I feel the need to reinvigorate my interest because at times I feel like I've reached a dead end. I continue to make connections and have been very actively re-framing my environment. Aside from the obvious time commitment this class really has affected my thinking and perception. I frequently make connections but they seem to lack application at the moment, so to amend this, I have kept my initial interests the same but now I am moving inwards.
I only recently got Facebook. I had it for a year or so in high school and never used it, deleted it, and spent the next six or so years disconnected from any social media with the exception of Reddit, which I view regularly but have never posted in. I am a bit of an outcast when it comes to social media. Because Facebook is the only form of social media I use, I feel somewhat illiterate in the worlds of Snapchat and twitter. I also find myself being far more critical and confused by certain trends than my peers are. Its all new to me.
I am also in the early stages of a new chapter in my life where I am living in a city, without the comfort that school provided, the comfort of knowing what will happen tomorrow; more school. Now each day is unpredictable and the social bubble of college and high school have now been stripped away.
My challenge is to see how media has affected my life in the following ways;
How has it affected the way I communicate with others?
How has it affected the way I see myself?
How has it affected the way I empathize with others?
How has it affected me physically?
I really needed a spark to get me going with this project, so I have decided to conduct as kind of experiment as well as research. I've been on Facebook for a year and a half, and next monday I will leave it for one week, just to see what happens. I will not delete the account, just simply not visit Facebook. Thats it. And I'll see how I feel.
The place I'm at right now is a place that needs a little honing in. The ideas we've explored are so interesting and overwhelming in their scope I need to phrase it like I'm a five year old. I have big grand, ungraspable ideas and concepts just swimming around in my head and need to organize them in a more palatable way.
Some of the notions I have a grasp on now and want to explore further are;
Language as a constriction. The idea that language represses us from our full expression. In particular, written language and how it impedes secondary orality, as Ong described.
The categorization of our world. Watzlawicks notion of how the world as we know it is seen through frames, and Lakoffs of how these frames are manipulated. This also plays in to McLuhan, who I think is spot on about the affect of framing and the 'medium' on our culture.
Our full body awareness, McNerney and Watzkes ideas regarding experience as being full body and not just cerebral.
Mirror Neurons, and their ability to dictate our behavior, and off of that notion, how simulations dictate our behavior, and the vicious cycle that can arise from them.
This exploration will be under three major contexts that we've explored. The first will be linguistic, in the investigation of my communication with others. The second is empathetic, in the investigation of my ability to relate and empathize with others. The third is bi-hemespheral, in the investigation of medias affect on my compartmentalization.
What I ultimately aim to do is weigh my data and come to a conclusion of weather social media is beneficial to me or not. I will pool sources and continue to do research but the focus of the project is me. Just your typical millennial, me, me, me, me, me.
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