Sunday, March 4, 2012

Cultural Change; From face to face to FaceTime


Topic: Cultural Change

Source: In class we had to embark on a “scavenger hunt” to find certain anthropological signs and cultural texts around campus.

Relation: A friend and I set out to locate signs of wealth. While she focused on wealth being expressed through clothing, I focused on it being expressed through the technology people around campus used.  I was surprised at the number of iPhones and apple products in general. While much of this technology is used to communicate over distances, its now mostly used more than actual humans speaking face to face.

Description: Before telephones and telegrams, the way people would communicate within a community is by walking up to someone and speaking. Even after these inventions, people only resorted to phones when it was either too late or too far to talk to someone else. This technology has been a major factor in shaping or culture. It has gone from people walking to the store to calling in orders; from walking to a friends house to calling them on the phone; and even in some cases, calling the person in the next room instead of walking. While movies like “Wal-E” have a comical sense about it, the movie makes some serious points.nerd.jpg

 Our culture is constantly finding uses for technology to support their lazy habits. Inventions like text messaging have also forced people away from traditional human interactions. Instead of striking up conversations, people can find “friends” on websites things of that nature. These websites also lead to people creating personalities rather than them being themselves.facebook-fake-profile.jpg

Analysis: If our culture continues to use technology in a manner which influences laziness instead of efficient behaviors, then our culture will continue down this spiral of lazy people who cannot communicate efficiently face to face.  

3 comments:

  1. Nice connection with "Wal-E", I really liked that movie and agree with you on how our advances in technology is making people become lazy and less active. The point of 'people creating personalities' everyone has done that. There is just somethings that you feel better to write out than stand in front of someone and mess it up. Have you ever thought when you are responding to a text "this would be hard if i was talking face to face with this person?" It has happened to me. Liked the topic good job:)

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  2. I agree that technology is a contributor to laziness but i don't think of it as only influencing laziness.Our culture can adapt to the increase in technology but we can't use it as an excuse to be sedentary we need to use technology to our advantage.

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  3. Technology does have the reputation of creating less physical ways of getting tasks done like shopping online via your I-phone, reading a book on your kindle instead of going to library/store and flipping through it page by page, or have a conversation with someone without having to go find them in person. Technology does give us these option like you mention that can make one seem "lazy" , when logically they could be choosing the more efficient options so that they can get more done in one day.

    I have seen from these negative side affects of less physical activity from technology that there has been progress in making up for that lost activity. They have created the Wii which is a game to promote physical activity, they have made pedometer apps on I-phone to use for running/walking, as well as at gyms they have attached entertainment to many work-out machines so that you can enjoy yourself while working out.

    I'm not sure if people are "lazy" by using technology, but they can have less physical activity which does need to be made up for so our bodies stay healthy. There are just many more options for interaction now that people mentally have to keep up, which is a quick and large shift of change in American and other cultures in the last 15- 20 years. I see that there is progress with activity being involved in technology, and there is probably more examples than I named. Can/does anyone else know of other examples of technology being used to increase physical activity?

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