In “Personal Connections of the Digital Age” Nancy Baym comments on a variety of views and opinions that try to distinguish and label the role technology plays in the social sphere of human existence. Nancy groups the differing sentiments into two categories: Technological determinism, and Social Construction of Technology. Technological determinism claims that technology determines the extent to which humans can use it, thus altering human traits and characteristics. On the other hand, Social construction of technology argues the opposite, in that it views technology as merely serving an inherent human need, something that would persist with or without the emergence of socially geared technological devices.
However, siding with either category of thought does not sufficiently address the issue of properly weighing and understanding the nature of our social uses for technology. A perfect sub-topic of technology that parallels this discussion is the image, and its prevalent usage in the digital world for the purpose of human interaction. In using the two extremes Nancy Baym discusses, technological determinism and social construction of technology, one can easily see the ways in which the digital image can be argued for either side. But the simple grouping or labeling of the image as being one or the other ignores the subtleties and nuances that are necessary to understanding this relationship between the human and the digital image. Though I would like to argue that technology and its relationship to the image does assume a role in which both tend to the social needs and impulses of humans, something it definitely does, I think the way humans categorize their interactions with it is troublesome and ultimately problematic. The greatest qualm I have with digital technology is its love of the image. I find the relationship between digital technology and the image as worrisome solely because people lack the ability to correctly interpret or read images/photographs. Like language, the photograph is a linguistic instrument who’s doubly articulated existence is subtle. To read the subtleties of the image is to make an extra effort to interpret an entity that one can appear to have been adequately read almost instantaneously. However, the emphasis and dominance placed on our visual receptors is deceiving humanity. As images become more and more easily accessible, a result of their scalability, and if we continue to lack the skills to critically examine images, what will become of our more critical thinking processes or nuanced understandings and relationships to things and ideas. Has technology honed in on a human weakness? Lacking the skills to critically examine the digital image, humans would continue to perpetuate stereotypes and misinterpretations that could eventually harm social and cultural groups and possibly even further divide and segregate people as being similar or dissimilar. How would this affect our societal understandings of global cultures?
I completely agree with you in regards to the dangers of shifting to a image based culture. What immediately came to mind when reading your post to the amount of digitally manipulated photographs—especially of women— that create a vision of an impossible ideal. This is similar, in a way, to how on Facebook the majority of people post images showing themselves having a “good” time; thereby curating a portrayal of their lives that are not accurate representations of reality and limit the scope of analysis true analysis of what it means to be a human subject as to what images one decides to share.
I do agree with you, however I like to think how powerful images can be. There are moments in life that cannot be captured with words, sounds, or like sensations, because of the Image, and even the digital image, we have perspective access to life back to say the 1850s. In some ways I think the picture has become too stressed, like a destination is only made to get a picture saying you went, rather than embrassing the journery and living in the moment. As for critical examination skills, each person has a different way of seeing, a different looking glass to see the world; what makes an image so unique is that it is easy to read, which can become issue sometimes, it really just goes down to individual ways of thinking, and that is what makes pictures so beautiful, the possibilities are endless.
I think the issues with misinterpreting photographs are especially potent on social media. Everyone does their best to make it look like their life is amazing, fun, and desirable, even if they’re just sitting home 22 hours of the day. If a “friend” or follower sees that image, they only see the hyper edited, ultra fun existence that is being exuded, and feel hopelessly inadequate in comparison. We edit our own lives online, but many people forget that others edit theirs as well.