Cybersociality

For this week’s readings, we read another chapter, “Online and Offline Relationships,” of Daniel Miller’s How the World Changed Social Media. The most important takeaway of this chapter for me was that internet and social medial use is viewed and construed differently throughout the world so it would be impossible to make a generalization. However, it can be said that a strict divide between our online and offline selves do not exist because the relationships formed in both of those platforms are entangled in some way or form. I know for me, for example, my friendships in real life can definitely build from online interactions. When certain people like my photos or comment on something, I feel closer to them because it shows their support or appreciation for whatever I posted.

I thought it was interesting how the chapter mentioned that Socrates back in the day once thought that writing was a dangerous technology that could dismantle the story telling culture. But if we think about how many great literary works have come about and how people are able to express themselves through writing, Socrates’ claims sound a bit ridiculous. Now, I hear many people expressing similar sentiment about technology—how it is dangerous and is disrupting society. Certainly, technology and social media specifically has brought about certain benefits such as being able to keep in contact with relatives and being able to connect with people with whom you would not have met. However, there are many downsides to technology—too many to write them all down in this blogpost. Based on this, I am curious as to how social media will be viewed or how it will have changed when I am a middle aged or old adult.

Olivia Banner’s “Treat Us Right!” talked about biomediation, including self-tracking methods of illnesses into informatics data specifically on the site PatientsLikeMe.com. This is basically reducing health into a number and inputting that into a system to share with others or to be sold to third-party vendors in order to research or make generalizations about that certain disease. Although the idea of having an online community to share stories and difficulties about shared afflictions is noble and acts as a great support system, I am hesitant to really get on board with the idea of transforming symptoms into data. This is because I feel like there is so much more to an affliction than symptoms that can be reduced into numbers. There would be background stories and specific details about a person’s life that we would be losing sight of if this were the main method to classify and receive help about the disease.