ch. 10

In chapter 10 of Alone All Together, Turkle shares the views of several high school age students about how they communicate with friends. The students have become so accustomed to text messaging and other  forms of online communication that they not only loathe talking on the phone, but have created different rules and etiquette solely for online use.

For these students, and no doubt other adolescences and adults, the allure of  texting seems to stem from the fact that texting allows a person time to think about the message he or she is about to send, with time to edit and revise before sending. After all, if you answer the phone when a friend is calling and that conversation goes on longer than expected, nobody likes making up an awkward excuse to get off the phone. For the students, avoiding an awkward "good bye" is good enough reason to be completely tethered to your phone at all times.

As people become more and more tethered to digital forms of communication and new media, aren't also the abilities of those people to multi-task increasing? And is this a bad thing? Employers love an employee who can multi-task, after all. But at what point does multi-tasking and staying connected and always "on" become a problem, or even an addiction? Below is a video of Turkle taking questions from students, and she touches on the topics of addiction to digital forms of communication as well as where she sees the multi-tasker will be a few years from now.

So are you addicted to staying connected? Should the term addiction be applied to the droves of people who flock to games like Second Life, who use identity play to satisfy a thirst for adventure and newness that they're not able to achieve in real life? Do you agree with Turkle's views on addiction? Will students like Audry from chapter 10 in Alone All Together have to take classes in the future to learn how to unitask, as Turkle describes in the video above?

Marriage in Second Life

 Certainly one of the traditional stables of marriage is the bond, both physical and emotional, that the married couple shares together. Typically this bond evolves over a period of time, which is formed and solidified after two people have shared enough time with one another. These couples experience the ups and downs in the relationship, and after getting through the good and the bad times come to a point where they feel inseparable.

But what would it be like to be married to someone that you've never met in person?

Turkle tells a strange story in the book All Alone Together about a couple that tied the knot in the online game, Second Life. I had to ask myself- Is this serious? Can two people meet through a game, signify their marriage online with a ceremony  surrounded by their closest avatar friends, and have a successful marriage in the real world? Does the marriage even take place in real life, or is it only a marriage when you're playing Second Life? With these questions in mind, I did some research to see if there were other people with similar circumstances to the couple Turkle mentions in her book. There were no shortage of examples.

Several iReporters from CNN Living chronicled the marriages of people "in-world" (in Second Life), and most seemed normal enough. So normal and traditional  that it's a bit weird.

 "iReporter Hibiscus Hastings even visited a Second Life bridal shower. There were about 40 vendors and over 800 attendees, according to its organizer. It even included a fashion show and panel discussion of "wedding do's and don't's."("Virtual world, real, 2008")

Stranger still are those Second Life marriages between people who have significant others in real life, and are able to maintain those relationships in a healthy manner without letting their Second Life marriage ruin what they have in reality.

  "So, what is the relationship between the virtual bride and groom? When asked, both of them described it as "a giggle." Latte and Benelli are good friends in real life, each with a real-life significant other who is aware of their Second Life marriage. ""We get on great and  enjoy each other's company," Benelli said. For those whose Second Life relationship carries into the real world, Latte says it's "wonderful. As long as people don't get hurt it's a great thing.""("Virtual world, real, 2008") 

It all seems a bit strange to me, but like Roach Benelli (who didn't give her real name in the article) says, as long as people don't get hurt, have at it.

 

The "Information Poor"

While reading the 1st chapter in the book entitled "Reading" Cypercultures, I stumbled upon some points that Nayar brought up in regards to the flow of information in what is rapidly becoming, as Nayar puts it, our technocapitalistic  society. With all sorts of New Media infiltrating and replacing old forms of Media, Nayar points out  that in today's ever globalizing world that consumption demands technological linkages and synchronous, 24/7 communications. The flows of information that everyday people receive through the various forms of New Media are becoming more and more important in everyday life. But as these flows of information become more important in our everyday lives, what happens to the people who have limited to no access to this information?

Nayer states: "Increasingly, people, classes and territories that are not significant for the informational society are excluded from the wired world. The old, African nations, the mentally ill, the inner-city ghettos are all peripheral to the globalizing ICT movement. .... the high-tech age is driven by the need to posses ever greater amounts of information, and those who lack this (the "information poor") are left out of the race" (Nayar, 7). 

Automation, information gathering, and labor are analogous to mechanization from the early days of capitalism (Kellner, 1999). This was a time when a blue collar worker with a trade skill could provide food and shelter for his family, while keeping the peace of mind that his skill could be used anywhere in America.  But in today's technocapatilistic world, the information poor such as the poverty stricken, mentally ill and uneducated will fall through the gap, simply because they do not have the means to acquire the technology to keep up. It's like a digital divide in America, and one that cannot be boiled down to someone who has the internet vs. someone who doesn't. Other cultural factors such as language become problems as well, such as when a non-English speaker cannot find information about social welfare rules or job opportunities anywhere but online, and that information is in English only.

So what is to be done about the information poor? Government action? Media coverage? Free iPhones and "How-To" tech books shot out of t-shirt cannons to crowds of Apple-crazed homeless people? Do we have a moral obligation to provide these people with new forms of technology?

In an article I read about the information poor, Tim Mazur brings up the topic of moral rights. According to Mazur a moral right is an entitlement based on ethical standards rather than legal ones. An example of a moral right would be the right to subsistence, or to clean air. These are rights that everyone should have.The right to telephone service, on the other hand, would be considered a subsidiary moral right (a right which protects the conditions necessary to exercise a moral right). According to Mazur, since everyone has the moral right to safety, many states have made it mandatory to have phone service subsidized for low-income households to get help for a serious injury, because it is the moral right of those people to get help, and the only way to get help for a serious injury or tragedy would be to call 911 or the fire department through the use of the telephone. So in the future, should the information poor be allowed access to subsidized means of technology so that their moral rights are not violated? Mazur brings up the point that many ethicists "maintain that persons have a moral right to equal opportunity to jobs and college/university admission slots. Yet, if certain job opportunities are available only through electronic services, qualified candidates among the information poor may be shut out."


What are your thoughts?