Four guidelines for conquering new media

By Matthew Gillis

After a semester of exploring new media, I’ve decided to reflect on the digital experiences I’ve had and decide which lessons are worth taking with me as I continue to venture into the ever-changing world of technology. I’ve compiled a list of the four biggest lessons I’ve learned throughout my digital adventures that one should follow when conquering new media.

1. Create your own new media. As we’ve discovered, we’re all submerged in a world that is dominated by technology (whether we like it or not), and we’re dependent on it in order to function in society. Technology structures the way we maintain communication, from the use of cell phones to Facebook, to how we educate ourselves, from Google searches to social bookmarking. But the biggest lesson I’ve learned from our use of technology is that we have to learn how it works and the best way to do so is by creating our own new media. In the introduction to Douglas Rushkoff’s book Program or be programmed: Ten commands for a digital age, he stresses that in order to maintain control in a world dominated by digital technologies, one must learn how they work to be able to manage his or her everyday life. Learn HTML, start a blog, or make a Twitter. Don’t you want control over your reality?

2. Embrace technology. The benefits of using many of the new media technologies that I’ve written about throughout the semester are seemingly endless. Specifically, social bookmarking sites like Pinterest, Google Reader, and Delicious make gathering information easier and faster than ever before and supplement traditional media forms, such as newspapers and encyclopedias. Take advantage of our culture of shared thinking by connecting with others on LambdaMoo or by sharing your “random, fleeting observations,” which Julian Dibbell describes in “Future of Social Media: Is a Tweet the New Size of a Thought,” on Twitter. Without a doubt, I’ve learned that there’s no harm in trying these technologies, which aim to comfort us and make our lives easier. You’re only doing yourself a disservice if you don’t.

3. New media isn’t perfect. Danah Boyd writes in her article “Incantations for Muggles: The Role of Ubiquitious Web 2.0 Technologies for Everyday Life,” “As you build technologies that allow the magic of everyday people to manifest, I ask you to consider the good, the bad, and the ugly.” While you should take advantage of the benefits of new media, don’t forget that technology is not perfect, as I’m sure many of you have frustratingly experienced before. Your iPhone could break at any minute, your Wi-Fi could go down without warning, and your Facebook could become hacked. While new technologies usually generate utopian hopes for its users, as Fred Turner describes in “How Digital Technology Found Utopian Ideology,” it’s important to be aware that technology isn’t actually foolproof. In the same token, it’s important to question what you see when using these new technologies. In an age where everyone is a publisher online with sites such as Wikipedia, information is bound to be wrong. We can’t expect that what we’re reading is perfectly correct, or else we all may fall into a culture of misinformed people.

4. Look out for the future. I know it may seem impossible to predict what’s coming next in regard to new media, but I think it’s important to the process of deciding how to interact with the technology around us. As I wrote about it my last post, I believe that technology is headed toward a reduction of information with the use of imagery over text as seen in technologies such as Pinterest and Instagram. It’s important to be prepared for new technologies by educating ourselves about imagery as a communication form, for example, especially because that new media may end up being a part of our everyday lives.

Now go forth and dive into our media-filled world.

A photo-filled future

By Matthew Gillis

Predicting the future of technology is like asking someone to fly to the moon; it’s nearly impossible, unless, of course, you’ve got genius connections. How can one predict something that literally changes from day-to-day?

If you’ve been keeping up with this blog, I think you understand that much of our daily lives depend upon technology. But more specifically, much of that technology involves the Internet, and I believe that future technology will too. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. That’s not a very groundbreaking prediction. However, I believe that even more aspects of our lives will be experienced online, from high school education to religious ceremonies.

But, surprisingly, it isn’t the idea of spending our lives on the virtual reality of the Web that scares me. It’s the continual reduction of information used to communicate online that does. In my lifetime, I’ve seen the way that the Internet and the tools we use from it shape how we maintain relationships through communicating. Like many of my peers, I was introduced to social networking with the ever-popular MySpace, where I was able to have complete control over my profile design, bio, interests, music, and heroes, among other categories. Once MySpace wasn’t “cool” anymore, I migrated to Facebook, where control over my profile’s design was lost. Similarly, expressing interests and music on Facebook is limited to a single picture of the activity or musician, for example, of which you have no control over. Even between these two social networks, I’ve seen how communicating your public image online is depending on less and less information, from the use of lengthy bios to now displaying a row of “interest” picture icons.

It seems that visuals, such as Facebook’s icons, are replacing the extensive forms of communication. Just look at an iPhone. The rows of app icons replace text-based descriptions.

I predict that the future of technology will be dependent on visuals rather than text. We may even be in the midst of this visual-focused future right now. Just look at the popularity of photo-sharing technologies such as Pinterest and Instagram. While I enjoy photography as a form of expression, I don’t think that pictures can replace text-based communication. Just as movies haven’t replaced books, I don’t think that photos can replace text. (I mean, who actually enjoys the movie version of a book over the book itself?)

Photo By Matthew T. Gillis/Instagram.

But it’s more than just my personal opinion that leads me to this concern. Our current educational system is still based on the use of text as the primary form of communication. Until schools begin giving courses on how to interpret imagery as a form of communication and how to produce such images appropriately, the future of image-based technology is quite frightening.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Just because you can take pictures, doesn’t mean you should.

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Find me on Instagram: mattgillis

What’s so great about Twitter?

Twitter in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

By Matthew Gillis

Since I began “tweeting” in May 2011, I’ve grown to like Twitter (despite much uncertainty). My first hesitation stemmed from the content that many people post on the site. I’m not a fan of hearing about how much laundry you have on Facebook, so why would I want to see it on Twitter?

But I think that’s what makes Twitter so intriguing. In “Future of Social Media: Is a Tweet the New Size of a Thought,” Julian Dibbell describes Twitter’s format as a type of microblogging, in which people publish steady streams of one-line updates.

What makes a successful blog is one that incorporates aspects of one’s daily thoughts, struggles, and triumphs, and I see that style taken with Twitter. Twitter users approach the site as a diary, publishing honest and vulnerable content that doesn’t aim to seek any rewards, which contrasts much of users’ goals on Facebook, where one updates his or her status in hopes of accumulating a high number of “likes.” I find Twitter’s sincerity to be refreshing.

Because Twitter lacks a feature like Facebook’s “like” button, users aren’t reassured that followers are reading their content. I find myself publishing random information about my day that I don’t even bother telling my closest friends, not knowing who (if anyone) is reading it.

Twitter favors anonymity, which I believe also encourages the truthfulness (however bleak or brutal) of users’ updates. Dibbell quotes Farhad Manjoo, who sees an unknown risk to Twitter: “I think there’s a question whether Twitter is going to be the thing everybody does…” I think that being able to use a fake username or profile image downplays Twitter’s competitive advantage in the world of social networking and cautions many from using the site.

However, I believe Twitter’s advantage lies in this idea of users’ content being “random, fleeting observations,” as Dibbell describes it. Users have the ability to publish what they feel at the exact moment they feel it; Twitter is a real time diary. In an age of shared thinking, Twitter capitalizes on no longer being alone in our own thoughts and allows people to form strong connections with those they “follow.”

Twitter’s success lies on one basic and human feeling: there’s comfort in knowing that you’re not alone.

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Follow me on Twitter: @MatthewTGillis

Research trials and tribulations

By Matthew Gillis

After my post last week, I started thinking more about Facebook and its implications on society.

I went straight to Google (obviously). I searched “effects of social networking on society” and glanced at the first sentence or two of each article, returning to Google when necessary.

Quickly, I selected “The Health Effects of Social Networking” by Robert Mackey from The New York Times, not necessarily because I read the entire article and found it useful (because I didn’t), but because the first two sentences seemed promising, and it’s from a credible source. After actually reading the article, I found that it discusses the potentially harmful consequences of the constant stimulation qualities of social networking sites on the brain.

Immediately I thought of the “skimming activity,” which Nicholas Carr describes as the process of hopping from one source to another on the Internet without returning to the previous ones due to a decreased attention span in his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” That’s just what I had done. Was my mind no longer capable of concentrating long enough to read an article online?

Next, I turned to Google Scholar. I became extremely frustrated, because I was getting no articles that pertained to social networking, even though I had only spent about five minutes searching.

Finally, searching “Facebook,” I came across an article, “The Benefits of Facebook ‘Friends:’ Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites,” which discusses the correlation between Facebook and psychological well-being. For research purposes, I find this article useful in providing an opposing argument for The New York Times article.

Lastly, I turned to Loyola’s library resources for research help. Again, I became frustrated with how difficult (in comparison to Google) it was to find relevant articles. It took about ten minutes to find a useful article using the search “effects of Facebook on society,” which is by Zizi Papacharissi and describes a comparative analysis of several social networks and the way privacy shapes self-presentation. This article provides an interesting outlook on the way social networking sites shape our identities in society.

Throughout my research, I found myself searching for articles that reflected my current attitudes toward social networks, which confirms Douglass Rushkoff’s idea in Program or be programmed: Ten commands for a digital age: “…we overvalue our own opinions on issues about which we are ill informed, and undervalue those who are telling us things that are actually more complex than they look on the surface” (66). Not only was I facing the struggle of a reduced attention span, but I was also avoiding learning anything new about the particular subject.

However, I did learn something.

Steve Kolowich’s article, “What Students Don’t Know” is accurate in saying that students overuse Google and don’t know how to properly use scholarly search engines. I’m not claiming to know the answer to what has caused this new lack of concentration and avoidance of effort, but until these search engines are as efficient and easy-to-use as Google, I don’t see myself or other students switching loyalties.

When it comes to getting knowledge in the age of Google, we’re impatient and lazy.

Facebook, please be perfect

By Matthew Gillis

A perfect Facebook would be one that would not have let me post those angry “I-hate-the-world” statutes when I was 16. It would be a site that would have automatically deleted those God-awful pictures of me sleeping in public (with my mouth wide open, of course) the minute they were uploaded.

But I think a utopian Facebook would also include unlimited privacy settings, unflawed access to communication, and, of course, Words With Friends without advertisements.

After reading Fred Turner’s “How Digital Technology Found Utopian Ideology,” I found myself agreeing to his idea that new technologies always generate utopian hopes for its users. The reason I stopped using MySpace (with much reluctance) and started using Facebook was built on the belief that Facebook could solve the problems Myspace had, giving me, and every other pubescent eighth grader, hope for a utopian social network.

Merriam-Webster’s first definition of utopia reads, an imaginary and indefinitely remote place.

Imaginary. As I now know, a perfect Facebook is imaginary.

With the availability of digital cameras, being able to click a button has given everyone and his or her grandmother the ability to be a “photographer,” and now Facebook has given everyone the opportunity to be a publisher. But just because we can take pictures and we can publish them on this dystopian site doesn’t mean we should. I mean, we all have that Facebook friend we choose to keep “friended” due to his or her drunken Friday night pictures that we love to stalk.

I know that a Facebook free of flaws has the potential to connect people all over the world without negative consequence. But I also know that the dystopian Facebook we have today has the potential to create another technopanic, explained by Alice E. Marwick in “To Catch a Predator? The MySpace Moral Panic,” due to it’s ability to ruin relationships, careers, and our chances of ever having a clear slate for the future with just one click of a camera.

Just remember that until Facebook becomes a perfect place where the pictures of you sleeping with your mouth open or the ones of you passed out with “stupid” Sharpie-d across your forehead automatically delete, your utopian hopes are far from reality.