Download > Devices Poster (Please post and share)
About > The Transduction team is hosting a community discussion on the effects of devices on thinking, learning and community entitled “Our Gadgets, Ourselves: Virtues, Vices and These New Devices.” This Charlottesville community event is part of Humanities Week at UVA. All are welcome. Parents and teachers may choose to invite student delegates to participate.
Date/Time > Tuesday April 8, 2014, 7 pm.
Place > The Bridge, 209 Monticello Road, Directions.
Format > Brief presentations by panelists, followed by open community discussion with all who are present.
Panelists/Speakers > Angeline Lillard, UVA Psychology (early development; Montessori education.) James A. Coan, UVA Psychology (clinical psychology and affective neuroscience). Amanda French, George Mason University, History and Art History, and Center for History and New Media (digital humanities; poetics of Twitter).
Moderator > Michael Levenson, UVA English, Director, Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures.
Sponsors > Transduction Project Team, Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures, OpenGrounds, The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative
Register > here to receive a reminder, join the community network (optional; not necessary for participation).
Before > the event on April 8, please submit device related topics, questions and concerns in the comments section below. This will be helpful in planning our community discussion.
After > the event on April 8, please submit afterthoughts and ideas for next steps in the comments section below.
Resources > are posted here. This is just a start and may be updated over time. Please share other good resources in the comments section of the Resources page.
Transduction 
Can you go a day without using devices? Try it and see. What is toughest for you to give up? Are you a ___ addict? (Fill in the blank. e.g. computer, smart phone, tablet, email, internet, Facebook, Twitter, text message, Instagram, online game, news, music, social media, etc)
I am 68 years old and not your average survey taker. Yes I can go without my devices, but I miss the emails and keeping up with the news.
Have you ever had meaningful interactions and relationships with people you barely know or have never met by email, social media, and other electronic and online means?
One of my longest standing scientific collaborators lives in Japan. We met once for breakfast in Amsterdam almost a decade ago and since that time have written a dozen or so papers in partnership, and still publish together today. Essentially our entire relationship has been and continues to be electronic, both using email and social networking (facebook). Our careers have also had parallel tracks, each choosing to do administration for awhile while balancing scientific work. There have been many exchanges advising each other of ways to address challenges in both areas. Our relationship is personal and meaningful, and would not have been possible without the use of online tools given our professional lives.
How has the definition of “necessary” changed along with the technology available to us? We often hear of people who “can’t quit ______ because…”, citing various, often legitimate, reasons for being absolutely unable to unplug from certain social networking sites.
To an extent, this seems to be true. With the proliferation of online communities, there is an expectation for an individual’s presence on various sites, such as Facebook or twitter, as a prerequisite for participation in many off-line activities. Social groups facilitate communication through their group pages, event coordinators rely on massive advertising through event pages, and some schools even use these networks as communication resources. In some cases, individuals who don’t participate in these communities don’t have other reliable sources of accessing common information for participation in the groups. Even email lags behind some of these communities as the preferred mode of communication.
In light of these changes, there does seem to be a difference in what is strictly “necessary” and “unnecessary” in the use of technology in today’s world of technology-based social interactions. How, then, do we move forward from here, aware of the ways in which we are aided, or hindered, by technological advancements, while recognizing that to a certain extent, things have changed in ways we can’t linearly “fight back”? Once we see that our device-ridden lives can no longer be fixed simply by “giving _____ up” cold turkey, we are a step closer to the answers to these questions, though perhaps also complicating those very answers.
In what ways have devices brought you closer to or taught you about the physical world around you?
As research scientists, our instruments and computers allow us to investigate the inner workings of phenomena that could not otherwise be examined accurately by the human senses. In addition, these devices allow us to maintain, compare, analyze, and share accurate records of these observations across time and across different samples in ways that would be almost impossible without them. Thus our tools are crucial for establishing objective evidence of how nature works and a means for creating the material things that we use in life, including newer and more powerful research instruments. While on the one hand, scientists are building the biggest devices in history, such as the Large Hadron Collider, most instruments are dramatically shrinking and becoming less expensive. For example, there are now tiny wireless TV cameras that can be swallowed for medical examinations. In the future, wearable devices such as Google Glass will provide both average citizens and field researchers with not just the ability to record events but also “augmented” views that integrate a wide range of supporting information.
I agree. In addition, we experience the world through our own version of technology, what is an eye connected to a brain if not a biological camera. As we have evolved, we have created more and more technologies that allow us to do more things or perceive more, as you mentioned @jrafner. These benefits can be both negative and positive depending on the analytic framework. The question that innovations such as Google Glass and other wearable devices (perhaps the smartphone too) beg to ask is when do we take a step back and try to reflect on the impact that all of these “advancements” bring us. Does a technology such as Google Glass positively impact its user or does it detract from the experience one would have without it?
Consider the following scenario, you run into a friend on the street and during the middle of your conversation, you receive a message from a friend. Does this interruption, which with something like google glass only you will be aware of, have a negative effect on that interaction? What are the implications of being able to be contacted/interrupted by a text, email or phone call at virtually any point in the day?
When I was a teenager (1960) I would listen to an earbud radio. (A crystal set that took no batteries, used the radio waves to power the unit.) Since then if I wake up at night I cannot get to sleep without listening to a radio, as my mind keeps racing toward the next day’s events. So I suppose I am addicted.
It is great for keeping up to date with news and friends. I have gotten over dependent on the GPS to find me way around this world.
How will devices like fitness monitors and physical activity tracking further impact our eroding personal privacy?
Many devices, such as exercise bikes at the gym, FitBit wristbands, and fitness apps on our smartphones already implement performance tracking that can place our personal data “in the cloud.” If we consider that Google automatically scans the words we use in our gmail messages to customize advertising, it seems plausible that other companies will profile our physical activities for marketing.
I think this question is very relevant to telehealth and telemedicine.
Telehealth is a comprehensive word for the use of internet, television, smart phones, tablets, and other devices connected to a network to share healthcare information not only from the healthcare specialists but also to healthcare specialists from the patients. WebMD and smart phone/tablet apps that directly send daily blood pressure and sugar levels to physicians is part of telehealth.
Telemedicine is a medical care that is provided through in-time teleconferencing tools or via asynchronous method of communication like emails or text messages. This method is often used to connect a rural clinic with the specialists in more often an urban area.
For these specific health care devices, data are encrypted when sent between devices so that 1. data cannot be intercepted 2. any intercepted data cannot be read. So in this way, these more personal health information have ways of being more protected.
Does the propagation of digital devices change the way that we record history and information? In a way, it certainly affects the way that we record the written word, which is how we used to transmit information across time. Does it matter that we no longer record information in physical format the way that we used to? Why does it or doesn’t it matter?
It may be interesting to consider the intended durability of the history and information that we record. In the past, busts were sculpted out of stone and metals that would endure for centuries. People buried physical memorabilia with them in their tombs. Nowadays, the medium changes so often (updated hardware or software), that it becomes difficult to read information even from a couple decades or years ago (blu-ray, DVDs, VCRs, floppy disks, zip drives, usbs, CD’s, tapes).
We compromise the durability of history for these new technologies and memory devices that are cheaper, easier, faster, and use less resources. Now people are gravitating towards sharing pictures via SnapChat, so they can share instantaneous pictures with each other without having to invest memory space on each other or worry about perfecting the craft because it will be erased in a matter of seconds. For the purposes of speed and mobility people are also gravitating towards SSDs instead of more hard drive space.
Have social and political activisms changed since the advent of social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, etc that connect people regardless of limitations of time or space? Are we more aware of what is really happening in the world with these SNS tools that allow “normal people” to share the unfiltered news? Do activisms SNS translate to a real change off-line?
How do articles like these change our perspective of the world through SNS?
(A collection of Instagram photos captured by the regular citizens at Kiev, comparing before and after the political unrest)
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/life-in-kiev-before-and-after
more of the same; how social media technology “intensifies” our normal human interactions and tendencies
Do you consider an online community (e.i. online forums for specific interests, fan organizations, etc) a legitimate community? Have you ever been involved in one?
How do we define a community in the 21st century?
Devices today often hold our itineraries, contact list and countless other forms of data. What impact do devices and search engines that function as an augmented memory have on the way that the human brain retains memories and what is the effect on short-term and/or long-term memory?
How are devices changing politics and campaigning? NPR weighed in this morning: http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2014/03/17/290714189/google-glass-coming-soon-to-a-campaign-trail-near-you
What is the effect of using social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. on how we view the world? The social networking culture exists in a different yet interconnected space within the real world. How do these online “structures” and norms affect how we perceive others and how we create our online persona? Is our social media “image” actually who we are in real life, or does it represent our aspirations of how we want to be perceived?
The laborer becomes but part of a great machine, which may at any time be paralyzed by causes beyond his power, or even his foresight. Thus does the well-being of each become more and more dependent upon the well-being of all — the individual more and more subordinate to society. – Henry George (Social Problem 1883)
Do devices take away our individual freedom and force us to be completely dependent on them? Do they in a sense, make us vulnerable?
According Media scholar, Marshall McLuhan, media is not only a mechanism to deliver information but it also shapes the process of thought.
Is our brain re-wired due to internet use? Are we prone to ‘power browse’ through all the readings and somewhat lose the ability to read Proust? How do we read differently now than before?
Read an article written by Nicholas Carr, titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and his thoughts on how new media could change the way we read and think:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/
Consider the implications for our use of social media websites and/or our purchasing history which is now easy to maniuplate. This TED talk serves as a prime example of the potential dangers and possible solutions: http://www.ted.com/talks/jennifer_golbeck_the_curly_fry_conundrum_why_social_media_likes_say_more_than_you_might_think?utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_content=button__2014-04-03#t-48675