Identifying With Avatars : Can You Live Off The Grid?

The rapid expansion of technological advancement is engulfing our culture. The author of IRL Fetish, Nathan Jurgenson argues that people have a weird interest in the world of offline. Technological advances are leading people into the realm of online, but Jurgenson also realizes the glorification of movement to offline. People who believe online world is destroying the real-life connection and many writers lament, “Writer after writer laments the loss of a sense of disconnection, of boredom (now redeemed as a respite from anxious info-cravings) …” (Jurgenson 127). People who are saying technological advances is removing people from the real-life so they think they can create a world where online does not exist. This new movement is educating the world that phone must be put away and boast about being offline. In IRL Fetish by Nathan Jurgenson, the author illustrates the practice of fetishizing of the offline world creates a misrepresentation of online and the offline world.

Even now, readers see examples of how family can be brought together instead of segregated by their devices, not just in this article but even in commercials on TV. Programs are being developed where one device has the ability to control others by turning them off, they show an example of how this at mealtimes. Eating food together as a family is a tradition. Phones being put away or ignored for the hour it takes is the perfect example of how modern society can learn from the amish. Humans must learn to control technology, instead of the other way

Moore’s Law, most simply put, is the observation of how computer power doubles every year and keeps the same price, meaning that technology will only get better and faster in the upcoming years. In their essay, “Why Place Matters,” Wilfred M. McClay and Ted V. McAllister argue that the world is becoming “placeless” because of technology. According to them, technology not only gives us virtual places to visit, but also allows us to easily communicate and move around people, products, ideas, and styles, thus diminishing our individuality. McClay and McAllister believe that, by substituting tangible home, family, and friends with virtual websites and digital relationships, we risk forgetting our own reality and identity. The authors conclude that

Technology already consumes most of our lives. In fact, the average American teen spends around 9 hours per day on electronic devices, more than the average amount of time they spend sleeping. However, what if we bring that to a whole other level? What if we spend every single moment of our lives attached to technology? This is what the novel, “feed” by M.T. Anderson, addresses.

People think that technology is their life but in reality it is not. Technology is just something that entertains you. It is not the most important thing in life you can literally go at least a month without your phone even though you think that you cannot. I have had to do it before for six months. People can live without their phones and one example of putting our phones down is when I went to Altitude last night and we were all on trampolines playing dodge ball and throwing and dodging during the game and being active and none of us had our phones out texting or looking at social media so it really was not that hard to put down my phone. In Fahrenheit 451 there was a character named Montag

People who become too accustomed to lives based around technology will no longer interact in the real world. Today people rely on technology for many things such as communication, entertainment, transportation, e.t.c. For example, in Ray Bradbury’s work “The Pedestrian”, the world has diminished into lives lived sitting in front of TV screens. He writes, “The tombs, ill-lit by television light, where the people sat like the dead, the gray or multi-colored lights touching their faces, but never really touching them”, (Bradbury, 60). In this example Bradbury describes the life of people watching television all day and seeing the sights on-screen, but not being inspired or enlightened to go outside to experience it. Most people prefer to stay

I am constantly on my phone almost every second of everyday; texting friends, scrolling through Instagram, tweeting, or sending ugly snapchats of myself. All behind a screen, I felt connected to my friends, my followers, and the world. However, I was actually slowly losing my grasp on reality as I indulged myself in the world of social medias. Reality hit when parents came to Wellness Committee with concerns about their children’s overwhelming use of technology. As the Director of the Wellness Committee, this issue became my focus because I realized that constantly being on technology was unhealthy. It was also affecting the connections I made with people in real life; I was always too busy on my phone to make conversation with the those around me. I wanted my peers to be aware of this and to encourage them to disconnect from technology and connect with the real world. Therefore, I organized an informative community block and a no-technology lunch with the Chair of the Wellness Committee.

The young adult fiction Feed by M.T. Anderson portrays a suburban dystopia where people’s life is manipulated by an embedded internet chip known as “the feed”. Within this novel, Anderson mainly tackles on the negative aspects of advancing technology. The development of technology has indeed led to the development of the society in various ways. This essay discusses the impact of technology on identity in a suburban adolescence context. Suburbanization is “a process by which cities expand peripherally, initially by out-migration of population and economic activity from dense urban cores, to less dense contiguous settlements.” (“Suburbanization”) Within the “Futurama” of Feed, highly advanced technologies such as the “Feed Net” and “upcar”

Ever since technology began so prominent in the modern world, can anyone remember going outside for more than 30 minutes and not see a cell phone or computer? Probably not, as these pieces of technology have become so ingrained in people’s lives, no one wants to leave their home without still being connected. And there is no reason to, as friends, family, and strangers share the same sentiments. Unplugging from technology is not only a decision people don’t make for personal reasons, it simply isn’t conducive to a productive life, as many people’s work and social lives wouldn’t be the same, if exist at all, without being connected to other people or the internet with just a single touch.

In the article “Growing up Tethered”, by Sherry Turkle, she argues that technology today plays a major role in everyday life. Youths do not have the ability to branch off and have their own independence because of their reliance and attachment to technology. They also use technology to develop who they are as people and create an online personal identity of what they think is a perfect life. In comparison, their own life seems boring, pale and unwanted. Turkle also talks about how teenagers think of their phone as a “friend’s” and cannot live without it. When feeling a strong emotion, teens want to share their feelings with their friends and phone. I agree with Turkle’s opinion that technology is changing and will never be the same, which will be hard to improve this attachment to technology because too many teens are tethered.

In the article titled “The Pointlessness of Unplugging,” by Casey N. Cep argues the worthlessness of unplugging from technology. He goes on to explore and share with the reader several reasons people like to unplug while using “The Fifth annual National Day of Unplugging” as the focal point. He explains how anxious everyone has become because of the pace technology progressed by saying “How quickly the digital age turned into the age of technological anxiety” (Cep, 2014, para 3). He then states statistics backing his opinions on why he believes the idea that online connections aren’t authentic is false. The author then shares a story on missing the news of his grandmothers death directly related to him unplugging from technology. Cep’s article has several great points all in which I agree with completely. To evolve as a species we need to learn to not fear the unknown but to embrace it and learn from it as we go, not shut it down before it has a chance. As an American what would the country look like if we all unplugged? I hope the country has watched their fair share of post-apocalyptic movies because that’s where we all would be if technology was suddenly ripped away from our hands.

The National Shut Down Your Screen Week can show us what it's like to have no access to technology. Having no technology can teach us to be independent and to try new things. If we didn't have technology we would probably be doing things we don't normally do like read. Author Nicholas Carr said “ if you're really interested in developing your mind, you should turn off your computer and cell phone and start thinking.” No technology can make us learn more about things we’ve never experienced.

“Turn off the phone(and the Tension)” is an article written in 2012 by Jenna Wortham. On a summer day, Wortham and a friend decided to take a trip to their local pool. Upon their arrival, they noticed a sign stating that all electronics were to be kept in lockers. Flabbergasted, Wortham did as instructed and put her phone away. She spent a while lingering by her locker, desperate for social media and for the feeling of typing underneath her fingers. However, she soon got over her need for electronics. Wortham realized how technology impacts one’s life, she could barely go a day without her phone. As the author said, our phones have become our lifelines. When the majority of society has a smartphone and can’t take their hands off it, we know that our lives are run by our phones. We, as a society, suffer from the Fear of Missing Out, FOMO, we are afraid that we might miss a tweet from our favorite singer, actor, or role model and that will drive many insane. The day at the pool relaxed Wortham and she realized that not everything needs to be recorded, photographed, or snapchatted. Wortham’s article proves that we as a society cannot properly function without access to social media, technology, messages, emails, and phone calls.

As I sit here and recall my last nineteen long years on this planet and my various interactions with different mediums of technology, it has become very obvious to me that I, like most people where I am from, have had really no major interactions with technology compared to others in my age group. I sit in coffee joints at night and watch people become more introverted than a turtle, ducking into their little shells of technological safety. They look at you through their faux, so-call trendy DKNY knock-off glasses, dressed in their Abercrombie clothes, hiding behind nothing but the glow of a laptop or in the corner talking to someone on their cell phones which just happens to match what they are

Do personal technologies like phones, iPods, and computers connect or disconnect us? The opinions vary from person to person and generation to generation. Two opinions that we’ll look at specifically are from Andrew Sullivan, a blogger and columnist for the Sunday Times of London, and Anna Akbari, a professor at New York University. When looked at briefly, Sullivan and Akbari’s views seem to be like the opposite sides of the same coin. Sullivan argues from a more personal standpoint that personal technology shuts us out from the world. Akbari, on the other hand, sees technology and our personal devices as a way to open the world up to us and provides facts and results from professional studies that