How has the digital obsession altered our ability to interact causing out sense of individuality to decline?
INTRODUCTION:
All types of information seem to be thrown at us constantly. The new digital age started when the radio was mass-produced. The radio was the first electronic medium that brought people together. As with television the radio was somewhat addictive but nothing like today’s television or some of the other digital mediums in our culture. So many more people listened to the news in the radios hay-day then they do now. The Internet and television are used primarily as a form of entertainment where as the telephone and radio were primarily used as form of communication. At first the television was used mostly as a means of obtaining information such as the news and current events and gradually turned to a method of entertainment (I Love Lucy in the 60’s and American Idol in the new millennium.) There are now so many digital mediums they have caused us to re-think interaction between one-another and what it means to think impartially. The digital age has created a new form of screen-based communication, which has reduced face-to-face embodied communication and replaced it with electronic mediums; this is changing our ability to lead an individual life of free thought.
ARGUMENT ONE:
The Internet is arguably the biggest change in our way of life as a result of the digital revolution. Its many aspects play multiple roles in obtaining information. One of the biggest portions of the Internet is the self – publishing side. Blogs, movie reviews, and personal thoughts (aka comments) blanket the web like no other type of entertainment could. Why send a letter to the editor when you can comment on the website. In the book Everything Good is Bad For You the author Steven Johnson states: “The wonderful blog-tracking service technorati reports that roughly 275,000 blog entries are published in the average day - a tiny fraction of them authored by professional writers.” (Johnson 119) This statistic shows how frequent blogs are posted, and read, and thought about, and replied, and forwarded. If you were to look at any random post there is a high probability that it will be based on the person who wrote it, whether its what they are feeling about work, what they think about sports, or politics, or movies. The underlying principle of the post is self-involvement. The blogs are providing new channels for social interaction. At first glance this seems like a positive and in many ways it is, but there is an overwhelming negative side. The constant blogging, followed by the comments, then the replies all happens so fast that within minutes your ideas, thoughts and opinions are seen by tons of people. Your original thoughts about life are now the thoughts of others and your ability to keep your thoughts and be an individual are wiped away with the click of a mouse. The blog is the online diary, except on the blog there is no hiding place. The connection is so strong that it begs the question can you be too connected? And what does that mean; does it mean you’re tied together with the rest of the populous to the point of losing your individuality?
The blog isn’t the only way the Internet has changed our interaction habits. Search engines have also tarnished our thought process. Many, most of whom are teenagers, have all the information in the world at their finger tips and see no need to learn more the minimum necessary or have intelligent conversations instead they use the easy way, the method that requires less work, they rely on Wikipedia, and Google to gain knowledge only when necessary. “Google is our culture’s principle way of knowing about itself.” (Johnson 121) For today’s youth the digital age, primarily the Internet has given them an excuse to never educate themselves unless necessary. This change from intelligent and purposeful conversation to the opposite has been partly caused by the television and the Internet together. The T.V. distracted and caused people to zone out while the Internet gave them a place to get anything they needed 24/7. In this sense the Internet and television have made people dumber and less cognitive. As a result there is less interaction about what really matters, and the conversations that do exist are based on Youtube videos and reality shows.
Social networking sites are another way the Internet has changed the way we interact. They help shape the new interaction style different from all else. According to the facebook website there are about 300,000,000 active users. ("Facebook.com") This is only around 4 million less than the population of the entire United States! Social networking has helped form the new method of interaction. It helps connect friends and family like nothing in the past could. Social networking has gone as far as redefining the word friend. Being a facebook friend doesn’t meet the same requirements of a real life friend, to change the definition of the word friend is quite a feat. Similar to the blog, Facebook has opened a new pathway of interaction. Social networking is seen as the change from having a conversation with a friend on the phone or in a restaurant to looking at the pictures of someone you hardly know in the safety of your home. And with more than 2 billion photos uploaded every month ("Facebook.com") the change isn’t difficult to miss. Social networking sites have worked to appease the demand of having information immediately. This is further making it harder to think about something objectively with no background information or individual opinion.
ARGUMENT TWO:
Nearly all the digital mediums in this age have an aspect of constant contact but nothing has matched the cell phone’s ability to connect people from every corner of the world. “Nothing has matched the seismic cultural shift created by the cell phone” (Kim.) The cell phone has revolutionized the human idea of connection. It has given us the opportunity to talk to anyone anytime. The cell phone has given people the opportunity to interact and connect while being hundreds of miles away. One example of the obsession of constant contact is a table adapted from the Neilson group telecom by “fuor digital”. It shows that 88% of wireless subscribers in Russia have used text messaging within the last 30 days of the survey. ("fuor digital, digital media specialists ") This statistic does a good job of illuminating how many people use texts and cell phones to connect and interact with friends, family, and co-workers. The constant use of cell phones and texting has altered what is normal talk. What used to be a human connection is replaced with a piece of technology. We have become so immersed in our digital lives, the text, calls, and screen that we stop thinking about what is around us, what we should be focusing on is brushed to the side by the digital mediums.
Cell phones obviously connect people through their personal lives but they also connect business. Thousands of people rely on cell phones to work. This is both advantageous and disadvantageous, in one sense industries have thrived because of the availability to send information at any moment, but at the same time people lose their ability to disconnect, to be alone. When I was interviewing people on their thoughts of digitalization one man made the point that we are always reachable: “Everyone expects that your available 24/7, which means you have an urgency in responding, people aren’t thinking, they are not acting appropriately in many respects.” This is an excellent point cell phones have allowed work to never cease. How many people claim they can’t live without their phones? The explosion of digital media has changed proper interaction, people now use technology to work even when they are away. Everyone is reachable all the time thus preventing people from leading a solely individual life, having one life based on work, and the other on personal life. The constant connection is preventing people from being truly alone.
ARGUMENT THREE:
Another negative implication of the digital age is that we use the connection set by the Internet and cell phones even when it is not necessary, to often we Google something because it is easier. We get the raw information using the fastest way we know how. We use the technology because we are addicted and it’s appealing. An example of using the technology when not necessary is in the book Feed by M.T. Anderson: “we were to angry to speak out loud our jaws were like grrrrrvvvvv. So we started to chat” (Anderson 167). Even though they were sitting right next to each other with no one else around them they used the technology. They didn’t need to use it, they could have just spoken and gotten the same outcome but they didn’t because the feed was more attractive, it was marketed better. The addiction to digital representation devices has altered our sense of interaction as shown in Feed instead of speaking as individuals to each other, they used the Feed as a third party.
Another example of using digital representational devices when not necessary is from the film “Wall-E” in the film two men are using a screen to interact even though they are right next to each other. (Wall-e) This is another example of how the digital mediums have changed our ideas of interaction so much that we don’t even think about not using them, it has become second nature. They have become the central point of interaction. They are so prevalent in our society that our thoughts are no longer just thoughts; they are represented by digital devices.
SIGNIFICANCE:
This idea that we are losing our ability to think freely is extremely important. What kind of world is it if one can’t be an individual and you have to rely on everything and everyone else? People spend so much time on the Internet and watching television that they are constantly being shaped and formed by the ideas of those who write it. We see so much, because we spend so much time in a trance by the digital devices. We attempt to mirror what we see and hear from them, thus losing our individuality. We as humans are all different but the digital age it conforming us, reducing individuality
CONNECTIONS:
These changes are seen just about everywhere. Pretty much all of the modern world, especially the western world, is having the same affect as a result to the digital obsession. The lack of face-to-face embodied communication is gradually lowering the need for individuality all over the world. I see it occasionally in my life, for example I can recall last year instead of reading notes from the text book I wrote down the question and decided to Google it later. However this is just the human way of thinking, to find something new, adapt to the change environment it has caused, obsess, and eventually move on.
Still some remain unaffected by the digital age. The Amish for example use no modern electronic technology or digital devices. Yes they interact but only with one another so their conversations do not expand, they remain stagnant in there own culture. The difference in lifestyle is an example to prove how we are different because of the digital age.
OPPOSING VIEW POINTS:
On the contrary what’s good about the boom of digital representational devices and the idea that the digital age is destroying our ability to think and interact is that digital devices are just the latest version of human interaction. Did people say the telegram was destroying interaction, or the smoke stack? No, they just made life easier, they were just the examples of human ingenuity. History is merely repeating itself, just in a different version. As people develop so do the inventions created for them. Technology is simply adapting to the wants and needs of the population. Digital mediums are helping people get what they need and want faster, easier, and more efficiently. It is a valid argument, one that many overlook. It is just change, and change is always somewhat scary. The digital age is more worrisome because it was immediate, not gradual like other innovations before it.
Digitalization has played a big part in modern globalization. The Internet assisted in moving cultures together. People of various lifestyles and cultures have been brought together. “The internet breaks down cultural boundaries across the world by enabling easy, near-instantaneous communication between people anywhere in a variety of digital forms and media. The Internet is associated with the process of cultural globalization because it allows interaction and communication between people with very different lifestyles and from very different cultures.” ("Globalization".) This, from the globalization page from Wikipedia shows how digitalization has brought people together in positive ways. It has connected us as a world, and created international integration.
CONCLUSION:
The new form of digital interaction has relied too heavily on electronic methods instead of a human communication reducing our ability to lead an individual life.
- · johnson, steven. Everything Bad Is Good For You. New York: Riverhead books, 2005. 119. Print.
- · Johnson, Steven. Everything Bad Is Good For You. New York: Riverhead books, 2005. 121. Print.
- · "press room, statistics, general growth." Facebook.com. facebook, Web. 3 Nov 2009.
- · "press room, statistics, applications." Facebook.com. facebook, Web. 3 Nov 2009.
- · "Text-messaging overtakes monthly phone calls." fuor digital, digital media specialists . 07/11/2008. four digital, Web. 3 Nov 2009.
- · Anderson, M.T. Feed. cambridge mass.: Candlewick press, 2002. 167. Print.
- · Kim, Ryan. " The world's a cell-phone stage The device is upending social rules and creating a new culture." San Francisco Chronicle 27 Feb. 2006: n. pag. Web. 5 Nov 2009.
- · Wall-e, 2008 Pixar.
- · "Globalization." Wikipedia. 2009. Web.
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