What Should We Do With Young Criminals?

This is a very delicate subject. 
It is delicate because juveniles can either be treated as an adult, or as a kid, buy where do we draw the line?  If juveniles were to always be judged as kids, then they would abuse of the advantage of being treated more softly, and how can we judge a 15 year old the same as a 3o year old? Isn't the elder suppose to know better than the 15 year old?
These are very important questions, that don't have a specific answer.
Although we watched two videos about different cases in sociology class, one of them left me with anger towards the justice system. The case of Nathan Ybanes and Erik Jensen. I can understand the judgment of Nathan, who strangled her mother to death, but it seemed obvious to me that Erik should not have received the same judgment as him. He had assisted to it, yes, but he practically passed out. He should have been charged for helping his friend hide the evidence, but that's it. He never should have been sentences to life without parole. As his mother mentioned in the documentary, the whole thing happened in only a couple of minutes or even less. Not only was he not in the state of responding to his friends violence, but the rest of his living life will be spent in jail because of it. It was only a couple of minutes. All of this brings up the question, where should the balance be? How should justice handle them? I know it's not a perfect answer, but i honestly believe that it should be taken care of case by case. We can not generalize all of them. We can not sentence a child to life in prison because his act is as bad as an crime that could have been committed by some who is elder. 
I was looking different cases on the web, when I found this page. It gave multiple facts and numbers about this subject. For example,  did you know that 26 percent of released prisoners who were sentenced t an adult prison before the were 18 did not have their 9th grade. ow can someone be judge without even knowing the basic of life (that is supose to be mainly thought at school) and did you also know that in 3 different states, defendants aged 16 or older are automatically judged as adult?
It kind of scared me to know that i live in a world this crazy. If the justice isnt ecactly just, then how can anything be fair?
The Juvenile Deliquents Act was established in 1908. The government had said that they would try to put themself in the shoes of parents, and try to be 'kind'. It's pretty obvious to me that they failed to do so. If you paid attention to Eriks mom, in the same documentary, the pain she has in her eyes when she was speaking of her son, was so present, so obvious and so real, that you almost felt as bad for her then for her son. If the government really had 'put themselves in the shoes of a mother' like her, then she would not be in such a big amount of pain. They failed to protect the ones who need to be protected the most.
The documentary only gave us three examples, but in all of them, the criminal had suffered from abuse, physical, verbal or sometimes both. If a child was traumatized because of what their own parents did, then this kid needs help. If a minor was able to come to the conclusion, that their own parents did not love them enough to treat them properly, then this young mind needs to be helped, and NOT to be locked up. I honestly find it's only common sense, but apparently the ones in charge have voted against this logic. 
I think Canada should learn from the injustices made in the past, in order to have a futur that is fair, and if so many of these delinquents have committed a crime because of their parents behavior, then who's fault is it really on? 

The Impossible Accessible

Over the past year,s internet changed most of us. I can say that I use the internet everyday, for probably more time then I should. After watching Jimmy Wales, Kevin Kelly, Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the very unique wiki, and Nicolas Negroponte, I leaned many things. 

As we all knows, internet has already changed many times, even though it is only 5000 days old. It went from the web 1.0 to the web 2.0, which can be compared to open sources (which is also a pretty amazing concept).  The speakers brought to the table many different aspects. As Kevin Kelly said, there is 100 billion clicks per day, and 1 million IM messages per SECOND!  

The detailed explanation of wikipedia made by its very own creator Jimmy Wales, let me in a state of shock. Jimmy spoke about one of the most important aspect of internet/ wikipedia. It is not only an access to all human knowledge, but it is also free!  Wikipedia is more then a website. It’s a society who cooperate together as volunteers.

This idea was not even something we could have thought about in a not very far past.

But as Kevin Kelly said, ‘‘Internet is believing in the impossible’’

The internet has become a black whole. Sucking all information ever thought of. It has become a tool with no interuption since 1976.

Sow what will it do in the future? The answer? so many answers. First of all, it will continue to educate. Since internet is a sources of information,  we can obtein knowledge from it, which is what Nicolas Negroponte’s did, with ‘One Laptop per Child’  project. This permitted many to be able to gain more knowledge, more power.

I mean, the internet has changed education so much. Students can now follow and pass classes with a simple access to internet.  We can achieve the goals of many teachers, teaching paperless.

Wikipedia is not the only free access revolutionary thing internet did. With the ue os skype, we can speak and see at the same time someone on the other side of the earth for free!

I think that the internet and the future technologies will be able to help the ‘heath’ organizations. Perhaps they will be able to have files on the internet where the hospitals will use digital files and not written papers.  The internet is only 5000 days, so I am waiting for many more changes for the near future, but what will Man be able to do this time with this wonderful tool? A 3D skype?  Have online therapy? A human robot?  Online weddings? Cellphones implanted into our ears? Impossible will you say?

Well what can I say, ‘Internet is the impossible’. 

The Internet- Flawed?

As Eugene Morozov spoke about, the internet does not only have positive aspects.

I'm going to start by pointing out what I found the most relevant in his speech.
First of all: connectivity. The ability to communicate faster is remarkable- except when people use it in a negative way. If people communicate wrong information and change the core of a certain truth, it is not being used in a good way.

So if people can communicate wrong ideas about anything, then no one is safe. Anyone can be targeted.

This is how the Rwanda genocide happened. Because so much hatred was targeted towards Rwanda. Over 800,000 Rwandans were killed in 100 days.

Now, cyberbullying might not affect such a big amount of people so fast, but it is a problem caused by technology. One can target a person and emotionally hurt them which would damage their self esteem. Who knows the consequences this can have?

Also, teenagers do not realize that because of facebook, people can follow us. If a teenager applies to a job, the managers can find us and see if we are ''appropriate'' for the job. Meaning that, even if one looks proper and polite, but have pictures of himself showing a complete other personality, his proper looks is become irrelevant.

During all of Eugene's speech, I was waiting for a point he did not even mention. I feel like because of technology, my generation is now way more antisocial. We are so hooked to our computers that we have lost almost all social skills. In my parents generation, if they wanted to speak to someone, they needed to call them- if not see them. For my generation, we can simply stay in our house, from the back of our computer, and see if they're online. Most of the time, if they aren't  we'll just find someone else to speak too.

Even though Internet is not flawless, I do believe that it does more good than bad. We can communicate faster, find better and newer information, learn what's going on around the world through the simple use of TWITTER ! Internet is almost a miracle.

Information Is Power

Since I had a very young age, technology was evolving- practically with me.

I had always known that my generation used technology more often than the previous ones. I also know that my generation is stereotyped as lazy, less aware of what was going on, and that we loosing our life on our computers.

After hearing Don Tapscott 's lecture 'Grow up Digital', the contrast between the previous generations and my own became pretty clear.

In his lecture, Don Tapscott spoke about this subject brilliantly and proved wrong all of those stereotype. 

The older generations, generation x use to work with an Internet called Web 1.2.       Us, generation y, are working with Web 2.2. The main difference between both of them is that the newer generation have control over the information of the web and we are able not only to control it but also to change it.

As he explained, when the generations of ''baby boomers'' were our age, they spent more time watching television. In their times, everything took way more time then it does today. They didn't use as much technology on regular basis. For me, it's almost not a choice, but a necessity. Most of the information needed for school can be found through the  internet. Instead of having to look for hours in books, we can use our internet browser. We can now find newspapers and even all tv shows on the internet. The amount of hours possibly spent on the internet obviously increased. This made us ''faster''. We can multi-task  easierly than our parents, and we can do everything in a shorter amount of time. Don gave the metaphor of a running track. The older generations would be placed on the outside track, and my generation are not only on the inside track, but we are running way faster then the older generations. But is that necessarily bad? We like seeing things move faster, and see a certain growth. Everyone sees this as a bad thing..(!)

As we outrun them so easily, even some ''outside runners'' tried to catch up and understand our way of living. It was almost impossible for many. Eventhough one would try to fully understand our way of living with technology, it is a difficult task, since they have to catch up to a lifetime full of learning. Another thing Don said was that  ''we fear what we don't understand''. As more individuals from older generations failed to understand the newest technologies, most of them closed their mind to it. In fear of having to admit they did not have the potential to understand our daily routine, they have created assumptions based on what the image that my generation projects. Which explains the ''lazy'' and ''less aware''.  I guess they didn't understand that we can do everything they can form the use of a simple computer.

What I found very true that parents still fail to see, is that we have, like Don said, a ''Bs detector''. The internet has so much of it that my generation has learned how to filter it and to pick up the truth. This ''detector'' can be applied everywhere. When my generation sees something, we're going to wonder is thats the truth, and how it was modified. He took the example of his daughter and him looking at the same picture on a magazine. If its a woman, Tapscott will think about his opinion on how she looks (woman on the magazine cover), but his daughter will wonder how she has been  photoshoped==> Bs Detector!

There's also this stereotype that offended me. When people say that we supposedly 'don't care about anything'. I think it would be interesting to see those peoples reactions when Don mentioned that 89% of graduates in the USA have volunteered to do something in the past 3 months.

If I had to conclude what he said in one sentence it would be :

Information is power, and right now, the newer generation, have more control over information than generation x, which scares them allot. This has caused them to not only close their minds on my generation but also to but false and negative assumptions onto us. Thanks to Don, this was cleared up!