Scattered. Media I've started reading Reclaiming Conversation, and it's making me think a lot. Heading into the read I had already been thinking a lot about my relationship with media and technology, and feeling that it's not that healthy. Last night I made a decision to ditch Facebook with the exception of a page I manage, and to RSVP to events. No more posts, comments, photos, etc. I need to get away from my phone more. We need to get away from our phones more and pay attention to each other. Listing example after example which I have personally contributed to or encountered would be easy, but everyone knows exactly what I'm talking about, so it's pointless. veen what kind of impact did this book have on you? More Media What has/what will the recent "Me Too" social media campaign accomplish? What will social media activism ever accomplish? On Being Selfish Came to the realization that having goals, intense desires, and devoting your time to accomplishing them is not being selfish. I'm not imposing any of this on anybody else, it's all on myself. If that means a relationship fails, or an interpersonal connection suffers, that is not being selfish. It is a matter of life getting in the way. There's a huge difference there.
I believe the point is to showcase how widespread the problem is. That it’s not only limited to slutty Hollywood actresses, but perhaps your sister, classmates and best friends too. Hopefully some people will open their eyes, and say “bro that’s not cool“ next time their buddy cat calls someone? The point is to start a conversation about respect. I don’t know if many minds will change, but perhaps seeing it as a society-wide problem VS an isolated one will help. What has/what will the recent "Me Too" social media campaign accomplish?
Ah, I think that's where we disagree. While that may be the point, I do not see this actually opening up a conversation. Where is the outlet for a conversation to start? There is a statement, and an awful one at that, but a status and a handful of comments on Facebook makes not a lasting, impactful conversation. The quote veen pulled out of Reclaiming Conversation (and there are many, many other applicable quotes) call into question if we are really making progress, truly conversing with one another. In a few months I think we will see if that is the case or not with the recent "Me Too" campaign.
It's not likely to have an impact on you because you aren't a creepy guy or a woman who has been harassed. I'm not sure if it makes a difference on a bigger scale but I know that it does make a difference to individuals. Sometimes talking about this stuff opens up a conversation off the internet as well. Sometimes being able to share something like that in even the vaguest details is incredibly cathartic especially for women who have struggled to even put words to what happened to them. It's common to jump back and forth between knowing you were assaulted and thinking you're just overreacting because others had it worse. So putting a statement like that out can mean a lot to individual women and it can mean a lot to the woman who resonates with it when the post has some more detail.
I don't disagree with you. But I also never said that it doesn't make a difference to the individual. I'm talking about actionable discussion or change on a larger scale and society/community wide, which you acknowledged. Two very different things.
I think it starts with individuals though and slowly becomes a more society wide change. Things don't change over night, people devote entire lifetimes to making small changes because it takes a while to really change society. I mean Australia still hasn't legalized gay marriage. Progress is slow with or without technology. If anything I would say technology, or I guess the access to information it provides helps move things along faster.
Well we can definitely say the internet helped push things along for Trump so maybe you're right.
Where to start... I jotted this quote down, which might be a good starting point: The focal point of her book, in my opinion, is that she describes our generation's 'flight from conversation'. She doesn't beat around the bush: we've willfully eroded and replaced valuable, face-to-face conversation in favor of easier, more comfortable but less meaningful digital communication. She uses a bunch of archetypes to hit her point home, for example when she describes the friend group where most people are glued to their phones most of the time. Or when she describes the 'always-connectedness' of highschoolers. Or when she describes teenagers unwilling to call because that conversation might not be perfect, preferring the comfort of a well-crafted email instead. Or the girl demanding that her parents stop using their phones and just talk to her. I am so guilty of the behaviours she describes. Obviously not to the extent she describes, but to an extent that I'm ashamed of. Because I bought into the aforementioned illusions of digital communications, the book felt like someone pulled the rug out from under me. As an example, I always loathed and avoided phone calls like a lot of my peers. So even though I've been living out of the house for years now, I've never called my family to just talk about how things are going. That was probably the first thing I drastically changed — I now call my parents at least once a week, usually more.Digital communication gives us the illusion of companionship, without the demands of friendship; it gives us the illusion of progress, without the demands of action.
I'm going to be reading that immediately following this book. I think.
I have read Alone Together a year or two ago but wasn't as impressed with it as I am with this one. If I remember correctly, she made some interesting points about how we interact with technology, e.g. our ability to do the heavy lifting when humanizing AI and robots. What made you feel so bad when reading it?
The inevitable drive towards a technology that, by her own investigation, we are hopeless to humanize and her steady qualification of her studies over the past 30 years indicating that human empathy has declined in lock-step with our adoption of technology.