Chapter 10 – Alone together
I remember when I was back in
England and I broke my phone. It was one of the most stressful days, not
because I was expecting an important call or needed desperately to get in
contact with people, but because I felt I was disconnected from everyone I knew
and that I might miss out on potentially something important. Since coming to America, I have not needed a
phone as I can easily get in contact with everyone via Facebook and emails. This
however, has made me very reliant on these sources of communication. I have
grown accustomed to checking my FB every time I am now on a computer, just to
see if anyone has messaged me, as I feel I might miss out on something important,
which is very rare.
Today Turkle explains how people
tend to rely so much on their cell phones due to the amount of easily accessible
sources and information at a click of a button. With a couple of clicks of a button
you can check texts, email, facebook, twitter etc. I am pretty sure if all phones were turned off
for the day the world would turn into an ugly scene as people have become so
reliant of them.
Gone are the days of contently using
your cell phone to call everyone, today, Turkle sees people as texting more than
ever as a text can be well prepared and though about instead of spontaneously saying
words without much though being given. “At a screen you feel protected and less
burdened by expectation. A phone call can be seen as fearsome because it can
reveal too much” (Alone together p188). The only people that people tend to
call nowadays are close friends and relatives as people will want to keep up to
date with these people and actually give time to speak to these people. Other than
that very rarely will people contact their friends via calling unless it’s
important. Texting and emailing is the way forward. You can start a conversation
with a simple work like “what’s up” and if the convo is going nowhere or
somewhere you don’t want it to go as in a potential argument, then you can
simple just say “got to go or goodbye”.
Today with the amount of ways to
communicate to people around the world, more and more people are creating their
own online versions of themselves called Avatars.
These are your online versions of yourself, but you have the ability to
create this avatar to how you want it to come across. People often put things
such as pictures on their facebook page showing the world how they want to
appear. People will usually only upload good pictures of themselves, and can
also crop and Photoshop images to make them look and appear better. This is
related to texting as you don’t have to think of things on the spot and can often
take time to respond to people but at the same time be to the point rather than
dragging out a long conversation. In “Alone together”, Turkle uses examples to
explain how people will create an avatar to talk to people across the world and
be someone away from their real lives, such as more sexy and confident compared
to the shy, less attractive person sat at the computer. For me personally, and
I think males in generally don’t care too much about their appearances on such
things compared to women, but I have never really got into creating an avatar
that is someone else from what I am.
What can be the downsides to all of
this? Turkle explains how people can become annoyed at a person not responding quick
enough to a message that has been sent to them. This can be seen on Facebook
and iPhone’s where it will often say message read at so and so time. People and
myself included have actually got angry and wondered why that person has read a
message and not bothered to respond, even though in a reality, the reason could
be something like they are busy, at work, or are multi-tasking too many things
and just simple forgot to reply. Another problem that can occur is the “spillover
effect”, which is when a person who might have a character online in such games
as “world of War craft” might become a lot more confident and change the
character of their normal in the real world selves. For example, if a group of
friends were online playing a game with certain characters, a boy who might be
skinny and shy in the real world, might start talking as though he is a big
strong man. This could cause his friends to make fun of him and in turn cause
friction in real life. A way to avoid this can be just what happens online,
stays online.
Because a lot of these technologies
that are current today have only really been around in the last 10-15 years, a
lot of the older generation are often left behind and despondent to the way
things have changed. So long are the long talks on the phone. Instead of
standing and talking to friends at school, it will simple be a case of “ill
speak to you later online”. People can
hide away from their real live stresses and become a completely different
person online, virtually shopping and meeting other avatar characters.
I often enjoy not having a phone as
I often am sat in a room with friends and all with be on their devices and not
making much conversation. Of course there are many benefits, but we must try
not to lose simple skills such as communicating.
