Avik Sarker Dr.

OHara English 137H 19 November 2012 Interconnected Imagine this scenario of a not too distant past: a group of undergraduate college students wants to get together to work on a collaborative project. How do they communicate to decide a time and place for such an event? Nowadays, they could accomplish this by creating a Facebook group chat and deciding where to meet, by emailing each other in a similarly structured group message, or by not even physically meeting at all - using the online collaborative power of services like Google Drive, which allows online collaborative document editing, and the substitution of physical presence through a video chatting service such as Skype. Physical presence in a tech savvy world no longer stands as a requirement for interaction between peoples. Compared to these sleek and seemingly simple services and solutions, calling by telephone has been relegated to an antiquated status, despite not having been used too far into the past. However, less usage does not mean disappearance; moreover, people utilize technology in more parts of their lives. Whether it be a social media website such as Facebook or taking advantage of the omnipresence of online editing tools, technology accentuates and augments the modern lifestyle, diminishing the barrier between the offline and the online. With this progressive and accelerated development of various technologies, including the

Sarker 2 development of smartphones and social networking, the line between offline and online has become progressively blurrier in conjunction (and perhaps caused by) the changing values regarding the public and the private.

The State of Technology

As demonstrated in the example in the introduction, technology within the past five years has expanded, evolved and taken forms anew within the information age world. The physical aspects of technology (the hardware), as well as the virtual aspects of technology (the software), both blossomed within this tech savvy era. Especially within the virtual realm of the Internet in tandem with mobile hardware, technology advances in these realms enables and accelerates the merging of the offline and online spheres, according to Joseph Faina, writing in the linguistics journal et Cetera. According to him, although older media sources such as print and television news media have made an impact in this merging, the most significant contemporary development is undoubtedly the Internet (Faina). Looking at the hardware aspect of this development of technology, much has changed with regards to its use within everyday life. Hardware technology, mainly in the form of computers, integrated itself within society as the primary technological tool society uses. However, mobile technologies have now

increasingly defined furthering advances in technology. American society adopting the smartphone models this claim. According to the Pew Research institute, as of

Sarker 3 September of this year, nearly two thirds of American young adults ages 18 to 29 own smartphones, while 45% of all adults own a smartphone now (Rainie, Smartphone). In a separate survey, Pew finds that of all cellphone Internet users, 31% use it as their only means of going online (Smith). These statistics result from the development of mobile Internet standards, such as 2G, 3G, and most recently, 4G LTE, which allow users to access the Internet at near computer like speeds (Internet Technology). With the ability to access the internet, Pew also finds that smartphone users tend to use other services such as location based technologies, photography, videography, in addition to social media. On the studys website, Pew shows an especially striking statistic, saying that of cell phone users who use apps, 97% use it to take pictures, while of all cellphone users asked, 67% use their cameras (Purcell, Entner, Henderson). Besides photography, users also assimilate another key technology with their phones: location based services. Pew finds in a separate survey that 74% of smartphone users take advantage of these services, while a subset of 22% also enroll within a geosocial service, such as Foursquare (Rainie, Brenner, and Purcell). Services like these combine aspects of social media with the augmentation of GPS technologies. These technologies allow users to broadcast their location to others, allowing for the user to communicate more than just a message, but their offline location rather than being confined to the online world. The developments within the hardware sector of technology and its corresponding adoption among users demonstrate the changing nature of the interaction of technology within the life of an Internet user.

Sarker 4

The Rise of Social Media

A subset of the Internet technologies developed, social media emerged within the past half decade and took over by storm, embedding itself within communications, helping to merge the two spheres together. Facebook and Twitter, two social media sites, have made an impact in interpersonal communication and within spheres outside the internet, such as television media, and even politics, especially when considering the long list of events colloquially referred to as the Arab Spring. Christian Fuchs of Uppsala University in Sweden argues that although social media was not the cause of the revolution, it played a part in the communication and information distribution aspects of the rioting (Fuchs). Wael Ghonim, an executive at Google, stated in an interview with NPR that social media, especially Facebook, helped bolster the cause of the rioters in Egypt (Social Media). Usage of social media in this way demonstrates one instance in which the offline information, in this case, locations and documentation of the revolution, permeated through the online world, to work as one unit in bolstering the revolution. However, social media has also helped unify telecommunications in a more personal way, photography. In tandem with the usage of the camera with smartphones, photography gained a footing within social media as well. Social media sites such as Pinterest and Instagram entered the Internet scene within the past couple of years; however, Pew

Sarker 5 finds that 46% of adult Internet users post original content, while 35% of them post this content to sites such as these. Pew bolsters the idea that the rise of the smartphone has played a crucial role in enabling these numbers to appear how they are (Zickhur). Social media technology, however, whether it be personal or interpersonal, has changed the way the offline and online worlds interact with each other. With this integration of social media into life, values about content have changed as a result, especially concerning privacy. Specifically, the notion of what is private versus what is public has changed as a result of this merging of the offline and online spheres. Nancy Baym and danah boyd of Microsoft Research describes this value change and its relationship as such: the distinction of the public and the private are resultant of the conflict of audience of material when it is posted online. She argues that the intended audience for material posted online is not always the audience intended, which she calls, the imagined audience (Baym and boyd). This results in material with conflicts of audience, which also raises another changing value: the handling of privacy in the online realm. Pew finds that from 2009 to 2011, users of Facebook have taken more action in controlling content through the use of the sites privacy monitors. They find a marked increase in the number of unfriendings and content removal over the two years of the survey (Madden). Although these two ideas seem relatively exclusive in terms of value, boyd argues in the same paper that publicity and privacy differ from the notion of public and private. With the prevalence of this technology within users lives, it

Sarker 6 comes as no surprise the unification of these spheres have an impact on value systems. Throughout this research, I have been able to relate personally to all the changes social media has brought in changing the way I interact with the world. Being born into the information age, technology has surrounded me from the beginning of my life. However, through the research, I have been able to see the vast impact the integration of technology has had on people throughout the world. The changes in values are especially important to realizehave they been a beneficial part in enhancing the offline and online interaction? As the nature of technology is ever changing and ever evolving, future developments, many unknown, can be expected.

Sarker 7 Works Cited Baym, Nancy K., and danah boyd. "Socially Mediated Publicness: An Introduction." Journal Of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 56.3 (2012): 320-329. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 11 Nov. 2012. Faina, Joseph. "Twitter and the New Publicity." et Cetera 69.1 (2012): 55-71. ProQuest Social Sciences Premium Collection. Web. 13 Nov. 2012. Fuchs, Christian. "Social Media, Riots, and Revolutions." Capital & Class 36.3 (2012): 383-91. Sage Journals. The Conference of Socialist Economists. Web. 11 Nov. 2012. "Internet Technology." American Decades: 2000-2009. Ed. Eric Bargeron and James F. Tidd, Jr. Detroit: Gale, 2011. 451-454. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 5 Nov. 2012. Madden, Mary. "Privacy Management on Social Media Sites." Pew Internet. Pew Research Center, 24 Feb. 2012. Web. 11 Nov. 2012. Purcell, Kristen, Roger Entner, and Nichole Henderson. "The Rise of Apps Culture." Pew Internet. Pew Research Center, 14 Sept. 2010. Web. 11 Nov. 2012. Rainie, Lee. Smartphone Ownership Update: September 2012. Pew Internet. Pew Research Center, 11 Sept. 2012. Web. 5 Nov. 2012. Rainie, Lee, Joanna Brenner, and Kristen Purcell. "Photos and Videos as Social Currency Online." Pew Internet. Pew Research Center, 13 Sept. 2012. Web. 11 Nov. 2012.

Sarker 8 "Re-Imagining Old Technologies." American Decades: 2000-2009. Ed. Eric Bargeron and James F. Tidd, Jr. Detroit: Gale, 2011. 454-457. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 11 Nov. 2012. Smith, Aaron. Smartphone Adoption and Usage. Pew Internet. Pew Research Center, 11 July 2012. Web. 5 Nov. 2012. "Social Media Advances 'Revolution In Egypt'." National Public Radio. 17 Jan. 2012. 1309 words. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 11 Nov. 2012. Zickuhr, Kathryn. "Three-quarters of Smartphone Owners Use Location-based Services." Pew Internet. Pew Research Center, 11 May 2012. Web. 11 Nov. 2012.