Sharon Hill
CMNS 150
Sherri Turkle, a psychologist appears on a
Ted Talk of what technology is doing to society. Texting, emailing and social
media are replacing real life conversations and connecting with people in a
real way. It made me look at my own life and consider the real information she
shared about having human relationships. Interestingly she shared how
technology creates an illusion that we think we are connecting with people by
having conversations digitally. But by actually having real conversations we
learn about ourselves and other people. Technology provides good information. But
we need to know how and when to use it.
I thought Turkle's talk was very informative as well, and it caused me to do a little reflecting on my own use of technology for communication (especially text and Facebook). I agree that there needs to be a balance. However, it seems like you have to make a conscious effort to reach out and communicate with people on a deeper level. It made me want to phone my mom, my grandmother, etc., as we sometimes take advantage of these important relationships - they all require feeding and nurturing.
ReplyDeleteYou're right. It seems more purposeful to reach out to someone and shake their hand to actually make the connection.
DeleteI love how she focuses on the illusion of it all. People buy into the fantasy that they can choose which aspects of any person or situation they can pay their attention to, which as she points out is no way to get to know new people. We think we know others, just as others think they know us based on how we present ourselves online, and this ultimately makes us very alone. Moving on I think we need to make more of an active effort as a society to un-plug and re-connect in real space and real time.
ReplyDeleteIt made me think of that too, "this ultimately makes us feel very alone. It is very insightful.
DeleteAs somebody who is what Andy calls a "digital immigrant" do you find people who grew up online to be worse at face-to-face communication overall? I'm not sure I really buy the connection but I'm curious to hear what you think.
ReplyDeleteIt's a different generation. I don't think it's hard to communicate face to face. I think she gave good insight about real life human connections. Nothing beats that. Digitally, we can always unplug from people. Where the human connection has a more lasting effect.
DeleteI also found the video very interesting. While I was watching, i kept receiving notifications from 'likes' and 'comments' on my social media account, making it super difficult to focus on the message of the video. I put my phone away, only to be left with a need to check my phone every 2 minutes! Talk about an empty action... I have been trying to make an effort not to check my phone while having real life social interactions!
ReplyDelete