MY Experience with MY Electronic Presence

Over the past semester I've been the lucky benefactor of a type of class that I never thought that I would get to experience in college -- one that ended benefiting me outside of my major and outside of the classroom. This class made me critically access my use and my personal online presence in a way that I often took for granted but now realize is much wider and more impactful than I had first thought. In the following post I will be talking about some of my experiences in the class and the ways it has impacted how I think and the actions I do in my everyday life that involve my electronic presence and the use of my favorite devices.

Our presence nowadays seemingly split into two main ways of thinking -- these ways of being a place are both physical and electronic. Starting with the most common way of thinking the most commonplace way of being is obvious being somewhere physically. Physical presence is pretty much how it sounds, it means that you as a person are physically somewhere with flesh and bone. Alongside being there in body a big part of being somewhere physically is making sure that you're there physically and there mentally alongside your body. The next way of being is to be somewhere electronically -- this way of being a little more difficult to describe because the way to exist electronically is much greater then our way of existing physically. To exist electronically it means that while your physical body is one place your electronic self is somewhere else. This is most easily imagine using a situation such as being at the dinner table but being completely engrossed in your phone. While you're physically at the dinner table, your electronic self is wherever your phone puts you -- oftentimes you're in the twitter world or putting yourself in a concert somewhere in a video that you're watching. Another example of our electronic presence is when we post about something on Facebook. While our physical presence is limited to those with whom we are in immediate contact with, our electronic selves do not have to overcome this obstacle. They can reach anyone who is friends with use and with the use of sharing and other features who have a similar goal it means that our reach as people electronically is much greater then our reach in person.

I've learned a lot about electronic presence over the semester, one of the main ways I've come about doing this is a lot of the reading that we have done. Thought I've read many viewpoints about electronic presence one that has clearly stuck with me throughout the year is the idea of the sociological imagination. This idea by C. Wright Mills really struck my interest with the way it places the change of society by the technology that pushes it in a certain direction and it was a completely new take on the electronic world as I know it; it blew my mind the way it was brought up how technologies that I think aren't that impactful actually have the ability to dictate change for an entire society of people and thus change the course of history forever. Over the corse I have talked with various members of my family about some of the ideas we've discussed -- an example of this was for one of my assignment I was asked to read off a list of words that our class felt when we didn't have our electronic devices and my friends said that it sounded like the person was depressed. It really amazed me just how vast the impact of these technologies was and it proved the point that almost everyone in today's society is addicted to their devices.

Over the corse of the class one realization I've had from our major projects is that I am too involved in our electronic world. Oftentimes I let myself get too wrapped up in my electronic self that the physical one is left behind in a way that I am not fully comfortable with. One example of this is that sometimes during a meal with friends I found myself zoning out reading Twitter instead of engaging with those who were directly around me. During my eight hours without any technology at I found myself longing for the constant feeling of connection that I had with my devices. I realize that I am addicted to my devices and the feeling of connectedness they bring to my life and the way that they let me bypass somewhat awkward social interactions instead of having to deal with something like that head on. I now realize that this isn't the best way to deal with these types of interactions and have attempted to instead try to face them head on and because of this have made a coupe key friendships that I otherwise not have made if my head was stuck in my phone like so many other people around me.

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New Technology? New Impacts.

Electronics have revolutionized the way people connect -- whether online, offline, or anything in-between the world as we know it is progressing towards an electronic world for better or for worse. In our world we connect with our phones, laptops, and even our appliances that somehow have an internet connection. In the world we know today the impact of these technologies is easy seen, we talk to our friends on our phone, in restaurants we are beginning to order using a tablet, we post pictures of our adventures on our favorite app for all of our friends to see. The impact of these technologies is mostly positive, faster more correct ordering and an easier way to stay up to date with what your friends are doing are all positives for society.

Though the electronic world does offer us many positive aspects there are also quite a few criticisms of the type of world that an online society creates. One of these worries is described by Baym with the statement about our electronics that "life without them can become unimaginable" (45). It's evident no matter where we go that people are too attached to their devices. People text while driving, through movies, and at the dinner table. Everywhere we go we see people glued to their devices trying to post another status update or get a score update instead of just enjoying where they're at and what they're doing at that moment. These technologies definitely have a place in our world and there is no reason to argue against their use because it's unreasonable that they will go away; what is not unreasonable to argue against is that we as a country and as people need to figure out a way to limit our use so that it doesn't as heavily affect our other relationships. I, just like everyone else, knows just how easy it is fall into the trap of using our devices too much and eventually becoming reliant on them for nearly everything in our lives. I find myself constantly using my phone for almost every event in my life -- it's my planner, my way of communication, my map, and just about everything else.

Another important person who has a strong opinion about electronic media is Sherry Turkle in her 2015 article Stop Googling. Let's Talk. In this article Turkle makes a lot of good points but one especially poignant part was her that after her realization of our generations obsession with technology there is one one cure -- conversation and social interaction (Turkle). Turkle knows that young people especially are prone to getting into a phase where whenever they encounter an awkward social situation, instead of facing it head on and learning more about how to deal with hard social situation we put our heads in our phones so that we can be "elsewhere". Her point is that without these hard social situations we don't learn how to take advantage of the easier ones in our lives either. She has a good head about her solution though, she understands that these electronics will not magically disappear overnight and people aren't going to go against the grain and give them up -- instead her solution is one that is much more manageable, people simply need to be more conscious of their decision to use their devices. Each device has a specific purpose and can be a huge benefit to the user but without proper mediation it's easy to become "used" to these devices and thus reliant on the service they use eventually developing negative habitual use of these devices such as the symptoms that people display with their phones day in and day out.

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Media Forms Communcation

There are many characteristics of electronic media that shape the form and context of communication, take this blog as an example. Writing this information in the form of an essay wold lead to a completely different feel for the reader and a completely different topic path for me, the writer. It's undeniable that the platform you read your news on changes the way it is read, reading your news from a newspaper versus reading it from a news congregation cite such as Reddit will often lead to completely different biases and beliefs about certain issues. In Jeffery Sconce's 2000 paper Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television Sconce mentions the idea of the "telegraphic imagination" (56). This idea was the thought process behind drawing a connection between the telegraph allowing people in different places to communicate without being physically present and spiritualist talking to the dead. While there are obvious differences between these two types of connections it's easy to see how people who aren't educated about new technologies and don't understand how it works to think the two technologies work in the same way.

In both of the circumstances its easy to see that though the messages being portrayed are important it's more about the medium of communication than it was about what was actually being portrayed. This is especially important in the spiritualist movement because though the people that were asking questions felt as if they were important it was more about the communication with those have passed away then it was about the questions they were asking them. For these people having the connection with those who had left their lives was the ultimate goal and being able to connect with them (even if it wound up being false) gave them closure that otherwise their lives may have missed out on.

Another important idea brought up by ProPublica and their research on different pricing for different people was the fact that with the new mediums that we have today corporations have the ability to selectively price the services that they provide. ProPublica found this specifically with the pricing of their review for SAT prep courses but it is surely being used in other mediums and services around the world -- corporations know that certain demographics are more or less certain to buy certain items and with the mediums and tracking abilities we have today it's trivial to charge people more or less depending on a corporation's certainly that they will be interesting in what they're offer. In this type of scenario the medium in a huge part because with the computer being able to do what it does this type of scenario wouldn't be able happen. In this way the media that these companies receive show them that certain portions of society (Asian people in the NPR talk) are more likely to buy their services so they use these new knowing to change their way of communication to make them more money. In this way the media and their knowledge about trends are more important than the method of connecting to people.

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Electronic Media and Our Relationships

As electronic media has progressed so have human relationships. Relationships with our environment, ourselves, and each other have changed more rapidly than they have ever previously had the ability to and the introduction of new medias, new relationships and formed and older, outdated ones are phased out. In Baym's reading Personal Connections in the Digital Age it's mentioned how “We can use non verbally limited media such as text messages or emails to shelter us from anxiety-inducing encounters such as flirting or ending relationships" (4). This example of how people use new forms of communication to get out of situations is one that most people can say they've used and it really shows just how impact these new forms of communication and media are on our relationships with others. In previous times  if someone wanted to end a relationship they would have to go face the person and tell them how they really feel but with the new technologies it makes it so ending a big part of your life isn't as much an ordeal as it was previously. These new technologies allow for a disconnect between what is happening in real life because the phone causes a break in immediate backlash that would have previously been immediately evident to those who are involved in the situation. In a previous time without electronic mediums for communication people's actions would have had to have immediate negative consequences but because it's not so easy to hide behind phones for people there is a break in the chain between cause and effect -- people feel much more comfortable saying things they would have previously been to afraid to say. While this has some positive effects such as people finally speaking out on the internet for causes that may have previously remained silenced it also means that in online forms such as video games people know their actions will have next to negative effect so they completely remove their filter. This is due to the online media allowing them nearly complete freedom to say what they believe and the affect of this is that things get said by people that they would never say in real life.

These needs for avoiding awkward situations have been the way social relationships have been shaping electronic media but it also goes the other way -- just as much as relationships shapes media, the electronic media has the effect of shaping relationships as well. As mentioned in a previous post, since the creation of electronic forms of communication there have been new ways of communicating with people that people may have never otherwise had the chance to communicate with. When communicating online instead of face to face people often have more confidence to say what they think this means that they oftentimes allows their personality to come out more confidently and what they speak about to be less censored. There are two sides to this idea, one positive and one negative. The positive side of relationship's effects on media is that because of people's need to communicate more effectively with those around them there have been many great services created based around making communication with other more effective and fast. This is seen in services like Facebook and their ability to offer services during natural disasters to ensure your loved ones that you are safe during a natural disaster by posting to a Facebook group saying that you are safe. Services like this take the load off of phone-lines during times of emergency by making a person's safety publicly available so that viable resources like cellular tower data loads can be spared for those who need them most. The negative side is that with the feeling of freedom people are more empowered to speak about ideas that they otherwise wouldn't speak about in public -- this idea is shown in in Lisa Nakamura's paper Gender and Race Online with the mention of how online "Individual examples of person-to-person prejudice and harassment are ubiquitous within networked video games" (84). Online people's need to have relationships with those in their favorite games have created a way of communication that has next to no moderation at all. Though the rules outlines in most games say that racism and sexism are not allowed it's evident to any online gamer that both run rampant through almost any online game.

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How Our Electronic World Came to Be

 Since soon after the creation of electricity, the way humans interact with each other has never been the same. With the introduction of the telegraph and other similar technologies based off of the idea communication with those who aren't directly in your presence there has been a shift in the way that people communicate with those around them. In Nancy Baym's book Personal Connections in the Digital Age the following seven key concepts of “interactivity, temporal structure, storage, replicability, reach, and mobility” (7) are outlined in hopes of making the understanding of the electronic world we live in a little more easily understood. A few of these concepts, primarily storage, replicability, and reach are what make the basis for the technologies we love and use today and they have done so for each integration of the technologies we use starting with the telegraph.

The telegraph was the first way for people to be "electronically present" instead of having to actually be physically present in a place. Described in the documentary How the Victorians Wired the World by Russell Barnes it's easily seen that with the introduction of this new technology a person's reach grows exponentially. Language, love, and what is considered personal all changes with the advent of these new technologies in ways that before were not even thought of. One example of love changing so drastically was that since there was now a possibility of connecting with people far away people that otherwise would have no change of meeting were able to connect and exchange conversation without ever having physically meant the person with whom they were talking. In the documentary this exact scenario was described when they talked about how a couple meet, fell in love, and got married all over the telegraph. This situation was completely new when the telegraph was first invented but has since grown at an exponential rate -- this is evidenced in websites like eHarmony and Tinder. These new sights are different and more advanced but the concept remains the same, matching people with others that they otherwise would almost certainly not meet in the "real world".

Another argument for the historical context of the new world's "electronic presence" is seen in Volti's reading Societies and Technological Change about giving people in far away places axes that previously had symbolized power and presence in their societies (25). In these Australian tribes stone axes had symbolized power and authority between men and the trading of these axes was an act that previously had been reserved for those men with power and wealth. This was until a group of missionaries came into the tribe's society and started giving away steel axes to people in the society that had previously not had access to them. This caused a dissection of the tribe's hierarchy because now something that had previously been an important part for understanding who did what in the tribe was broken up. This is not unlike in today's world where often times people attempt to change things for the better not knowing the social context of a society or the group of people they are affecting and instead end up causing change for the worse. This oftentimes stems from people's thought about a primitive society being worse then their society and wanting to help change that society so it fits what they think of as "acceptable" and often times this attempting to change simply brings about hurt instead of help. People want others to fit into what they believe is the "best version of society" so they go about causing change in places where it was often not asked for.

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Electronic what?

Electronic presence is something that nearly every person in developed countries lives in. With the expansion of the internet and the adaptation of it to nearly every aspect of our lives it's almost impossible to go somewhere and not be impacted by the internet. Whether it be giving your food order online, studying using online resources, or texting friends from your cellular device, it's easy to see that the scope of the internet and thus our electronic presence is more expansive than first meets the eye.

This blog's aim will be to discuss the social and historical context of our electronic presence, the reach it has, and how it affects our every day lives. It will go into depth about who, what, and when electronics affect our presence in the world by using references that we have learned about throughout the year and during my own self-research.

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