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.