey Album discussion from two weeks ago, but I was thinking about it last night and again this morning. It seems that Jay-Z seems to have a lot of these going for him with the best being the collaboration with Linkin Park. Don’t get me wrong, I love HOV just as much as any other white kid from New Hampshire who plays hockey and listens to U2, but it seems that some of Jay-Z’s songs are better when they are mashed with another genre.

Take his song “Encore” for instance. I like the lyrics and the song itself, but the original sucks in comparison to the mashed up versions with LP and the Beatles. Why is that? I mean the lyrics don’t change, but that beat and a mix of familiar music makes it much more appealing than its regular version.

Then, I was thinking what my favorite all-time mashup was and came up with one conclusion: Wonderwall of Broken Dreams. My roommate freshman year used to play it and it caught on pretty quick. I love Oasis and think that Green Day’s American Idiot is an incredible album, so this is a great start. The songs seem to mesh together so effortlessly. The key in this song, though, is to note that there are actually four songs mashed together. Aerosmith’s “Dream On” is used at the end as the Eminem version (which could actually push the total to five), while Travis is also heard in the middle as the bridge.

So, President-Elect Obama can’t have his Blackberry for what reason? Ok, Ok, Ok, I get that no one wants him to have his phone calls picked up over the air. I understand that’s a security issue, but my god man, take away one of the kids or a staffer or don’t let him get the dog! Don’t take the man’s berry away!

Do you think he has the new Storm? I bet he gets it just for a few weeks before he has to give it up just cause hes a genuine badass. I bet he gets it, just because, then he gives it to his daughters and still uses it form time to time just to spite the secret service.

I don’t know what I was thinking when I saw his interview tonight, but when this part came on, I thought ‘He’s the leader of the free world and he can’t have a friggin berry!?!’ I also had no idea that he smoked with cigarettes either, but I respect him more because I feel like he is really a common man now after seeing that.

So, in conclusion: let the man have his Blackberry so I can Blackberry Message him and like it does for high school kids, smoking has made Barack Obama cooler in my eyes.

I am currently writing this post from the hotel of the Burlington, Vt., Sheraton. I kid you not, they don’t have wireless Internet in the rooms; a staple of business hotels in today’s modern go-get-’em world. They charge 10 bucks a day for access in the room and counter that with an impossible-to-figure-out public area wireless system.

So, I have been sitting in the lobby all night working on my game notes for tomorrow game with Michigan State and it got me thinking. Why would i want to sit in the comfort of my own room, working in a private setting with no distractions, when I could be in a public area with people all around me? I think it’s a no-brainer. I mean, who wouldn’t want to write a press release with a hippie wearing flannel and chirping on his cellphone to a buddy about everything from ’sick powder in the White Mountains to time travel (he seriously talked about time travel for five minutes after explaining how he was snowed-in here… there is maybe half an inch outside).

With that all said, I would personally like to commend the Sheraton Hotel for making things extremely easy and convenient in structuring their hotel in a manner which suits 10% of their clientele. Way to go. Awesome job thinking that one through. You would think a hotel in the middle of Nowhere, USA would try and do things so as not piss off the people staying her in the hopes that they come back sometime. But, what do I know? I’m just an interactive communications major.

As we speak… right now… currently… I am blogging about talking about blogging. We are talking about blogging in my 522 class. He asked myself, Matt and Jimmy about blogging and our series of blogs became prevalent in conversation.

So, as I am typing this, I am blogging about me talking about this blog. He just asked about this blog being graded. And then began to openly judge us! I think blogging is something new to him and he is fascinated by it.

He seems to be having fun with all of this. Since he seems a little old fashion in the way information is brought to the people, this new means is something that excites him in the sense of changing the way system. His general attitude seems to be that this is a shakeup in the journalism world that forces professional journalists to be more accurate and on point.

This conversation has made me reevaluate my own blog. I know that I have been a little behind the times, but I told him that I think the reason I am behind is because now that the election is over the news world seems to be less entertaining.

I have to find something that sparks my interest to blog well. This discussion has made me think that there is still a lot for me to talk about in this space. I know now of numerous new topics that I can talk about and that is pretty neat if you ask me.

Is Politico a blog? I’m still unsure.

Matt and I are planning on discussing the role of facebook on how today’s youth view relationships and how they value personal interaction over those built on the social netwroking site. We would like to incorporate multimedia into the presentation of our theory, but done so in such a way that will incorporate the facebook theme.

We have discussed what we think our conclusions will be, but we would like to have a good deal of input from people of all age groups ranging from college to grad school. We want to know how long they have had it and how it has shaped their friendships with others. A lot of people use facebook as a means to stay in touch with those they had previously lost touch with. Without facebook, would they have known that some random girl they went to high school with is now in Dallas with her boyfriend and their shared dog? doubtful, but this site allows for that. If this is a good thing remains to be seen.

In the presentation we also have some ideas that will force an interaction between the members of the class, while forcing an examination of how peers stay connected since the creation of this one particular social networking site. Also, what has made this one stand out among the others seen all over the internet?

Facebook certainly has had an effect on this generation. However, it reamins to be seen on how much of a role it has played on the social interactions of those who comprise it. We hope by scratching the surface that it will shed some light on the topic, while also forcing us to look at our own usage from the outside.

How did we lose? That guy stole my man Jay’s work! And the Beatles! Have you ever looked into Paul McCartney’s eyes? That look alone would make me not want to steal music. I’m calling bullshit on tonight’s vote.

I never really commented on it before, but the election was a huge deal and I feel that as someone who cares about the goings on in the world, I should make a note of it somewhere. In the Kid’s World, he refers to it in his post as a world-changing event.

It is a time of change and the Kid discusses this chnage at the forefront of his argument. We are a country that demands problems be fixed immediately. We say there is no such thing as a quick fix, yet we demand them all the time.

Obama is someone who might bring change, but we wont know until after a few months or years in office. However, as of right now, this country is completely different socially than it was 40 years ago. Tuesday, Nov. 4, proved that. we have come a long way since MLK and Obama owes a lot to those who paved the way for him to reach the highest office in the world. But it won’t be long before we say that others owe a lot to Obama.

That was the single most important day in American history during my life. 9/11 was a sad day and reshaped foreign policy and the way we are viewed in the world. Obama being elected is a positive and illustrates that we are a nation of understanding people who have shaken off the shackels of past moral ideals.