Where am I, who are these people, and why can't we think for ourselves? A reflection on Media Ecology and Ambient Intimacy

The latest reading for K-State's Digital Ethnography research group consisted of two fascinating articles: one an excerpt from Lum's "Notes Toward an Intellectual History of Media Ecology" and the other, Clive Thompson on "Ambient Intimacy." So what exactly do they mean for this class, and more importantly, for human beings communicating through various media today?

For one thing, as Lum points out, the medium or media used to convey a message intrinsically changes it; this is something I think many of us tend to overlook. I read part of this article outloud to my husband, and rather shamefacedly had to admit, as he nodded smugly, that I was guilty of this, and that he had told me more than once I was looking at it the wrong way: whenever a favorite book of mine was adapted to the big screen, I would insist on seeing the film, then complain irritably later that the film was utterly misrepresenting the book; as both he and Lum have pointed out, from a media ecological perspective, it just makes more sense to look at the two media as conveying different messages, though they are derived from the same "story" that the original author had in mind. Different forms of media, the introduction of new media technology, can have huge impacts on culture - oral cultures are dominated by the elder elites, the possessors of vast amounts of knowledge coveted by their people; and yet, when you introduce literacy, that power is reduced, now shared with younger people who can absorb that knowledge through reading it. Printed media creates new jobs and allows information to be more widely disseminated, and electronic media carries this even further. In "Guns, Germs and Steel," Jared Diamond proposed that it was geography that led to the hegemony of Eurasian societies; if that is so, then the technology that arose from such convenient location may well be the key to connecting the underprivileged and underrepresented peoples of the world, if this new media can be extended within their reach. But is the interconnectedness of everyone the greatest idea?

Clive Thompson tackled this idea in his article on ambient intimacy. People are now connected, mostly through weak ties, to hundreds, sometimes thousands of people on such services as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. They're updated minute by minute on the minutiae of their friends' daily lives - in fact, some of these people on their "friends lists" aren't even their friends, in the strictest sense of the word - they may never have met them, but simply know of them due to celebrity or microcelebrity status. Even fictional characters have Twitter accounts - the characters of one of my favorite webcomics, Questionable Content, have their own Twitter feeds, right down to Pintsize the AnthroPC, who isn't even a fictional representation of a human or animal, but rather a fictional representation of a sort of sentient, lewd, pocket-sized computer that walks and talks. I barely touch my Twitter, unlike many people, but even I have succumbed to this, and follow each character's Twitter feed (checking it once every week or so), simply because it's funny. But why do I, or anyone else for that matter, want to know what's going on in the life of a fictional character outside its usual episodic environment? And what does this do to our ability to strongly relate emotionally to others?

Still, it does have its advantages; in some ways, as Thompson points out, it strengthens our relationships with those we're close to, and broadens our network of weak-ties, those people we know, but not well, who might be in a better position to help us when those who are close to us, and therefore probably like us, are too like us to offer us ideas and opportunities that have not occurred to us.

Ultimately, though, are we really getting to know anyone by watching these tiny, insignificant details of their lives on RSS feeds? Are we joining these services because we want to...or because everyone else is? I resisted MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter for the longest time, and simply because everyone I knew had them, I eventually got them, succumbing to the constant cries of, "You should get a MySpace!/Why aren't you on Facebook?/Follow my Twitter, please!" I still resist, checking them only sporadically, but with everything we've been studying lately, I find myself struggling between an urge to check them more (out of alternating boredom and paranoia) and an urge to just shut off every electronic device in my house and escape from all this technology for a little while - and start thinking for myself again.