While I enjoyed the flutter video and the joke that it presented I agree completely with the argument that they were making about how we keep getting lazier with our technology. Every new technology that comes out these days seems to make something faster which to us automatically makes it better. However, I think that if we really paid attention we would see that even though our technology is making things like informing people of what is going on in our lives faster and more efficient through tools like twitter, we are not spending any less time using them. Now the digital tools that we use we can get sent straight to our phones so we are constantly checking them. Instead of spending less time on digital tools like facebook or email by using twitter we spend more time on it looking at everyone's tweets and posting our own. The parts of the video where they were talking about how long it takes to read a twitter was very ironic because twitter is supposed to be the quickest way to update your current status and read about everyone else's. However, in all reality it does take a long time to use twitter, not because the tweets are too long, but because we spend so much time reading everyone's tweets and getting tweets from companies and celebrities who tweet constantly. Twitter has not made keeping up with everyone's lives faster, instead it has just given us another place to do that same thing that we do with myspace and facebook.
This video was very entertaining and I very much enjoyed watching it. It made me think about how all of these new digital tools are not at all limiting the amount of time that we spend using them. They just give us another tool to obsess over and check every 10 minutes. It made me realize that although I don't use twitter, I still spend way too much time on my emails and facebook and other online tools. It also really made me see how ironic all of our new "more efficient" tools are.
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I completely agree with you. Even though each new site that comes out makes posting faster and easier, we spend more time on each new site than the one before. This trend has been especially evident with the addition of Twitter. Twitter actually encourages posts to be as short as possible, causing people to do little else than post updates. I also agree that this applies to non-Twitter users as well; this video has opened my eyes to how much time I spend on similar sites such as facebook and e-mail. The addition of Twitter only pushes this trend further in that direction.
ReplyDeleteYou make an interesting observation when you pointed out that Twitter takes up more time than previous tools of communication even though it is supposed to be more time efficient. The same can be said with many technologies, and the first one that comes to mind is Facebook. Like Twitter, Facebook is supposed to be an easy way to keep in touch with people. However, between the newsfeed and posted photo albums, all it seems to do is suck up the time of its users. It would be fascinating if someone did a study on how long one average message takes to post on these websites and how long one actually spends on average viewing and interacting with the site.
ReplyDeleteThen again maybe twitter ain't so bad. Look what I have to end up doing here, reading all these way-over-140-character posts by a dozen and a half people. And also, for such organisms so remarkable at multitasking, people seem to feel very disinclined to think and read at the same time. Brainless obsession and time wasting has its niche in the world.
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree with Harrison. So what if you have to read way-over-140-character limit posts? That is the difference between blogging, and micro-blogging. Blogs allow for people to post more thoughts, leading to more insightful discussions. What if she just posted "I enjoyed watching the flutter video, and I agree with it. Technology takes up too much of our time"? She has no space for an argument - no place to explain why she thinks technology is taking over our lives. That's why blogging and micro-blogging are in two different realms; they just can't be combined into one.
ReplyDeleteYou could not be more right! Technological advances in communication that are supposed to reduce the amount time we devote have actually increased this time. Instead of checking e-mail once a day we check our phones, our facebooks, and our twitter pages constantly. We are obsessed and losing enormous amounts of time staying connected.
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