#digitaldivides

Before I read my classmates’ posts, I was struggling to make sense of the readings. One, the print was small, so my eyes didn’t want to work so hard to read words I don’t know. But also, I think I was struggling to envision what was being considered. Now, after having read through these posts and considered questions brought up by my peers, I have a much better idea of what was being explored. This is, first of all, an example of where technology has enhanced my experience and relationship with individuals, contrary to the sentiments of “Touchscreen” (though I do think that is a very beautiful piece). 

The video Rowan posted, “Amazing Tron Dance,” brought up some questions introduced in “Identity, Performance and Technology.” Of course I marveled at the spectacle that was the dancers being strategically illuminated to seem as if they are disappearing and reappearing out of the darkness. The luminescent suits they wore also captured a very “tech-y” “avatar” kind of character. But overwhelming I had to question the mixed reality paradigm, a term Evie generously outlined for us from the reading. The dancer on stage embodied both themselves and their avatar, with the illumination of costume defining the difference. To the spectator, when the lights are off, that body is gone from the show, gone from sight, gone from consideration. And yet, of course the body is still there. I question the doubling presence of body and avatar, when both are housed in one? I think film really has the advantage of effect because in person, a performance like this may ask for suspension of reality (i.e., you can still see the outline of bodies, hear their feet scuffling, etc.)

Just as a little treat, I wanted to post a Beyonce video that came to mind when considering both readings. her 2011 Billboard Awards performance of “Run the World” was supplemented with this avatar technology, “manipulation” of projections background. This was the first time I ever saw something like this before. Of course it isn’t as impressive or precise like the “mesmerizing dance performance” video, but it was also 2011. 

I, like Evie, found Touchscreen to be a lazy argument. Perhaps social media has made us somewhat less skilled at in person communication but it has also opened so many doors for people; especially the LGBTQIA* community. 

LGBT people, especially teenagers, in rural communities do not typically have a large support base at home or in school and they find that support online, especially on spaces like Tumblr. Through social media, they are able to find information and hear experiences on how to go about coming out, transitioning, dating, etc. 

In Making Digital Culture, Martin Hand states that “there is something about the interactivity of digital machines which destabilizes modern categories of culture and technology” (44). He further defines the former as meaning and the latter as technique, claiming an asymmetrical relationship between the two and acknowledging modernity as the increasing technologization of society, culture, and subjectivity. 

A lot of people, including Marshall Davis Jones in “Touchscreen,” target technology and modernity for ruining interpersonal relationships and dominating ‘culture.’ They claim there is no real human interaction anymore, that love is felt through a screen and to have an online presence is a) a necessity and b) a performance. However, in thinking about romantic relationships specifically (of course ‘romantic relationships’ as a norm warrants destabilization), I am wondering if this is too lazy an argument. Even if the overwhelming presence of social media (Instagram, Facebook, Tinder, etc.) did inherently mean performance on the part of those who participate, is this something new? Is this a distinctly technological phenomenon? Marriage and love itself were commercialized and institutionalized long before the evolution of modern technology. 

People lament the commodification of love without acknowledging the purely capitalistic (and colonialist, racist, and heteropatriarchal) foundation upon which Marriage rests. Slaves were kept from marriage so that their children could be born into slavery, forming the backbone of the economy. Freed Black people were then forced into marriage in conjunction with a criminalization of adultery in order to recapture them, once again forming the backbone of the economy. Communal (non-married) methods of indigenous living were destroyed in order to implement White, European economic structures. Women have historically been pressured into marriage to keep them out of the public/economic sphere and contained within the private/domestic one. The current wedding industry pulls in an average of 40 billion dollars per year. In other words, the commodification of “love” and relationships is not born with the rise of technology. Further, ‘culture’  may never have really been all that separate from the technique that those critiquing technology discuss.