A new lifestyle...

In the documentary “Digital Nation,” the director Rachel Dretzin illuminates the effects of technology on our world today. She explains both the positive and negative results of technology through traveling and talking to different experts about how technology has affected us physically, emotionally, and culturally.
In “Digital Nation,” Dretzin interviews a MIT professor named Sherry Turkle. In this Interview, Professor Turkle enlightens the point that “every hour of life on the screen, is an hour not spent in the rest of life, if we’re there, where aren’t we?” She is asking the question that so many researchers question today, how blurry is the line between the virtual world and the real world? It is evidently blurry enough for people to date, have business meetings, and recruit soldiers through technology. Technology isn’t necessarily bad, we are just both gaining and losing parts of our cultures through it. Like when the typewriter was invented, people’s handwriting became less efficient and legible. But because of the typewriter we are able to write more in general. As Mark Prensky CEO of Games2train states, “People complained when we moved from letters to the telephone, and it’s not that their wrong totally, things get lost…but we gain other things, and life moves on.” Technology is not good or bad like other inventions in the past. But as Dretzin explains in her documentary, it’s powerful, and we need to find a balance.
Right now as I am writing this reading response, my house is completely at loss of direct human to human contact. My brother is down in his room playing Halo, my mother is watching the news in the basement, and I am upstairs on my laptop going from Microsoft Word to my phone. It is inevitable that technology continually affects everyone’s life. Digital media use is becoming a way of life. In general, I strive to separate myself from technology when I can. I value face to face conversations, and I really do not like conversations with people when I cannot hear their voice. “Digital Nation” does an excellent job at illuminating the blurry line of virtual and real reality. I have friends that I fear are not even aware that there is a line. One of my best friends I am trying to “train” to not be so connected and wired as she is. She never ever lets go of her phone, she is constantly texting, even when we are in a deep and serious conversation. She even admits that every time she opens her laptop she immediately goes to Facebook. It has become habit; it has become a way of life.
Even if you choose not to be immersed in technology, you always will be. Rather you are in Fred Meyers simply trying to buy some produce when you get confused in the “self-checkout,” or bought a cell phone plan by your overly protective parents so they can always check up on you. Everyone uses technology every day. It has become a lifestyle, to some people more than others. As my brother may spend up to 6 hours a day on his Mac while I barely send 6 text messages a day, we all are a part of it. We all live with technology, because it’s a powerful tool that will take a long time for humans to find the balance between the real world and the virtual world. As Professor Turkle says, “If we’re there, where aren’t we?”