The end is near...

As I look back on the past eight weeks, I realize that I have learned far more about communication, culture, and cyberspace than I expected when I registered for this course. When I first saw the class description, I was excited to find a class that focused on something that I use in my daily life and interested what I could possibly learn. I am happy to say this class far exceeded my expectations and it is probably one of my favorite classes I have taken so far. Not only did I get to participate in really interesting projects, this class really made me think about my interactions online and evaluate myself. This wasn’t a class that I learned something that I will never use again, but one that gave me perspectives to look at that I had never considered before!

I was really pleased with all of the blog assignments and found that each really made me examine my internet usage in different ways. My favorite project (and least favorite as well) was in Week One where we had to abstain from the internet. I never realized just how much I rely on the internet until I had to do without and while I appreciate now what I learned from the experience, I admit I was annoyed with this project at the time since it was so hard for me to do! I learned that I do use the internet TOO often and it does keep me from doing other things I enjoy and aids me in wasting time “surfing the web”, since this experience, I have really tried to limit my internet usage some and enjoy real life more!

While abstaining was the favorite project for me, I think each project was useful and really made me think about the material we read for the week and apply it to myself. Week two, I rented You’ve Got Mail and it really made me think about the ways we perceive each other online versus in real life. Week three made me evaluate how I portray myself on Facebook and how what I say, or don’t say, reveals about me. This really made me think about how I am cautious about what I do write on Facebook because of the audience and knowing that most of my friends are people I interact with often. Week Four was a great experience because I never had thought much about the difference in snail mail versus e-mail and how the person receiving the letter may put much more value in a handwritten letter rather than a typed on. Week Five was great because I got to meet new people and see how I portray myself in an anonymous setting, this also showed me the world of message boards and from that I have met some great people and talked to others who have the same interests as myself, even today I still keep up with my postings on these boards! Week six showed me that even though people may fit into the “older” generation, that doesn’t mean they don’t keep up with and use new technology and find it useful, where some younger people have little to no use for it. Week seven gave me the opportunity to choose a personal experience and share with others how online communication can be misinterpreted or taken out of context. Each week gave me a new challenge, yet taught me something or made me think about these things in a different light than usual. I also found it interesting how people in society perceive the internet and interact online, in some ways the internet as a whole is like one huge community. I can honestly say that I would not change any of the blog topics, that each was valuable in its own way.

I found the Wood & Smith readings to be interesting and well presented; I found it to be an easy read and something that wasn’t too dry or boring (unlike many other texts). I had more trouble with the Postman readings because it was something so different than what I am used to hearing and made me really think in a completely different way. I had never thought about how technology could actually be a burden or negative aspect of society and Postman really made me think about this. While Postman was a harder read for me, I think it was very thought-provoking and really gave me a lot to think about.

I honestly cannot think of anything negative with this course, the only changes I could ask for would be if it was a 10 week course, I would love to have had an opportunity to participate in more online experiences… The one thing I can say is that if there were a second part to this class, I would register for it immediately!

Miscommunication in Cyberspace

I assumed this assignment would be the easiest since it gave me the opportunity to write about any experience I have, but I found that choosing something that happened to me in my personal life opposed to the projects assigned for the class is a little harder to write about. I guess this is because I don’t like giving out too much information about myself online, but want to share an experience where I really think communicating via e-mail caused more harm than good. After reading Chapter 8 this week in Wood & Smith, I realize the vast numbers of people who are connected to the internet and wonder how many instances of miscommunication there happen on a daily basis. How often are friendships ruined? Words taken out of context? E-mail’s sent to the wrong person by mistake? My own experience reflects on why sometimes the internet gives us the ability to talk to people, who may not want to hear from you…

A few weeks ago I logged onto my Myspace account, something I rarely ever do any longer since I became obsessed with Facebook, but I decided to poke around a little and see what I could find. What I found was my ex-boyfriend’s profile which made me start thinking about mending fences and doing something I had wanted to do for years…saying sorry. Yes, I know, it may seem corny and dumb to many…I am a person who lives for today and for the future, but I am also someone who can reflect on my past and realize the mistakes I have made and this is one that stands out in my mind as a time when I treated someone poorly and for that I truly feel bad. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel bad because I think the decision for us to break up was a bad one and I want to get back together with him…I have been happily married for nearly 9 years and have three children I adore, but I just wanted to say hello and apologize for how I treated him. Before anything, I talked to my husband and make sure this wouldn’t upset him and being the easygoing and trusting husband he is, he told me to go ahead, although he did warn he wasn’t sure it would be well received. I should have listened to his advice!

I won’t go into many details about the relationship, but this ex (I will call him Brandon) and I were very good friends for years before we started dating, we dated for about a year before I realized that he was a wonderful friend, but we just didn’t have enough in common to stay together and broke up. Like all breakups, even though we had promised to remain friends, he ended up hating me for dating someone he was friends with (whom I ended up marrying) and we never spoke again. This all happened almost 10 years ago, so I assumed that it was all water under the bridge, that it had been long enough past that hard feelings were gone and we had moved on…

I sent a message to Brandon on Myspace, it was a very short message saying hello, asking about him and apologizing for what I had done in the past. I told him that I would understand if he didn’t want to write back, but I was hoping we could put all of that in the past and find out how life was treating him, afterall, we had been friends for a long time before everything happened. I received a response the next day, but honestly it didn’t say very much…just that he was having a good life and we were young and stupid and the past is the past. I took this as an opening to write back, which I did just to tell him I was happy for him and glad things worked out well in his life. I thought that would be the end of the correspondence, I didn’t want much else, I had just wanted to say hello after all of the years so if we did run into each other it wouldn’t be awkward. BUT, I received another response and this one wasn’t as nice, telling me how it was wrong of me to write after all of these years and how what I did was terrible and how I probably never even felt sorry for it! I was shocked since the entire purpose of the letter was to show him that I do feel bad…needless to say, I decided it was best not to respond and to leave things alone.

I think this situation show miscommunication on many parts. First, he obviously did not take my apology seriously which makes me think that sending him a message probably was not the best way to do this. I think if we had met face to face, maybe he would have been able to see in my expression and hear in my voice how sincere I really was and maybe have had another reaction to my words. Second, I misunderstood Brandon’s first message, thinking he was opening up the lines of communication for us to talk again when he obviously was not, so somewhere in his message he conveyed to me that he wasn’t angry and was able to leave things in the past and move on. I’m sure if we had met in person, I would have been able to tell that he was still angry and not attempt to initiate any more conversation like I ended up doing through online communication. Third, I think I felt a sense of security knowing I was communicating with him online. I wonder if I had seen him walking down the street, if I would have had the courage to walk up and say the same things or if I would have walked the other way, being too embarrassed of the situation? Maybe some things are best left unsaid.

Three Generations of the Internet

For this assignment, I interviewed my best friend, Crystal (age 30) for my “young” generation, my mother, Lou Ann (age 49) for my “middle” generation and my father-in-law, John (age 61) for my “old” generation. I was surprised by the results I found, I assumed before doing this project that internet usage would decrease with age, but didn’t find that to be completely true as you will read.

The common ground between all three people’s internet usage was that they all used e-mail as a source of communicating. I found Crystal (young generation) used the internet the most often, in addition to e-mail she used social networking sites, especially Facebook which, she uses quite often to stay in contact with friends and family. She also shops, pays bills and reads the news via the internet. Lou Ann (middle generation) said the only other reason she uses the internet is to search for vacations or look up topics she is interested in on search engines. Her internet usage is minimal. John (older generation) uses the internet daily at work to do research on products he uses. For personal use, he frequently shops online for the best deals and uses the internet to do a lot of his shopping. I found that he uses the internet fairly often for both work and personal use.

When asked how comfortable they were with using the internet for communicating with others, Crystal felt very comfortable since she constantly e-mails and “talks” to her friends via Facebook, the internet is even the way she met her husband, so communicating online is nothing new to her! John’s main internet communicating is done through e-mail at work, while he rarely e-mails for personal use, he does e-mail daily at work. Lou Ann did not feel comfortable with communicating on the internet, while she checks her e-mail and will occasionally send a note to someone or forward something of interest; it is not her preferred way to communicate with others.

Both Crystal and John felt the internet has changed their lives in some way. Crystal (young) felt that the internet is a very valuable resource but, that it has changed her life both for better and worse. Better because of the “ability to bank online and shop without having to deal with long lines and out of stock items and customer service people always bothering you” and worse because she has gotten so used to using social networking to communicate with others that she doesn’t go out as often and feels it “promotes laziness in an already obese society.” John (older generation) felt it changed his life for the better because it makes his job easier since he can find information so quickly and can communicate with his co-workers through e-mail which. He also thinks it saves him time in his personal life since he doesn’t have to shop in stores and can do it from home which is more convenient. Lou Ann (middle generation) did say that she thinks that the internet could be a great tool “if I knew how to use it”, but doesn’t think it has changed her life very much. While it makes it somewhat easier to search for things, she did not feel it would make an impact in her life if she did not have the internet any longer.

I was surprised to see that the older generation seemed more comfortable and used the internet more than the middle generation. I think a large part of this is due to the fact that my father-in-law uses the internet in his work and this has made him more familiar and comfortable with it, where my mother still doesn’t really understand what she can use the internet for (other than the basics). What I found very interesting is that my father-in-laws job is working with machinery, something I never thought would require the use of the internet, but ties in with the Wood & Smith reading “Increasingly, scholars of the “information economy” report that knowledge work is replacing industrial work” (page 147). I think that Crystal (younger generation) seems to be “typical” of the younger crowd who have grown up with the internet and it is almost a necessity in their everyday lives. Crystal said something I thought was very true about how when our children are old enough, the internet will have changed so much that it will be completely different than what we have learned. I find that true already, my oldest daughter (6 years old) uses the computer every day in school, it is one of the required activities that they have where they go to the computer lab and use educational software as an additional source of learning. Even at this young of an age, children are being exposed to the computer and it is commonplace to them.