With the recent times more and more people find pleasure in making their lives public. It feeds the need for attention and most people find nothing wrong with it. People want to be liked. They view these reality TV shows and assume that is how they should be living. For the most part people live their lives by some form moral beliefs and goals, but what those beliefs are, can be changed by the media we see around us. We see others making their life public so why shouldn’t I? They are getting attention while I’m not. I guess that means I have to change.
Autobotography allows a person to see who they really are. What faults they have and insecurities they have been trying to hide. When it comes down to it, autobotographys also show us what technology is doing to us. How it is changing us. In this way technology also allows us to focus more upon our selfs instead of others. We are given new ways to show how much we care about our selfs and how much we make others care about ourselves. The attention is addictive. People post photo after photo just so that they can have a reminder that other people like what they do. It becomes a cycle, that the more people show us interest, the more we want that attention back when it fades.
The internet and your information should not go together. With the recent times Facebook and its need to know about me have grown to ridiculous heights. Everyone on Facebook does not need to know where I am at every moment of the day. If I want people to know where I am, I will call them. If I wanted peoples opinions on what I do everyday, I would ask. Also posting your current location online almost teachers online predators your schedule. If a family all posts that they are going on vacation or at least out of the house for a length of time, whats stoping a potential burglar from robbing them blind? It almost makes it too easy for the predators out there.
One project that really changed its participates, was the Blogging a Birth project. I think by allowing the readers and the audience of that blog into such a private moment like their child’s birth, establish a much more interment connection. In a way relationships are formed with every member of that blog. Another project that really seemed to change they way we think about our selfs, would be the Jennicam. Before the Jennicam no one was really showing every aspect of their lives on with other people. She took this new medium and changed the way people perceive privacy all around the world.
With the project Nobody Here, views are greeted with the site of a man hunched over a computer. It brings to light the fact that this new technology only involves one person. Working on a computer is a looney task and it removes the human interaction from user. It attempts to replace it with other forms of interaction but nothing can really replace two people talking and interacting in person.
With all of our current technologies, we shape another not physical version of ourself. Everything posted on Facebook, everything we see and like changes what the internet thinks we are. Most companies out there now try to target individual people based upon what they think their target demographic is. The internet allows them the tools to find exactly who would buy their product because of the cybernetic version we leave of ourselves.
Like I started to say above, what we do on the internet changes our digital selves. Our digital presence can be bought and sold to the highest bidder, so that companies know everything we say about our selves upon the internet. We become who we are based upon what we like or do upon the internet.
The idea of a digital selves raises a lot concerns. What if the representation does not match what actually exists in the real world? What is preventing a man from portraying himself as a little girl? People on the internet need to know that who they are interacting with could actually be someone totally different. These invented selves do not need to be true. We “invent” them. We can make them into who we want to be, who we are not, or just what ever we care to be. People really need to understand the lack of truth within a digital self.