WEEK TWO - Experiment

This week our task is not to use Social Media for one full day. That will not be difficult as the only application I use is Facebook.

My day without Social Media

This exercise wasn't difficult because I don’t use: twitter, snapchat, whatapp, tender, or anything like that. In fact I only re-joined the ‘smart’ world this Christmas because my fella got me a new Samsung Galaxy Mini. I wasn't wired all last year. I’d dip in and out of the internet when I was on a laptop, but I didn't want the feed. The only Social Media I use regularly is Facebook. So this Saturday I was working from 8am to 9pm Sunday morning. That’s a full 24 hour day. I work in a house belonging to an elderly gentleman and he doesn't have Wi-Fi and I don’t have an internet package on my phone. I had made a promise to arrange a hillwalk with a classmate via a Facebook message, so instead I text a mutual friend for his number and got in contact from that channel. I text a total of five people during the day. I don’t make calls, because I don’t ever have the credit, and I would use e-mail instead or face-to-face. So I guess I'm more into ‘Mediated Interaction’ than ‘Virtual Mediation’ for which this exercise was set, in order to gauge anxiousness at withdrawal. However, I did miss the internet for my laptop. To name but a few things, I wanted to do, but couldn't:

A.      Add events to my UCD connect calendar

B.      Buy an e-book on Amazon

C.      Contact my daughter in Poland using Facebook or Skype (our only channels)

D.      Download a template for making ‘personas’.

E.       Enter a Moodle site for an assignment’s resource material

F.       Finish my registration on Google ‘MIT App Inventor’

G.     Google Scholarship, make an application

H.      Look up my pathway and module descriptors

I.        Research an internship opportunity

None of the above have anything to do with interconnectivity, except for the case of my daughter. I was not missing out on the incessant ‘stupid’ snapchat selfies I see all the 20 year olds doing, when ‘being alone’ is just not an option. I sometimes wonder if it is fulfilling to spend time that way. There was an article in today’s paper about Emoji’s, and the author, a 30something who was sceptical for years, suddenly felt ‘infused with joy’ when she became emoji-enabled. Are these little bits of communication like little kisses to your heart? Are they making lovely squeezy loving warm hearts within the first internet generation who walk these hallowed halls with me? Maybe they can teach this 40something their mystique.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118562/emoticons-effect-way-we-communicate-linguists-study-effects

The Sociology of it all:

According to Durkheim’s sociological concepts, this new generation is just making a regenerated formation of ‘Mechanical Solidarity and Ritual’. They may seem; less socialised, more individualised and lacking social cohesion, but actually they are making new norms of rituals for the information age. However, it is concerning that Weaber’s concept of ‘the iron cage’ is so prevalent. They seem trapped in a capitalist system of consumer fetishism (Marx) with integrated companies like Apple and Microsoft leading them like Pied Pipers. Castells hints at emancipatory potential when he says that “we can resist the capitalist system in our everyday lives” and that we are actually free within this confine to make individual choices, like ignoring gatekeepers.