Changing times…
In our Transient Spaces lecture last week we discussed the changing nature of communication due to mobile phones and the internet (and various other communication technologies). I found it particularly interesting talking about the way mobile phones make us talk.
It is true that we now will message each other rather than calling. Who can be bothered actually talking to anyone these days?! Recently I have made a concerted effort to actually call people rather than sending emails, particularly with things to do with business or contacts for my thesis. You immediately make a bigger impact by calling people rather than them recieving an email, one of about 500 emails that they will probably delete or put in junk anyway. When you actually call someone these days, they take notice and might actually give you the time of day.
I was discussing this with my family over the dinner table last week and my brother explained his theory that the world went digital, and now certain things are actually going backwards. Take education for example, he teaches at one of the most prestigous schools in Melbourne and none of the students have laptops in class. They must use pen and paper for taking notes as well as exams. We also discussed this in our thesis class, where many students are now writing their thesis by hand rather than on the computer to allow their ‘creative juices’ to flow through their hand. It is an interesting notion.
For most people, particularly in the business world though, most communication occurs online. When I sit in an office I no longer walk three desks down to talk to a colleague, I email them. This not only saves time and the chance of getting side tracked just chatting away to them, but it allows them to answer in their own time and not interrupt their work flow.
In our lecture we also discussed many of the new networks on the internet catering for freedom of information and new press, such as:
- democracynow.org
- nowpublic.com
- smartmobs.com
- indymedia.org
We also discussed social polarisation and social exclusion, which is an integral topic when thinking about the internet. Oh the great digital divide. Our lecturer just said that 50% of the worlds population has to walk 2 days to get to a telephone, let alone pay to use the internet! We are living in a completely digital world when msot of the world couldn’t even comprehend something like the internet. I loved travelling through regional Thailand and going into villages where one elder owned a mobile phone and people could pay her to call someone!
Communications technologies certainly have changed the way we live, who knows what the future has to hold. Will we go back to pen and paper when we realise machines have taken over our lives? Or will we continue to live in our square eyed monitor world…
