Living in a Digital Age

I have not taken part in social media since 2011 when I deleted my Facebook account. Now, I have a Twitter account just for this class. *sigh* Rob, I will never forgive you for this.

I went ahead and followed a whole bunch of people, organizations, musicians, publications, and breweries. Immediately, a whole bunch of uninteresting twaddle populated the screen. So, a small sample of who I followed:

First, these are 3 people I DIDN'T follow

1) Donald Trump

2) or any other politician

3) Kim Kardashian

Ok, now that that's out of the way, here are some people/entities I followed and why

1) KivaRose Bell-Hardin (@FaeryThorn) - Herbal medicine is one of my passions. Kiva is not necessarily one of the herbalists I'm most familiar with or identify with, but she seems to be one of the only well-known herbalists with an active Twitter account. Getting her "tweets" for the duration of this class will hopefully get me out and about in nature, or at least in my kitchen making concoctions, and not just totally focused on school and work all the time.

2) Warp Records - Because I have been wanting some new music lately and this is a label I've always liked. They did put out an interesting article which I read just now, while I was supposed to be finishing this blog. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jul/03/artificial-intelligence-compilation-album-warp-records-idm-intelligent-dance-music

3) BBC Mundo - because I do, after all, want some real form of news, but dammit I want it in Spanish and from a non-US source. It shows me what is going on in the world from a slightly different perspective and improves my Spanish-skills.

An article I liked was in Spanish, written by El Pais (the country): 

https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/07/07/opinion/1499427117_731612.html?id_externo_rsoc=TW_CM

Its title,"La batalla feminista en el proceso de paz en Colombia: Las mujeres que participaron en los diálogos con las FARC relatan cómo fueron relegadas" translates to "The feminist battle in the process fo peace in Columbia: Women who participated in the dialogue with the FARC tell stories of how they were marginalized." It stood out to me because I was raised in an Egyptian family and am more aware of different political and social movements happening in certain parts of the world. I want others to understand and see that social structure and feminism are fluid and dynamic cycles throughout the world. I feel like they think that women in the Middle East, Latin America, etc, are all just weak and brainwashed, but it isn't the case. They are amazing and brilliant.

I think any tool can be used to empower and strengthen if you use it well, but we don't all tend to use social media and other technologies very well. I think we CERTAINLY create our own echo chambers, probably just as much as they are created for us through algorithms. When I had a Facebook, I don't feel like it empowered me to do much of anything. I thought that I needed it at the time because I was booking concerts, but putting up a Facebook event and promoting anythign via Facebook seemed to actually have no effect whatsoever on whether people showed up or not. It was word of mouth and publications which people specifically went to in order to find out which was going on that night (such as the local zine, Do317 [Indianapolis], etc). Social media allowed people to completely ignore the event (being bombarded with other events) or confirm that they were coming, but then not show up at all. Also, while I had a Facebook, I felt like it was keeping me informed and that if I deleted my Facebook I'd miss important things. Then, I deleted it anyway due to all the other crap that goes along with social media, and found that this wasn't the case. I didn't become less informed, I just talked to people and sought things out on my own. I didn't miss Facebook at all.

Sherry Turkle's talk about us becoming more isolated through our technological connection is very true. For example, a lot of my coworkers are in their very early twenties, and they are all about their Snapchats. It seems like they are incapable of having a conversation without someone's Snap story coming into it. They also are on their phones ALL the time, and not just them, but to a certain extent everybody, including myself. I think it's because we compulsively turn to these things every time we feel the least bit awkward or bored. This is especially concerning to me because I grew up really never knowing what boredom was (except during class in middle and high school, but that's different.) I always had something I was thinking about or doing, and I never felt like there was an empty space in my life. Now that technology has become such a big part of our lives, my brain is actually wired differently. I broke my phone a while back and didn't have it for a few days. I literally remembered what boredom felt like during those two days. I don't think all this supposed "communication" is bringing us closer or empowering us at all. It's sapping our creativity, our spontaneity, and, like she said, our ability to be by ourselves and be just fine with that. During the course of writing this blog so far, I've read and responded to probably 10 texts. Why? Was it necessary? Couldn't it wait until I was done?

I have made my car a device-free zone, for obvious safety reasons. I actually feel more mindful in the car now and I notice more things. Cool, huh?

Mindfulness and practice are the steps I take t make sure I am listening to others. I usually don't have a problem listening to others because of technology and love listenting to others. This is, to be fair, partially due to some of my lifestyle choices. I have a phone, but I would never pull it out while I'm having a conversation with someone, or even out with them. However, I don't have a TV. When I'm somewhere that has a TV, I find it distracting, even if I'm not actually interested in the content on the screen. I can't help but keep glancing at it, even though it's the least important thing in the room.

I haven't downloaded any games to my devices other than just one that I did a long time ago back when I lived in the same state as my parents. It was called "Wordament." It is a simple, nerdy game where you just had to find words on a grid, but it would rank how you did compared to other people and you could have "friends" on it so you could see their scores too. My mom was a total whiz at it, so sometimes I'd play, thinking that meant I'd connect with her. I remember we were playing one time her score was probably triple mine. She, without looking up from her phone at all, says to me "You really need to get better at this" and kept playing.

I don't do gaming or social network, but I feel like texting is its own scial network which I'm very guilty of. It's easy to do because it seems to be everyone else's preferred mode of communication, even for full blown conversations. It means that I keep in touch with some of m friends who I otherwise wouldn't. I have a friend who recently moved to Washington. She and I text every single day, even though if texting didn't exist I double we would call each other hardly ever. I don't know what this means or says about relationships or texting to be honest. I think humans are hardwired to become closest to the communities immediately around them, but technology blurs those lines of who is actually "around."

Food for thought: This uncertainty is something which I think has been mirrored in the videos we watched these past 2 weeks. This week's TedTalk about connection/isolation and last week's about the Arab Spring featured speakers who had both given previous TEDTalks in which they, considering themselves quite immersed in this limitless new world, had expounded the virtues of technology. Then, they did something very, very rare in our culture. They came out publicly in another TEDTalk and said, "I was wrong." All of this technology is very new, relatively, and I think we are only just beginning to understand it. The dust has far from settled on how exactly it is going to fit into our world and culture, and we are just the guinea pigs of the digital age.