One thought I had after completing these readings was about innovation itself. What is innovation? To me, innovation is developing a new concept or product that fulfills an intrinsic need or want that people didn’t realize was a need or want until they experienced the new concept or product. Take the general masses use of the web, for instance. I doubt ordinary people in the early 20th century were upset at the lack of opportunity to access endless amounts of information via an electronic system. Yet, the web as we know it today did not create that desire within us. The web is rather a symptom of that desire. Baym (p. 47) notes a similar point made by readers of Ann Landers and Dear Abby.
What about violence? We can trace murder back all the way back to the beginning of time, when Cain killed Able. It’s true that guns enhance the ability to commit murder (and I’m all for regulation on a personal note). But guns don’t make us violent. Violence will never go away. The same point can be made about CMC and our use of it. The evolution of enhanced technology is an evitable course that will continue to magnify our desires, needs, wants and human nature.
Meanwhile, as discussed in the Herring article, some aspects of modern technology and CMC have become ordinary and mundane in their use. Email and texting are prime examples. They clearly fulfill a text-based communication need. Herring noted that “the robust popularity of, for example, email over the past 30 years suggests that it satisfies some important communicative needs.”
Yet, despite some of the benefits of CMC, like efficient communication, closing the gender gap, information at our fingertips, there are also many aspects of CMC that have caused users to fear it. Some of these negative forces include loss of personal privacy, online harassment, spamming, excess noise (which leads to de-valued content), addiction, etc. Again, though, are these qualities caused by CMC, or symptoms of human nature and how we choose to use CMC? It certainly begs the question.
I think Herring is correct to note that CMC has become more of a practical necessity than an object of fascination. The same can be said about most new inventions and technology advancements. We adjust our use of these technologies over time and integrate the parts that satisfy the most pressing needs into our everyday lives. Then they become mundane, and we move our attention to what’s new. As for research, Herring makes a good point about the cycle I just talked about. Researches would be well suited to “take a step back from the parade of passing technologies and consider more deeply the question of what determines people’s use of mediated communication (p. 34).
Hello Tim,
I strongly agree with you that people wouldn’t know about something need or want until they experience the product. In 1996 I used to pay a monthly payment of at least $400 for America online just to be connected with my family members and freinds. At that time American Online was new thing to me and I wanted to experience it and benefit from it. I didn’t know in the beginning whether I really need it or I just want to have the new experience but now it is part of my life and something ordinary. Today, we have Yahoo, Hotmail, any many more other free internet connections that everybody use and the fear of this new advancement almost does not exist.
Good Post! I really enjoyed you take on this topic. I totally agree with your last paragraph because it is so true. We more our focus onto whatever is new and the old things become mundane. Herring questions is a good question “what determines people’s use of mediated communication?” Researchers would first have to determine how would they measure this in order to obtain a good sample because everyone’s use is not the same.
You identified an excellent quote in your last paragraph about researchers focusing not on the newest innovation, but on the motivations that cause people to use these technologies. It might be a challenge to determine what are the correct questions to ask in order to gain measurable information, but it is worth doing. Understanding these motivations could potentially lead to the development of technologies more in tune our needs.
Luckily in the time since Herring’s article came out, we have seen more research on motivations and other characteristics that influence people’s specific media choices – in fact the Tech Users Types quiz that you all took last week was part of that. But as we also saw with just our results, it is still difficult to really tease out all of the specific motivations for people’s choices.
I also like that you talked about symptoms, rather than causes. Media discourse often conflates theses things, saying “Technology makes us _____ . ” But as you correctly point out, often what we are seeing is a latent desire, need, or want finally being able to be expressed.
Humans are fundamentally social creatures – we are basically made to communicate. Is it any wonder that we would come up with all sorts of new ways to do that?