Schaefer Shares

Response to Village Phone

I thought that this was a really cool article to read. During this day and age, it is so easy to “go viral,” and that’s just what happened. It’s interesting what gets people interested, such as the lost phone and the online confrontations that occurred between the owner and the girl that took it. I think that stories are able to get picked up by people when there is some kind of argument, and one person is clearly right and the other is doing something that is clearly wrong. On page six it says, “It wasn’t the phone that caused so many problems… It was the people at the other end of the phone.” In our society, it is so easy to hide behind a screen without thinking about the consequences that we may face.

I liked that the article went into Sasha’s perspective. She was a teenager, that didn’t do a very ethical thing, but many teenagers don’t. There’s a good chance that she comes from a poor family, so to have a phone like that must have been very tempting. As the text said, we live in a media-saturated world, so if you don’t have the latest phone, or even remotely the latest technology, a lot of children and teenagers fall victims to bullies, even though it’s not their fault. I am very interested to learn more about why people do what they do when it comes to new communication technologies in this class.

Response to Love Online

When I was reading this article, all I could think about was, “Why would a dad let his son fly halfway across the country to meet the girl he’s been dating online?” To me, I don’t understand the interest of going online and talking to strangers. That’s the one thing that we remember our parents telling us not to do, right? When it comes to teenagers, I think that a lot of them are awkward now because they’re so glued to their screens, more than the rest of us. So to them, it’s easier to talk online. The article said, “Their daily lives require constant decisions about what to say on the phone, what to write by hand, what to communicate in chat rooms, what to send by e-mail. They juggle multiple identities-the fictional personas of electronic wrestling, the constructed ideals of romantic love, and the realities of real bodies and real emotions,” and I think that that is exactly what the problem is — they form multiple identities and can hide behind a screen without showing their true self.

As for adults, I can see why they are more drawn to online chat rooms or matchmaking websites; they’re older and ready to settle down. They’re looking for love! So it makes sense for them to go online and try to find someone since so far, they haven’t been able to do so. I think that most sites are relatively safe, and being an adult, precautions are already made before meeting with someone that they don’t know. As for teenagers, they don’t necessarily have the maturity to make those decisions wisely, which is why I don’t see myself trusting my children online in the future.

As a Whole…

As far as both articles are concerned, the audience, whether it’s those speaking in an online chat room or participating on the lost phone man hunt, people want to feel like they are being included. I think that this is especially true for those that are shy or introverted in “real life.” Those people don’t know how to communicate well in a person-to-person format, so on the internet, they can reinvent themselves into whoever they want to be. This is both the scariest and most inviting part when it comes to participating on the internet in my opinion.

“When we change the way we communicate, we change society.” Our society is constantly trying to find the most efficient ways to accomplish tasks. When we are able to do that, our society will continue to rapidly change. The lost phone would have never been able to be found if it wasn’t for the website that was created, and those that followed because they kept crashing. Two people that meet online would never be able to meet in person if it wasn’t for society accepting people that do that, and for the capabilities that the internet holds. Society will always be changing around our innovations and interests, and it all starts with communication.