Wrapping it all up

The blog project has been interesting for me, alternately not terribly difficult (I did blog professionally for nearly two years, so blogging wasn't an entirely new thing for me), but a challenge in making a connection to both the textbooks and culture in general. At times, I have felt a little vexed by the Postman text which is a little strange, since I really enjoyed one of his other books, Amusing Ourselves To Death. Postman's general thesis is strong, in that we need to remember that technology isn't entirely positive or even simply neutral, but on some occasions, he seems stuck on his paradigm unwilling to accept technology's positive ends. That made making a connection from his ideas to, for example, the week four project of sending an email to one friend and a letter to another, somewhat difficult. Postman was certainly a very bright and influential man, but to some extent, I think Technopoly might be wistful for a day that has already past us by - one where technology could be thwarted in its domination of our society.

The Wood and Smith book was vexing in a different way. It might be my own narrow experience with the internet, but it seemed their text was already outdated. Wood and Smith spend quite a bit of time in their text discussion MUDs, but not as much time discussing Twitter, for example. It seems like any textbook discussing the internet that actually gets to print is going to be already outdated, which is sort of unfortunate. I like actually having a book in my hand, but it seems like when my son is in college (or quite a bit sooner), textbooks will all be on a Kindle, updated daily with new content. There were definitely moments in this class when I was stuck in the midst of several paragraphs about an aspect of technology no one is particularly concerned about anymore that I wished the text was more up to date.

The assignments themselves were fine, although I felt a bit corny on occasion sending a letter to someone or doing the interviews. Still, that wasn't too much trouble. The only assignment I would have preferred to not do entirely would have been the initial abstinence assignment. While I understood the point (how can you realize the depth of technology's influence while still in the midst of it?), at this point and time, it seems like our lives are too connected to extricate ourselves without a significant amount of disruption. I had to take a day off from work, which isn't really anyone's problem but my own, but the assignment actually cost me a smallish amount of money, which was unpleasant.

Otherwise, the class was fun and interesting, but I think new texts might be beneficial, or even, to make the cost of taking the class itself somewhat more affordable, to eliminate specific texts entirely. I would think, and this might be unmerited arrogance, that blogs, magazine articles and newspaper articles all available for free online could take the place of the textbooks. I would imagine that would be a difficult process to assemble an adequate replacement for the textbooks, so that's a problem, but I think that would be the best way to improve the class, if feasible.

Something Completely Different

For some reason, I spent thirty minutes staring at the screen trying to think of what to post here. Not for lack of material, but the opposite. I spend nearly every moment that I'm awake on the internet in one form or another these days, so thinking of a specifically interesting moment that would reflect culturally in some profound manner or that I could connect to the texts this week (especially Postman, who seemed off his rocker a bit in chapters 9 & 10) was a real challenge. The internet is my culture at this point. I spend for more time communicating through Facebook or Google Talk than I do face-to-face. I'm working on a book with people I've never actually met. The person who signs my paycheck and I have met once, for about ten minutes. In a way, thinking about cyberculture issues makes me think of an old joke: Two fish are swimming along when another older fish swims up. The older fish cheerily comments, "The water sure is nice today!", and swims away. One of the original fish looks at the other and says "What's water?"

Partially, that's what makes commenting on cyberspace culture so difficult. Postman is right in one sense on his comments about the social sciences: we're not blessed with the definitives of chemistry or geology, where there are specific laws of motion and matter that govern results, making them reproducible. With cyberspace, there's no particular definition of the playing field, either, as the internet is really an amorphous space changing based on perspective and time. Wood and Smith's book has been frustrating at times because it reflects an internet set in a particular place in time by the restraints of publishing. Should someone even bother to write a physical book about the internet? Shouldn't they just publish an online document that can change by the day? Would a crowd-sourced wiki better reflect the realities of online communication and research?

So, what experience to talk about? I thought one of the most uniquely "online" experiences I had during the quarter was that in this blog last week, I was going through the comments for my previous post realizing there was a comment from a friend of mine from my earliest days on the internet, back in the days when email groups were on the cutting edge of technology. We used to exchange email personally and via the group nearly every day for several years, but lost touch when families and professions started to get in the way. Somehow (he didn't even know how exactly), he stumbled upon this blog and made an effort to re-connect. We exchanged emails this week, catching up on each others lives, and hopefully, we won't let years go by without communicating. Still, he's not someone I've ever met in person, but we know each other well enough to be happy to be in touch with each other again. This seems like a situation unique to the internet age, to me. Sure, I imagine there were penpals who probably reconnected via postcards once or twice, but the nature of networks of information where people have multiple, separate connection points is something new, complicated, and worthy of academic investigation in a class such as this.

The interviews

The process of interviewing three people for this exercise was interesting, although it seemed like the responses were largely what I would have expected based on their age group and the length of time and extent of exposure they have had with the internet. First, I talked to my friend, Jed, who is 33 and works as a network administrator. Understandably, based on his job, he spends nearly all of his waking hours connected to the internet in one manner or another. In fact, our conversation was conducted via the chat mechanism on Facebook. Jed mentioned having trouble recalling life without the internet, since he was first exposed to networked life in high school. Since then, nearly all of his communication, from work interactions to those with friends, family, and even his girlfriend seems to pass via the internet. Still, Jed was unsure if technology has overall been a positive thing in his life. Similar to Neil Postman's concepts in Technopoly, Jed perceives the internet to be a movement, working in both positive and negative ways. In fact, Jed was getting ready to take a vacation the next day, and expressed his wish to leave behind his phone and laptop, but the nature of his work wouldn't allow him to do so.

[Specific to the readings this week, I talked to Jed about the idea of employers spying on the internet use of their employees. Jed mentioned that his current employer is very concerned with where their employees travel on the information superhighway, and that a regular topic in employee performance reviews is history logs from web browsers. Jed felt the unease that his employer could be using the internet to look for his replacement on a job site, while he could be fired for looking for a new place to work on his lunch break. In fact, someone he works with was reprimanded recently for looking at Craigslist on his iPhone during a paid break using the company's secured wifi. Jed on several occasions used the term "Big Brother" to describe the extent that a panopticon has been established at his workplace.]

Next, I talked to my mother-in-law, who is 55. While she is intrigued by the internet and sees it as a gateway to a world of possibilities, she is still uneasy in navigating the internet as a whole, knowing what is trustworthy and how to find exactly what she's looking for. However, to her credit, for someone who didn't have a computer until a few years ago, she found her current job via an internet jobs site and uses email like a pro. She said she primarily uses the internet to accomplish specific tasks, such as her recent job search and her current quest to find a new apartment. She doesn't find much use for the internet casually, although she mentioned wanting to spend more time "looking around and exploring". She said that she wasn't entirely sure how technology has changed the way she lives, although she recognizes how different things are as time goes on. She is envious of those who use the internet with ease, and feels that it's a little late for her to catch up.

Finally, I talked to a woman at my mother-in-law's work (a retirement community), who is 75. I was somewhat surprised by her level of interaction on the internet. She said her primary use of the internet was to keep in touch with her children and grandchildren, although she also uses the internet to keep up with her finances also. She feels fortunate that she lives in an era when she can communicate instantly through Skype, Facebook and email to keep in touch with her family across the country and the world. She still refuses to spend money on the internet, fearing her credit card will be stolen, and is uneasy about privacy issues, but overall, she feels that technology has been a positive influence in her advanced age.

I wonder how these results will differ in five years, ten or twenty.