Digital_Nation 2: Relationships

The more I watch this documentary, and navigate the website, the more astounded I am at the multiple ways people have accessed, and taken control of, our new digital world. One of my favorite segments in the portion of the film dealing with relationships and identity comes in the form of an 83-year-old Jewish woman, who along with her grandson Avrom became famous through a television show she has online, Feed Me Bubbe.



One thing Bubbe notes is the void that she feels her show may be filling in some people's lives. Do you think that people are reaching out because they're lonely and isolated, or do you think that it's not that computers are isolating us... but are bringing isolated people together?

Digital_Nation

Are we living faster and faster lives, or is the world we're living in moving faster and faster, while we scramble to merely keep up? These are problems addressed in the first portion of PBS Frontline's Digital_Nation, directed and produced by Rachel Dretzin, accompanied by Douglas Rushkoff. One of the first quotes in the film, from Melissa Chapman, relates the need for connection through technology that we're faced with: "I can't imagine, I can't even imagine, being without [my blackberry]."

This isn't a strange phenomenon, of course. We're all, in some respects, wired up to the eyeballs. I asked the students in one of my classes today how long they spent online in a typical day. One student responded about 5 or 6 hours. We don't like to think it's true, and many others seemed pretty surprised to hear that number. But think about it. I use facebook, I surf blogs, I read news online, I check and write e-mails constantly, and text, all available on my handy iPhone. How often do I use technology every day? Rushkoff observed that World of Warcraft players devote an average of 10 hours a week to the game, and some people snicker when they hear that. But, really, some of us spend 10 hours a day on our digital devices without even thinking about it!



What does it mean to be wired? Are we too wired? What would that look like?

Once More, Into the Breach!

I've aptly titled this blog entry after a line from Henry V, by William Shakespeare, because I'm once more grappling with (or rather, I'm once more instructing students to grapple with) concepts revolving around the rhetoric of technology... Okay, so Henry V has nothing whatsoever to do with the rhetoric of technology, but I am, once more, leaping into the "breach" of arguments revolving around this incredibly salient and prescient topic. I've approached this topic with classes before, but in keeping with the responsibility to the kairotic moment - that is, in keeping with the times - I'm incredibly anxious to see what new layers of meaning and different levels of argument and various viewpoints this new batch of blog-writers uncovers.

What will they find important? What new vocabularies, new technologies, and new ways of seeing our interaction with technology will they uncover?

I've already started noting the depressing fact that, while I age every year, the students I teach always remain about the same age. There was a time when I could ask a classroom if anyone was born in the 80's, and a few hands would have gone up. Those days are, regrettably, past. But with new, fresh minds, comes fresh perspective. I hope that taking a step back and, once again, taking a long, hard look at the technology and power we hold in our hands on a day-to-day basis will help each writer learn, and thus, teach others, about the rhetorical meanings behind all the things and objects and ways of communicating we take for granted.

See for yourself! This semester's list of writers is below the cut!