Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Information on Steroids and how to Organize it

For my first post I’ve decided to comment and expand upon K Star’s post entitled “How much is too much?

Her main contention was that we use too many forms of technology to moderate our lives. She gives examples of how many different devices she has to use to keep up with school and a social life. I too often wonder why we’ve allowed technology to be the nodes through which we access our education, work, and social life. I’m technology obsessive; I have a Blackberry, a Razor (as a backup phone), a Macbook Pro, two computer monitors, thousands of dollars worth of digital DJ equipment, and an iPod Touch. Every technology you’ve ever wanted I’ve likely had. As hip or nerdy (depending on the way you look at it) as this might make me sound, it begets the question.....WHY?



Before I answer that I want to first state that I’m by no means a technological determinist. According to Wikipedia, technological determinism is “a reductionist doctrine that a society's technology determines its cultural values, social structure, or history.” I tend to think that although technology has a great influence on our lives, it is also an expansion on our a priori senses, notions, beliefs, and values. Technology is like ourselves on steroids. It makes everything we do bigger, more connected, and more powerful. Think of Barry Bonds as a blackberry - it’s just an extremely powerful phone.



And this is where the answer to K Star’s question lies. We use so many different technologies to keep up with the complexity of everyday life - which itself is a result of an affluence of technology - because these technologies are simply extensions of our pre-existing methods of education and social interaction. Facebook is based upon the notion of the facebook’s that were used at Harvard, so that first year students could remember all of the people they met, while WebCT attempts to resemble every aspect of a classroom. As we’ve become more accustomed to technology we’ve allowed it to operate as a replacement of existing social structures and institutions.

This begets a more intriguing question: does our reliance on so many technologies enhance our abilities to keep up with daily life? Does it diminish our abilities? Or does it convolute our daily lives?

But more specifically on the topic of citizen media and the public sphere, how many sources do you get your daily information from (news, e-mail accounts, blogs, facebook, etc.)?

Too many sources for daily information is something I had a problem with. It got to a point last year where I would wake up and spend so many hours juggling between my information sources that I would lose precious time to actually spend with friends. Luckily there are forms of content control that have helped me organize my life. First are aggregator sites like Digg and Reddit that always provide me with interesting news. Second, is G-Mail’s ability to streamline all of my e-mail accounts into one server. Third, there are RSS readers like Google Reader that streamline the over 200 sources of information I have into one easy to read program. And lastly there is Facebook, which is of course the hub of my extended social life.

So I want to know...

What technologies do you use to manage your daily lives?