After you finish reading Christian’s article, assess the impact of technology on human relationships, using ideas from Christian’s essay as support. You may want to consider “statelessness” and/or “nexting.”
For Nov. 9, Monday
November 4, 2015 | 11 Comments
November 6, 2015 at 2:45 pm
Like time has shown, as technology advances and alters the way humans interact must adjust accordingly. For instance, before the invention of telephones, people were forced to have face to face conversation if they needed/wanted to talk to someone. As time progresses, the need for face to face interaction is slowly depleting. Nowadays, you can hold a relationship with people without ever even meeting them in person, while still being as attached as if you had spent actual time together. With social medias being the new way of socialization, humans are beginning to lose the ability to talk to one another which is creating a heavy reliance on technology, it is getting to the point where humans cant survive without electrical components. I believe that if we as humans continue to pursue the path that we are leading then we will eventually come to the point where we wont need to/want to speak to other humans in person, and we as a society will rely on technology to connect us all.
November 7, 2015 at 7:03 pm
After finishing Brian Christian’s article, it is becoming increasingly clear to me how technology has caused many of our conversations to become “stateless”(Christian 107) meaning our responses have started to “[depend] only on the current query without any knowledge of the history of the conversation required to formulate the reply”(Christian 107). By constantly using technology people are communicating almost like robots, who seem to only be able to provide responses based on the last question asked or comment made. Christian even discusses how the cycle of providing quick general information about oneself in customer service discourages the formation of proper human relationships because “cobbled-together bits of human interaction” (Christian 106) simply cannot provide a basis for a long lasting non fungible relationship. By customer service phone operators constantly nexting callers to the next operator and asking them for the same information to identify themselves without taking the time to actually engage in a realistic conversation and find out more about their personal life human relationships are prevented from developing and the communication is similar to a conversation between computer-operated robots.
November 8, 2015 at 2:16 pm
Technology has greatly affected human relationships and interactions. Christian believes that “having a sense of a person- their disposition, character, “way of being in the world”- and knowing about them-where they grew up, how many siblings they have, what they majored in, where they work- are two rather different things. Just like security, so does intimacy have both for and content”(pg 96). This supports the idea that knowing information about someone is very different than actually knowing someone. In today’s day and age, technology is making it hard to truly know someone. I credit this issue to the fact that it is so much easier to reach people on your phone, instead of having to actually find them and talk to them face to face. This is a major problem with technology as people have come to rely on it to communicate with others. We no longer desire human contact and intimacy, but rather rely on our cellphones to get our thoughts and opinions across. This seems to be a major issue that Christian is addressing in his writing.
November 8, 2015 at 6:26 pm
Technology has influenced the way people converse and view the value of conversations. I like Christian’s attention given to “nexting.” People have gotten so far away from the importance of conversing, that they don’t even have regards to what people have to say. They move them along because they don’t have the time, like a customer service rep who hates their job. Even online conversations have moved from complete sentences to all emoji characters.
November 9, 2015 at 12:42 pm
Brian Christian’s article discusses the various downsides to our ever advancing technological world. One of these in particular he defines as “Nexting”. He is talking about how now a lot of the time our personal face to face interactions with others are one time thing never leading to any further interactions. That people just seem to move to the next stranger to next stranger without ever intending to know them on a personal level. There is a loss in the idea of having a “best friend” as society is starting to see that as a bad thing. Society is starting to tell us that we need to become friendly with more and more strangers in order to succeed regardless if we have any personal connection or things in common.
November 9, 2015 at 1:32 pm
Brian Christian has showed how we have a lack of drive to talk face to face mainly because instant messaging has consumed our lives. Like in the articles we read in class the idea that we need everything in a timely fashioned has created abundant usage of texting. People back in the day would talk face to face to people that live in their community but the internet has created a way for us to meet people from all over. The reason face-face has depleted is because you cant talk to someone who lives 15 miles away from you as easily as if you were to text each other. Also text messaging is easier and ultimately faster which has been the biggest reason Face-face communication has lessened. Brian Christian mentions that knowing information on someone has created a sense of humanness such as their family members and friends but technology has created a harder time to do this but there still are cases where people meet online and eventually become good friends.
November 9, 2015 at 3:30 pm
After finishing the article, I can see that technology does impact the relationship among humans. Not just technology itself, but the use of technology to communicate with other people. Someone usually starts a conversation with Hi, then they go back and forth only discussing what was mentioned a few messages ago. Once they finally finish for the night, so does the conversation as a whole. It is rare for people to pick up the same conversation that they did the night before. This is basically saying that we depended on what was last said and that people don’t really care to learn about other people beyond the text, just what is said there and then only.
November 9, 2015 at 4:16 pm
Technology has been something that since its early stages has proven to have a huge effect on humans and the way that society works. Although some of humans biggest achievement such as landing on the moon, medical advancements, and most importantly the creation of smartphones. (Joke) But in all seriousness with all of the great aspects behind technology there also exist many downsides. Christian focuses on the ways in which technology has disconnected humans as a whole and the way that it has changed the way in which we communicate. “Nexting” as Christian calls it focuses on the way in which our generation no longer truly focuses on what is being said from one person to the next or the actual content of the conversations but rather the next topic of conversation that can keep them entertained for a short period of time. It is as if a world in which we are more connected than ever by technology is also the most disconnected we have ever been from one another.
November 9, 2015 at 4:25 pm
In Brian Christian’s article “Authenticating”, he explains that human interaction has gone from seeing how a person acts to determine who they are, to talking to someone on the phone and being able to identify someone by their voice. “Having a sense of a person-their disposition, character,’way of being in the world’- and knowing about them-where they grew up, how many siblings they have, what they majored in, where they work-are two rather different things.”(96) In order to really be able to know someone, it doesn’t just take knowing these statistics about someone to really know them. Christian shows that it will clearly take more than just talking on the phone or texting to get to know someone. He says that face to face conversation has become less prevalant because of the technology we have been giving. Because of this we are more likely to text someone and hardly know them rather than taking the time to meet them. This shows just how much technology has affected out society, we don’t care to take the time to get and know a person because that would mean disconnecting ourselves from our phones, computers, or any other source of technology we may have become addicted to.
November 10, 2015 at 10:15 pm
I believe technology is both good and bad for our interactions with others. Like most things in life moderation is key, things used properly are good and things abused is bad. For people who properly use technology it is great. You can connect with anyone you want, wherever and whenever. You have the best of both worlds in a sense, to connect with loved ones constantly in a human way. I believe this is what Christian means by “stateful” (Christian 108). People who abuse technology tend to have “stateless” (Christian 107) conversation. These conversations not amounting to anything and have little to know purpose or meaning. Technology used properly is good for humans, technology abused is what turns our conversations “stateless” (Christian 107).
November 15, 2015 at 7:29 pm
After reading Brian Christian article, its pretty clear that technology is the new way of communicating. Technology today has increased to a whole new level where we no longer need to travel unless we really need to or want too. Here are some example,
we can sit at home FaceTime off of our touchscreens with family and friends across nations, we can now deposit checks into bank accounts with click of picture, we can now search mates through dating sites by specific description, we can make new friends through social media sites, and etc. I believe technology is good to an extend where you do not abuse it. We should not allow to relay on technology for daily routines. I believe do to technology we human are becoming lazy do to the amount of time we spend on touchscreens, blackberries and computers. Christian discussed the pros and cons of technology he believes that technology has changed the way humans communicated. I completely agree with him the aspects of today’s technology is very beneficially in many levels however, I do feel that do to technology we are missing out by not communicating the natural face to face. I believe that behind technology a person is able to be a “false self” where he/she is able to expose to be whatever they want to be in order to fit in or to have someone to like them whereas, in person he/she is the complete opposite of the “false self”.