Reflection paper “Seeing Ourselves Through Technology Ch. 1”

Being as how busy I am, I really should not be waiting until the last minute to try and organize my notes into an organized, well written, reflection paper. But, here we are at 12:45 on Friday. This is me… reflecting. My initial thoughts and reactions to this article went like this “wow, this is really long..” and then there was “wow, this is going to be long AND boring,” haha, and while I was not exactly riveted to my seat, it did turn out to be a lot different than I thought it was going to be. I have never once put that much thought into the way I represent myself, which is odd because anyone who knows me or is close to me will tell you that the way I “represent” myself is quite important to me. But, the reasons why, or how it started, or the effect is has on us has never crossed my mind. The only time I feel old in my daily life is when I am on my college campus. I am about 14 years older, give or take, than anyone of my average classmates, so while I am not a dinosaur, I do remember when things were different. In retrospect, they were a LOT different. My first cell phone wouldn’t even fit in the pocket of one of today’s “snug” pair of pants that all the kids are wearing. It was Huge. And it served only one purpose: To make and receive phone calls. Yea, weird, I know. There were no apps, or games, or cameras. And the internet that I did rarely have access to was very slow, and it did have chat rooms and things of the like, but for a while it was fairly difficult to connect with anybody, or someone specific, let alone everybody. Technologically speaking, I grew up in a different generation. Like, I mentioned before, when I wanted to write I wrote in a notebook. The process of “saving” anything I wrote involved me just figuring out how NOT to lose it, as opposed to today’s “ctrl s.” Anyway, back to reflecting.. The fact of the matter, as it was mentioned in the article, self representation is much more conversational. It is exponentially easier to be seen at all, let alone the ease we now have to be seen how we WANT to be seen. Everything feeds into everything else now, social media is connected to EVERYTHING. Most of today’s information comes from one form or another. Like the saying goes “if it’s not on Facebook, it never happened.” And it all began with texting, I even remember when instant messenger started becoming pretty popular and that eventually transformed into texting. Somewhere along the line we have developed this inherent NEED to know about something right away, and being able to get ahold of someone instantly, right when you want to, is of the utmost importance. I’m not sure if life just got more intense or we just got more spoiled and needy. I tend to lean more toward the latter. The article itself, at least the chapter that I read shines a different light on it all. Explaining specifically that it isn’t even necessarily about being seen, but also about seeing yourself. I like to think of myself as an artist, or it could just be my excuse to be broody and irritable, but it is how I express myself, not only because someone else might see it and judge it, but because there are things in my head that I can’t explain that need to get out sometimes! And the same is true for many, many, people. The desire is the same, the medium is just different. I also seriously got a kick out or the comparison of a painted self portrait and a selfie. Ha! They both certainly had a similar intended purpose, but rather than sitting for hours while someone paints your portrait and being stuck with it whether you like it or not, we can now simply hit a button to “snap” a picture of yourself. And if you don’t like it, nobody ever has to know about it, unless you accidentally hit the “send” button instead of the “delete” button, in that case it is out of your hands forever. That is one of the big problems, too. Once you put something on the internet, you can’t take it back off. Anyway, I feel as if I have done enough reflecting for today, I should probably get ready for work so I will end with a quote from the article that I wrote down for no real reason: “Find a bit of beauty in the world every day, and if you can’t find it, create it.”