Off the grid is definitely off my list

Living off the grid almost sounds appealing to me: Less noise, less chaos, being one with nature and reducing my carbon footprint.

I say “almost” because I know my romanticized notion of the off-the-grid movement — popularized by films and literature such as “Into the Wild” — is seriously misconceived.

It’s not even the idea of no indoor plumbing that has me balking at the thought of living in my own cabin in the woods Walt Whitman-style; I’ve been camping and I figure I could cope. It’s not the lifestyle I find so objectionable, but the mentality that accompanies it. You have to be totally dedicated to the idea of living off the grid for this lifestyle to be successful.

Yet, this dedication to leaving the modern world, disconnecting from people and completely isolating yourself only works in theory. One of the central tenants of living off the grid is calling attention to our impact on the world through our continued reliance on the fossil fuels and pollutants that power our homes, cars and industries. The message: Leave the system behind, begin again and save the planet from human-caused destruction.

But why leave society altogether as a means to promote change when there are so many other active, collaborative alternatives that don’t require you to join the next generation of homesteaders?

You’re making very little impact on anyone other than yourself, and perhaps immediate family members who question your sanity. Yes, having your own solar panels and drinking out of lakes may reduce your personal impact on the world, but it also reduces the impact you could be having if you were still part of society.

Living off the grid is a fad perpetuated by people who are disillusioned by our system and style of living. According to Nick Rosen, editor of the site off-grid.net, the off-grid movement started because people had an ideological motivation to take their environmental impact into their own hands and reduce their mindless consumerism.

Rosen also asserts that after the financial crisis of 2008, more people turned to off-gridding because it was a viable means to take care of themselves when the government appeared incapable. He estimates there are roughly 2 million people living off the grid in the U.S.

Rosen has a good point. You can take care of yourself when you live off the grid, but that’s about it. It’s selfish to believe that living off the grid will make more of an impact than advocating policy change. Instead, you could work to create environmentally friendly start-ups, or even engineer new ways to make clean energy affordable to those who can’t drop out of society to pursue a personal ideology that confuses selfishness with concern for the environment.

There are plenty of people making a difference on behalf of the environment who haven’t felt the urge to drop off the face of the earth. Can you imagine if someone like Elon Musk,CEO and mastermind behind Tesla Motors, decided to live off the grid instead of working toward a social revolution? Musk is making a huge impact on the way we think about cars and the automotive industry, something he absolutely could only have accomplished as a part of society.

It might be tempting to turn to the idea of off-grid living, because it does offer an interesting alternative to the rat race we all feel caught up in sometimes. However, my interest in such an alternative lifestyle dwindled when I realized that my goal in life was not to make a self-satisfied claim about my carbon footprint, but to make a tangible impact in some way or another. That’s not something that can be accomplished by living an off-the-grid lifestyle.

Withdrawing from society to chase a selfish ideology isn’t the way to change the environmental disaster we’ve gotten ourselves into. We have a collective problem that needs a collective voice to remedy it, not a fragmented, self-righteous counter-culture.

We’re Addicted to Self-Perpetuating Loneliness

A friend of mine recently posted a link to an interesting video on Facebook about the effects of Facebook and other forms of social media on the brain. The video was originally posted by Cam Lincoln on mobiledia.com, and in it he describes a phenomenon we’ve all come to subconsciously realize: “I share, therefore I am.”

As we become more and more intimate with our technology and social media platforms, it’s important we realize the things that seem to connect us are also making us lonely.

On the internet, we get to create our best selves. We spend hours crafting and editing tweets, status updates and even text messages. We can choose which Instagram filter best suits a photo and the Facebook profile picture that makes us look the best. The cost of this excessive preoccupation with creating our best selves is a connection to reality.

In a study done by the International Center for Media & the Public Agenda, college students reported feeling addicted to social media such as Facebook and even facing anxiety and depression when asked to refrain from using them. When it comes time to face reality, we’re more inclined to immerse ourselves in a world of virtual friends and perfect images, leaving us with less time to experience real life.

But we don’t get to edit real-time conversations, and we can’t go back and touch ourselves up in everyday interactions with other people. There’s an unhealthy obsession with creating and selling a false image, even if we just think it’ll make us appear more interesting. Our addiction is to the instant gratification, the validation we think we’re getting when we get “likes” on a picture.

Margie Warrell a blogger for The Huffington Post calls this being seduced by social media.

“They seduce us with the implicit promise that, if we get enough friends or followers or likes, we will feel truly significant in the world,” Warrell writes. And many are falling prey to this promise.

According to thenextweb.com, Facebook has 1.19 billion monthly users and 728 million daily users. More and more people are connecting with each other, but what value do these connections actually hold?

Lincoln’s video suggests that a human cannot physically and emotionally connect with more than 150 people on an intimate level, but last time I checked, my friend count was two or three times that. Intimacy is a natural part of being human, but Facebook only offers the illusion of such connections.

Our hunger for more friends and more connections draws us to sites like Facebook, but reality suggests that more virtual friends, rather than real life relationships, really aren’t the key to relieving us of our loneliness. When we add friends on Facebook, especially friends we don’t even know well in real life, we’re not seeing their profile as an honest picture of who they are.

A Facebook profile offers a limited, edited version of a persona that the person has created. And yet, we revert to Facebook time and time again to learn more about people, to get glimpses into their “personal” lives that often misrepresent who they actually are. We get hung up on details about a person’s life without realizing that we’re never privy to the whole story.

It’s the conviction that what we’re getting on Facebook is real that drives our sense of loneliness. Studies have shown that people who use Facebook more tend to be more depressed afterwards because they feel inadequate compared to their friends. On the same note, people may feel lonelier even with so many connections because they realize there’s nothing truly worthwhile or real about the friendships they only maintain through Facebook.

Internet profiles and personas may make us feel interesting and get us more likes, but they don’t establish emotional connections or lasting intimate relationships between people. We’re making ourselves lonelier by continuing to believe that real relationships can come from a simple “add friend” button and that we can really know someone just by what they post online.

Online Classes Give us Opportunity and Hopefully Fewer Boring Lectures

I dare you to try and count the number of times you have been on the Internet within the past 30 minutes. Try remembering how many times you’ve glanced down at the shiny iPhone superglued to your hand, or used that tablet to “take notes” during class.

I pose these challenges not because I resent technology — I am just as guilty of constant device-use as any other college student. It’s our educators who need to realize this trend. Many professors ban the use of laptops or tablets in class, and speak longingly of the days before “eBooks” and “online homework.” But they’re missing a key piece of the puzzle: online is opportunity.

Pearson released a survey this month titled, “Grade Change.” The survey examines whether we are embracing the digitalization of our higher education system by looking at the attitudes of professors and educators, rather than those of students.

Despite the wealth of resources available online, the survey points to a crowd of educators stuck in the past. Thirty four percent of those polled said that online learning “was not critical to their long term strategy.” This is disheartening, considering the survey also reported that almost 7.1 million students in the U.S. are taking at least one online course.

The numbers show that students are embracing online education, but educators haven’t yet learned that there are more resources and greater flexibility available online than in a typical classroom.

For instance, look at the success of sites such as Khan Academy, which provides simple yet effective tutorials on everything from elementary algebra to differential equations. Students are not trapped in a 50 minute class period. They can view materials as many times as they need and engage in online discussions with their peers, to solve complex problems.

If Khan doesn’t work, there are thousands of other sites and tutorials available for free online.

 

Moreover, online learning can be self-tailored; if you want to take a class at 3 a.m. because it’s when you’re most awake, you can. If you don’t understand a math problem, you can watch an instructional video more than once. Learning is not the same for every student, and online education provides opportunities for each student’s distinct learning style.

And yet, traditional college classes are still defined by the lecture format — a completely antiquated method of teaching that better corresponds with the era of manually catalogued library books and late nights spent pouring over dusty textbooks.

Professors who still rely on this “face-to-face” method of teaching are skeptical about online learning because it creates a “disconnect” between student and teacher. But this “disconnect” is already prevalent in 400-plus person lectures.

Ashley Lykins, a pre-pharmacy freshman, said she has similar feelings about teacher-student engagement in large lecture classes.

“I think it really depends on the professor,” she said, “but for the most part they just talk at you.”

It is time for higher education in the U.S. to move forward and embrace the resources available to us through digital classrooms and online learning. If professors are worried they will lose the intimacy of a “real” classroom setting, they have yet to discover webcasting, Skype or FaceTime.

If they are worried about the efficacy of their teaching, it’s because they have yet to realize that the Internet is a massive ocean of untapped resources and educational opportunities waiting to be explored.

Online learning does not diminish the efficacy of good educators, rather, good educators are the ones who take advantage of the opportunities presented by teaching in an online setting and using digital integration in a physical one.

Our generation of students is the most plugged in to ever attend college, but this doesn’t have to pose a threat to the professor who is willing to adapt. It’s an opportunity to explore the possibilities of putting more classes online, of embracing the digital era and of reconditioning the old teaching system to meet the growing needs and demands of its students.

Lifeline Laws: the Good, the Bad, and the Preventable

It’s no secret that many UA students like to have a good time, whether it be at a kickback, house party, or even a frat bash. It’s also not a secret that copious amounts of alcohol are usually involved in such festivities. Most of the time things go great, but on a not-so-great night of binge drinking and poor decisions, things can often turn out really, really bad. What’s worse is the frightening realization that you could get into trouble simply by getting help for a friend in need.

Binge drinking is a pervasive trend among college students, and the Center for Disease Control reports that 11 percent of all alcohol consumed in the United States is by adolescents between the ages of 12 and 20. For this group, 90 percent of their drinking occurred as binge drinking, meaning that five or more drinks were consumed in about two hours for men or four in about two hours for women.

Binge drinking can result in alcohol poisoning or, if left untreated, death. In a study by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence in New Jersey, you start accumulating risk at a blood alcohol level of 0.30 and it only gets worse as you drink more. Unfortunately, judging just how intoxicated you are is no easy task, especially when you factor in variables such as time, hydration, and weight.

While underage drinking is not going to vanish, we can push for legislation to support and protect students who need to report serious accidents or overdoses. Currently, Arizona does not have such “Lifeline” legislation, but it has been successfully implemented in Indiana and Colorado, where underage drinkers are protected from criminal prosecution for illegal possession or consumption if they call 911 and ask for medical assistance, and they provide their names and remain on the scene to cooperate with the medical and law personnel.

When students are faced with the choice between letting a friend “sleep it off” or getting the notorious minor in possession slip we’ve all come to fear, it’s no wonder that many students would hesitate to act, further endangering the life of someone who is severely intoxicated or even blacked out.

ASU conducted a random survey of 6,000 undergraduates and 1,500 graduates and asked what would compel them to seek medical attention for someone passed out or incoherent due to alcohol. 35.5% of those surveyed said they feared getting their friend into trouble, and 47.6% said they wouldn’t even know what to do. In a life or death situation, hesitation is the worst reaction to have.

While the Lifeline Law is not a surefire way of avoiding an MIP or other repercussions of underage drinking, it is the most effective way of protecting underage drinkers in situations of medical necessity. When properly in place, the Medical Amnesty Protocol at Cornell University reported that more people called for assistance and there was less fear of getting into trouble that forestalls aid.

 

Michael Rabbani, a freshman studying environmental sciences and business administration, readily agreed that safety must be the biggest priority for students in trouble.

He said that “by giving minors leniency in a situation like this, it would take away any hesitation they have to call authorities for help.” When you’re not scared to call for help, it’s that much easier to make a responsible and crucial decision. Right now, Arizona law puts more lives at risk than it protects. It is clearly illegal to drink if you are not 21, but this fact is continually ignored by the pleasure-seeking party-goer. Rather than punish responsible actions, we need to protect our students with laws that will encourage them to seek help and realize that irresponsible binge drinking isn’t the way to have a good time in college.

A Lifeline Law is one of the greatest gifts we could give our students, and as a solution to an already prevalent problem, it encourages responsibility and promotes health and safety even in a crisis situation.

Sometimes Big Data isn’t Equivalent to Big Brother

We’ve all been taught that privacy is one of the finer things in life. We know leaving the bathroom door open is not socially acceptable and that keeping our ATM PINs from strangers probably decreases our risk of getting robbed. What we often don’t realize is that privacy is effectual less often than we imagine, especially on the Internet, thanks to something called “big data.”

Big data is the next big computational trend, providing more data to companies and advertising agencies than is humanly possible to imagine. Perhaps the easiest way to think about big data is as the strategic information about ourselves that we litter across the Internet. Think of your last Google search for “how to grow cacti in Antarctica” or the Facebook page you liked about cats in weird places. Less than 24 hours later, cats and cacti are showing up on your Facebook news feed, and Google is suggesting the best places to make such purchases, all thanks to big data.

Even tech giants like Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp. and Oracle Corp. have a difficult time describing what big data actually is, which makes it all the more tiresome for consumers like us to try and figure it out for ourselves.

But while we can’t comprehend everything about it, not all big data has to be bad data.

When you consider the amount of data a single site like Amazon or Google has access to, it’s easy to understand how people might be concerned about a “stalker economy.” In fact, according to an article by Jerry Michalski of Forbes, Facebook is valued at $100 billion because it is a venerable treasure trove of your personal information, voluntarily put online by you.

Google openly admits to collecting data from devices, like login information, location information, unique application numbers, cookies and other anonymous identifiers. Amazon has access to 152 million consumer accounts, complete with spending and viewing habits.

But while big data may seem like the next Big Brother catastrophe, it’s little more than the evolution of our consumer society.

 

Imagine the ways that safe, controlled harnessing of big data could benefit our everyday lives.

Kord Davis, author of “Ethics of Big Data,” argues that big data presents us with a chance to analyze and assess the human condition like never before. Can we predict economic trends earlier and with more accuracy? Can we expand participatory medicine or predict epidemics before they wreak havoc? Can we look at the data and figure out ways to improve our education? These are questions big data has the power to answer.

And, of course, big data enhances our shopping experiences. The ads you see are targeted directly to your purchasing habits, streamlining your consumption and ridding your browser of those aggressive pop-ups.

Even Netflix relies on big data aggregation. Without it, there would be no “Popular” scroll bar or suggestions tailored to your viewing history. By looking at the statistics of what and how much you watch, Netflix has created a site personally tailored to your viewing preferences. You certainly can’t say that about your now-defunct neighborhood Blockbuster.

Yes, big data is an aggregate of everything data-mining companies want to know about you, from your spending habits to your love interests, but the advertising companies that use this data never really know you.

Your habits are simply analyzed by an algorithm that treats you in the same manner as the thousands of other people who have roughly the same online habits as you.

The collection of data you willingly post on Facebook, Google, Twitter or any other site is so vast that you are merely a speck among millions, if not trillions, of other data points.

While we are accountable for protecting our sensitive data, there’s no use in worrying about data collection from companies seeking to sell you new products. Big data holds the key to consumer trends and preferences, and it pushes us to analyze and assess the human condition in new and exciting ways.

We should embrace what it has created for us so far: a streamlined, consumer-centric economy based on us and our preferences.