After class at 5:25pm, I was heading to Chipotle getting excited about the combination of chicken, salsa, corns, and guacamole. I was checking all the Chipotle chains around my college through Yelp app, today I chose the one at Union Square. Having a seat in there, I was looking at all posts in Instagram while crunching lettuce. Then I got a notification from Facebook that my friend tagged me on the brief video about the movie called “the King” which we saw last night. Then back to Instagram, my friend was on live taking all the videos of what she was having for dinner in K-town. Then my friend Chris texted me to see if I was still enjoying Chipotle. Of course, I took a picture of my lovely Chipotle to show him. I looked at all the photos and hit likes on my interests such as some models wearing nice outfits, and the mouthwatering food photos. After that, switched to Facebook and I started to hit likes on every interesting event going on in NYC, such as central park ice festival, rooftop party, cherry blossom festival, and quiet clubbing. Then I got a notification that someone requested to be a friend on my Instagram, but I didn’t accept right away because I know the guy was at my roommate’s birthday party but we hadn’t talked to each other so much at that night. I got an email from equinox saying they would like to inform me about the promotion that I requested. I had totally forgotten that I had signed up for information after seeing the promotion advertised on Facebook.
I realized how I am so addicted to digital media. I am constantly on social media whatever I do, except during the class when phones are prohibited. I chat, phone call, check emails, do Instagram and Facebook, and watch Korean drams through my IPad. These activities definitely occur only with the existence of digital media. I imagined what my life would look like if all the digital media are gone, then my life would be just reading books and maybe I will force myself to try to do some work out.
As stated in the reading, computerization makes the most of complex tasks into efficiency and reduces human errors. The development has also spread to domestic environment that women could use the time they had used in domestic tasks in the paid workforce. Since then, the acceleration of technological revolution finally gave a birth to “Internet” that led to globalization. People could communicate and share all the information and thoughts through digital media all around the world. As Castells mentioned, the interconnections so called “the nodes” in the network society are the real or the virtual places where information converge (Couldry 16).”
However, since the computerized society has arisen, those who are outside of the information age have to rapidly adapt to all of the pressures of mobility, and constantly shifting patterns of connectivity. Otherwise they would remain in social isolation and material destitution(Couldry 17). In addition to this, the first development of computational machines led to the development of military applications such as missiles and atomic bomb.
With that being said, the development of technologies improved human’s life in speed, convenience, and abundance of information; however, it also causes the maladaptation to society and the more developed but brutal military weapons.
- What are the professions that will disappear in the future because of the development of these technologies? Or Are there any jobs that you miss that have already become obsolete or been replaced?
- If you could develop one machine or technology, what would it be, and why?
I agree that digitization has lead to faster spread of information because during the print process, information in books weren’t up to date as it is now on the internet. Updated constantly.