We Are All Computer People.

I chose Sherry Turkle's article titled, How Computers Change the Way We Think....

which you can read for yourself at..

http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~comp300/documents/HowComputersChangeThinking.pdf

In this article, Sherry Turkle is discussing how technology is changing the way we think, and she is focusing on computers in particular and what they are doing to us. She also addresses the issue of privacy. Nowadays most everyone is using the web for blogging, email, or other purposes, and they are losing their privacy. It seems as though college aged people are less concerned about their privacy compared to the older generations who didn’t grow up with as much information out there on the web for most anyone to see. It is the younger generation that is more willing to put more personal information on social sites, and they don’t seem to care much about their loss of privacy. Also, people are representing themselves through avatars on different websites and games. Some even get so used to using their avatars that they forget how share feelings in the real world. She explains how computers are being introduced to children at elementary ages. At this young age, children are learning to understand more than just the content, and we have to wonder how this is affecting their thinking. Because of word processors, are we relying too much on them and no longer thinking ahead?? Whatever the case, we need to accept that technology is continually evolving, and we must form our cultures around this growing technology. Turkle ends her article by explaining that there is no longer a group of “computer people”, or trained techies, but everyone is now a computer person.

This article had many points that relate to what we have talked about or we are going to talk about in class I’m sure. One thing that first popped out at me was when she discussed the use of avatars. Possibly because we just discussed this. Turkle brought up the issue that a dominant use of avatars may hinder our real life experiences. I think this is somewhat true as well. If all somebody does is sit at home, hiding behind their avatar, they may forget how to act in the physical world. Maybe I shouldn’t say ‘hiding’. I guess I could say using their avatar for communication more than themselves personally, in ‘real life’. It makes me wonder if we will eventually lose all face to face communication.

I also find the issue of privacy very interesting and kinda scary. We have talked about this topic in DTC 375, so those of you in that class, feel free to skip ahead. The idea had come up that because of technology we are becoming a private-less culture I guess you could say. Because so many people are willing to publish more and more personal information on the web, they are losing all rights to their privacy. And it’s like they don’t even care, which is the scary part. The younger generation of internet users are so used to putting anything and everything on the web that they are immune to the fact that they have virtually no privacy whatsoever. I am not one of those people who post their every move in their Facebook status or Twitter update. For that fact I don’t even have a Twitter. I find it kind of weird that people I don’t know would ‘follow’ me. I’m not against Twitter or anything, it’s just not for me. I seldom personal information in my Facebook profile, because I like to feel that I still have some privacy. But with the way things are going these days, the up and coming generation of tech users will have no sense of privacy. And the only way to gain any privacy is to avoid technology altogether, which seems next to impossible.

So back to the article and how computers are changing the way we think…

I think computers are making us somewhat lazy. We no longer have to think before we write things out. If we don’t like how something is worded, we can change it in an instant. Backspace!

Computers are causing us to think in digital world mode, not real life mode. And I think we should cherish the face to face interaction we get now because who knows how long it will last.