Reflection of "We live in the public"
“We live in the public” is the movie of experiments and description of Josh Harris. Josh is the pioneer of the internet and he directly induces the boom of internet social networking. It is his idea that changes the way people interact on the internet and the development of social networking. First of all, I one hundred percents agree that expose ourselves in front of the public or other people might change our behaviors, so when Josh came up with the “quiet” experiment, I totally can understand why he thinks the camera can change the social development and people’s interaction. Take me for example. I usually lie on the sofa and laugh on the TV show without caring for my image but while there are guests in my house, I tried to sit properly and actively pour tea for them and tried to act that I am an elegant girl. Or while my boyfriend is taking a video of us, I tend to use a more tender tone to talk with him in the video than I usually do. Through these little actions, we can realize that when we know that someone is looking at us or the images including us is going to be public, most of the people will change their behaviors unconsciously and want to make sure the impressions of ourselves to others are in good condition. Therefore, I am not surprised that the hypothesis of the quit experiment that people change their behaviors before the cameras. However, I am surprised and can’t understand the result of the experiment until now. In the beginning, people who live in the basement, of course, feel a little bit embarrassed when they noticed that numerous cameras and channels are watching and overseeing them. After a while, however, they were gradually used to be spying on by someone and began to act more and more crazily without restriction in the public. That’s the point I can’t understand and I am also curious about why those people have these kinds of insane behaviors.
Living in this generation in which social media and the internet are everywhere, I can imagine that some people choose to give up part of their privacy to earn recognition and popularity. If throwing away parts of their privacy in private areas can make them have more attention and followers, some people might be willing to do that. That can explain why some people nowadays shot some interesting videos of daily life and expose their private fields to the public. I acknowledge people eager to get approval and get the intimate connection with others through exposing themselves in front of cameras, but I still doubt the result of the experiment that people’s attitude turns into crazy because they feel comfortable to be watching at and they want to catch attention by doing insane behaviors.
Usually, if people want to get more attention which means people also care about others’ views of themselves and want to have good evaluation and reputation. Therefore, I am confused that I should define those people in the experiment were doing themselves or doing something against their mind due to the eagerness to catch others’ attention.
Josh Harris recognized these series of experiments as the future development of human interaction in the post-internet society. He also involved himself in the experiment and lived in front of the public with his girlfriend. He had the consequence and the prediction that living without privacy in the transparent social internet world may cause the mental sick to the public and break the security snd stability of social development. In my opinion, however, I agree that the development of technology and social media nowadays has changed the way of interaction between people, but I don’t think these kinds of social networking will cause the chaos of society like the consequence of the experiment. Even though people like to share their private lives in the public area, we still have the right and autonomy to control the content we want to share. We have the absolute right to decide what do we want to share and how much we want to be exposed on the internet. That’s the reason why I don’t think our society will lose control like the experiment.
