Multi-Tasking our Lives- Are we better at it than our parents?

I’d have to agree with Sherry Turkle that technology is taking over people’s lives, but that it is only problematic with parents. In her interview she talks about the “nostalgia of the young” and that children are going to grow up seeking attention due to the attention that their parents gave their blackberry’s, Facebook’s, Twitter’s, and Ipad’s and not their children. In the this perspective I would definitely agree that there is a problem. The parent should know when the right time to use their blackberry is and when it is time to listen to their children.

On the other hand, I’m going to contradict myself a little and also disagree with Turkle, by saying that children who have grown up in the digital age have learned to multi-task so that they are able to do both listening and texting, facebooking, etc. at the same time. An article in USA Today on kids and multi-tasking hints at the fact that the younger generation’s brains are actually wired differently. The author in this article says, "They should be distracted and should perform more poorly than they do,". But findings show teens "survive distractions much better than we would predict by their age and their brain development." I have even taken a college course where the professor openly said, “I don’t mind if you use you have your cell phone out during class because I understand that your generation is able to multi-task.” So is this technology really a problem in children, teens, and young adults? I don’t think so- I’ve heard of multiple friends who have de-activated their Facebook accounts during midterm and finals weeks so that they were more productive. I think that our generation knows how to balance technology and the outside world. The real problem is when adults, who didn’t grow up using this technology and are not able to multi-task are taking time away from their children.

The Technological Sublime

As we learned earlier this semester, the technological sublime overlooks history and it is overly optimistic that technology can fix society and make society a better and smarter place. Sherry Turkle supports this definition of the technological sublime when she states, “I think that we live in techno-enthusiastic times. We celebrate our technologies because people are frightened by the world we've made. The economy isn't going right; there's global warming. In times like that, people imagine science and technology will be able to get it right.”

Turkle goes on to mention how before 9/11, young children did not have cell phones because they did not need one. However, shortly after 9/11 parents began purchasing phones for their children so they could contact them instantaneously. These parents thought that if their children had a cell phone, they would be able to contact them if anything went wrong. This is another terrific example of how people think technology (in this case cell phones) can solve all their problems no matter what, but in reality, shortly after 9/11 children wanted to play games, text and call their friends, and listen to the different ring tones that were available rather than contacting their parents and letting them know they were alright.

Turkle continues to talk about how people prefer texting rather than calling somebody because “talking for them involves too much information, too much tension, too much awkwardness.” Turkle is concerned because she believes adolescents are growing up without some basic skills (for example: communicating with people face-to-face). I agree with Turkle, but I also think high school and college students are experiencing the same problems because they are so used to communicating via their cell phone or lap top computer. A lot of individuals our age have trouble talking with people face-to-face, especially our superiors (teachers, coaches, parents, advisors, employers, etc). Synchronous communication is quickly becoming an afterthought, and I think it is hurting many people in our society.

Technology Overload

Sherry Turkle discusses the need for our generations now to feel connected, to always be in contact whether that be via text message, email, FaceBook, phone call or face to face interaction. We are consumed by technology to the point where we now have developed the kind of thing where: “I have a feeling. I want to tell somebody about it.” Many people experience this when they share a FaceBook status update, or send their friends a funny text regarding their day. Turkle argues in her NPR interview that we need to know when it is appropriate to act on these impulses. At the dinner table for instance. Turkle argues that the dinner table is a sort of sacred place where respect needs to be shown and phones need to be off limits. She alludes to people who text and drive, text while at funerals, even people who text while breast feeding! She goes on to say that this type of thing, technology addiction really won’t get any worse. She justifies that by saying that we are now conscious of our behaviors and that we aren’t happy while we text on the road, rather we are learning the role that these technologies play and the contexts for us to use them will become more defined. That’s the way I read it anyway. She really does have a point, I recall one time when my aunt, a generally fun loving aunt told me to quit texting during a holiday meal. This led to a conversation about the fact that while it is rude for me to ignore them it is just as rude to ignore the person on the other side of the phone. I was obviously alone in my opinion, however months later my parents got text friendly phones and surprisingly agreed with me. The saturation of communication friendly technologies have really influenced the place and time deemed appropriate in our society and over time those times and places may change, so long as we keep it away from the dinner table.

Posted by: Mike Anderson

Social Networking: Same Fate as Blogs?

Chapter 2 of Blog Theory by Jodi Dean, focuses on the death of blogging in recent years. Dean blames blogging’s demise on many factors including overexposure, lack of creativity, corporate involvement, and ‘spamblogs.’ The introduction of video and picture blogging combined with a shortage of new ideas and new topics to discuss, lead readers to seek information elsewhere. The heavy corporate involvement posing as bloggers on top of spam blogs-consisting of simply advertising-further pushed people away. However, Dean draws on the biggest opponent of blogs, social networking sites. Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter all have similarities to blogs, including rapid growth in a relatively short period of time. Social networking sites have not only captured readers, but the media as well. Business and advertisers have also become more intertwined with popular social networking sites. However, this makes me wonder if soon Facebook and Twitter will have the same fate as blogs, death. The intense corporate advertising presence was one of the elements that drove blogs to their demise-can social networking escape a possibly destined fate?

Dean discusses the “Critical Media Theory,” which basically states a social medium will inevitably fade away after its ‘newness’ has faded away and/or the next new technology takes its place. Dean refers to different technologies surpassing each other, such as radio and television. Technology further evolves and develops, and outlets of television and radio branch to untraditional forms of media (think Pandora, iTunes, both available online) Now technology is going one step further by introducing the MOG. This device is similar to a radio/MP3 player that is attached to your car and has access to over millions of songs. The music streaming device can also be accessed through television as well. This is another example of how both radio and television are evolving; some aspect of their traditional form is still present.

I think social networking sites, such as Facebook, may be the outlier of this theory because they too have the ability to evolve. Facebook’s features keep evolving, changing, and tweaking. Also, the content itself is constantly updated with recent status updates, new photos, events, wall posts, and the list goes on. Facebook always has new information to offer because most of the users are constantly uploading photos, updating their statuses, changing their profile pictures, and much more. However, if the advertisements continue to expand, I’m curious as to what the reaction will be.

Blog Theory: Will Blogs Die?

From reading the selection of Dean's Blog Theory there is a discussion at the beginning of Chapter 2 about the death of blogs. The time of this event was way back in 2007, four years ago when I thought that blogs were still relatively new, and they were. What Dean was trying to convey in presenting the argument was that as soon as they were unveiled to our society, it was only a matter of time after reading the same five sports blogs every day, the content was always the same, and people were to become bored with the idea of posting the same kind of comments to every post on a Blogger site. I know I had one of the "ghost" blog sites that were abandoned after a post or two, and it was because I just did not see a future in writing a daily blog with the same content as a million other 20 somethings with a passion for sports and an extraordinary amount of free time. But at this point lurking in the shadows, there were the large corporations who had yet to jump with two feet into the burgeoning blogosphere. However, the fact that they waited gave them the option to look back and see what works and what doesn't in the online world. Companies could promote new products on blogs as a new wave of advertising, and thus virtual ad space was highly sought over by large corporate companies looking to reach certain demographics within popular blog sites.

This site outlines many of the different ways blogs could choose to have advertising incorporated into their sites by big businesses. Blog advertising can sometimes be the only way to profit from the fruits of one's labor in the online world these days. Online advertising offers three primary types of ads bloggers can use to make money from their blogs, and there are many more outlined.

Mass Amateurization

There is no doubt about it, blogs are less formal, more straight forward, and often times tell juicier stories that a printed article. They had a dramatic increasing in the past decade because of the interactivity they offer to fellow bloggers and readers. In February 2011, over 156 million blogs have been created which contradicts the books assumptions that blogging is a dying communication style. Since this form of communication continues to grow and attract readers, traditional forms of information providers are also turning to the blog and twitter revolution.
Now, almost every newspaper has a blog in addition to what they do and how they traditionally send out information. Journalism is not necessarily decreasing or becoming less relevant, it is simply evolving. By adapting into what their readers want, they are able to keep their following. A small 140 character tweet may be more helpful and easier to access that taking to time read a story about a news headline. CNN has done a great job transitioning their following to watching CNN at home on tv, to checking twitter on their smart phones. They have over 1.5 million followers, without taking into account that each news reporter/journalist have their own twitter following.
It is no surprise that newspaper and magazine circulation are decreasing, and even library visits continue to fall because people have the power to get information faster from home and even create their own blogs and twitter accounts. The increase in social media is a direct correlation to mass amateurization. Blogs become more popular than the news because they tell the sides of stories that people want to hear. In a 2010 article a sports journalists shows his frustration about blogging relating to scandals PR try to cover up from the public. One mention is the Tiger Woods story and how his divorce was so publicized. "These stories break in blogs because their writers aren't beholden to the same model, and often don't care about being so close to their subjects." Although blogging could be giving the public more information than we need, we seem to crave it.

Who's Cashing in on Free Labor?

Over the past few weeks we have been talking a lot about free labor and how people are constantly doing unpaid work such as blogs, social networking, and other forms of digital work that is not their occupation. This reminded me a lot of the Shirky article we read and the idea of mass-amateurization in which the journalism and publishing of printed word of the past which had fixed and expensive costs that were reserved only for large companies and professionals in their field is now open to the public. Anybody can write anything they want and distribute it to the masses at a speed that isn't even measurable. Are these people making money doing this? For the most part they aren't, but at the same time somebody has to be. The mass-amateurization of journalism and publishing has shifted the ability to be heard and the right to write (that wasn't on purpose) from a professional field to a field of amateurs who can create and disseminate materials on a massive level. It has given power and autonomy to bloggers and users of social networking, but has also created a decay in credibility as well as a form of media decadence in which people know less now then they did when they were all reading the same materials. It has been said now that nearly 50 percent of people under the age of 35 get their information from facebook posts and what is "trending" on twitter, causing news companies and professionals to shift in where they get their information, and influencing them to put importance on specific messages.

So one wonders if the people that are writing these blogs, social networking posts, and tweets aren't making money off of their free labor then who is cashing in? The answer is that media conglomerates are still the ones making the money, they just are doing it much easier by using the free labor that people are willingly producing. A good example of this was the post on the icon site about the Huffington Post. It was sold to AOL for 315 million dollars, but the people actually producing the information aren't making the money, the owners of the platforms are. As things become more digital and information continues to be freely created on internet platforms, the owners of these specific platforms and companies are the ones able to make millions of dollars. So in a sense, even though the internet makes finding and creating material and content freely available, and encouraged to everyone, it still pays to be a professional, or a media conglomerate.