My online personality is a little schizophrenic. The way I use the internet varies with the seasons. One week I will dive into a web sphere, and the next I will do nothing but escape to simplicity – read and listen to music. Although, this has recently become more digitized through electronic devices (Kindle and Spotify mobile). When I am in school, I am involved in blogs and projects. Sometimes they inspire me to follow other content more closely and be more involved. At times of lull, I simply move content around on Pinterest and Flickr. Fundamentally, I am motivated by mobility. According to the PEW survey and Horrigan, I am classified as a Digital Collaborator. I didn’t expect this at first. Though I do create and share content, I do not consider myself a highly active leader or tastemaker. After reading the different types, the categorization does fit. As a long term user, I have become more deeply engaged with digital content. I do view creation as a means of expression, and I want to see & share across a wide variety of places.
The second closest user type is the Ambivalent Networker. I do use the internet for entertainment, tools, and social connections though I don’t care much about social networking. I do text frequently, and I also use my mobile smartphone to enhance productivity and share content regularly. And I do have some skepticism, and agree that tech breaks are sometimes necessary, but only in a balance. Nonetheless, I am absolutely addicted and I love the access to endless information and innovation. I do not even want to imagine a world with limitations on internet access. The most valuable strength of the internet is the ability to connect people around content, to share ideas and motivate change.
Categorization leads to a better understanding of the different types of users. By segmenting target audiences, each user can be reached more effectively. If leaders can understand the behavior of various roles and adapt to each audience, it impacts the overall structure and harmony of the internet for everyone.
Sometimes, I am skeptical of the broad & expansive wasteland of the internet. I do occasionally fear some of the negative consequences that the web will do to our minds and society: the effect the constant stimulation has on our minds’ operation, the cultural fragmentation and loss of identity with natural world, forfeit of privacy, etc. It is harder to disconnect from the addictive expanse of information, the alluring cry to create, and the perception of productivity. The more I get, the more I want and my dependency deepens.
I like that you state that your personalty is a little schizophrenic, what a unique set of words. School does cause you to use the internet more than usual. Categorization does lead to a better understanding. It also allows the person to define themselves and determine if they have a problem or need to decrease their usage.
You talked about the negative consequences of CMC. Do you think these consequences are caused by CMC or a symptom of how we use them? Are we by nature an intrusive society? I think our next readings will get deeper into these types of questions, but I do feel that new media only magnifies human nature. Take, for instance, violence on television. Do I think it increases the likelihood of violence? Yes. But I also think violence is an inevitable outcome in our society, regarless of any one medium’s ability to increase the odds.
I agree that I also do not want to go back to an age where the internet is not available. In fact the last two mornings my internet service was under outage for 30-45 minutes and I was in complete panic! The internet has changed our access to instantaneous and endless resources. I felt I was a mix of the choices as well.
With regard to your last paragraph, I have these feelings on occasion too. Our smartphones can tell almost anyone our exact location at a given time. That along with privacy concerns can give one the feeling that you either want to throw your hands up and walk away or simply give up because you’ll never be able to disentangle yourself from the web. Additionally, with the emergence of platforms like Pinterest, there is a call to create projects from these picture perfect examples. It can all be so inorganic. However, I think its best to temper these feelings with a look back at reactions to previous technologies. Whenever I feel overwhelmed by our society’s immersion in internet technology, I think back to how many people must have felt truly intruded upon when television sets became the centerpieces of livings rooms. These rooms once represented a place for people to converse and socialize with family and guests, and suddenly a machine took center stage. It must have felt foreign to some, exciting to others, and both to many.
The Herring article brought up the point that we fear the “loss of personal privacy” (32). Some users are becoming ”more cautious” about the communication “traces” we leave online( Herring, 32). Still, there are many other privacy issues involved in our online activity, often beyond our control. Like you stated, smartphones track so much personal data that we unintentionally allow. We have adopted the technology and integrated it in our lives, but we are still uncertain as we try to keep up with the commotion of the adapting technology. We have try to trust the system more as we indebt fragments of our lives to the technology.
Susan, it is always a pleasure to read your blogs! ( We were in Theories of Persuasion together last semester!) I very much agree with many of the things you wrote about in this entry. For starters, I do find that I am extremely interconnected with the internet, even though I do not use social media. I am constantly learning new things from the web, whether that be a gluten free recipe, how to do a fish tail braid or how to get your car started if the battery cables are corroded. There is literally nothing that I can’t figure out just by googling it! However, I do worry about what effect the internet is having on those around me. For example, I am an avid reader and I actually love to go to the library and check out books. However, just last week I overheard a co-worker say that libraries are archaic and useless now that we have the internet. He truly believed that we no longer need libraries because we have the internet. It shocked me to think that a man with a PHD in English would actually advocate closing down libraries. I worry sometimes that we are becoming too dependent on the internet, and not enjoying the things in life that occur offline. Like you, though, I also can’t imagine a world without internet connection. Its definitely a Catch 22!
Luckily for us Laura most American still seem to value libraries, as per this new Pew Internet report: http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2013/01/22/library-services/
I definitely resonate with your last paragraph, as well. There are times when I begin to worry that I may have, perhaps, surrounded myself with such vast amounts of inspiring, informing, and intriguing content from Reddit, Tumblr, etc. to the point where I don’t have room to breathe. I can’t help but feel struck by the irony of my fascination with the story of a man who spent a year without the internet… whom I read about in an article I found online.