Every time I use my computer, the first thing I do is to put on my headphones, turn the music on, go online, check my Facebook, sign into Skype, check my email accounts, and go online on MSN.
It doesn’t matter to me if I turn the computer on to write a paper or just to fool around. This is a ritual that I’ve internalized so much inside my brains that now I perform it without putting thought into it.
As you may imagine, if I’m listening to music, writing an essay and chatting online with my boyfriend at the same time, it’s most likely that I’m not going to listen to anyone outside my private “computational” world.
To think about my self-induced isolation helped me to understand what Ullman was trying to say on his essay “Dining with Robots”. There, he states that we shouldn’t be so worried about trying to figure out a way to explain robots things concerning feelings and senses, such as “a good red Bordeaux”, but about the fact that we have been trying for so long to do this, that we have ended up becoming like robots because we are losing our abilities to communicate with each other through regular means.
Skype has become the best way for me to be “connected” with the people in my life that are not in my geographical region. In Skype, I spend all the time “communicating” with my boyfriend and friends but, can I really call that communication? I supposed I can since I’m always using it, especially now that I’m away from boyfriend, and that Skype gives me the opportunity to actually see him while I’m talking to him. However, sometimes I feel that even though I can talk to him through the computer, it is not the same at all, since I am missing out all the things Noam Chomsky put under the name of pragmatism in 1974.
Pragmatics is all the things that are involved in a conversation, such as context, emissary and receptor, message, verbal and non-verbal signs, etc. When I chat with someone I lose all this things that help me to completely understand the intentions of the emissary of the message. This is one of the reasons why sometimes if you are only chatting; you may misunderstand something that is said by the interlocutor.
Despite the misunderstandings that may occur, for most of the people, the artifact that it is always cool to have is the computer. This artifact is also, in my opinion, the main factor in our isolation from the world. On a computer you are so “connected” to the world, that you allowed yourself to be in your house knowing everything, talking to everyone, and actually, being completely alone. It is weird for me to state this because I really love my computer, thus to state this and to reflect about what it is happening to me, and my acquired robotical attitudes, makes me think that maybe I’m a loner. Maybe I have become a robot too. Maybe I’m loosing my capacities to communicate face to face, to interact with others in a “real conversation”.
Having said this, I ask myself: what is a real conversation? Is it a face to face conversation? Is it an online conversation? Is it a text message you send someone? What is it?
Most of the time for me it is a face to face conversation, but then I ask myself: what am I doing when I’m chatting with my boyfriend on Skype? Am I not actually communicating with him? It is hard to figure out, since nowadays, we spent more time on the internet, or talking on our cell phones, or sending text messages and emails, writing on walls of Facebook and Fotolog, than actually talking to each other. I noticed when I was living and studying in the US, that I “talked” to my family more often than when I’m at home. When I am home in my bedroom I have my computer, my TV, my DVD player and my Mp3 player, and all of those things allow me to be isolated from what’s going on “the real world”.
But what’s “the real world”? I remember the movie “Matrix 1”. There is a scene when Neo is on a kind of cocoon connected to this huge machine, sometimes I feel that I’m like that; connected to a cocoon: my computer. I have a whole different world on my computer, a world that it is only mine, I allowed people in, and I’m the one in charge if I want to take them out, with just one click I can erase someone from my world and also, with just one click I can have new friends.
Technology gives you the power of playing with your life, to make all the decisions, but also, tells you all the things you have to do. I mean, you have to follow its orders; you can not communicate with someone else on the phone for instance, if you don’t dial the number the way you are supposed to dial it. You can not chat with someone if that someone it’s not online. And you can not see what’s really going on if you are not reading the pragmatical signs from your interlocutor.
On the other hand, being myself an IM addict, I shouldn’t admit that what I’m doing as a ritual every single time I turn on my computer is completely bad. I shouldn’t admit that my “robot’s pleasures” are insane. That all this things are really screwing up our communicational world, or our abilities to communicate in person. If I admit all of these, I’m betraying my whole generation that lives through the things that happen on Skype or MSN; the gossips, the things you better write on an MSN window cause it’s easier than just tell them face to face, the stories, the bittersweet of online communication, all of those exciting things that could only happen on the net.
Finally, in this world full of computers, cell phones, Internet, SKYPE, MSN, AIM, Blackberries, I-pods, I-phones, interactive shows on TV, and a lot of more stuffs, it is almost impossible not to be trapped by the technological communicative trend of these last years, so we only have two options: sink or swim!
It doesn’t matter to me if I turn the computer on to write a paper or just to fool around. This is a ritual that I’ve internalized so much inside my brains that now I perform it without putting thought into it.
As you may imagine, if I’m listening to music, writing an essay and chatting online with my boyfriend at the same time, it’s most likely that I’m not going to listen to anyone outside my private “computational” world.
To think about my self-induced isolation helped me to understand what Ullman was trying to say on his essay “Dining with Robots”. There, he states that we shouldn’t be so worried about trying to figure out a way to explain robots things concerning feelings and senses, such as “a good red Bordeaux”, but about the fact that we have been trying for so long to do this, that we have ended up becoming like robots because we are losing our abilities to communicate with each other through regular means.
Skype has become the best way for me to be “connected” with the people in my life that are not in my geographical region. In Skype, I spend all the time “communicating” with my boyfriend and friends but, can I really call that communication? I supposed I can since I’m always using it, especially now that I’m away from boyfriend, and that Skype gives me the opportunity to actually see him while I’m talking to him. However, sometimes I feel that even though I can talk to him through the computer, it is not the same at all, since I am missing out all the things Noam Chomsky put under the name of pragmatism in 1974.
Pragmatics is all the things that are involved in a conversation, such as context, emissary and receptor, message, verbal and non-verbal signs, etc. When I chat with someone I lose all this things that help me to completely understand the intentions of the emissary of the message. This is one of the reasons why sometimes if you are only chatting; you may misunderstand something that is said by the interlocutor.
Despite the misunderstandings that may occur, for most of the people, the artifact that it is always cool to have is the computer. This artifact is also, in my opinion, the main factor in our isolation from the world. On a computer you are so “connected” to the world, that you allowed yourself to be in your house knowing everything, talking to everyone, and actually, being completely alone. It is weird for me to state this because I really love my computer, thus to state this and to reflect about what it is happening to me, and my acquired robotical attitudes, makes me think that maybe I’m a loner. Maybe I have become a robot too. Maybe I’m loosing my capacities to communicate face to face, to interact with others in a “real conversation”.
Having said this, I ask myself: what is a real conversation? Is it a face to face conversation? Is it an online conversation? Is it a text message you send someone? What is it?
Most of the time for me it is a face to face conversation, but then I ask myself: what am I doing when I’m chatting with my boyfriend on Skype? Am I not actually communicating with him? It is hard to figure out, since nowadays, we spent more time on the internet, or talking on our cell phones, or sending text messages and emails, writing on walls of Facebook and Fotolog, than actually talking to each other. I noticed when I was living and studying in the US, that I “talked” to my family more often than when I’m at home. When I am home in my bedroom I have my computer, my TV, my DVD player and my Mp3 player, and all of those things allow me to be isolated from what’s going on “the real world”.
But what’s “the real world”? I remember the movie “Matrix 1”. There is a scene when Neo is on a kind of cocoon connected to this huge machine, sometimes I feel that I’m like that; connected to a cocoon: my computer. I have a whole different world on my computer, a world that it is only mine, I allowed people in, and I’m the one in charge if I want to take them out, with just one click I can erase someone from my world and also, with just one click I can have new friends.
Technology gives you the power of playing with your life, to make all the decisions, but also, tells you all the things you have to do. I mean, you have to follow its orders; you can not communicate with someone else on the phone for instance, if you don’t dial the number the way you are supposed to dial it. You can not chat with someone if that someone it’s not online. And you can not see what’s really going on if you are not reading the pragmatical signs from your interlocutor.
On the other hand, being myself an IM addict, I shouldn’t admit that what I’m doing as a ritual every single time I turn on my computer is completely bad. I shouldn’t admit that my “robot’s pleasures” are insane. That all this things are really screwing up our communicational world, or our abilities to communicate in person. If I admit all of these, I’m betraying my whole generation that lives through the things that happen on Skype or MSN; the gossips, the things you better write on an MSN window cause it’s easier than just tell them face to face, the stories, the bittersweet of online communication, all of those exciting things that could only happen on the net.
Finally, in this world full of computers, cell phones, Internet, SKYPE, MSN, AIM, Blackberries, I-pods, I-phones, interactive shows on TV, and a lot of more stuffs, it is almost impossible not to be trapped by the technological communicative trend of these last years, so we only have two options: sink or swim!
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