Technology and Social Interaction

              Most of human communication is non-verbal, but that does not mean communication solely through the internet, texts, or other digital media is not meaningful.  When the only way to talk is through type, it makes the user focus on what is being written and rethink the thought before pressing “send”.  This in itself makes the person think before they “speak”.  In the virtual world, you are your words.  Digital media enables those that may suffer from physical barriers (i.e. handicaps, lack of confidence) to interact as equals.  In Second Life, for example, you can be whoever, go wherever, do whatever, the company’s advertisement even says Second Life can “change your mind and your world”.  What would you do if you had unlimited resources, the change to live, indeed, a second life.  You could design yourself as well as the place you live.  Nothing is stopping you.  However non-verbal communication is lost or misinterpreted such as original intention, context, and sarcasm. 

            I believe that the spread of such technology has a positive impact on our everyday face to face interaction.  This was not always my opinion.  I was like many who believed those that spent scrupulous amounts of time using digital media were anti-social, awkward, and even lazy people.  However, after the TED talks and even conversations with some new friends here, I have found that technology actually enables communication not like I had spoken of before but an even deeper level of commitment to ones words and actions.  My friend said that he was incredibly shy growing up and when he found World of Warcraft, he was able to practice his language skills, grow comfortable with typing, and then translate those skills into real world conversation.  He said without World of Warcraft, he would still be the same unconfident, shy boy he once was.  I then continued to ask him, are the friends you made in World of Warcraft the same as the friends you have here in the real world?  He replied that they are friends in a different way, that they provide more of an outlet, and a group of people that share common interests.  This idea of relationship “difference” can be applied to online dating and marriage.  In the digital world, we can create meaningful relationships but in a way that we are not used to.  Dating and marriage online can seem like an outlandish concept to certain individuals, but to others, the virtual world is a viable platform through which people meet their girlfriends, boyfriends, and future spouses.  I believe that you can create relationships that will be limited by physical means.  Balance between online communities and real communities is key to living a healthy lifestyle.  Both can work symbiotically.  If balance is not obtained, then the real world should never be sacrificed for the virtual and the person must focus on the real.  True interaction is physical, discussion is similar and requires less physical interaction, but most of all, we are our words but also our actions.  

Are Bloggers the New Political Activists?

             Blogs were met with little aversion, only brief skepticism.  It was a strange concept, posting your ideas to an unknown audience and a very large one at that.  But once the initial apprehension subsided, blogs sprouted up everywhere making the internet fruitful with innovative ways to express, discuss, and collaborate ideas.  There are blogs about everything now; blogs about food, parenting, medicine, etc. but an important blog ‘type’ to consider are political blogs and how that alters the relationship between the government and its people. 

            Bloggers in many oppressive countries are hailed as political activists, pioneers that dare to speak out against their government and motivate their communities.  This has been proven true in the case of China and the Middle East.  The idea itself, I find, is more romanticized than truly effective.  This idea may disappoint you or even infuriate you but please remember I am not claiming bloggers are not effective, I am only trying to remind people that bloggers are not the new activists.  I wish they were.  And yet, only so much political change can occur from behind a computer.  Blogging is anonymous and can be done from anywhere.  In this way I believe blogging lacks the type of authenticity or even responsibility for what is posted.  It is easier to say than to do and this is true for anything.  In online political forums, spokespersons from a presidential candidates’ campaign can easily post on hundreds of blogs without the people’s knowledge.  Anonymity can be incredibly useful by making no one blogger better than the other but it is also a dangerous fact about the internet.

I like to think that bloggers are motivators rather than activists.  They incite ideas and conversations that stimulate constructive thought in its readers.  Ideas are words and that is exactly what blogs are.  However I still have a hard time calling bloggers political activists.  Bloggers are behind a computer, they are anonymous, they are not physically doing something in the real world that will translate into political action.  The internet has yet to over throw dictatorships (as was previously assumed in the case of the Middle East) or put in place new laws.  Blogs are the start of political activism but they are not the heart of it all.  Yes, I will agree that bloggers are a new driving force that we have to be aware of if we are aware of the digital age at all but I believe bloggers need to not only discuss but act because it is that last step that most people are not daring to take.  My generation, the youth, have never lived during a time of world war or revolution (like the 60s), we have never fought for our rights or for the rights of others.  We see and read so much about far away places but are almost desensitized by the influx of information available at our fingertips.  Bloggers need to put a name to their writing, take claim, and take action. 

Love and Other Digital Drugs

At age 19 I can honestly say I am not sure whether I have been in love.  Teenagers in general think they have “found what, or who, they are looking for” and then the next moment they are chasing after “the next best thing”.  Love is blind, love is foolish, but most of all, love is a game for nearly all teenagers who think they know everything.  Literally, Second Life provides a place for their users to love and experience countless other emotions because they can act on the slightest impulse.

Second Life is a complete virtual world, accessed online, and complete free.  These three dangerous forces make Second Life incredibly accessible and appealing to those with hectic lives.  It is good to have outlets through which one can relax or explore, have fun or be daring.  Yet, is there a point where outlets become a dangerous addiction, a tantalizing distraction, so seductive that one wishes to escape completely and thus altering their own reality?  This melodramatic run-on sentence may seem a bit overwhelming, but it is not the first time that a lifestyle has become an addiction.  In Second Life, you can run and walk but also fly.  Second Life is you, but better.  Users are able to create a version of themselves, their own avatar through which they live their ‘second life’.  After starting ‘fresh’ users interact with real people in a very unreal place.  This is incredibly appealing to 30 year olds and older because they are a time of their lives where they tend to look back and regret.  The feeling of regret can motivate anyone to escape such anxiety.  Through their avatars they have the ultimate power to decide what they look like and how they act without any physical, financial, or emotional responsibilities; or so it seems.    Second Life virtual world is perfect.  It is everything that is ideal for those that use it.  So much effort and time go into the creation and maintaining of the world that “users” become “civilians” of a new reality. 

            An important debate in the sociology world is whether or not the actions users make in virtual worlds (i.e. Second Life) hold real merit, or can anything be done without actual consequences.  This idea is particularly important in the context of love.  In class, we watched a video in which a family was torn apart by the mother’s addiction to Second Life and adulterous actions inside it.  But does adultery apply to characters made solely of binary code?  Many people actions speak louder than words which invalidates any actions made within the game.  However, I believe love, pain, and sex that occurs in the digital world are very much real and therefore makes the users responsible for their actions.  Actions are emotion based.  Users need to remember that Second Life feels as real to them as it does to everyone else playing the game and cannot be treated as such.

Social Networking and Privacy

          Social media has become as common as daily advertising.  An important difference, however, is the fact that daily advertising is thrown at our faces while social media is something that the public gravitates to.  We feel such a strong desire for social media that it can become an addiction, and with all addictions there are dangers.  

         The main social media form I use is Facebook and even then I do not go on and remain logged on for a long time.  Two years ago, I certainly was one of those people.  Wake up, check Facebook, go to class, check Facebook, lunch, check Facebook, soccer practice check Facebook, homework, check Facebook, get ready for bed, check Facebook.  Honestly, it was disgusting.  Fortunately, I quickly grew out of this lifestyle, but many of my peers, like most Americans (especially teens) have not.  I was praised by my professors and adult acquaintances for my “unplugged” lifestyle while at the same time being shamed by my peers for not being “up to date”.  No, I would not know the latest YouTube video or even know when my friends were getting together because I did not reply to the Facebook event.  Suddenly I found myself being caught between wishing to live an unplugged lifestyle and being plugged in to remain modern with current times.  Society has been moving towards social networking and I needed to decide whether I was on or off for the ride.  It was amazing really; there was the grand battle between Facebook and MySpace for social network power, now five years later we look to each other and think MySpace who?  No longer is the company that does ‘something‘ first the best, but it is whoever does that ‘something‘ the best first.  Facebook had a web platform that obviously was more appealing to a wider audience, not just teenagers and young adults looking for a good time.  Facebook invaded the home as well as the work place.  Every aspect of our lives can be, even without our knowledge, online.  I do not believe that social media and networking brings either positive or negative changes but merely fixes previous problems while creating new ones.  We are the ones that determine whether social media will have a positive affect on society in the way that we regulate it by law and through public/personal responsibility.  One must be proactive in their computer use because all of us now have a alternate world that we participate in.  Once anything is online, it can never be taken back.  

          Everyone at some point learns the valuable, but painful, lesson of “over sharing” information on Facebook, MySpace, AIM, Blogs, email, etc.  I am one such person.  I had recently met someone at a soccer game and the expected friend request followed.  But unexpectedly, dozens of hate comments followed the friendship post.  Apparently the girl was hated.  Caught completely off guard, I found myself trying to appease everyone through multiple messages on everyones wall, just to find out what is going on.  The problem with this is that everyone could see these.  I should have just talked to everyone face to face, not through the book.  Instead, people tried twisting my words and following my every digital move surrounding a simple friendship post...who knew.  There are many pros to social media, like there is with any new technology.  Social networking enables international collaboration, appeals to visual learners, removes the physical barriers in conversation, and clears the generation gap.  The cons are distractions, time consuming, limits the physical ability to focus in the brain, and less privacy.   At the end of the day we are becoming more collaborative and more public and we will need to decide whether we will fight the changes and learn to “like” it and keep moving forward.  

My Media Diet

Sunday, November 13th

• (.75) Pandora on the iPhone for a workout
• (2) Computer - email, homework
• (1.5) Movie
• (2) Football game
• (1) cell phone use - text, call

Monday, 14th

• (1) Check computer - email, Facebook

• (1) Teacher uses .ppt in class
• (1) Computer use at work - Excel
• (.5) Watch my friend play a video game on the GameCube
• (1) cell phone use - text

Tuesday, 15th

• (.5) Pandora on the phone for the working out 
• (1) Check computer - email
• (1.5) Teacher .ppt
• (2.5) Computer use at work - Excel, Word
• (1) cell phone use - text

Wednesday, 16th

• (2.5) Teachers using .ppt in class, including TED talks
• (.5) Hulu to watch New Girl episode
• (1) Watching my friend play a video game on GameCube while doing math homework
• (1) Cell phone use

Thursday, 17th

• (3) Computer - Music essay and lab write up
• (1) Cell phone - Facebook and phone call

Friday, 18th

• (1) Watched my friends play a video game on their computer
• (2) The Walking Dead episodes
• (2) Cell phone use 

Saturday, 19th

• (3) Pandora - on the computer and the iPhone
• (1) Cell phone use - phone call and text

         It is a common wish to have more than 24 hours in a day.  But what do we particularly want to do with those extra hours?  Ideally, we would most likely want more time to be with the family, relax, sleep, even pick up a new hobby, however realistically we all know the truth that those extra hours will simply get filled with more and more things we HAVE to do rather than what we WANT to do.  Our media diet is strongly determined by the struggle between what we have to do and what we would like to do on a regular basis.  We have to work from home and check our email but at the same time we text, play Words With Friends, and listen to music.  This is a prime example of media convergence and how it makes the tasks we do more dynamic and our lives that much more complicated.  

         My media diet is surprisingly not as social media heavy as I originally predicted.  After watching and reading countless movies and articles I figured I was simply just another teenager from the digital age that is forever “plugged in”.  After recording my ‘media diet‘ for six days, Sunday November 13th to Saturday November 19th, I realized that my media use may not consume a majority of time through out an average day, but when I do use media, I use extensive amounts at the same time.  

          Girls are known to be multi-taskers, and that same idea applies here.  On Sunday, a more leisurely day, I woke up a listened to Pandora on my phone as I worked out in between laps/stretching I would send a quick text or answer a phone call telling whoever, “Sorry, can’t talk, can’t breathe, working out” and they would continue to send me a text moments after saying how funny it all was.  Following the work out and a well deserved shower, I sat down to do a couple hours of homework.  I cannot imagine how many hours, cumulated in years, we have spent doing homework.  We, being my friends and I, later sat down to watch a movie followed by a football game like classic 20 year olds, all the while texting on our phones.   This may seem like a heavy duty media day, but overall the time I spent using media was 6 and a half hours out of a 15 hour day (7am to 12am) with 2 of those hours being necessary for school work.  I found that I use more media on the weekends than any other days of the week.  

          I do not believe that my media diet results are common for the average 19 year old in America.  On the week days, my average media use was a little over 4 hours.  To be honest, I do not use the computer very often when I am not taking any computer classes.  And when I do use the computer it is for a class project or for work, rarely leisure.  I certainly use my cell phone for texting but not for phone calls as much, those will occur sporadically through out the week and even then will not last very long.  Most teenagers spend time looking at Facebook, playing video games, or video chatting.  I live close to home and work so majority of my time is spent catching up rather than having free time.  There are definitely students like me who sacrifice leisure media activities because of our crazy schedules, and yet we still use media to complete the tasks we HAVE to get done although we may not be doing what we WANT to do.   Society will inevitably turn digital, but not quite yet.