After attempting to completely isolate myself from communication and media technology for a 24 hour period, I feel as though it is an impossible task for anyone to accompolish. Today our society is filled with gadgets of technology used to entertain, communicate, occupy, and learn. These gadgets at our finger tips can consume the lives of today's people and especially today's youth. In fact according to The article "The Longest Day," in the Washington Post newspaper by Danna L. Walker, "Eighteen- to 20-year-olds know in their hearts that electronic media are nearly as dear to their lives as physical nourishment." In fact "they have vague memories of a time before iTunes, personalized ring tones, Facebook, Google, Rocketboom, "MySpace: The Movie" and www.i-am-bored.com."
Technology such as cell phones, music players, computers and television all are everywhere in our lives whether we realize it or not. We use computers for communication through email and messaging as well as managing our banking, paying bills and much more. Television is not only used to entertain us but also is used as a source of the news and weather. Without these some people may not be able to function. Thus I feel as though people are becoming more and more dependent on electronic media.
As speaking for our society as a whole, it seems as though life without electronic media is not only unimaginable but practically impossible. Personally before I tried to go without electronic media for 24 hours it seem very hard but still possible, although when I actually tried the task it was 100 Times harder than I imagined. First of all I should never have attempted this task on a weekend because it is even harder to succeed.
I started the task right before I went to bed on a Thursday night so I knew I could at least succeed for eight hours. I started my day off with breakfast in the morning but without television, which was unusually quiet meal because I always watch television in the morning when I eat. As the day went on I did a few things around the house then I decided to go to the gym in the afternoon. At about 3pm, 15 hours into my task I already failed without any fault of my own. I walked into the gym and the radio was playing, i couldn't believe it. I completely forgot that the gym played music while people exercise. At this point I realized that without locking myself in my bedroom that I was literally impossible for me to achieve my task. If I didn't go to the gym and decided to go out to lunch then most likely I would have failed there too because most restaurants have televisions for people to watch which also would of ruined my task.
After attempting to completely isolate myself from communication and media technology for a 24 hour period, I feel as though electronic media has completely dominated our lives without realizing it. Electronic media is everywhere, it is in our homes, our cars and even in our pockets. Not using these gadgets is extremely hard but living without communication and media technology in general is practically impossible.
2 comments:
Hey Dan,
I ran into the same problems with media saturation. I agree that is is almost impossible because using digital media is often a means of efficiency. I was okay without my cell phone but I had to avoid pretty much all public places. Luckily, I had to work the majority of the day. Even then, I ran into problems using the land line telephone. This was definitely a difficult task, but it really made me realize how exposed we are. Just like when you forgot the gym played music. Its pretty much everywhere, there is no avoiding it, unless of course we want to be hermits.
I agree that it is virtually impossible for our society to live without media. We do basically revolve our world around it. I also agree that it has unconsciously grew to dominate our whole lives. It's crazy to actually think that people ever went without the things that are so dependent on today.
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