Digital Media in Our Lives

As I have gone through Chesher’s article and read over some of the previous blogs, it finally hit me what to comment on. To some extent, does digital media affect us if we don’t allow it to? Granted we are in a world that would leave us behind if we didn’t interact with digital media, but what if? Chesher explains how the “relationship between a human and an electronic invocator is a quasi-magical” experience. By no means do I disagree, because when I sit down and really think about the power of, let’s say a computer, I am blown away; however, it makes me wonder. Aren’t we receiving from a computer what we want? Why should we be so surprised by the output? We made them to do what we wanted. Granted, this doesn’t include the times we’ve all had when we wanted to pick our computer up and throw it across the room. All I can say to that, though I don’t like to admit it is “operator error”.

Also, as I read through everyone’s blogs, a reoccurring topic was that of cell phones, text messaging in particular. It made me laugh to think about all the times my friends, co-workers, or anyone has asked, “Didn’t you get my text?” My reply, “Nope, I don’t have text messaging.” It seems funny that I, an advocate on the forefront of modern technology users am not one to fully utilize my resources. But it makes me think of this world called “cyber space”.

As we have been thinking about “doing theory” I’ve been trying to just figure out if when I’m thinking am I really thinking or just reacting to my surroundings? For me, I kind of see this cyber space as an equivalent to what happens in our minds. We gain input, process it, and spit something out. We know thought exists in our minds but can’t grasp them or directly manipulate them. As for cyberspace, it’s out there… somewhere. We visit it, take things from it, but really does it exist? It may seem that now I have completely contradicted myself, and honestly, a spiraling circle of confusion is about where I feel right now.