Del.icio.us I can say has become my new favorite online friend! By searching keywords such as technology, anthropology, digital, and social network on this site, I have been able to find sources that relate to my blog. This site cut my searching time online in half and in the process I have found some people who have tagged the same articles as me and who might turn out to have some of the same interests as I do.
While searching through the results after typing in my keywords I stumbled upon Sherry Turkle’s website. For those of you who do not know, she is a sociology professor at MIT and a renowned author who writes about the interaction between technology and people. What I admire about her website is the fact she places links to websites of her articles, books, reports, and even chapters of her books so people do not have to waste their time searching. However, the best part I believe about her website is the fact that she has certain chapters of her book available to download for free. I looked at one of the chapters titled “Always on/Always on you”. It talks about how we always have this need to have our communication technologies on and how we believe the people we are connected to only matter most is if we communicate with them over technology. To touching upon how games allow people to live multiple aspects of themselves and since adolescence is all about experimenting, teens can reinvent their lives online
Danah Boyd is another researcher whose website intrigued me. She is a researcher at Microsoft Research New England and examines the interaction between people and technology but in a different way than Sherry Turkle does. On her site she has a post titled “Digital Self-Harm and other Acts of Self- Harassment”. In this article I was surprised when I realized the post revolved around the dangers of formspring. Formspring for those who are unaware, is an anonymous question and answer service that facebook has for anyone to answer or ask anything about the person who has that formspring. When she mentions how it has become a way for people to attack themselves I was literally in shock. I thought, why would someone actually want to cyber bully himself or herself? I read on and discovered that there are three reasons why this happens: either to get attention, a cry for help, or actually become popular. Its scary how technology has not only become a way for others to bully others but also for those others to bully themselves.
What I didn’t expect to find in my search was how technology is changing the relationship between people and the educational system. While reading through some websites about how the education system is changing I learned something new thought! I read about this new kind of library mixed together with technology called Youmedia. I found out about Youmedia on Mimi Ito’s website who is a cultural anthropologist studying new media’s involvement with youth culture. It’s a library experience unlike any other that is loud, sociable and hip while still remaining a place for learning about our world and society whose employees have high IQ’s. Youmedia takes the BORE out of the word library and has replaced it with FUN! By doing this, kids will actually want to spend time at the library and learn because its an environment that attracts them.
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