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.