Hello! I'm a sophomore student of communication at Lewis and Clark college in lovely Portland, OR, and I am currently taking a class taught by Daena Goldsmith on interpersonal media: that is, how media, especially new technologies, effect our relationships and identities and methods of communication. I'm a frequent internet user myself (honestly, most of my free time is spent browsing the web in one way or another) with quite a personal interest in the subject, both from an intellectual perspective and an emotional one, so I'm quite looking forward to the experience. I'll be blogging throughout the semester on our readings and, when I find them, occasionally sharing links (videos, articles, what have you) that I find relate to the subject matter of the course, possibly including my thoughts on them, possibly not. I'm making this blog public because I know several of my friends share an interest in this subject, and if they do, probably lots of folks online who I don't know do too! So please feel free to peruse.
On to the reading, the article that most caught my interest - maybe because it most aligned with my own views of the 'net - was "It's Not the Technology, Stupid! Response to NYT 'Twitter Trap'", by Cathy Davidson at HASTAC.org. Chapter two of the Baym book suggested that there are many different ways of perceiving the influence new technologies have on us and the influence we have on new technologies, and the way that is probably the most accurate (and which I most agree with) is the ideology of 'social shaping', which is to say that the process very much goes both ways, with humans finding new and innovative ways to use the new technologies we're presented with while simultaneously having our own identities, habits, and thought processes shaped by them to some extent. For me certainly, my constant use of and access to technology has severe effects on my day to day life and I can't imagine what I'd do, or even what life would be like, without it. But I'm not convinced that that's a bad thing, and I'm even less convinced that computers have somehow denied me all agency! People use the internet in unexpected means to unexpected ends that sometimes could not possibly have been achieved without the 'net's assistance (a key example: The Arab Spring).
What was most interesting to me in Davidson's article was her argument that, although technology surely was changing our lives (from our social standards to our work habits), that change is par for the course in a society where such standards and work habits never stay exactly the same for too long. It is not exactly a positive change - the Internet may not level communication completely across gaps of status, race, gender, etc., and it may not always serve to bring us closer to those we love. But it is not exactly a negative change either, as so many seem to advocate. Change is a neutral force. I will not deny, nor does Davidson, that the change we are currently undergoing with widespread use of the Internet becoming more and more the norm is a larger and stronger change than has been felt in Western society for quite some time. But that's no reason to demonize it excessively - and besides, wallowing in nostalgia will not stop change; it never has. (And from the perspective of an aspiring advocate of social justice, this is something of a godsend!) To be certain, computers shape us, but we shape them too, as we have always done with technology and as technologies have always done with us. In sum (or to use netspeak, TL;DR): just because this change is more massive than any before doesn't mean it's inherently new, or good, or bad. Everything is situational, online, offline, and throughout the whole of human history. As Davidson says:
"It's NOT the Technology, Stupid! It is about what we--you and I--do with the technology. It always has been, it always will be."
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