Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Technophilia High

Two interesting articles today highlight the ways technology continues to infiltrate every aspect of our lives -- for good and bad. The first explores a new project form Central Florida's College of Education to use avatar-infused instruction to get future teachers "teaching" in the classroom: http://mashable.com/2010/07/07/oxygen-facebook-study/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29&utm_content=Google+Reader. Essentially the program creates a series of avatars linked to one or more real people that then interact with the teacher trainee who is in a separate room with a projector screen seeing these avatars in action. Some elements of the virtual classroom are automated, but the real life actors are used to make the simulation more realistic. The question to me, then becomes why use the technology at all, but I digress.

The second article relates to young women 18 to 34 who are increasingly becoming addicted to Facebook and other social networking sites, even logging on before they hit the bathroom or eat breakfast upon waking up in the morning: http://mashable.com/2010/07/07/oxygen-facebook-study/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29&utm_content=Google+Reader. The study from Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research (of 1,600 adults over a two-month period) found that 57% of women talk online more than face to face, that 39% declare themselves addicted to Facebook and many check it in the middle of the night. As one researcher reports, "Our habits are changing due to social media technology, particularly Facebook. It's not just a connection tool for many women, but a research tool, a dating network, and a way to keep tabs on both boyfriends and enemies."

I know I have mentioned this before, but Marshall McLuhan once argued that after a period of negotiation with a new technology, we start to be defined by it as much as we define its use. It is not that this exists in stasis, as people change with technology and then change technology and readapt it to new uses or stop using it over time. Ultimately, we are conditioned but not determined. Yet it is clear that repetition and daily usage of technology change patterns of quotidian life in profound ways. Some do not succumb to the allure of a new technology, but many more do and it alters the nature of our lives. The question to ask is whether the time spent on Facebook is really productive. Sure maybe you can find someone to date there, but spying on boyfriends, friends and enemies, keeping the world updated on your daily activities or playing with their growing list of interesting but largely useless apps simply wastes time, doesn't it? In a deeper sense, what troubles me the most is the thought that we have created a generation of youth who assume that they should be engaged (or entertained) in every waking second of their lives. Lost then would be time to actually contemplate those lives, to use boredom as the fount to search out a hobby or interest, to read a book or, gasp, to think creatively about the world we live in and how to improve it. Of course, I type this online . . .

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