Kenophobia
One of our first assignments in the class "Composing Cyberspace," we were asked to... stop writing in cyberspace. No social media or texting for five days, but instead, a handwritten journal of our experience, one entry per day.
The assignment to me illustrates the fundamental difference the textural "space" of cyberspace represents to different generations. There's an anecdote from Richard Bartles in Designing Virtual Worlds of American nerds running up thousand-dollar phone bills connecting to the first multi-user dungeon game, so addictive was the experience of live digital networking. But if you grow up with the addiction, is it an addiction? Or is it just... a part of life? Are we addicted to breathing, when our distant ancestors got along just fine with gills?
Day 1 (Thursday, 8/31)
I'm a digital immigrant myself. Before age 12 or so (around 1995 or '96) we had no Internet access in my home. Not that many did, but I was one of the last of my friends to get it.
And to be honest, it would be even easier for me to lie about my 'digital vacation' (or lack thereof) than it will be for most of my classmates. Empty sentences practically write themselves about discomfort, habits I "struggle with," like a stubborn alcoholic pretending he's given up the drink at meeting-time. But I am crippled by a perverse and oppositional honesty, and have no intent of changing my digital habits this weekend -- only of reflecting on them.
Checked Facebook once, supported a struggling co-worker and "liked" something my Mom posted. Exchanged a few banal texts with my girlfriend. B
Day 2 (Friday, 9/1)
All I did Friday was sleep -- didn't even get to this entry until later on. Of course, I wasn't literally asleep the entire day; I ate, excreted, played video games. But I was mentally asleep. Since that makes a poor (or blank) entry, I'll reflect on what this project has inspired.
I'm the guy who "never" responds to texts, doesn't post life events (or food pictures -- how did that catch on?) to Facebook, didn't even have a Twitter until one was needed for a class. And yet I identify as having "grown up" online. The technologies I was familiar with are gone, replaced by better or better-marketed versions, and I find myself a nomad among them. Or perhaps to paint more colorfully, a drifter; weathered and carrying a canteen, remarkably strange but unremarkably disinterested. In Makers, Cory Doctorow wrote a line to the effect that you can't make a home out of an amusement park. It isn't yours, is his point; it will change or disappear in ways you cannot affect. He's pretty transparently talking about online communities that exist within corporate-owned sites and structures. Less perfunctorily stated is a corollary; you get to keep the experience, and take that home with you.
Don't think I texted or used FB at all. Don't think I did much of anything. F.
Day 3 (Saturday, 9/2)
Like most of your students [yeah, I'm writing to the reader I care about, the one with the grade book - auth], I work on the weekends. The idea of paying for school this way is laughable, but it at least pays for gas and fast food. The cycle continues.
I work at Wawa, and for years had a policy of not FB-friending my co-workers. I suffered through my noble pariah-hood valiantly before I realized I gained nothing from it except the Fixed Gear Hipster Vegan smugness of "No, I don't keep up with Game of Thrones, I don't even own a TV." I got a lot more help at work when I started 'liking' peoples' cat pictures.
I've said before I text rarely. I'm not the most filial of sons, nor the most stalwart (or romantic) of S.O's. So it's about two, three times a week (that's three texts, not three conversations) unless something's going on. I suppose that's often enough that my 'real' average is closer to ten/week (especially with work again a factor), but the latter ones tend towards terseness.
The former do too, really.
No texts, spend a little while on FB. Sister's doing well in India, which is good. Worried about my other sister. B.
Day 4 (Sunday, 9/3)
Work again, but a short shift, which is nice.
My sister moved to India with her new husband (a June wedding) for her diplomatic post. I have no idea what he's doing for money there -- here, he taught music and played shows. Could be doing the same there, I suppose.
My girlfriend is blown away by how little I communicate with my family. She texts her sisters dozens of times a week, and her parents a few dozen in a month. I feel guilty for using my tools so sparingly, but writing cold opens is hard. I envy those for whom communication comes naturally.
She and I and her housemates played dominoes tonight. They've gotten into it recently -- I don't think I get it, but I'm glad of the break from Cataan.
No texts, was busy most of the day anyway and don't think I checked FB. We did have our usual music video round-robin while playing, which is social media in the most literal sense but I don't think it qualifies here. C
Day 5 (Monday, 9/4)
Frantically (well, okay, more 'rapidly, and while annoyed') threw together a group project for another class that needed to be turned in today. The whole thing was done over Google Docs in perhaps the most ass-backwards use of communication technology I've been a party to lately... well, okay, no, I do use Remote Desktop to check in on a virtualized Android device that automates a game I play, so I guess I don't have the high ground. At least I have the decency to be embarrassed about that, though. Anyway, they set up this hideous abuse of a collaborative document before I could get anything structured, and then didn't check back all weekend, so now it's my problem.
Eh... I'm okay with that. I like doing things my own way.
Napped.
Discussed this assignment at dinner with my housemates. They were duly incredulous. "I wonder how many people are just going to steal their lines from the Internet?" one asked.
Me too.
Finally texted my Mom. Banal. Not much, but better than nothing, I think. A.
Summary/Thoughts
"I want you to stop using words five days," he said.
"You want us to stop speaking?"
"No, just no words. You can use your mouths, or any other noise-producing instrument to make noises -- just not words."
I have no idea why highways are lain out the way they are; I just use them. But at one point I imagine that almost everyone had an opinion -- everyone wanted something out of them. Then they became, and gathered the inertia of existence. It's easy to make changes when the slate's still blank, but erasing half the words and trying to make the rest still fit is an exercise in madness.
I do know, a little bit, why the Internet is the way it is. I got to watch it grow up; I got to grow up with it. I wanted things out of it -- I still do, but I know now some of them aren't coming. The wild places once owned by pioneers are now refuge to criminals, fed and syndicated, strong-arming the others out.
And let's be honest, a lot of the pioneers were criminals too.
So to me, putting aside social media means putting down a tool. A profoundly useful tool, but just a tool; it's an inconvenience. Putting aside texting is harder because nobody talks on phones anymore unless you're working or taking a trip, but honestly... I just don't text much to begin with. I'm "quiet."
To anyone under 20 right now, putting aside social media is as cogent an idea as giving up words. Sure, maybe you could... but why do it? Anyone you want to talk to uses words, and giving up talking altogether (even if you could theoretically rig up some other way to communicate) is just self-sabotage professionally and socially.
It's a noble thought, but the era of language as merely a technology has passed and vows of silence belong in a monastery, not a 200-level course. Instead, my proposition: keep a log of the times you use social media. No judgment on number, high or low; no need to share anything you post. Just log it like you would exercise, keep track of time and post count. Share something you learned, or at least something funny. Share a time you didn't have your phone and missed it, or didn't. The pedagogy here is reflective rather than authoritarian (and antiquitarian?), and I think more effective for it.
There's a reason, after all, that no one needed to catch up their notifications Tuesday morning.
We of an earlier age catch ourselves compulsively refreshing email inboxes or forum pages and wonder why we're so manic; it's an artifact of immigrancy. We are afraid of missing out, afraid we'll catch on too slowly, blink at an inopportune moment. The natives speak the tongue already. They sense when it's safe to blink. They are afraid of being alone.
The assignment to me illustrates the fundamental difference the textural "space" of cyberspace represents to different generations. There's an anecdote from Richard Bartles in Designing Virtual Worlds of American nerds running up thousand-dollar phone bills connecting to the first multi-user dungeon game, so addictive was the experience of live digital networking. But if you grow up with the addiction, is it an addiction? Or is it just... a part of life? Are we addicted to breathing, when our distant ancestors got along just fine with gills?
Day 1 (Thursday, 8/31)
I'm a digital immigrant myself. Before age 12 or so (around 1995 or '96) we had no Internet access in my home. Not that many did, but I was one of the last of my friends to get it.
And to be honest, it would be even easier for me to lie about my 'digital vacation' (or lack thereof) than it will be for most of my classmates. Empty sentences practically write themselves about discomfort, habits I "struggle with," like a stubborn alcoholic pretending he's given up the drink at meeting-time. But I am crippled by a perverse and oppositional honesty, and have no intent of changing my digital habits this weekend -- only of reflecting on them.
Checked Facebook once, supported a struggling co-worker and "liked" something my Mom posted. Exchanged a few banal texts with my girlfriend. B
Day 2 (Friday, 9/1)
All I did Friday was sleep -- didn't even get to this entry until later on. Of course, I wasn't literally asleep the entire day; I ate, excreted, played video games. But I was mentally asleep. Since that makes a poor (or blank) entry, I'll reflect on what this project has inspired.
I'm the guy who "never" responds to texts, doesn't post life events (or food pictures -- how did that catch on?) to Facebook, didn't even have a Twitter until one was needed for a class. And yet I identify as having "grown up" online. The technologies I was familiar with are gone, replaced by better or better-marketed versions, and I find myself a nomad among them. Or perhaps to paint more colorfully, a drifter; weathered and carrying a canteen, remarkably strange but unremarkably disinterested. In Makers, Cory Doctorow wrote a line to the effect that you can't make a home out of an amusement park. It isn't yours, is his point; it will change or disappear in ways you cannot affect. He's pretty transparently talking about online communities that exist within corporate-owned sites and structures. Less perfunctorily stated is a corollary; you get to keep the experience, and take that home with you.
Don't think I texted or used FB at all. Don't think I did much of anything. F.
Day 3 (Saturday, 9/2)
Like most of your students [yeah, I'm writing to the reader I care about, the one with the grade book - auth], I work on the weekends. The idea of paying for school this way is laughable, but it at least pays for gas and fast food. The cycle continues.
I work at Wawa, and for years had a policy of not FB-friending my co-workers. I suffered through my noble pariah-hood valiantly before I realized I gained nothing from it except the Fixed Gear Hipster Vegan smugness of "No, I don't keep up with Game of Thrones, I don't even own a TV." I got a lot more help at work when I started 'liking' peoples' cat pictures.
I've said before I text rarely. I'm not the most filial of sons, nor the most stalwart (or romantic) of S.O's. So it's about two, three times a week (that's three texts, not three conversations) unless something's going on. I suppose that's often enough that my 'real' average is closer to ten/week (especially with work again a factor), but the latter ones tend towards terseness.
The former do too, really.
No texts, spend a little while on FB. Sister's doing well in India, which is good. Worried about my other sister. B.
Day 4 (Sunday, 9/3)
Work again, but a short shift, which is nice.
My sister moved to India with her new husband (a June wedding) for her diplomatic post. I have no idea what he's doing for money there -- here, he taught music and played shows. Could be doing the same there, I suppose.
My girlfriend is blown away by how little I communicate with my family. She texts her sisters dozens of times a week, and her parents a few dozen in a month. I feel guilty for using my tools so sparingly, but writing cold opens is hard. I envy those for whom communication comes naturally.
She and I and her housemates played dominoes tonight. They've gotten into it recently -- I don't think I get it, but I'm glad of the break from Cataan.
No texts, was busy most of the day anyway and don't think I checked FB. We did have our usual music video round-robin while playing, which is social media in the most literal sense but I don't think it qualifies here. C
Day 5 (Monday, 9/4)
Frantically (well, okay, more 'rapidly, and while annoyed') threw together a group project for another class that needed to be turned in today. The whole thing was done over Google Docs in perhaps the most ass-backwards use of communication technology I've been a party to lately... well, okay, no, I do use Remote Desktop to check in on a virtualized Android device that automates a game I play, so I guess I don't have the high ground. At least I have the decency to be embarrassed about that, though. Anyway, they set up this hideous abuse of a collaborative document before I could get anything structured, and then didn't check back all weekend, so now it's my problem.
Eh... I'm okay with that. I like doing things my own way.
Napped.
Discussed this assignment at dinner with my housemates. They were duly incredulous. "I wonder how many people are just going to steal their lines from the Internet?" one asked.
Me too.
Finally texted my Mom. Banal. Not much, but better than nothing, I think. A.
Summary/Thoughts
"I want you to stop using words five days," he said.
"You want us to stop speaking?"
"No, just no words. You can use your mouths, or any other noise-producing instrument to make noises -- just not words."
I have no idea why highways are lain out the way they are; I just use them. But at one point I imagine that almost everyone had an opinion -- everyone wanted something out of them. Then they became, and gathered the inertia of existence. It's easy to make changes when the slate's still blank, but erasing half the words and trying to make the rest still fit is an exercise in madness.
I do know, a little bit, why the Internet is the way it is. I got to watch it grow up; I got to grow up with it. I wanted things out of it -- I still do, but I know now some of them aren't coming. The wild places once owned by pioneers are now refuge to criminals, fed and syndicated, strong-arming the others out.
And let's be honest, a lot of the pioneers were criminals too.
So to me, putting aside social media means putting down a tool. A profoundly useful tool, but just a tool; it's an inconvenience. Putting aside texting is harder because nobody talks on phones anymore unless you're working or taking a trip, but honestly... I just don't text much to begin with. I'm "quiet."
To anyone under 20 right now, putting aside social media is as cogent an idea as giving up words. Sure, maybe you could... but why do it? Anyone you want to talk to uses words, and giving up talking altogether (even if you could theoretically rig up some other way to communicate) is just self-sabotage professionally and socially.
It's a noble thought, but the era of language as merely a technology has passed and vows of silence belong in a monastery, not a 200-level course. Instead, my proposition: keep a log of the times you use social media. No judgment on number, high or low; no need to share anything you post. Just log it like you would exercise, keep track of time and post count. Share something you learned, or at least something funny. Share a time you didn't have your phone and missed it, or didn't. The pedagogy here is reflective rather than authoritarian (and antiquitarian?), and I think more effective for it.
There's a reason, after all, that no one needed to catch up their notifications Tuesday morning.
We of an earlier age catch ourselves compulsively refreshing email inboxes or forum pages and wonder why we're so manic; it's an artifact of immigrancy. We are afraid of missing out, afraid we'll catch on too slowly, blink at an inopportune moment. The natives speak the tongue already. They sense when it's safe to blink. They are afraid of being alone.
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