K Bechtel

The effect of technology on a culture can clearly be seen when looking at the young people of that culture.  What we do, how we do it, and how we communicate is greatly impacted by technology.  Danah Boyd described technology has being fluid with the youth she studied.  I guess I would compare technology has being a rocky hillside to many of the adults in our culture!  As she said in her interview, teens do not see technology like IM as an interruption.  On the other hand, a phone call would be seen as such.  For example, my niece is much more apt to talk with her friends on the computer rather than by phone, unless of course she is texting them!  Conversely, she only contacts me by phone (cause she knows that’s how I can be reached!)  Likewise look at all the businesses, like coffee houses and restaurants, making access available to their customers.  People are always available today (and want to be) via technology.

Another analogy Ms. Boyd gave in the interview that really speaks to where we as a culture are heading is how as children, our parents would send us out to play with instructions to return home by dark.  I would go play with all the neighbor kids around my block and as I got older, I could hang out as far as two or three blocks away from home.  Parents today do not do that anymore out of fear.  The equivalent to kids going to hang out after school is the social networking sites.  Teens and even younger kids go “hang out” in places such as My Space and Facebook with their group of friends.    Of course adults go hang at these places as well, but their intended audience was college kids and that has trickled down to teenagers and younger kids.  Like the Hula Hoop when most kids could do it better than their parents, I think the social networking sites like My Space are used more easily by kids.

So my future, being directed by those youngsters that fill the seats in my classroom today, will bring new ways of doing a whole lot of things.  Communication, entertainment, education, job opportunities, and medicine will be greatly influenced by technology…technology we don’t even know about yet.  We technology natives must learn to embrace it rather than resist it.