Sunday, December 4, 2011

Liking Is For Cowards

In this article Jonathan Franzen talk about our "relationships" with technology. He starts out by telling us a personal story. He recently had replaced his outdated Blackberry for a more new Blackberry. He immediately fell in love of course, and he was so fascinated with it that he wanted to just touch it and hold it all the time. It was alway near him no matter what, even if no one was texting or calling him. He had grown a new relationship with his updated phone. He also talks about how we treat technology gadgets like they are humans. For example, we all blame our phones when we don't receive a text or call. Not always is it the phones fault, may be service is bad. We also give our gadgets human-like descriptive names like "sexy". Then he goes on and talks about Facebook. Franzen goes on to talk about the "like" button that everyone is so quick to click. Facebook changed the verb "to like" from a state of mind to an action that you perform with a computer mouse (Franzen). He also said that "To friend a person on Facebook is merely to include that person in out private flattering hall of mirrors." I agree with what Franzen has to put out on the table. I think that we do treat our phones and other technology like we have a direct connection with them, as they were to be human beings. Also, I had never really thought of the like button as he explains, but it does make a lot of sense where he is coming from. 


(28 M). Liking is for cowards. go for what hurts. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/opinion/29franzen.html?pagewanted=all

No comments:

Post a Comment