Additional Source:
Great TED talk by Sherry Turkle on how technology is shaping our relationships with others and ourselves!
Questions:
- How do you think that these wide arrays of specialized networks can serve as an advantage in the working or academic realm?
- In what ways do you feel disadvantaged by these specialized networks, if at all?
Networked Relationships: Size Matters
This chapter opens up with the claim that Americans have become frantic due to their fear that they are making less meaningful connections due to the supposed isolation caused by Internet use. These panicked Americans are worried that people are discussing less “matters that are important to them.” This chapter refutes that claim, giving several examples as to why that is not only false, but even going so far as to claim that the opposite is true.
It is however important to consider why this fear exists. What often incurs this fear is the looking back at previous generations, and how they used to interact in a more favorable way. However, this tactic has proved to be repetitive throughout history, claiming every generation prior to be better than the current one. Critics argue, “community is falling apart because internet use has led people to lose contact with authentic in-person relationships as they become ensnared online in weak simulacra of reality.” There is a general fear that people are losing touch with others that are within their own community and instead focusing solely on networked friendships.
However, what has come to light though several different research projects is that social networks have in fact improved relationships within the community. The chapter goes on to explain that something that has changed is the way in which people connect. Before, there used to be a certain expectation that a household or workgroups would connect with others, but what has become increasingly clear is that people now connect from individual to individual, rendering the older version of connectivity obsolete and allowing for more individualized networking with a greater span of reach. People no longer limit themselves to one or two groups but instead create diversified networks depending on what others have to offer. Different types of networks have been born from this need, more specialized. All these specialized groups may not always discuss the “matters that are most important to them,” but many of these different groups are able to offer a different and unique form of closeness to the individual. For example, the chapter claims that friends can serve as confidants and social companions, whereas neighbors and coworkers are uniquely suited to help with unexpected emergencies due to their adeptness with goods and services. There are different types of support that now exist in the networked world, and what has become increasingly clear is that these networks and different forms of communication are not replacing but advancing the way we connect with individuals.
Communities, Communication, and Online Identities
This article explores the concept of identities in different types of communities. The article begins with communities. It is established early on that virtual communities are essential social aggregations that emerge from the internet when enough people carry on public discussions for a long enough time and with just enough human emotion to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace. From there the article goes into how these different communities can allow for individuals to form different types of identities based on what platform they are using. The question is posed, Do identities change online? The article explains that in different situations, people use different aspects of their identity. (ex. Communicating with colleagues, family, friends, etc…) Then, five new concepts are presented concerning cyber-identities: eponymity, nonymity, anonymity, pseudnymity, and polynymity. Eponymity is defined as “the state of being identified and recognized by name and other distinctive individual features.” An example of a situation in which one would be utilizing this identity is when in communication with someone who knows the identity of their communicator. Nonymity is defined as “the state of not being identified by any name nor any other distinctive individual features.” Essentially, nonymity is not having any distinctive identity characteristics that are apparent. Anonymity, a term we are more familiar with, is “the state of not being known by any name,” the user under this anonymity is granted complete freedom with their identity. Psuedonymity is defined as “the state of being identified by a pseudonym, that is by name, which is not somebody’s real, correct name.” Finally, there exists polynymity, which is “the property of having and presenting oneself with many different names.” The article concludes with the importance of managing ones identity through the many different types of cyber-spaces.
Engineering Sociality in a Culture of Connectivity
This chapter starts out by creating a historical map of social media’s transformation, specifically between the years of 2001 and 2012. The Web 2.0 essentially matured from being able to simply offer networked communication to becoming capable of offering a rather large variety of platforms on which one could communicate. The first half-decade gave rise to communities embracing the Web’s potential for long-range collaboration and connectedness. However, shortly after the year 2006, the term “social” came to mean something completely different. It was now defined as being, something that was technologically manageable and something that could be exploited economically.