After long days in the office being on my feet with you in my belly, I often find myself sitting in your nursey thinking about the world your father and I are bringing you into.  Yesterday, your Aunt Melissa had called me on her way home from work and during that time we spent most of it taking about work about how impossible it is for us to make it professional without the use of media.  You’re probably going to be too young to understand the concept of media when you read these journals I have wrote for you, but soon enough you’ll be thrown into the influence of media and will understand.

Your Aunt Melissa and I started out talking about our work day.  It’s been tough for your Aunt, especially during the winter months, to make it as a female in the automotive industry on her own.  She has Grandpa Roop to help her get small jobs with BMW and Mercedes but she wants to make it on her own without any help.  So as a surprise Uncle Jessie and I have been working on surprised with a logo that he used to create a website for Aunt Melissa to promote her qualifications and her skills because every opportunity your Aunt has can be the make or break in her career.  I can’t barely imagine the thought of what you’ll have to go through to promote yourself in whatever job occupation you decide to do.

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While your Uncle is still programming the website, your Aunt, as usual, wasted no time in marketing herself.  As I was scrolling though Facebook and Instagram (just because I am your mother doesn’t mean I can’t have social media Aaliyah) I noticed multiple posts made by your Aunt showcasing her work.  It’s ironic how social media networks such as Facebook operate because when I was roaming through your Aunt’s profile, other Automotive companies and associated companies Aunt Melissa had worked at came up through advertisements.

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It’s amazing how Facebook tracks and Instagram tracks their users interest and revert those interests back to the users.  As I was listening to your Aunt complain about local traffic on her way home, I decide to click on a few of the advertisement so see what the competition was like for your Aunt.  Now, there’s something that I would hope to see change.  But as it turns out, based on those other companies posts and picture/video uploads, they’re not doing exceptionally better at promoting and marketing themselves.  I remember my days in high school when Grandpa Roop had automotive fundraisers and he would assign his students homework and extra credit to physically go out to local automotive shops and promote the event.  Though this way of promoting yourself takes a lot more time, compared to what we’re doing for Aunt Melissa, it’s as effective if the person who goes out promoting is educated and can respond to client’s questions.  The main goal of promoting and marketing yourself and/or an event is to get as much expose as you can possibly; no matter which way in the future you decide to do to help market yourself, the fact that you have to promote yourself will probably never change in the digital age.  The means of doing so will evolve for when it’s your time.

Computerization and digitalization will continue to improve human activity drastically.  Why?  Because the human race as a whole has a constant want of something to make their lives easier, especially those who live in New York City or any city for that matter.  For example, me writing journals to you using my laptop as opposed to writing the journals by hand.  Both computerization and digitalization has made this process more convenient for me for two reasons.  One, based on Couldry’s thoughts on “The digital revolution and its uncertainties,” computerization infrastructure makes writing journals on a laptop easily transferable in the sense that I can give you my laptop when you’re at an age I find appropriate for you to understand these journals for you to read on your own time.  This almost implies “… early printers were nomads who physically transported their technology about with them…” (Couldry 9).  And two, digitalization has helped minimize the physical storage space notepads would use.

As for, negative consequences and effects of computerization and digitalization they devalue human interactions as well as continuously set standards of what society sees as acceptable and normal.  According to Athique, “… the era of new media has brought … a language of its own … –some dense names of things, some summarize new concepts or proclaim new problems, and some facilitate new codes of communication and new ways of talking to each other” (15).  For example, if I had taken the opportunity to sit with you and read you my journals, we would be able to have a special mother-daughter bond that’s incomparable to me handing you my laptop to read what I have written to you; it “despecializes” the whole purpose in writing these journals.

Questions

1. Computer engineers and programmers today are feeling the pressure of coming up with the latest “digital revolution.”  What do you think they have in store for us in about 10 years?
2. What do you think is the next evolution of social media such as Facebook, and Snapchat?