The good, bad, and disturbing...

I think the effect depends on the technology. To name a few examples, the telephone changed the way we communicated, the radio gave everyone instant access to all genres of music and national news, and the television provided a way to combine several media to create audio and visuals. All changed the way we obtain information. The Internet takes it a step (or leap) further by giving us the ability to interact with other people and share information world wide instead of just obtain it. The effect of this is massive in terms of access, identity, and community. Turkle’s discussion of identity focuses on individuals that use the web for certain reasons. Those that participate in online gaming and seek out programs require them to create an online identity using avatars and screen names. I think this fits well with the idea that the Internet can be an extension of one’s own self. Although a person is a white rabbit or a female (when they are a male in real life –RL) in a MUD, it is still a part of their identity that they are choosing to express online rather than offline.

Community = social networking in my eyes. The idea of Mark Z’s social graph is just a combination of a personal web page and social network combined. When I picture it, I think of MyYahoo but on steroids. I think it’s a great idea and exactly where social networking should be headed and I’m hoping Facebook beats the rest of them out. I agree with Molly Holzschlag when she says that people will eventually get tired of logging on to and maintaining several profiles and that there will be a necessity for one and one only. The OpenSocial idea is going to be one that people will really need to be educated on before participation occurs. I have read a bit about it and I’m still not quite sure how it will work. Until I do, I won’t bother with it.

Access, to me, is the golden effect. I am amazed every day of the information that I have access to, not only as a student and teaching assistant, but also as an Austinite, a painter, a music-lover, and the niece of 6 uncles and 6 aunts with kids and grandkids spread all over the U.S. I can instantly find out about the next art show in Austin, where that random band is playing that sings that random song that I like, and when festivals are coming to town and how I can participate in them. When I was in my teens, I was lucky if I found out about babies being born or someone graduating in my massive family until someone got down the calling list to my father. Now, my cousin’s newborn picture is in my email box a few hours after delivery. The negative side of access is expectation. With all this information at our fingertips we are expected as individuals to be more informed, more intelligent in our discussions and produce written work more quickly than ever before.

The disturbing part of the Internet (and technology in general) is dependence. What I mean by dependence is not just addiction. Chou, Condron, & Belland’s study was not shocking for me. If people spend too much time doing anything, it is bound to have negative effects on something else that they are neglecting. Burnett and Marshall cited Kraut’s 1998 study in the book about people who spend too much time online. I think this is a great quote. “Internet social relationships were substituted for face-to-face relationships, or time spent online is time in which people would be forming strong face-to-face ties were they offline.” Now, obviously this is not the case for everyone who spends a lot of time on the Internet, but I think it’s a good reminder that there are qualities of life that do not involve the Internet that cannot be replaced. If a child growing up now doesn’t learn how to handle physical, personal confrontation or public speaking, they are without very important skills that are required to function in society. The studies used by Chou, Condron, & Belland all seemed very different. If you use different students from different schools and different scales for each time you measure anything, then everyone is going to have their own lonely results. Overall, I think that younger people who use the Internet and social networking as a supplement to their lives instead of using it to survive their lives are the ones that are on the right track.

As a concerning effect of technology, the other part of dependence that I am referring to has more to do with expectations, which I briefly mentioned above. Once I was promoted a few times at work and started traveling and meeting with clients several times a month, I was asked to carry a Blackberry (or Crackberry as we lovingly refer to it). Let’s just say I “accidentally” lost that thing and they replaced it three times before they gave up. I argued that our business was doing just as great before the invention of that thing and that we shouldn't fix something that isn't broken... it didn't work. My point is that, when it is “off-duty” time, it is MY time and I don’t want to be expected to return emails or log on to the network or take client calls 24 hours a day. There has to be a balance between personal time and “Internet” time. As a teaching assistant I encourage students in my class to come see me in my office hours to discuss their projects. Instead, I get emails that have their project attached and say something like, “Can you read over this (30 page document by the way) and give me comments and tell me what I am doing wrong so I can fix it?” My answer? “If you would like to go over your project with me in my office, I’ll be happy to give you verbal feedback. My office is OM…” I have no intention of letting students use email to facilitate laziness. A few questions are great for email – an entire project is not. All in all, I think that each person has to make their own decisions about what role technology plays in their life and how much they will let it run their lives. I take comfort in the fact that if all hell breaks loose tomorrow and my laptop crashes and the network goes down at school, I can still function as a human being and get done the things I need to get done.