What I enjoyed most this week in class was the discussion on societies reliance on technology. The use of technology in society today has created increased communicative means with people while at the same time those connections are emotionless. These ways of staying in touch are developing more and more everyday. There are many effects resulting from this, for example the main two I found was the increasing size of the private sphere as well as the lack of emotion conveyed towards one another. It's funny how we have more control over our lives with dependence on something as external as technology.
Secondly, I have noticed what with growing technological reliance there is a lack of emotion being held within messages as well as a diminishing importance on personal interactions. When texting, e-mailing etc it is difficult to detect a tone with what you are writing about, for example I've known people who have fallen out all because one was being sarcastic over texting and the other could not detect that. With this lack of emotional connection with each other we are beginning to lose it with ourselves; meaning that can only be conveyed in person is lost when traveling through cyber space from one communicative technological device to the next. Will we all become monotonic humans who read language exactly as it is written in front of us, emotionless? For this to happen, there would have to be a development of a global understanding of words and text so that all words would have the same meaning to ultimately create a language of technology. This would be taking DeSaussure's concept on how communities can determine the values and meanings of words and placing it in the context of a global technological community. In addition, Jenkin's recognizes the regression to a folk-culture with our ability to understand creativity, can be applied here in that I think that our emotional development will regress to a more primitive time, along with our socializing skills. Socialization is a key part of growing up, I think we all remember when we were young and our parents encouraging us to get involved and play with the other kids. With this developing participatory culture do we need to physically get involved with other people when we can do it cyberly? I believe that there is a new form of socialization that will over-take the necessity of 'personal interation' and make it 'impersonal.'
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1 comment:
Excellent post. Your discussion of technology and it's lack of emotional connection was well thought out and you made a great connection to DeSaussure.
-Starfish
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