Interpersonal life online or How I met my husband

I found the articles this week extremely engaging, particularly Nancy Baym’s article: Interpersonal Life Online. To what extent has this digital medium altered our relational lives  is a fascinating  question.

From Baym’s perspective, technology is fundamentally social.  She also points out that many early scholars failed to understand the social implications of the medium.

Since online interpersonal communication filters out the traditional cues that are present in an FtF encounter, we base our judgments of other on different criteria. There is more emphasis on conversational style rather than appearance. There is also a heightened potential for identity playing.  People can be whoever they want to be on the internet.

Certainly the established rules of interpersonal behavior and etiquette (if I can use that dated term) are changing radically.

We are now in a digital world where people are being introduced by matching algorithms.   Is this proof of a broad cultural shift in society?  If the answer is yes, are we in fact in the third wave, the information revolution?  I think we shall soon know.

Information Revolution or Evolution?

Are we in the Midst of an Information Revolution?

The first thought that struck me while reading the articles this week was the multitude of terms attributed to the “information society”. Are we in a "post-industrial society" as Daniel Bell wrote, or the "third wave" of a technological revolution as Toffler spoke of or a "knowledge society" as Stehr proposed? 

How do we define the term information? Is it interchangeable with technology? 

Are there appropriate qualitative or quantitative methods to evaluate whether we have entered a new era?

Webster, in his article The Information Society Revisited, points out that there is an assumption (that he argued against) that quantitative increases transform-in unspecified ways-into qualitative changes in the social system. Are more computers and more information synonymous with a new societal order? Is there a tipping point?

Webster would argue that technology is a part of society not the major force in change as the determinists would state. There is a much more complicated relationship between technology, history and society.

After reading the articles, I would agree with Webster that the basic structure of our society has not changed, so have we entered the Information Revolution?

I say no.

Is the medium still the message?

While reading the articles for class, my mind kept drifting back to another college class, in Canada  over  thirty years ago.  As an english major at McGill,  Marshall McLuhan, often revered, sometimes disparaged was often discussed.

The two questions that arose from the readers were:

1.  What is the purpose of technology? Is it a question of context over content?

2.  Who drives who? - as McLuhan more eloquently wrote; "We shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us."

Technology certainly is a powerful tool, and we need to be careful  that the context does not overwhelm the content.  Technology is an agent for communication, but again as McLuhan would say it should not overpower the conversation.
Technology does not drive history, certainly it has an increasingly important role in shaping history, as witnessed in the Middle East.
But it is important to understand the difference between a "tool" such as twitter allowing the conversation to happen, and underlying root causes for historical events.

New Summer Reading

One of the new summer books I read (actually listened to on tape) was NOW YOU SEE IT, by Cathy Davidson, who was the Dean of Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University.  In 2003, Duke University as one of the eight Apple innovation campuses gave their undergraduates iPods to explore for new academic uses.  What happened was truly innovative.  She discusses new theories of learning by Doidge and others.  A great read (or listen)!

Test your attention skills….Gorilla in the Room Experiment