MCS164: Five Things To Take Home
With the introduction of the web 2.0 into our society, cultural outlooks and behaviors have shifted gradually to encourage mannerisms of multi-tasking. As our first screening in class dove deeply into this issue, this issue of distraction and multi-tasking struck a cord with me very easily. As a college student, I have found myself gradually slipping into checking my phone during large lectures and have a need, almost, to to check my feeds to see the latest sports updates. University students feel confident in their ability to multi-task, in fact our generation might as well identify multi-tasking as millennial strength. Unfortunately, tests have shown that students who multi-task show susceptibility to distraction and reduced work efficiency. Multi-tasking can overload the brain and makes it harder to retain information. As much as we can point fingers at social media, we need to look at the parties involved. Our culture now dictates a certain set of rules to follow when using online media. When you get a message and don’t reply, people will ask, “why didn’t you reply to my message?” This can be an issue when dealing with media use and distractions…
Speaking of a set of defined social rules, media ideology has shaped much of how an individual perceives their use of social media. There are generally a few universal rules of messaging use that most people may agree with; not breaking up over text being an example of this.However, not everyone shares the same media ideologies and therefore, this can lead to miscommunication and a further need to collaborate to determine one’s compatibility with another individual. Some people, like myself, tend to limit their use of multiple platforms and instead just combine all social media needs into one app or source. The issue with this, I’ve determined, is that this may be limiting to understand the different underlying feeling and meanings when utilizing a different platform. For people, using one medium of social messaging and construe a completely different meaning if a message was sent with another platform. Some people need to work together, if say, one person prefers calling or video chatting and another prefers texting. This can lead to “media switching”, flip flopping between platforms to communicate. Studies have shown that the current generation of users have trouble reading intentions and expressions due to the number of different media out there.
Fuchs presents several social theories in his writings, citing theorists such as Tonnies, Marx, Engels, and others to help purvey the need of “collaboration” and “community” in our internet usage. After all, isn’t the internet intended to be used as a way of connecting people? That may be a subjective thought, however Fuchs prompts an intriguing conclusion that our society should pursue more sharing and collaboration as his answer. Wikipedia comes to mind when thinking about collaborative projects. It seems to, at the very least, pursue the idea that information can be shared, interacted with, and improved upon by the hands of a collective community. There is no singular ownership of information; rather, it belongs to the users for the purposes and benefits of the users. In essence, it is the pursuit of a participatory culture and democracy.
Speaking of ownership, the issues of “big data” and corporate commercialization within the guises of social media is startling and frankly, should be recognized by users. Big data practically stores all of our information onto media profiles, ones which can be accessed and shared more easily than we should be comfortable with. The how-to of creating a new social media platform seems to be coupled now with finding sponsors. Pages like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Youtube have practically sold out their users to share information with advertising companies to generate power, money, and consumers. We are seeing the perpetuation of a consumer system. There can be criticisms about storing so much information of people because big data is just that…data. You don’t look into that individual’s eye, get to know them, and THEN input the information. Big data should sorts out categories of information about people, and then that’s that. It is much easier to take advantage of data than it is to a physical individual. Terms and services of social media can be so overdone with the intent to confuse users away from reading that we don’t even know just how far they have breached our privacy. Again, under the guise of “open society” we see corporations fiddling for a profit.
When we think of digital labor, we see robots and machines assembling our goods for future purchase. The truth, however, is quite far from that. We forget to see that there is human labor involved with the production of technological goods. Factories in China hire workers for heap to stand in lines for hours upon hours to assemble our iPhones from tiny bits and pieces to eventually create what we use right now. Labor conditions can be harsh, private, and disciplinary. But, some workers fight through because they need the job. Minerals from the Congo are mined for the use of producing goods. They are called conflict minerals because they are produced and taken advantage of out of continued war. As long as war persists in the Congo, corporations will be able to dive in and reap all the profits of the minerals to use for their factories.
