Keenan's Blog

 I've done the 'take a break from electronics' a couple times before. Now, I would say 'it didn't really happen this time', but realistically, I just didn't feel like it. Maybe I just have a pretty boring life, but there's not much else I really want to do with that time, and I haven't really gotten much out of the experience before. I did use to be a huge reader of books, but I've grown to prefer watching stories instead. I'm a really fast reader and therefore read them way too quickly; so watching TV or movies lets me have a lot more idle time to think about the story or thoughts it provokes. (Not to mention most of what I would read these days would also be online!) I like writing and listening to music, but screens make both of those things a lot easier for me. Most of my social life revolves around doing stuff over the internet (especially during the pandemic and all), so taking that away is a pretty strong negative, and I live out in Me...

I think I've managed to more or less avoid the pitfalls of social media. Maybe I'm giving myself too much credit -- I've definitely done my fair share of Twitter scrolling -- but I definitely haven't gotten that deep. I've used Facebook to play Words with Friends for a week or two, and if you asked me about TikTok, or Instagram, or Snapchat, you'd be talking a different language than the one I know. I think the main thing is I use it as a detached observer more than anything.I started using it to deeply follow a competitive scene I was interested in, so at this point I get a feed of a thousand fairly ordinary people I don't personally know. I've got some friends on there too, but I very rarely put out something there myself otherwise and I usually have better ways to interact with them. It's not much of an exaggeration to say I've phased into a cute animal retweet bot at this point; I've probably followed hundreds of accounts dedicated to var...

Virtual Reality (VR) technology has been heralded as the technology of the future for decades now. From Tron to Sword Art Online to Ready Player One, media has taken hype-filled, unlikely glances at what this future might be like. From goofy 1980s NES accessories (ever seen the Power Glove?) to the Virtual Boy (the Edsel of video game consoles) to the Oculus Rift, the video game industry has tried to crack into the mainstream and failed.   I won’t say it’s all going nowhere — progress has certainly been made — but isn’t this narrative getting a little tired? It could happen someday, but we don’t seem to be getting there anytime soon. Sure, we’ve all fantasized about it, but if the technology isn’t there yet, it isn’t there yet. Beyond that, humanity has never been able to predict the future of technology well. It’s hilarious to pull up some dated media and see about all the fantastic devices we were supposed to have in the 2000s — how are those flying cars coming, Back to the F...

To put it bluntly, I disagree with the spirit of Shelly Turkle's argument. I won't deny that there's merit in looking upon the past and seeing what has been lost to us. Change is inevitable -- it brings many boons with it, but also tends to lose things along the way. That being said, since time immemorial, people have feared change. They view it as cultural devastation, and they blame religious doubt, rock n' roll, or whatever modern media outlets have decided to pin on millennial for all of society's perceived new evils. And yet, when I look around, we all seem to be doing just fine. Maybe I'm being a little cynical here. Or, just a tad defensive. After all, it'd probably wouldn't be a stretch to say online connections have saved my life. They've given me an outlet to find countless friends -- people I can really connect to, who actually share the same interests and passions as me, and who I feel I can genuinely rely upon. Somewhere past elementary ...

  I find Marshall McLuhan's idea of valuing medium over content interesting. I suppose I am conditioned to respond differently to a message depending on the context. It's a very different experience having an in-person conversation vs reading a text message, or watching an advertisement vs a YouTube video. However, I think part of that is different mediums inherently have differing content/stimuli. Over half of communication is non-verbal, so stripping that away from any medium obviously restricts how effectively it can carry a message. Most of what is verbal is communicated through things such as tone or inflection, which also get stripped away depending on the medium. Semantics aside, there are many other differences in various forms of media that change how I engage with them. In social media settings, I can easily observe and respond to creators in a way I can't towards more commercial media settings. In a text-based medium, I can stop and think through my words more ca...

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