The final paper will be five pages long, double spaced, Times new roman. For today's conversation, we are going to take a slightly different task. As you may have picked up in the reading, there is a disagreement about whether or not modern technologies, particularly communication technologies, are increasing or decreasing alienation. On the one hand, these technologies let us meet and talk with people we'd never otherwise connect to far away, find people who like the same things we do even if no one in our small town likes those things, allows us to interact with virtual worlds in ways that seem fun, and have been particularly useful during quarantine lockdowns. On the other hand, social media interactions are quite fraught and have been shown to lead to depression, jealousy, rage, and anxiety. Entertainment media like video games and Netflix can entertain and destract us, but often in a way that makes us feel bored (ever spent a lot of time scrolling through the hundreds of movies and tv shows you could watch but not choosing anything? That's discussed in the bonus reading for today, btw). Also those technologies, some say, alienate us from human flourishing by keeping us distracted at home instead of doing things that we actually want to do and would be good for us (ever spent too much time on your phone intead of going to bed when you should, doing homework, calling a friend, etc.?)