Mass Communication?

Going into my first class of mass communications I had no idea what to expect. I hadn't read the course outline but had been told the teacher, Mark Lipton, was one of the toughest at Guelph- Humber. I assumed they were exaggerating and walked into the class with my head held high and full of optimism. That was when he handed us the course outline. Once I got an idea of what the course would offer, I got a little nervous. I got even more nervous when I caught glance of all the projects, blogs and group work that had to be done. I was really looking forward to the discussions though because I am very interested in the media. One subject we touched on in the first week's discussion. Mark started to talk about the idea that every invention is invented for a purpose and decribed the differences between the intended purpose and the unintended function. I believe this is a big issue with new technology. For example, computers and the internet can provide with a quick and easy way to obtain information and an easy way to type up notes in classrooms when the notebook computer came out. Unfortunately a lot of people have started using them for other purposes, like downloading illegal music, hacking other user's PCs and unrestricted adult content. Don't get me wrong, I love computers. I probably wouldn't be able to survive without one I'm just trying to prove the point that with great innovations comes negative uses. I'd like to take this point one step further and say that with great innovations comes add ons. These add ons usually don't help develop society and tend to make their users lazier and more often than not they do not even better the invention. The cell phone has been changing since the day it was made. When it first came out, it was bigger than a cordless phone by today's standards, now they can easily fit in your pocket. I have a cell phone that can access the internet, take pictures, take videos, play live TV, and keep notes for me. Do I use these? No, because they're not neccessary. This makes society lazier because we no longer have to go to the library and look through books for information and we have computers, cell phone, Ipods and televesions to do everything for us and tell us everything we need to know. I'm not trying to saying that technology is a detriment to society but I think we need to stop using it for everything and especially ways in which it wasn't intended.