Book Panel

One of the books was very similar to the last expert group on social media. The social media group talked about how people are constantly attached to their phones and how people are communicating less in person and more online. We feel the need to constantly be online because it's addicting and it creates this culture where we view other peoples life highlights and it makes you think that you're not good enough because your boring and sitting on the couch. The social media group is similar to one of the groups that did a book panel presentation because they talked about how we now expect more from technology and less from each other. I think that is very easy to relate to because we always expect to be online, present and with technology it allows us to be on constantly. I think we have high expectations of our technologies and we heavily rely on them. Another point that the group discusses is that we seem determined to give human qualities to objects and content to treat each other as things. This was an interesting take away because I feel like we do take things for granted and even though we could lose this technology we kind of act wasteful. I'm not sure if wasteful is the right word to use but it is one word to describe how we go through technologies. I think humans do a horrible job at taking care of things and we don't treat things with care because everything can be replaced. Like phone screens. People drop their phones all the time, so we are constantly replacing phones and screens.
One really important take away that the group brought up that I resonated with was that even though our devices may not be in use, we feel disconnected with them. In the social media group they showed a video that mentioned a "phantom vibrate" which mistakes an itch for a phone vibrate in our pockets. So even if our phone isn't going off, we always think it is. I know that if I ever leave the house without my phone I feel lost and confused which is an awful thing to be attached to, but its just the culture we're used to. We feel lost and separated from society when we forget things like our phones at home. I don't think anyone has the ability to lose their phone because it is always attached to them. The feeling of disconnect is something we all can relate to. Whether our phone is in use or not we clearly identify with the feeling of being without our phones, computers, any sort of technology.