Have you ever wanted to transcend space and time? Well now you can in three easy steps! Step 1- Sign into Facebook, step 2 – choose a friend and write something on their wall, and step 3- press POST! Congratulations! You have just experienced the wonderful world of technology!
Not quite understanding how Facebook just helped you transcend time and space? Well with the handy dandy reading of this blog post, you will too understand the wonders of Facebook! First we must start off with the internet with which we are capable of transmitting information faster and more efficiently than ever before! Back in the day, when you wanted to communicate with a person, you had to travel ALL the way to go see them (or send someone) to deliver your message. And if you had sent your message via a messenger, you had to wait ALL the way for them to come back to relay the response! This of course took a considerable amount of time. However with applications such as Facebook and other online social networking sites you can send a message, and if the other person happens to be on Facebook at the same time, even if they are all the way across the world, they will receive the message right away and fire a response right back which will appear at your end instantaneously! No longer do you have to wait for the inconveniences of waiting around for that lazy messenger to come back with your reply, or have to resort to travelling ALL the way to see the person JUST to deliver a message. The internet and Facebook allow us to transcend the limits of space and the accompanying time of travel to be able to communicate instantaneously – this causes what Mcluhan calls the global village where our sense of time and space have become compressed, and access to the world seems limitless. So next time you feel like experiencing the joys of transcending time and space, just sign on to Facebook and leave a buddy across the road, or across the world a message!
Monday, December 8, 2008
Information as Public Property
Information is defined as any knowledge that is communicated or received, concerning a particular fact or circumstance. A key factor about information is that it is a both a commodity and a public good. Once information is produced, it is virtually inexhaustible, and any consumption of information has the potential to create more information. Once information is posted online, these qualities are magnified because not only can it be sent out; it can be replicated exactly, and stored. Therefore, if we are following that definition, anything we post up on Facebook is information and therefore public property.
Did you know that anything you post up on Facebook no longer belongs to you and is owned by Facebook? This goes for comments, wall postings, pictures, favourite movies, relationship statuses... Facebook is a prime example of how technology has created a means for the cultural value of the communication of information. It allows us to post up information and easily publish it for the entire world to see. However with this ease comes the danger of becoming reckless with what we publish online; it is only too easy to post up those photos of you posing with a 26oz of vodka or having a drinking competition with friends. At the moment, these pictures may seem funny however; these photos portray vital information about you to the public which includes potential employers and schools and can permanently tarnish your image. This could result in you being passed over for entrance into a school of choice or even deem you unemployable. It just goes to show you that you have to be careful with what you post online- because anything that you do instantly no longer belongs to just you.
Facebook the antagonist of productivity
Imagine this scenario. You arrive home after a long day at school, drop your bag down on the floor, and pull out that assignment you’ve been procrastinating on forever. You look at the clock – its 5:00 PM and decide that there’s definitely enough time to get that assignment done before the midnight due date. You sit down in front of your computer and sign into Facebook just to check if you have any new messages or wall postings. You browse around the site and laugh at your friend’s photos from an “animal themed” party, write on a couple people’s walls, send a message to your best friend, comment on a picture or two… Content that you have done enough daily socializing, you look up at the clock only to realize that it’s 9:00 PM! That can’t be right, you check your cell phone time and realize that you have just wasted the last 4 hours that you had wanted to dedicate to that 10 page essay, to Facebook.
Does this sound familiar to anyone? Any capitalistic thinker would be appalled at your behaviour because as a general rule, technology was developed to save time and make things more efficient. All technologies are supposedly created with a social group and value in mind. The social group Facebook was originally targeted towards was college students who were to be able to save time by joining this online social networking site where they could easily collaborate with other students and make friends faster. This seems like an oxymoron considering all the time that is wasted by student use of Facebook.
This in itself is an excellent demonstration of the interpretive flexibility of technologies – what was meant to save time, has been transformed into something we use to waste time. It just goes to show you what big procrastinators college students are – what was created for the specific purpose of saving time, has been transformed into the ultimate antagonist of productivity.
Does this sound familiar to anyone? Any capitalistic thinker would be appalled at your behaviour because as a general rule, technology was developed to save time and make things more efficient. All technologies are supposedly created with a social group and value in mind. The social group Facebook was originally targeted towards was college students who were to be able to save time by joining this online social networking site where they could easily collaborate with other students and make friends faster. This seems like an oxymoron considering all the time that is wasted by student use of Facebook.
This in itself is an excellent demonstration of the interpretive flexibility of technologies – what was meant to save time, has been transformed into something we use to waste time. It just goes to show you what big procrastinators college students are – what was created for the specific purpose of saving time, has been transformed into the ultimate antagonist of productivity.
Black-boxing Facebook
According to my notes from Communications 253, technology falls into two “predominant cultural orientations” in regards to understanding what technology is and how it affects us. The first theory is that of instrumentalism, where technology consists of value neutral tools and we can control which path it takes both good and bad. The second theory is that of determinism where technology is an independent force that shapes our destiny. If you were to step back and look at Facebook, which category would you say that it would fit in?
Well, both my notes and my common sense tell me that it probably fits into both. Facebook started out as a website designed to help students get to know each other in Harvard University. If we are looking at it from an instrumentalism point of view, it is evident that people have seized the opportunity that was presented to them with the creation of Facebook to expand their social networks to include not only those in their immediate environment, but also people across the globe.
On the other hand, if we are looking at Facebook from a deterministic point of view, perhaps what we do really is determined by technologies. Facebook has become such an integral part of socializing that it seems difficult to function without it. Without Facebook, many people would not be up to date with events, would have difficulty connecting with new people they meet, be unable to collaborate as effectively on group projects… But does this mean that we are merely recipients to Facebook technology and are merely adjusting our behaviour to follow trends?
I think that we as a society chose to capitalize on opportunities presented to us by new technologies, and by those conscious choices, create technologies that determine the nature of society (which now just happens to include several hours per day spent on Facebook).
Well, both my notes and my common sense tell me that it probably fits into both. Facebook started out as a website designed to help students get to know each other in Harvard University. If we are looking at it from an instrumentalism point of view, it is evident that people have seized the opportunity that was presented to them with the creation of Facebook to expand their social networks to include not only those in their immediate environment, but also people across the globe.
On the other hand, if we are looking at Facebook from a deterministic point of view, perhaps what we do really is determined by technologies. Facebook has become such an integral part of socializing that it seems difficult to function without it. Without Facebook, many people would not be up to date with events, would have difficulty connecting with new people they meet, be unable to collaborate as effectively on group projects… But does this mean that we are merely recipients to Facebook technology and are merely adjusting our behaviour to follow trends?
I think that we as a society chose to capitalize on opportunities presented to us by new technologies, and by those conscious choices, create technologies that determine the nature of society (which now just happens to include several hours per day spent on Facebook).
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