These Days, High-Tech Options Can Short-Circuit a Romance.

Can a texter love a Twitterer? Can star-crossed lovers overcome wire-crossed gadgets? Can these relationships be saved?

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Each form of communication has its own followers and rules, which means dating today is a law of inverse proportions: As ways to communicate increase, the chances you will date someone who speaks your technological language decrease.

Very interesting article on today's Washington Post about how technology affects romantic relationships.

I want more and I want it now.

DeGrandpre's readings made me reflect upon technology's implications over our society, especially over our children. What will it be like 100 years from now? Will engineers still be trying to develop a faster video game, something even more interactive than Wii (and perhaps Wii's sucessors)? Will ALL, and I mean ALL, newspapers be online-only? (Well, not necessarily online, but delivered in some interactive fashion.) Will hardcopies of books only exist in some sort of "antique" bookstores and libraries? Will libraries exist at all? I'm not sure what the answer to these questions is but, if DeGrandpre's assumptions are right, and I think they are, then the answer would be "yes."

"Another all-too-popular solution is to simply plug in more stimulating activities at school and home," says DeGrandpre. I was at a party the other day, where there were lots of young kids playing around adults. A "bored" 3-year-old started to become grumpy and complainy, when her mother took a portable DVD player and made the girl watch a movie (I think it was Madagascar). I must admit that it worked: the little girl was quiet and entertained for quite a while (so that all the adults could talk). Is that right, though? How about giving the little girl a piece of paper and crayons, or even an age-appropriate book, to help develop her cognitive abilities? "That's too much work," some parents would argue. Parents try to accomodate their young kids to a distracted way of life rather than trying to reduce their distraction by unplugging them, says DeGrandpre. I totally agree with him, because that's what I have seen lately.

Our habituation to all this stimulation makes the unplugged world to fail to grab our attention, and, as a result, people have constant need for an "optimal level of stimulation," DeGrandpre argues. No longer it is enough for many people to read the hardcopy of a newspaper, they need a video to go with it, I would add to DeGrandpre's "no longer" list. Although DeGrandpre wrote Digitopia a few years ago, his principles totally apply today. People's hunger for even more stimulation never stops. What's coming after Wii, Playstation 3 and games like Second Life? I'm sure there will be something new to satisfy people's "inflated need for speed." Wii's "wow factor" will soon be over, and users will want more out a video game.

Similarly, when DeGrandpre talks about our ever-lasting need for speed, something came to my mind right away: people are always complaining about their internet connection. Have you all realized that? It doesn't matter how fast it is -- people will always complain and want a faster one. Back in Brazil, where my house's broadband internet connection wasn't as fast as the connection we have on the UT campus, I used to complain a lot. Now that I'm here and have a pretty fast internet connection, I still find myself complaining at times. Isn't that funny? Does this happen to you as well?

"The more sensory addicted you become, the more you find that the unplugged world doesn't go fast enough or seem interesting enough," says DeGrandpre. There has to be a "half way through," in my opinion. Kids need to be exposed to fast computers and good graphics, but they should also appreciate and know the value of activities such as drawing, listening to music without the videoclip, and reading a book. As we discussed in one of our previous classes, because there is no end for the development of technology, I think it will be up to parents to stimulate children's interest in the unplugged world. This doesn't mean that I don't appreciate technology and that I think that kids have to keep a distance from it. I know it may sound a bit contradictory. I'm only defending that parents try to promote kids interest in the unplugged world as well.

Digital Overload Is Frying Our Brains

And here's a blog post on Wired.com about something we've been discussing in class: technology (and, with it, the overload of information) and how it affects our attention. Very interesting!

In Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, Jackson explores the effects of "our high-speed, overloaded, split-focus and even cybercentric society" on attention. It's not a pretty picture: a never-ending stream of phone calls, e-mails, instant messages, text messages and tweets is part of an institutionalized culture of interruption, and makes it hard to concentrate and think creatively.

The danger of the media equation

Although it seems a bit surreal to me that media and real life are the same, as Nass and Reeves argue in "The Media Equation," I was able to identify with some things that they mention.

"[T]he more a media technology is consistent with social and physical rules, the more enjoyable the technology will be to use" (p. 8)

When I read this sentence, it reminded me of how newspapers and TV networks are much more interactive today, therefore consistent with social rules.

When the spectator reads or watches something of his/her interest, he or she will feel compelled to respond to that. Because both newspapers and TV channels have their own online version, which interacts with their print or broadcast version, people are able to interact with the content, with news anchors or writers, and with each other -- therefore making the whole experience a more enjoyable one. Does this make any sense? :)

"When our brains automatically respond socially and naturally because of the characteristics of media or the situations in which they are used, there is often little to remind us that the experience is unreal. ... This is effective, for example, at a scary movie." (pp. 12, 13)

For this reason, I haven't watched scary movies since I realized that it doesn't make me any good to watch them. I feel nervous and scared before, during and especially after I watch it. I can't sleep at night, thinking that the bad guy will come after me, too (haha). So I simply don't watch this type of movies anymore because they seem/feel a bit too real and I don't like that feeling.

I know this sounds stupid, but it is exactly what the text authors argue -- "Absent a significant warning that we've been fooled, our old brains hold sway and we accept media as real people and places." I'm unconsciously fooled by the media, I guess. But come on, girls in the class, who has never cried during a sad movie? Has anybody seen Marley and Me? Yeah, I could barely open my swollen eyes the next day. :)

I guess all of this relates to a post that Eun Sook recently wrote on the "Reset Syndrome."

People who suffer PC reset syndrome tend to think a criminal act easily, because they have an illusion between cyber space and reality. In addition they think that is okay they can press reset button in reality.

Although our brains are very easily tricked by what's real and what's not, I believe people should try to differentiate both. The PC Reset Syndrome, for instance, is a disease and may harm the people involved.

The author of "A Human-Centered Technology" is worried about that.

"I am concerned that the new tools have moved us in unexpected ways to accept experience as a substitute for thought." (p. 15)

As a solution, he says that we need the "effort of reflection." He argues that, instead of having a "brilliant lecturer" speak to school children, and of showing these kids "prepackaged films and videos " to engage them, the school needs to make them think.

The problem is that the author doesn't give concrete actions that schools should to take in order to make young students reflect.

So what we, as heavy technology users, can do in order not to accept the technological experience as a substitute for thought? Any suggestion?

The Cellphone, Navigating Our Lives (NYT story)

Here's a NYT story published on Feb.16 that is EXACTLY about what we discussed last class:

"The cellphone is the world’s most ubiquitous computer. The four billion cellphones in use around the globe carry personal information, provide access to the Web and are being used more and more to navigate the real world. And as cellphones change how we live, computer scientists say, they are also changing how we think about information..." Read more here.

As technology evolves, social interactions change

Recognizing and analyzing people's agency in the usage and effects of technology is an important step in understanding our social world. (Humphreys: Cellphones in public, p. 829)

At first, the text "Making Connections: Single Women's Use of the Telephone in Dating Relationships With Men" seemed irrelevant to me. I often asked myself while reading it: "Really? You wrote an entire research article to tell me things that I already know about?" But after thinking about it for a moment, and especially after I read "Cellphones in public: social interactions in a wireless era," I figured how technology, no matter what it is (i.e. cell phone, computer), affects people's interactions and, as a consequence, our social world.

Back in 1993, when Amy Sarch's article "Making Connections" was published, telephone use showed an interesting pattern in women's dating relationships -- that only men were expected to pursue them. The social norm ruled that women could or should not show their interest. That obviously affected how they communicated via phone. Women weren't supposed to call. Women were expected to anxiously and passively sit and wait for the men's attitude. WHat a horrible feeling!

I experienced that during my teenage years, although I must confess that I didn't always sit and wait. :) Perhaps I belong to a generation that started to see things differently, to not accept the norms, and to act more proactively. There's a good chance that the advances in technology contributed to that.

Nowadays, with the newer generations of cell phone and social networking sites, men and women in dating relationships don't need to rely on telephone only to communicate. In fact, most people don't. I have noticed that people who are still seeing each other and/or have just started to go out together will most frequently text message or facebook each other instead of calling. Does it matter who sends the message first? I'm not really sure. Perhaps men are still expected to be more active than women, but that's no longer that big of a problem as far as I can see it. Of course I am speaking from the Western culture perspective and this may not be true in other cultures.

Sarch discusses the social meaning of answering machines on p. 140 -- she says that women would not leave a message when they first reached the answering machine of their dates. After carefully thinking about what their message would be, they would call again and only then leave the "right" message. Nowadays, in an era when couples can can text message and facebook each other, leaving the wrong message is no longer a problem. People can think about what they are going to say and leave the message right away.

So it's interesting to see how technology can bring different types of interactions to our society. And, to me, this is the most important aspect of both readings.

Below is a funny video I found on Vimeo, which shows how people are now often choosing texting over talking... a consequence of technology?