Alone, together.
With the ever changing technology, all sorts of digital devices are omnipresent in our daily lives, replacing the initial time we spent idling, zoning out, or even invading into our working, chatting or sleeping time. We could get the best possible outfits for our virtue characters in online games, we could attract hundreds of followers on twitter, we have an increasing number of ads were insert on Youtube videos, online shoppings that never shuts 24/7... There are just so much fanciful graphics on the net that we are attracted to, as one bids good night to the computer, one usually get onto the bed and continue the browsing through the phone..
However amidst the noisy and happening world, we felt more lonely; we glance at our phones every few minutes, refreshing our newsfeed to see what others did, we felt upset when our texts weren't attended to immediately. These html codes controlled our emotions, everyone is found looking at their phones on the dining table, the topics of conversations revolves around newsfeed on the social medias.
And why do we feel more and more lonely?
Because we rely on technology but not each other, envy others but look down on ourselves, we lack a sense of togetherness, a spirit of community. Albeit we are pampered with the best options and situations that had never happened before, our emotional needs have never change, as we are on our way chasing after a better way of living, we fell into the loneliness in the noisy world.
Today, a virtue identity is more symbolic and identifiable than our real identity. Our first step to build human relations is to add one another on social networks. And with the reliance on internet, we became the precise target of consumers. Whenever I come across the 'Things you might be interested' list based on past history records, I sometimes felt a sense of touch, that it really understands me.
And we have such a wide selection of photo editing apps, aiming to convert our ordinary lives into legends, we put them up for others' admirations. A showing-off action which Prof Sherry Turkle coined as 'presentation anxiety'. The internet is full of such 'anxieties', we watch as people turn the downsides to the back, we only see the good sides. We display what we deem as important or admirable to others. Yet as we spend more time watching others' happiness, we get more depressed.
Good thing is that there are more and more people standing up and advocating the harmfulness of social medias and the hoax of being connected virtually. And for me, sitting here and trying to come up with my own slice of thoughts is to serve as a reminder for myself to stay disconnected from social medias as much as possible, and I thought that being abstain from Instagram even till now is a good start. And frowning upon my friends who kept texting while going out with me alone is another, maybe that's why I value individual outing more and find all sorts of excuses to avoid group gatherings that seems redundant to me. Though sometimes I'm at loss when people mention about the popular celebrity or brands, I think a little ignorance does no harm to my life after all.
To end off I come across a beautiful quote by Sherry Turkle, a MIT sociologist, just some food for thought. And also that I should reflect how others can written something so convincing and fluent while I struggle with my limited range of vocabularies, and also that as an undergraduate holding an arts degree, what else can I offer if my language, something that a social science student should be good at, is so weak that I can barely convert my thoughts to words?
“Technology is seductive when what it offers meets our human vulnerabilities. And as it turns out, we are very vulnerable indeed. We are lonely but fearful of intimacy. Digital connections and the sociable robot may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. Our networked life allows us to hide from each other, even as we are tethered to each other. We’d rather text than talk.”
― Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
However amidst the noisy and happening world, we felt more lonely; we glance at our phones every few minutes, refreshing our newsfeed to see what others did, we felt upset when our texts weren't attended to immediately. These html codes controlled our emotions, everyone is found looking at their phones on the dining table, the topics of conversations revolves around newsfeed on the social medias.
And why do we feel more and more lonely?
Because we rely on technology but not each other, envy others but look down on ourselves, we lack a sense of togetherness, a spirit of community. Albeit we are pampered with the best options and situations that had never happened before, our emotional needs have never change, as we are on our way chasing after a better way of living, we fell into the loneliness in the noisy world.
Today, a virtue identity is more symbolic and identifiable than our real identity. Our first step to build human relations is to add one another on social networks. And with the reliance on internet, we became the precise target of consumers. Whenever I come across the 'Things you might be interested' list based on past history records, I sometimes felt a sense of touch, that it really understands me.
And we have such a wide selection of photo editing apps, aiming to convert our ordinary lives into legends, we put them up for others' admirations. A showing-off action which Prof Sherry Turkle coined as 'presentation anxiety'. The internet is full of such 'anxieties', we watch as people turn the downsides to the back, we only see the good sides. We display what we deem as important or admirable to others. Yet as we spend more time watching others' happiness, we get more depressed.
Good thing is that there are more and more people standing up and advocating the harmfulness of social medias and the hoax of being connected virtually. And for me, sitting here and trying to come up with my own slice of thoughts is to serve as a reminder for myself to stay disconnected from social medias as much as possible, and I thought that being abstain from Instagram even till now is a good start. And frowning upon my friends who kept texting while going out with me alone is another, maybe that's why I value individual outing more and find all sorts of excuses to avoid group gatherings that seems redundant to me. Though sometimes I'm at loss when people mention about the popular celebrity or brands, I think a little ignorance does no harm to my life after all.
To end off I come across a beautiful quote by Sherry Turkle, a MIT sociologist, just some food for thought. And also that I should reflect how others can written something so convincing and fluent while I struggle with my limited range of vocabularies, and also that as an undergraduate holding an arts degree, what else can I offer if my language, something that a social science student should be good at, is so weak that I can barely convert my thoughts to words?
“Technology is seductive when what it offers meets our human vulnerabilities. And as it turns out, we are very vulnerable indeed. We are lonely but fearful of intimacy. Digital connections and the sociable robot may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. Our networked life allows us to hide from each other, even as we are tethered to each other. We’d rather text than talk.”
― Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
Comments
Albeit falling prey to such actions myself - as easily seen when I'm with you ahem, I agree that social media is now slowly becoming something that brings about negative impacts on the society. I guess too much of anything is never good. The purpose of it was once to connect people, but now the issue with it's causing so much connection that we conveniently replace online interaction with physical interaction.
But I do think Turkle's 'We'd rather text than talk' is too much of an overstatement. There's so much in face-to-face interaction that texting or other online interactions can't replace - detecting emotions based on sheer observation of the body language, tonality and etc. So yeah, just wanted to point that out. But of course, this is only if people do realize how precious face-to-face interaction is, and how quality time means putting down that phone and giving your friends the attention that they deserve.
Okay shall end here. Oh yay, intellectual discussion here.
P.S. I treasure time with you even though I do take out my phone every once in awhile okay. <3 Hehe
To explain on behalf of Sherry, which is probably because I did not insert the context of her above statement. She mentioned how people rather text than talk because they find it a challenge to have a real-time conversation. Quoting from her speech:
When I ask people "What's wrong with having a conversation?" People say, "I'll tell you what's wrong with having a conversation. It takes place in real time and you can't control what you're going to say."
I believe what she mean is that we always want to be in control of what to say, what to show and the message to bring across, hence people avoid real-time conversation. Which I don't know how true is that of cause, since I guess we both hasn't become so reliant that we lost ability to converse with others in real life.
But who knows. anyway, I shared the TED talk by her that inspired me the post on facebook. Feel free to watch. :D