Thursday, April 30th, 2009...4:25 pm
Free Write for Final
What if anything is inherently better than real interaction than virtual interaction?
One, out of many differences I’ve noticed with virtual interaction is missing emotional components with communication. It’s hard when you communicate solely through email, instant messaging, texting, etc. to get an accurate depiction of the tone used by the other person. For example, if someone says “Cool blue mascara today” do they actually genuinely like your new style of wearing blue mascara or are they being sarcastic and making fun of you for wearing blue mascara? How can you tell? Sometimes, you can tell tone from knowing the person prior to communicating with them online. But then it’s like – wait, there are online web dating services such as match.com where you don’t meet the person, and then through these virtual conversations, you’re supposed to fall deeply in love? How is that possible? I guess where I’m trying to go with this is I feel online social communication between people can be very confusing to interpret. I have always loved talking to people, I really do. I am an extrovert and truly think I get my energy through speaking with others and listening to what they have to say. A few things about talking with people: if I can’t see a person, I find that distracting. BUT I will settle for phone conversations. But then to not hear someone, I again find that distracting. It gets harder and harder to decipher what a person is trying to relay to you when you are not physically near each other or speaking to one another. Text is hard to interpret, especially if you don’t know the person. Which is why I choose to 1. Have personal, face to face conversations when possible. Next, phone conversations. If I need a quick answer, I’ll send a text message or instant message. I do like emailing people to give updates when life is hectic and Id rather keep in contact with friends than loose touch all together. That’s what it is – virtual communication is good for DISTANCE. But when you’re literally a five minute walk away or a phone call away, I find it a little cheap to be having a text message conversation when the entire conversation could happen on the phone, speaking to each other in about 30 seconds instead you just wasted half an hour trying to figure out when to do dinner (for example).
Another aspect that scares me about the virtual world is the next generation of children. They are exposed to video games, internet, television, cell phones, etc. etc. at an increasingly younger age. With parents finding it easier to set their kids infront of the tv instead of driving them to soccer practice, they are missing out on two main components: 1. Lack of social interactions which hinders their social development 2. Missing out on physical activity which has been linked to childhood obesity and later health issues as an adult 3. They become hooked with video games that make them believe facts that simply aren’t true such as if they shoot someone with a gun, they won’t die or if you play soccer on Wii Sports, you can actually play soccer (imagine that)! So instead of learning the traditional games that kids used to play out in the backyards and on the playgrounds, they are learning these vitural games either by themselves or with a friend or two. Which is conserning to me.
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Where to go from here? I might look into doing a set of digital collages of images and words. One would be deciphering my “real interaction” thoughts and the other would be my “virtual interaction” thoughts. What do you think??? Comments, ideas, reflections on what I wrote, etc are MORE THAN WELCOME!
4 Comments
May 2nd, 2009 at 8:12 am
Cool. Sorry that it took me a while to get back to you. I had to unplug a little yesterday… the past week was insane..
Okay, so after reading the above, I can pull out some semi-conclusions:
“real” interaction is better because
• it allows for greater emotional understanding,
• it is more succinct and
• in some ways ‘truthful’
• it is better for people, especially children, because it is less prone to teach them outright untruths about life and accountability?
These are great starting points, I think. But, just for fun, I would like to challenge a couple of things…
firstly, think about not just texting and email, but there are tons of people who interact across vast distances via video chat. This is certainly closer to “real” conversation, right?
Also, there are many people in my life who make comments like “nice dress” and I have no idea if they are being sincere or if they are making an undecipherable dig.
And in terms of FPS games, do you really think that they teach children that there are no consequences? Are there any other influences in a child’s life that could influence how she interprets the violence in those games? How do these games compare to horribly violent movies like “Saw”? Most people when asked about this movie say that it is so “over the top” in it’s violence that it is obviously not realistic and therefore some kind of spoof… Maybe the representation of / fetishization of violence in general is more of a problem? Maybe too much of any one thing is bad? Maybe we will evolve with technology to organically understand the difference?
Maybe truth, sincerity and love are evolving out of our world? Look at popular films like “Mean Girls” that make catty behavior more fashionable and powerful that it already is in high school??
Just some ideas to challenge what you have written so far. No right answers here, but some of your arguments, while valid, are a bit one-sided.
yay!
May 2nd, 2009 at 8:15 am
maybe revisit this:
http://blogs.stlawu.edu/digitalmedia/2009/01/20/blogs-bloggers-blog-community/
to consider the other side of the argument?
as well as the web 2.0 video that I just posted (I cannot recall if I showed this to class… I think I did at the very beginning of the term)
anyhow, write back and come see me tomorrow or Monday!
May 3rd, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Thanks for your comments Amy. & yes, I’m being one-sided here. Trying to take a strong stance on an opinion. I watched the videos you suggested and really like the one that you just posted on the web about connecting people with their individual ideas and the part about rethinking copyright/sharing/love/ourselves/etc. I do love the web, don’t get me wrong. It has brought the world together in that we can be connected to just about anyone via the world wide web. The point I’d like to make is that though the web has created this virtual space for us to communicate in, I still feel there is something to value about physical communication with one another. I’m going to look for some other videos and try to put together a video mash up to make a point that the web does connect us, but as close as we may seem, it’s not real life…
I’ve also been looking at research on virtual communication done at standford (http://vhil.stanford.edu/) which is interesting to read.
I’m going to play with this, see what I find and come in tomorrow to chat. AAM
May 3rd, 2009 at 6:13 pm
I just had another thought — using the five senses — yes through virtual communication you can SEE & HEAR hear, but you can’t TASTE, TOUCH, or SMELL through the screen…. going to play around with that.
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