Project Web: Homework 1

The article “I Tweet, Therefor I Am,” by Andrew Lam, emphasizes how social media is spreading like a wild fire around the world, and is playing a considerable role in how we interact with one another and the world around us. Generations raised with communication technology are now spending the majority of their lives in chatrooms, YouTube, cell phones and music devices.

Lam himself writes, “As humans, we are beginning to believe that we do not fully exist without some sort of electronic imprint in the virtual world, a digital projection of ourselves“(25). In other words, Lam believes that people nowadays feel so habitually glued to the Internet that they completely dismiss the outside world, reality. In this sense, people are being conditioned to devote the vastness of their emotional life in the virtual world. Lam now believes that people have, “learned to split their attention, with one eye on the electronic mirror, and the other on reality” (25).

I agree that people have come to believe they don’t fully exist without some sort imprint in the virtual world, a point that needs emphasizing since so many people believe they have to report their news to the world. Self-tracking has become a terribly vital and significant part in this day and age. As Lam stated, “Diaries, once hidden under mattresses are now online in the form of blogs and vlogs” (25). People are now investing their emotional lives online for all to see, obscuring the boundary between public and private.

A large proportion of people’s lives are being dedicated to the virtual world. People now get their news from online resources such as Facebook, Twitter, or other social networking sites, rather than from a physical copy of a newspaper, such as the Los Angeles Times or New York Times. Even the way in which people stay in touch has completely shifted. Although, I know sending an e-mail or text can be completely suitable and rapid, I cannot help thinking that some people might feel that sending a text or e–mail could substitute the presences of brisk face-to-face esoteric conversations.

As seen today, the evolution and future of communication technology is swiftly proliferating, but I still believe there’s an infallible foundation of face-to-face conversation that communication technology will never be able to contest with.