Final Thoughts

To wrap up this course--and this blog--I started thinking about some overarching themes that ran through the semester. Of course, one of the most obvious ones that came up in almost every discussion was the idea of disruption. But what I found most interesting was a quote that Professor Robinson brought up a few times in class.

We discussed Kranzberg's 1st Law that technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral. There will always be unintended consequences that come along with the terrain of new technology, and these consequences are circumstantial. We can take our class's blog forum as a perfect example of this. Some technological advancement that one person sees as having extremely negative consequences can be seen by someone else in an entirely different light. We can't make any broad generalizations about any new technology. A perfect example of this is Sherry Turkle's view that cell phones are causing us to be "alone together" since we are so attached to them, but cell phones have also allowed us to be able to more easily connect to more people than ever before.

So, depending on the circumstance, the result of a technological advancement can have a certain type of consequence that it wouldn't have in a separate context, but in no context is it neutral.

Waze

After doing my class presentation on the community based traffic and navigation app, I actually had the chance to try it this weekend. Going home from Chapel Hill, we hit some horrible traffic and I wanted to figure out how long we might be in it for. So, I downloaded the Waze app and signed in just to see if it was all it's cracked up to be.

It ended up being extremely helpful. It showed me the traffic I was in, and the length of it, by making the road display red until the traffic jam ended. I could tell how much farther I would have to go to get out of it. What was really great, though, was that it's set up so you can see other users on your screen, so you can tell there are people around you who are also on the app. They come up as mini cars on the road, and when you click on one, it tells you how fast they are going. So, unfortunately, I could see that up to ten miles ahead of me someone was only travelling at 4 miles per hour. It was a long ride home...but the point is that--even if the app didn't get rid of the traffic (that would be an amazing app)--it still let me know just how long I should be prepared to be in stand-still traffic. It was really cool to see notifications popping up that alerted the Waze user community to the traffic conditions and updates. It's a great way to get need-to-know information as fast as possible.

Creepy Social Media

I have a post that should reaffirm the beliefs that some people in our class hold that social media is creepy. So, just as a preface to the creepy moment I just experienced, this past weekend I went to Disney World and met my boyfriend's family. Long story short, we stayed at a hotel called Melia. Now, here comes the creepy part. I'm not sure if you all are familiar with the website 9gag or not, but it is an incredibly addicting social media site that has a variety of memes, gifs, funny pictures, etc. Anyway, I'm on it all the time. Especially when I should be studying. I was on it today, of course, and as I'm scrolling down chuckling at a gif, I notice on the right side of the page where the advertisements are featured is an ad for guess what? Melia hotels! Telling me that I should book a stay now! What's weirdest to me is that I don't think I posted anything on my Facebook or any social media site about where I was going, much less what hotel I would be staying at. It's some creepy stuff. Even though it's a completely different situation, I feel like the girl whose dad found out she was pregnant from Target before he found out from her. Sometimes this personalization and behavior-tracking that comes along with media is a little too much. When a silly website I go on to procrastinate knows about a trip I took, that's where I draw the line.

Let's Not Blame the Internet

Maryanne Wolf thinks that online skimming is hurting our ability to comprehend and manage "deep reading" that is more dense than what we are used to. I don't think this is true. Sure, some people have a hard time switching from skimming light stuff online to more dense material, but that's two different kinds of reading. If you are going to read a dense novel you have to invest yourself in it and actively engage in the material. It's always been that way; I don't think the Internet has suddenly made us worse readers.

Also, as for students saying that their readings are too time demanding, I think this response is being analyzed in the wrong way. Sure, it is demanding on their time and they find themselves too impatient to finish or read it fully. But it's not because they are too used to skimming texts online, like Wolf is asserting. It's because they have so much dense reading for many of their classes and not enough time to do it all fully! That's how my experience has been, at least. I've certainly noticed, especially with having a Communication major with a Journalism minor, that most of my homework is reading. And it's not very light. (With the exception of this class, of course--we always have just the right amount of reading). So, yes, I find myself having a hard time focusing completely on one reading when I know I have three more to get through and not enough hours in the day to pore over each of them until I fully understand every single one. I think Wolf is focusing on the wrong problem.

Twitter Messaging Alerts

It seems like Twitter is making changes along with Facebook. In fact, Twitter's recent change makes it look a little more like Facebook. It's adding notification alerts when someone mentions, messages or retweets a user. I do think this new addition is a good idea, but maybe Twitter should hold back on becoming too much like another social media site.

Both Facebook and Twitter are great in their own right, so why change one to make it more like the other? I like Twitter the way it originated. The point was to have a one-way status update platform, but now it's looking more like Facebook with the messaging functions. So, I guess it depends on what direction Twitter wants to take their social media platform whether this new development is ultimately a good idea or not, but I think they should make sure they are keeping themselves distinctive from other sites.

Yet Another Change to Facebook

Another update on Facebook: apparently it's planning on taking chat out of the Facebook app, forcing users to download a separate Messenger app. This sounds like another bad idea to me, and Lance Ulanoff agrees. In fact, he gives us 11 reasons why, and he doesn't hold back. 

I'll let you guys read the whole article at your own leisure, but I just wanted to share a few of his reasons that I thought were great. First of all, Facebook didn't ask the public about this change. Why, after so many negative responses to their changes, would they make another one--that's even more annoying than most others--without getting their public's consent?? I don't get it. 

Secondly, Ulanoff points out that this change will ultimately hurt Facebook because it will take the real-time communication aspect out of the social platform. I think this is extremely relevant. This is one of Facebook's best features! It's so easy and convenient. Why would they feel the need to separate this aspect from their original platform and make the two mutually exclusive? I think it's an extremely important part of owning a business to have the ability to know when it is smart to innovate and mix things up a bit and when it's smarter to just keep things the same--the way people like them. In this case, Facebook does not seem to have that ability. 

Privatizing Facebook

Facebook is planning on updating their features, making it more private for users. According to Mashable, the new features give you the option to decide if you want your post to be open to the public or to be private, and will make the intended audience label more easily visible.

I do think this is a good idea, because people are very concerned nowadays about privacy issues--a concern that Kristin can definitely attest to. However, I don't necessarily think that it is the responsibility of Facebook to make sure that nobody posts anything they didn't want the public to see. To me, when you sign up on any social media site, you are signing a contract that you are responsible for what you post on that site. If you are concerned about something that you post being seen by someone, why not just refrain from posting it in the first place? I think that we should mediate our own privacy, not Facebook.

This isn't to say that things like people stealing your identity are the victim's fault. I don't think that's true at all. It's not like a free-for-all where if you're on social media you might get your identity stolen and you just have to accept that. That line of thinking is just unfair. But, I do think people should be aware of what they are saying and who is seeing it. If you really are that concerned with privatizing what you are saying, why post it on a SOCIAL media site when you could just tell the people you are close to?

Copying Might Not Be That Bad

In response to Lauren's recent post about social media companies copying others and their lack of originality, it's my belief that copying ideas--although it makes sense that the popularity of an aspect of one site would transfer to another--it ultimately comes off as lazy. Although, adding things like hashtags and private messaging makes our different social media sites more personalized and gives us more that we can do with that technology. So, maybe there are some positive aspects to what seems like copying. Some people may only use certain social media sites, so they might appreciate that features originally on a site they don't use were added onto the site(s) that they do actually use.

Cell Phones are Toxic

As much as I love technology, and am very glad to have it in my life, I can't help but feel that sometimes it does detract from some very important aspects of life and just being human. Nicole and Madison discuss some of the good and bad things about technology and how it has changed our lives, and I would like to add to that.

Their posts made me think about the Louis C.K. video we watched the other day about how he hates cell phones because they don't allow people to just be themselves and enjoy what is going on around them. Just "being a person." One of the comments he made that really resonated with me is that technology like our phones has given us an outlet--that we shouldn't have--to not think about the deeper questions in life. You know the kind. They come to you when everything during the day has died down and you're in bed alone and all of a sudden all of the questions of the universe suddenly come to you. It's a scary feeling and it's one that people will avoid if possible--and that's exactly what technology has allowed us to do. I don't think that's a good thing. I agree with Louis C.K. that we should just allow those feelings to take us over and maybe just get a good cry out every once in a while, because if we're not doing that, then we're not really in touch with our humanity.

Virtual Reality

In response to Lauren's post on the future of virtual reality,  I would like to say that I think there is no way it is going to end up as the next big thing, and it certainly isn't going to be so pervasive in society that it affects our ability to connect with people. Maybe it's just my bias, but I think that virtual reality technology is a bit overrated. Especially in the case of the Oculus technology; it's just a bit much and seems like it has the potential to be very overstimulating. Although this kind of technology is interesting at first, I think it loses its appeal quickly. It's just not practical. A huge set of goggles like those of Oculus seem cumbersome and inconvenient. So, even though it would be a fun and exciting experience to try once or twice, I don't see it as a lasting technology.

In my experience, virtual reality has been one of those things that is very cool for a only a very short amount of time. For example, you guys remember Runescape, right? At least within my and my brothers' circle of friends, this online virtual reality game was all the craze when I was in elementary school. And then all of a sudden people got bored with it and it died down just like that. I see this same pattern happening with other forms of virtual reality going into the future. I'm not worried at all that we will become glued to our alternate virtual identities while we leave the real world behind--at least not permanently.

The Future of News

One important current mass media issue that is being talked about is the future of news. As this just so happens to be my final topic, I have an interest in the subject. Something that I have noticed through my research is the reoccurring trend that people are getting their news more and more from social media. In fact, according to Pew Research, about half of adults who are on Facebook use it for news. There's a cool graph on the page that shows the different social media sites that people are using and the percentage of them who are using it for news as well. It might actually be the same graph that Professor Robinson showed us in class the other day, but, hey, that just makes it all the more valid, right? 

Anyway, I think it's very interesting--but not surprising--that this seems to be the path that news is going down now. I think it has a lot to do with convenience; if you're browsing social media and news pieces show up on your feed, it's that much easier to click on the link instead of searching it out. You have your information right there. It may also have to do with the "filter bubble". If Facebook knows what your preferences are based on your past behavior, your news feed will probably have more items that are of your interest than not. This means that you're all the more likely to click on those news links. Even though this is my prediction of where the majority of news will be in the future, I fully believe that other sources will not die out. There are always going to be those more traditional people that like their news the way it used to be: in print.