New Media, Networking and Phatic Culture - Vincent Miller

I picked it up and couldn't put it down. Aside from numerous trips to Dictionary.com and a detour to attempt and fight spam on my Facebook Account (which I found wonderfully ironic) I didn't stop reading until it was over. I've always had my suspicions on what detrimental effects these technologies are having on our culture as a whole. I especially liked how he took apart the "friend" concept and how he was very well cited. It was clear that Miller wasn't just stating opinions but really getting into the thick of the research. The main point is that human to human relationships are becoming more dependent on technology so that we can communicate with more people and maintain 'relationships' with these people through these technological tools. The result of this is a rise in the importance of 'staying connected' and a decline in the importance of actual substance in the information being expressed.

I didn't really understand what he meant by constant deconstruction and reconstruction of social connections. I haven't experienced this personally as I never communicate with people I don't talk to but maybe this concept is more widespread than I thought it was.

This is strongly tied to Raby's text about discourse. It is very obvious after reading tweets and FB status updates how the discourse creates this culture where everyone is talking about irrelevant things about themselves and vaguely listening to others while waiting for their turn to talk.

While reading and writing about this article I was texting with 3 different people, dealing with facebook spam, checking my e-mail sporadically, cooking food, having a dicussion with my mom, making coffee, and changing into clothes for school. Getting out of this internet connection/multi-tasking culture is a lot harder than I thought it would be. Anyone else in my boat???