I believe that this project is politically relevant for several reasons. Not only is our every day life governed by digital devices and the social media, there is an entire set of advantages, but also problems which go alongside with a highly digitilised world. Few of them may be that the younger generations may not have the ability to communicate in the same way that we used to. Online chat rooms become the substitude for real-life conversation and similtaneously serve as a means to keep us occupied at all times. Whether it is the Game Boy, the Wii or the Cell Phone. Questions about the influence of this on our every day behaviour have been often raised when shootings by teenagers in schools happend. Frequently they had been playing violent computer games like counter strike. Another issue are things like cyber bullying and the creation of an online personality which we may use in cases even more than our real self in order to communicate with others. However digital media has many positive sides as well which should not be ignored such as; the connectivity that can be reached across the globe via the Internet. News travel fast and the sources of information appear to be unlimited. In order to re-evaluate my dependency on digital devices and the influence this has on my life I will take part in one week of digital detox. I will abstain from the following:
- My Computer (For essays I will use those available in the library, without accessing social media)
- My Cell Phone
- The Radio
- Candlelight instead of electrical light when possible
- My I-Pod
- The TV or any other form of digital entertainment
- The Internet
The experience made during that week will be recorded by handwriting in a book with the other members of the group and by using a disposable camera afterwards the pages of the book will be available on this blogg.
These are all great manifestos - perhaps you could all do the detox on different days and one of you could document the difficulties of the other? The thing that you all need to address is the question of how deeply digital media penetrates into our lives. For those of you not able to make the last lecture, do look at the powerpoint slides on the VLE and read the Kitchen and Dodge article (difficult at the start but really worth it), which shows that even turning a tap on or a kettle or a light switch plugs us into larger, unseen digital circuits. Worth having a look also at some background stuff like Evgeny Morozov's 'Click Here to Save Everything'. But do beware also of an over-determined techno-determinism! Perhaps there could be some aspect of the project that might stress not just withdrawal but also a new kind of interaction with the digital and new opportunities for creativity done differently?
ReplyDeleteBernadette thank you very much for all your comments. I think you make a right a point about the over-determined techno-determinism. I think we need to tackle the aspect of a non-possibility of retrieving from this digital age as we are de-facto digital natives. If technology is so embedded in our everyday life as our project wants to highlight, how do we come out of the problem of social digital empowerment. If the web was born as the biggest democratic platform ever created and now it is yet again in the hands of some, powerful elite, how do get the people to reverse this?
DeleteVery interesting for this. My flat mate has just launched a project with Nesta called D-CENT. http://dcentproject.eu/
This could come useful in looking to find the new creative opportunities that you were highlighting.
Good luck with the candlelight. It's a shame we are not doing this detox in the midst of winter with the much shorter day light hours. All you need is a lace bonnet and one of those Jane Austin type gowns writing by candlelight.
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