Scorpio, 3/3

In class today, we discussed Poster’s article about technology in the postmodern era. Poster wrote that the new era of technology moves us away from our basic needs and gives us the falsities of basic needs when we use them. “What is at stake in these technical innovations…is not simply an increased ‘efficiency’ of interchange… but a broad and extensive change in the culture, in the way identities are structured.” (Poster 531) We studied this passage and found that through the various technological resources we use on a daily basis (Facebook, GPS, Text messaging, Skype…etc.), we mistake these new devices as part of who we are.
An example of Poster’s argument can be seen in the movie, “He’s Just Not That Into You”, when actor Drew Barrymore looks to her friend and whines, “I had this guy leave me a voice mail at work, so I called him at home, and then he emailed me to my BlackBerry, and so I texted to his cell, and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies. It’s exhausting.”
Poster argues that technology has become increasingly decentralized. Whereas twenty years ago, our culture relied on centralize forms of communication: i.e. newspapers and evening news. The radical shift then stems from a change in the way people receive information and the personalization in which takes place now.
I agree with the movie quote above in saying this shift IS exhausting. Watching my frustrated Grandma work a cell phone is hilarious, yet I can now understand that she is a being of the technology before my upbringing, therefore it should not be expected that she have to learn this foreign technology.
Sitting in the library, I coincidently look to my right to find a February addition of Fortune magazine. The main article reads: “How Facebook Is Taking Over Our Lives”. I find this article a perfect example a cultural shift in self-identity through social networking cites.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/16/technology/hempel_facebook.fortune/index.htm