Friday, February 20, 2015
Ruining Ourselves, One Story at a Time
Chapter 5, The Peek-a-Boo World, stood out to me and made a lot of sense. The author writes about how the advent of the telegraph was an amazingly useful and an amazingly useless invention. Samuel Morse's design truly did do great things. He theoretically erased distance for communication. His idea was brilliant for the time...if everyone had access to it. Newspaper publishers were the first to really catch on to the idea. Not long at all after however, it all started to crumble. "...newspapers came to depend not on the quality or utility of the news they provided, but on how much, from what distances, and at what speed." (67). In the first week of 1848, James Bennett managed to include 79,000 words of telegraphic content in the New York Herald. People saw any form of information out of a telegraph as almost holy. Telegraphic conversations became a language of their own (as they say about our texting "language"). Messages were short, fragmented, quick, and seemingly pointless. These messages and new articles were like a game of peek-a-boo. They went away as quickly as they came. I believe we are in such a similar world now. I personally like to keep my texts as I write. I don't abbreviate words, use numbers in place of letters...but I know so many others that do. So many of my friends use apps like SnapChat - sending pictures that last seconds and then are gone...Conversations do not seem to have character anymore. They are just quickly spatted words and pictures at each other.
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I agree, this chapter really captured my attention as well. In my opinion things aren't as cherished as they once were. There is no meaning put into doing anything these days. I, for one, can remember when I put my blood, sweat, and tears into writing a note and you know what? I am also the type of person that still has box after box of all of those notes that were shared between my friend and I. I will never understand how people can use these amazing words that we are so lucky to have, so frivolously. Nothing seems to have meaning anymore, and that is painfully depressing to really think about.
ReplyDeleteI really like how you brought up social media and how it has really changed the character of conversations. I think it really has taken a lot away from the whole deep connection people had together. I definitely think that social media is good for some things but on the other hand it definitely has brought up more complicated situations.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog. I agree with your comment about texting and about how so many people abbreviate a lot when they text. I personally still spell everything out. Who wants a text from their boyfriend or girlfriend or even a family member that says “i luv u” that is very impersonal. I have snap chat but I never use it because I am not very big on technology. I am almost 22 and still have an old slider phone. I would rather communicate with people in person. What ever happened to people sitting down and having an actual conversation, (I know I sound old) but it is so true. This new technology is good for communicating with my family in Washington State, Alaska, and Germany but other than that with my friends and family that are here in PA I would rather talk face to face.
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