It's 3 A.M. Your phone rudely awakens you from a peaceful slumber. It's your lab partner texting you, asking how you answered questions 15-17 on the chemistry homework. If this had occurred 25 years ago, you would have:
a) Been confused as to what a so called "text message" was, and
b) Been so offended that this person, thinking it was acceptable, had tried to contact you in the middle of the night.
Instead, you sit up in bed, quickly text your lab partner back, and attempt to go back to sleep. Sometimes we do this without even a second thought about how rude this digital contact is at certain hours of the day. And, heaven forbid, you don't respond promptly at 3 A.M.; your lab partner will be annoyed with you. When did we stop respecting people's personal hours? As a child, my parents taught me that it was inappropriate and rude to call someone's house phone after 8:30 or 9:00 P.M.
I am going to explore the advent of personal cellular devices at some point in this blog. This is when people started deeming it acceptable to call or text others whenever they pleased, and expect a response right away.
My specific area of interest is instant gratification, whether it be on your cell phone, Facebook, or the Internet in general. I'm going to talk about how we expect to retrieve information instantly, and when we aren't "connected", we feel lost, annoyed, and sometimes even angry. In this blog, I plan to stick to the idea of information overload. We are constantly "signed-in" and cannot fathom the idea of "logging out" for a while. You are always reachable in one way or another, and the same for all of your friends. We have constant contact with one another, and know about most everyone's personal lives. We just know too much information.
The idea of instant gratification is a very new phenomenon. We lose sight of the truly important people and events in our lives. We are too interested in everyone else. I would like to explore this topic because it both deeply saddens me as well as interests me. How can we behave so differently from our parents, even though they were the ones who taught us our moral values and manners?
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4 comments:
You are completely right! With every text message or IM, we want immediate feedback from the person that we sent the message to. We easily get aggravated when someone isn't messaging us back and if we are waiting for any duration of time for the next message. It's sad how much things have changed from so long ago that got us to the point that we are at today with forms of communication.
I completely agree. Just before I read your blog, I was on my email thinking to myself how quickly people were responding to everything I sent. We have so much communication in the palm of our hand, and with the touch of a button, we can make a critical impact on any aspect of our lives. It truly is extraordinary how technology affects the very social dynamics our society has become accustomed to. I am interested to see how your blog plays out the remainder of the semester.
I really liked your discussion of how technology intrudes in our lives. There's an interesting post on danah boyd's blog about taking an email sabbatical: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2008/12/05/warning_email_s.html. You might want to check it out.
You blog is super interesting, it really caught my eye right away! i totally agree with you! My parents still now believe that i shouldn't talk to anyone on the phone after 11pm. It's crazy to realize that we no longer have respect for others and their personal space. We want to be in everyone's business but forget about our own business we have to deal with. I'm excited to continue to read your blog post and learn more on this inquiry!
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