In his presentation, "The Machine is (Changing) Us", Michael Wesch refers often to the ideas of Marshall McLuhan. In particular, he quotes McLuhan's most famous phrase, "the medium is the message". The medium (or type of technology) we use directly influences how we communicate with each other. In the last ten years, our social interactions have drastically changed with the introduction of new technologies. Do you even talk to people on your phone anymore? Or, are you using a device which was once only used for oral communication, as a way to text and email with friends? Consider a single invention, like the telephone, and how much it has evolved since it's initial introduction in the 1870's. Wesch comments that "we shape our tools, and our tools shape us". In that sense, he has what Leo Marx and Merritt Roe Smith would call a "soft" determinist outlook.
Our tools are shaping our society, how we conduct business, how we educate, and, I think most importantly, how we interact with each other. It seems that people today are more comfortable communicating through a screen, rather than face to face. While in some sense, these technologies make us feel closer to people 7,000 miles away, I can't help but notice that those same technologies cause us to become distant from the people right next to us. Why? This is a question I hope to explore during my time here at TC.
2) What's with the disconnect?
In "Do Machines Make History?", which was written in 1994, Robert Heilbroner makes the argument that "an advance in technology not only must be congruent with the surrounding technology but must also be compatible with existing economic and other institutions of society" (Heilbroner, pg.63)
This statement caused me great concern, because I think that there exists today a huge disconnect with how quickly our technology is advancing, and our ability to actually afford it. There is no question that these new tablets, and smartphones are impressive advances in our technological evolution, but with the current state of our economy, these advances don't seem very congruent to me. Keeping up, and keeping in touch, is more expensive than ever before, at a time when our country is facing the highest rates of unemployment and homelessness in our history.
In order to communicate the way everyone else is these days we find ourselves
paying for internet connection, cell phones, data plans, tablet plans...all of these technologies are supposed to be helping make our lives easier, and yet I can't help but feel that they've just made them more complicated, and certainly a lot more expensive.
At a time when the US Postal Service (remember that?) is at risk of nearing bankruptcy, and we are faced with a future in which we will have to rely on our digital forms of communication as our only means of communicating, I worry that our conversations will turn in to a permanent form of short hand (140 characters, emoticons, etc).
I didn't intend to come across as a technophobe in my first post about ICTs, but my academic area of interest is communication, and in the almost ten years since I last studied the subject, I have noticed a disintegration in our ability to be "present" with one another. How many times have you gone out to dinner with friends, and every single person at the table has their phone out in front of them? This implies that someone, somewhere else, may be trying to connect with them at that very moment, and they would rather risk disengaging with you than miss that text. This seems to be a new social norm, but, when did this become socially acceptable?
At a time when Wesch insists that everyone is pursuing their authentic selves, and that we know ourselves through our relationships with others, you'd think we'd all be a little more considerate of one another.
