“Gimme A Break”

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While we have the inherent culture fear of falling behind, we also become fearful of the unknown.  Throughout the years the pros and cons to new media have drafted many radical opinions.  We see the Internet as this unlimited resource.  But being unlimited, and so readily available is it too much of a good thing?  “Rather than ‘using’ it, people maybe become ‘used’ by it, (Fischer, 1992).”

Because of this Kit Kat, paired us with the city of Amsterdam to create an advertising campaign for Wi-Fi-free zones. These zones are an escape for the constant hustle and bustle of a day filled with emails, texts, tweets, Instagram, Facebook etc. According to Kit Kat, “The world is becoming one big WiFi zone. There’s even WiFi on Everest. Result? People are always connected. Time for a break.” This advertisement takes the approach of going back to basics and being disconnected.  It is a chance to talk IRL (in real life) without having #hashtags and @randomwittyname flood your every conversation. As Baym highlights in chapter 3, with a face-to-face conversation we see that the other person is engaged by their facial expressions, like smiling or by their body movements such as nodding their head to suggest that they agree and are paying attention.

kitkat-no-wifi-bench

 

http://www.psfk.com/2013/01/kit-kat-wifi-free-zone.html

Amsterdam is not the only place you will find these Wi-Fi free zones, you will even find them here in you’re own native LA.  While some believe that these zones are to keep a face-to-face dialogue, other businesses such as cafe’s are using these Wi-Fi free zones to draw more business back into their shops. Many shop owners are noticing that when the Wi-Fi is turned on so are the screens, making space unavailable for new customers that come in each hour.   I am as guilty as the next person of sitting at a cafe for 6 hours and nursing one cup of coffee, but business owners are realizing free Wi-Fi may be harming their business instead of making it more enticing.

A few place where Wi-Fi is being taken off the menu include:

– New York’s Café Grumpy doesn’t offer Wi-Fi or allow laptops in four of their five locations.

– The Literati Cafe in Brentwood unhooks during the lunchtime rush.

“The Internet is a worm hole to the outside world, and we love that people use our space for that,” Eiswerth  (Manager of Literati) said. “We are just trying to please as many people as possible and find the middle ground.”

– Nook in San Francisco’s Russian Hill district is banning Wi-Fi in the evenings and on weekends.

– August First Bakery & Cafe in Burlington Vermont bans laptops and tablets.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/04/10/300518819/no-laptops-no-wi-fi-how-one-cafe-fired-up-sales

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/08/business/la-fi-cafe-wifi-20100808

 

Using dating apps to get free swag

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“Personal Connections in the Digital Age” brought up many interesting interactions and influences of technology on modern day life. I especially liked the analysis of the New York Times cartoon “No one knows that you are a dog on the internet”. Although most people this age don’t have to risk being taken for a sucker on chat rooms- we’ve had too many internet safety classes to experience the allure- many religiously use Grindr and Tinder to flirt and find potential romantic partners, which can be just as dangerous, in the same way and in others.

Some people have taken use of these types of apps to the next level. This is a three part article about three people who use the app of their choice to use and manipulate victims for swag. http://www.vice.com/read/i-tried-to-blag-as-much-free-shit-as-i-could-using-tinder-322

From what I read, most people were able to score free takeout and sometimes alcohol. The most fascinating part, though, was when the man in the article mentioned above made a completely fake profile to get even more stuff. The utter selfishness displayed in these is an example of the impact-imprint perspective discussed in “Personal Connections”. Dating apps are selfish, the user has the power to incessantly pursue or utterly ignore anyone they notice. In the world of Tinder, the user is a god who can construct the world they wish to inhibit, what kind of people surround them and who they talk to. As users realize this, it becomes more plausible to manipulate other users for personal gain.

This is also the result of the impersonalization of these apps. In chapter three, there is analysis of the benefits of internet, phone, and face to face interaction. Words, for the most part, are cold, and you can’t see the anger or hurt on the face of the victims who are tricked into sending free pizzas to strangers. If they try to tell off the person who manipulated them, they will probably be unmatched quickly. It becomes easier to lack regret when there’s no requirement that you will feel the consequences, and even that reinforces the god like nature of the user of dating apps.

Oh No! Not Innovation! | On “The Culture War” by Tom Standage

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Photo credit: Jamie Grill/Getty Images

By some stroke of luck, a Facebook friend posted a link to this old WIRED piece by Tom Standage, an article that is perfectly relevant to this week’s reading. I’d read the article once before, back when I was in high school, and though Standage wrote it in response to a politician’s condemnation of video games, it’s a pretty succinct rebuttal to virtually any shallow criticism of new technologies.

It’s not hard to get caught up in the latest moral panic surrounding new digital technologies. “Cell phones are making our kids antisocial,” these modern Luddites mutter, quoting the latest research findings with a kind of reverence not unfamiliar to a member of a doomsday cult. “Video games are turning them aggressive. The Internet is making them stupid.”

These ideologies are as unwise as they are inevitable: since the dawn of civilization*, adults have irrationally protested the newfangled ideas and behaviors of the next generation. Every technological leap forward has been accompanied by the mad ravings of Good Ol’ Boys who love to hate change. The cycle is doomed to continue, forever and ever, ad infinitum and ad nauseum—after all, youths who once embraced new technologies (and happily ignored the baseless warnings of their parents) will grow older and learn to distrust the technologies developed by the following generation.

(For a quick overview of the cycle of moral panics in US society, see this infographic from Tor.com.)

In this week’s reading, Baym makes the argument that anxiety about new media in the modern era stems from a non-user’s difficulty in understanding new rules of interactivity, participation, relationship building, etc., which I think does a good job of explaining every period of moral terror in American history. Uninitiated people are unfamiliar with the new rules and behaviors associated with innovative technologies, and they connect that unfamiliarity to an emotional affect of revulsion and distrust and fear.

It’s easy for me to laugh now at old fearmongers decrying the invention of the automobile or the discovery of penicillin**, and soon, it’ll be easy to laugh at the contemporary doomsayers who grumble about how much “kids these days” use Facebook. Sure, it may be inevitable how new technologies are often viewed negatively by members of the previous generation…but it’s also inevitable that the technologies that are currently the subject of the previous generation’s ire will one day be seamlessly incorporated into mainstream society.

My only hope is that in the far-off future, when my kids are off using whatever new technology of the day has caught their interest, I won’t participate in this cycle of fear and will instead embrace the new technologies as wholeheartedly as the next generation does.

* Did anyone else laugh at Baym’s discussion of Socrates’s hatred for the alphabet? No? Just me? Cool, cool.

** No, not really.

“Youngest Choreographer” \\ Infantry guides Adulthood?

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אתם עומדים לחזות בכוריאוגרף הצעיר בעולם >>

אתם עומדים לחזות בכוריאוגרף הצעיר בהיסטוריה – צפו בסרטון >>You are about to witness the youngest choreographer in history – Watch the video >> Have a GREAT weekend

Posted by ‎Suzanne Dellal Centre מרכז סוזן דלל‎ on Friday, January 2, 2015

 

I discovered this video on my Facebook newsfeed and neglected to read the caption “Youngest Choreographer” before I clicked play.

At first I watched a little boy as he seems to follow and emulate the adult dancers around him.

However, soon I realized after stumbles and expressive gestures, that the dancers were in fact following the little boy’s movements!

The dancers are constantly looking towards the little boy for direction, and would add mature isolation technique and form to the child’s moves. All the while, careful in their movements, to be playful and lighthearted, not to distract or scare the boy from continuing his dance.

Why was I quick to assume that the child was following the adults?

Rarely do we see this type of physical interaction between innocence and maturity. However it certainly exists. The Readings from the potato board are more of an explicit parallel to the video. The Potato Board, made up of corporate adults, are frequently checking and revising economic decisions based on the movements of the younger generation. It is a fragile dance to somehow sustain interest from an attention-deficient generation, without scaring them away with eager persistence.

In light of the Potato Board example, the most relevant metaphor for this video may be from an economic standpoint. From personal knowledge, I know that millions of dollars are spent annually on researching trends in millennials and frequently adapting marketing strategies to their ever-shifting interests.

This video can both challenge and support Stanley Hall’s theory of adolescence, the idea that adolescence parallel’s human race’s growth and evolution. We can see the puppetry between infantry and adulthood. Yet, in the video infantry guides adulthood. Which could be argued as cause and effect of growth, while an unrealistic method of individual nurturing.

My idea of adolescence and healthy upbringing stems from the mature technique added to the boy’s innocent expression. This way the older generations continue to learn from the younger generations, and foster wisdom and experience to push them to become a more creative and innovative generation.

Creating a blog post on our course site

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